When trials and suffering test our resolve, we summon up that “father’s face” to illuminate the murky path through life

Yosef Hatzaddik was drawn to the brink of temptation — but when he envisioned his father’s face, he found the strength to stay true to his principles. Ever since then, the Jewish People have held on to mental images of loved ones, treasured last words of encouragement, or even family heirlooms, to keep them from falling. When trials and suffering test our resolve, we summon up that “father’s face” to illuminate the murky path through life.

Five stories

Project Coordinator: Faigy Hutner

From the Brink

As told to Sandy Eller

It’s true that lots of people don’t have it easy growing up, but having an abusive mother left me facing challenges that are far more daunting than what most kids face.

I grew up on Long Island as one of seven kids, attended seminary in Israel, and continued my education to become certified as an LMHC — a licensed mental health counselor. But as time went by, I started heading downhill, and even therapy wasn’t helping me cope with the anxiety and depression that haunted both my days and my nights.

By the time I was 24, I had had enough. Life was just too difficult, too traumatic, so I chose to end it via medical means while I was sitting in my car near a friend’s house in Brooklyn.  Then I panicked: I didn’t want to be alone when I died, so I called a friend and told her what I had done, and she called Hatzalah.

I still remember the paramedics loading me into the ambulance and how annoyed, embarrassed, scared, and beyond exhausted I was the whole way to the hospital. Thankfully, my friend came along with me, and if not for her presence, I would have felt completely alone at this lowest moment of my life.

The doctors at the hospital insisted that I had to check into a psychiatric hospital ASAP, but as much as they talked and talked, I refused to listen. I had a good idea of what a psychiatric hospital was like, and I didn’t want to go there.

And then my dad walked into the ER.  He walked over to my bed and told me that I needed to get better and that I couldn’t ever do something like what I had just done ever again.  He kept on telling me that if going to a psychiatric hospital would make a difference, then I had to at least give it a try.  I can’t even begin to explain how much I didn’t want to go, but in my heart of hearts I knew that my father was right, and, in retrospect, listening to him definitely saved my life.

That day in the ER was the first time I ever saw my dad cry. He walked over to my bed, took my face in his big hands, and through his tears he could barely choke out the words, “Look at my face, Miri, like Yaakov.”

As a baal teshuvah, my father sometimes struggled with terminology — I asked him if he was referring to the way the image of Yaakov’s face had kept Yosef Hatzaddik from deviating from the right path. He nodded his head and said to me, “Yes, that’s what I meant. Look at me. Remember my face.”

Those simple words sustained me during the difficult weeks I spent at the Horizon Unit at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Westchester, which provides comprehensive inpatient cognitive behavioral treatment known as CBT, and is designed to meet the needs of frum patients.  There was even a time when I came close to taking my life again, but I squeezed my eyes shut and conjured up the image of my dad’s face, just like he told me to.  Picturing his dark, deep, brown eyes and remembering how they glistened with tears in the hospital, I knew that I had to go on, for his sake.

It’s three years later and I just passed my exams to become an LMHC, and would love to work as a grief counselor in a hospice. Things aren’t perfect and they aren’t always easy, but I have a secret source of support that I take with me wherever I go. I have the strength to persevere because there are people in this world who love me and believe in me. I have the fortitude to claw my way back from the brink. I have the support to keep hoping.

I have the memory of my father’s face.