Yes, a convert is still allowed to love his or her biological parents, something many Jews don’t realize

I never realized what a gift shivah was until my father died.

Since I’m a convert and my father wasn’t Jewish, I didn’t have that gift of shivah to mourn him. How I longed to dedicate an entire week to his memory, to cry, to laugh, to hold on to our close connection.

Instead, I had less than a day.

My father died on the morning of Isru Chag Pesach, a Thursday. I sat on the sofa and cried, and a few close friends called. But the next morning was Erev Shabbos, so I had to cook and prepare as if nothing had happened, as if my world hadn't just collapsed. And then Shabbos started, and then life just went on.

I never even got to say goodbye. Coronavirus took that from me. My father was taken to the hospital with pneumonia during Pesach, during the lockdown, and there were no flights, no trains, no possible way to get to England. I desperately tried travel agents who could offer me only insane flight combinations at insane prices that I couldn’t afford with stopovers in insane places like Addis Abba. I spent Pesach trying to be b’simchah while my heart was thousands of miles away in a hospital ward in Northern England.

Even if I had managed to get there, they wouldn’t have let me in to see him anyway — coronavirus regulations barred visitors from the hospital, even though he didn’t have coronavirus. His mind wasn’t clear due to the medication, and he must have been so confused, not knowing why his wife of over 60 years and his son didn’t come to visit him. And we couldn’t even speak to him on the phone — there was no reception in his ward.

The nurses told us he fell out of bed trying to get up and get dressed because he wanted to go home. But he didn’t come home. He died alone, who knows exactly how or when. And I never got to tell him how much I loved him.

And I did love him. Yes, a convert is still allowed to love his or her biological parents, something many Jews don’t realize. We give up our past life when we convert — I willingly gave up my home, my family, and the country of my birth. But we aren't commanded to sever all contact with the people who gave us life, who brought us up, educated us, and helped us to become the kind of thinking, truth-seeking people who find Judaism.