From Complications of Multiple Sclerosis to Revealed Miracles

Having written about my mother’s death, I thought I’d also write about my father’s.My father died when he was sixty-five. He had been intubated and on bedrest since he was fifty. He had been in and out of hospitals and rehab centers since he was thirty-seven and had been treated for multiple sclerosis since he was in his early twenties. Yet, his death and shiva were miracle laden.

Dad died alone in a Pittsburgh hospital. My mother, at my father’s urging, had left his side to attend the Allentown funeral of her sole sibling’s wife. Mom’s sister-in-law, who, herself had no siblings, had long embraced Mom as a “sister.” Meanwhile, My only sibling and I were out of state. Dad’s hospitalizations had become so frequent that we were told to care for our children rather than to fly in for each of his hospital admissions. Neither of us imagined that Dad’s newest hospitalization would be his last.

Meanwhile, my husband had driven from our home in Pennington, New Jersey to Allentown, Pennsylvania to attend my aunt’s levayah (I was incapacitated by a severe back injury; I had simultaneously injured multiple discs.) Thus, my husband was able to accompany my newly widowed mother back to Pittsburgh, where my California sister met my mother in the airport, and from where my husband served as the shomer for my father’s body until a shomer from a New York funeral could take over (my parents had bought gravesites in New York’s Montefiore Cemetery). A New York chevra kadisha performed Taharah.

Concurrently, our dear friends, Mishpacha Aaronoff, packed suitcases for all four of the young Greenberg children, the oldest of whom was nine and the youngest of whom hadn’t even had his upsherin yet, covered our mirrors, and offered to drive all of us to my Teaneck in-laws’ house, where we would rendezvous with my husband and, the following morning, drive to Queens for the funeral. Additionally, the Aaronoffs packed the kids’ overnight bags, and secured the Greenberg children in their car seats. I drove us to Norther New Jersey. My in-laws helped the kids disembark and I laid back down with ice.

Throughout, Rabbi Mordecai Terebelo, then of Lakewood, now of Phildelphia, who had been helping my husband and I on our journey to frumkeit, guided us through the levayah and later through shiva.

An Orthodox, New York rabbi, hired by my mother, led the levayah; she knew we were becoming Baalat Teshuva and respected our derech. Everyone cried when making hespedim.

Thereafter, we traveled from the funeral house to the cemetery in a combination of vehicles. The funeral home provided one limousine. A limo company, which serviced entertainers, of which my brother-in-law is and was one, provided another. My husband drove our children in our minivan.

However, it seemed that the limo in which my mother, my sister, my father’s sister, and I sat was not the one from the funeral home. Rather, the kippa sruga-covered driver worked for the entertainment industry’s company. His presence was Hashgacha Pratis.

En route to the k’vurah, he offered to daven kaddish, i.e., to be my sister’s and my shaliah- my parents had had no sons. The driver only asked that we donate to his shul and pointed out that all tzedukah accordingly given would be an aliyah for our father’s neshemah.

Additionally, once we arrived at the cemetery, that malach took himself “off the clock,” helped my husband lead the graveside service, drove us to my mother’s cousin’s house for the mourners’ meal, showed us how to wash before entering the house, prayed Mincha with my husband, and later led our extended family in Maariv. When sharing the kosher food, including the boiled eggs, which I had brought from home, he helped my family recite the  appropriate blessings.

Later, my sister and her family, plus my mother, retired to their airport hotel. My husband, our kids and I followed in our minivan. Before we took leave of them, my mother insisted that our kids list their Chanukah desires (my father had died shortly after Sukkot.)

I told our kids that Grandma was grieving, to politely answer her, and to expect nothing. Nonetheless, one child asked for her own room. Months later, my mother still insisted on granting that request.

Seasons after consulting with our rabbi, with a social worker, and with my sister, my husband and I accepted Mom’s generosity. There is no mitzvah when an act is preceded by an aveira, so my husband and I had to verify that accepting such abundance was not a crime against my mother as a parent or as a widow (eventually, with my mother’s approval, instead of adding to our home, we used her money, along with funds from our Pennington house’s sale to buy a home in  Highland Park/Edison. Living in a rum community enabled to become fully mitzvot observant.)

Beforehand, though, the actual shiva for my father was literally otherworldly. I was numb. It seemed unreal that people were visiting to console me. It seemed even more impossible that after my father’s decades in and repeated release from care facilities that I had actually joined “The Club,” the group of people who stayed in shul for Yizkor.

No number of tears, moans, stories, or other homages would return my father to this world or would lighten any unresolved heaviness between us. Nonetheless, the public act of mourning him allowed certain of my emotional knots to unravel and others of my sentiments to finally be expressed. I felt such incredible loss.

I also felt such incredible gratitude. A non-Jewish visitor commented on how fortunate Jews are to focus on mourning for, respectively, a week, a month, and, in the special case that is parents, for a year; to have Yahrzeit dates and Yizkor services; and to have closed coffins. She was right.

I recall, as well, many gifts of food. Whereas I ate little, those kindnesses meant my husband and small children were so sufficiently cared for that I could focus on lamenting.

Mostly, though, during shiva, I took meds for my back injury, sat on the floor, and cried. Grieving, per halacha’s sanctions, was cleansing. I considered myself fortunate to have Torah’s guidelines to provide handrails for me during one of my life’s maelstroms.

Twenty-five years have passed since I sat shiva for my father. I remain, forever, a member of “The Club.” I also remain, forever, grateful for Torah’s prescriptions for mourning and for the many acts of chessed and miracles that conveyed me during that time.