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J

ust recently I counted. Seven Eight Nine… Ten?!

I am in the middle of my tenth trial sent uniquely for me from my loving Father in Heaven. It started Erev Pesach.

The kitchen looked like a space center there were enough lollipops and potato chips to last until Succos and the table was set. My boys were napping blissfully in anticipation of the Seder and I was basking in that Erev Pesach glow. The phone rang — it was Mommy. But as she spoke her words slurred into each other. She was in the hospital she told me. Three thousand miles away.

It wasn’t just a stroke. There were several strokes the result of an underlying liver malignancy and Mom was placed in the ICU.

Isru Chag found me flying to Vancouver that glorious city of ocean mountains glass and green. That cradle of my idyllic childhood has become a jarring cacophony of emotion: nostalgia happiness sadness tragedy.

Two years before my cherished sister passed away in the same hospital where my mother was being treated. My firecracker of a sister my only sibling and best friend left this world at the age of 31 in a palliative-care room overlooking majestic mountains and glittering waters. And now I was back in the same building taking the same elevator to see my treasured mother who was apparently non-responsive.

But she did respond. I walked in my rav’s counsel ringing in my ears. Advice about Vidui and end-of-life halachos and a broken heart. At the threshold of the small room I stopped closed my eyes and whispered “ein od milvado.” Just like two years before I imagined a pillar of light and I clung to that. Hashem was with me in that hospital. “I accept Your Will Hashem ” I whispered “I accept this nisayon please just give me the koach.”

And as I walked into the room my mother opened her eyes and a smile cracked through: “Hi Beauty. I love you.”

I cried tears of joy.