From our first moment on earth to whom do we turn? Mother!
Can I tell you a little bit about my mother?
As a young girl, she wanted to help build the fledgling State of Israel. She walked through the New York City train cars (they were safe back then), and announced, “Streams of uneducated immigrants are pouring into Israel. With your help we can educate them…”
At age seventeen, my mother decided to go into a profession where giving, empathy and kindness are qualities that are continuously called upon: she became a nurse.
She made aliyah, and worked for about a year in Sha’arei Tzedek Hospital.
Ma returned to the States, and continued her schooling.
Bubby Gottlieb, my maternal grandmother, gave birth to a baby boy with Down’s syndrome. In the 1950s people with Down’s syndrome were called “mongoloids.” Most of them were put in a state facility. My grandparents were told by the doctor to put my Uncle Duvid there.
Zeidy and Bubby Gottlieb did not heed the doctor’s suggestion; they took Duvid home.
It took time, but Ma helped Duvid learn how to climb steps and get out of his crib. She toilet trained him and she even taught him how to ride a bike.
Uncle Duvid had four “mothers”: Bubby, my mother and her two sisters, Aunt Rochel and Aunt Yocheved. They showered him with devotion and love. And he – with his happy smile – returned their love many times over.
Someone called my mother, “the oak tree.” If you needed someone to lean on, my mother was there for you.
She knew that people were different, and she accepted them as they were.
After my parents married and started raising a family, Ma took a break from professional nursing to fill the role of full-time mom. Raising seven daughters and a son called for all those qualities of empathy, giving and kindness and a ton of patience!
Decades passed. My parents realized their dream of moving to Eretz Yisrael.
Last Succos was the first year after my father’s passing. My brother-in-law asked my mother if she wanted a set of arba minim. Of course she did. The question was only whether she wanted an esrog that was mehudar or super mehudar.
Ma’s response: “I want a mehudar esrog. And the difference in price between the mehudar and the super mehudar, give to tzedakah.”
My mother loved to sing. She’d sing parts of the davening. She sang zemiros on Shabbos. (Isn’t that a beautiful idea – to sing to our Creator?!) Ma even sang before and after her last surgery!
My mother loved to learn. After making her “second aliyah,” she asked one of my sisters to call her in the middle of the night (Israel time) so she could listen to Rabbi Braun’s shiur in the Young Israel of Flatbush.
Once, on the way to a shiur in her neighborhood, she tripped on the sidewalk. Someone helped her get up, and offered to drive her to the clinic. My mother took the offer for the ride – to her shiur! She agreed to go to the clinic afterwards.
Ma found happiness in little things. There were two muppets perched on her kitchen shelf. She made little yarmulkes for them and called them the “mashgichim.”
And she wanted to bring happiness to others. Last summer artificial grass was laid in her front garden. She commented to her next-door neighbor that she’s happy that after she goes, she’s leaving something that will be nice for the neighbors to enjoy…
The people whose lives my mother touched surely miss her.
As for me, I feel like I’ve lost the most precious person in the world.
Did I write this article just to share memories?
I’d like to share a message.
Don’t be shy to pay a shiva call. It’s a kindness to both the niftar and to the mourners. Your presence shows that you acknoita schwledge their loss and that you care.
Before asking the mourner questions, consider “Will this comment bring comfort?”
May the time come very soon when there will be no more tears, with the coming of Mashiach tzidkeinu, bimheira v’yameinu.
And may both the memories and the message bring an aliyah to the neshama of Miryam bas R’ Aharon (Sadowsky), my very, very dear mother.