Our daughter, Baila, Reb Eliezer’s wife, is a truly amazing person. These last 10 months she assumed responsibility for his care. She left no stone unturned in considering every possibility regardless of personal cost to her well-being. Against the advice of most of us, she took advantage of her training as a registered nurse to transfer him to her own care at the summer location of his yeshiva, where he could be surrounded by the life he loved and cherished – his family, his students and the sound of Torah learning, fervent praying, Sabbath celebrations and spirited singing. She was always dreaming and eagerly awaiting the moment when he would regain consciousness and he would tell her what parts of it had reached him.
She did all this in the late months of pregnancy. Two and a half months ago, Refael Aryeh Leibish was born. The bris was preformed on his unconscious father’s lap. Suffice it to say that it was a bittersweet time.
Then the massive recurring infection set in and Reb Eliezer was readmitted to the hospital. After a number of weeks, he underwent surgery to place a shunt to drain the fluid in his brain. Three days later, he suffered a massive brain hemorrhage. Baila sat at his bedside, day and night, for the next 12 days, up to his passing – talking to him, stroking him and crying oceans of tears.
Maggie, Reb Eliezer’s nurse, teary eyed, commented that in all of her experience she had never seen such devotion, so much praying and so many people who cared about each other.
After the funeral in Boro Park, it began to drizzle. Someone remarked to seven-year-old Naftoli Tzvi, Reb Eliezer’s son, that even the heavens were crying. He vehemently protested and said, “No. When my Totty was born, the heavens must have cried because they had to part with him. But now, these must be tears of joy because they have him back with them.”
To hear the voices of the little children as they belt out Kaddish is nothing short of heart wrenching. The little ones do it with real gusto – especially since one of their teachers told them that when their father who is in Heaven hears their voices, he joins hands with the angels and dances. The image of their father dancing is a very real one to them. The only question they had was whether the angels know how to dance.
In his eulogy, Rabbi Eliyahu Yehoshua Geldzahler, Reb Eliezer’s father, commented on the verse recited at the time of loss, “G-d has given and G-d has taken.” He confessed that at this moment his tears were spent, so he preferred to concentrate on the great gift of the 46 years of Reb Eliezer’s life – the pure nachas, the daily highs he received from his every phone conversation, his humor, his infectious joy, and his great accomplishments.
As for myself, Baila’s mother, presumptuous as it might be, I ask the Almighty to remember His promise to be the “Advocate of widows and the Father of orphans.” Only He can step in and give Baila the requisite strength to raise her children, to nurture the great potential within each one of them and bring to fruition Reb Eliezer’s legacy encased in their very genes.
And for all of us collectively, may G-d finally usher in the long awaited millennium, when there will be an end to all suffering and wherein “He will wipe the tears from every face.”