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This year, for the first time in my life—as least as far back as I can remember—I didn't spend Rosh Hashanah in synagogue. It feels strange to have missed services after all these years.

I like the enforced opportunity to reflect back on the past year and look ahead to the new one. Nothing was stopping me from doing that, of course, but I missed the ritual that usually accompanies it. And I missed the comfort of repeating that ritual year in and year out.

I'm not a deeply religious person. Actually, I'm not really religious at all. But I do cling to many of the customs of the religion in which I was raised, and I continue to find beauty in the words and melodies I learned as a child, attending services in the synagogue that my parents co-founded more than three decades ago.

This year has been an especially hard one, bookended by my grandmother's death and my dad's surgery, with my own medical odyssey in between. Perhaps it is fitting, then, that my parents and I spent this Rosh Hashanah in a hospital instead of in a synagogue. And as wistful as I am about missing the rituals I cherish, I can only be grateful to have started another year in the company of the two people who gave me life and taught me to how to live it.

Shana tovah, Mom and Dad. A happy and, above all, a healthy year to you and to all.