They set a wedding date and began to dream of their shared future. But my father had unknowingly become a player in a tragedy. Dorothy had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma—a death sentence back then—and her family had kept her condition secret from her. My father discovered the truth a few days before their wedding and, against rabbinic advice, telling no one except his best friend and his sister, moved forward with the plan to marry. Dorothy was—many of those who knew them together have told me—the love of his life. She died six months later.
