She had the illness, but it never had her

Told to Rivka Streicher by Chaya Gefner

Chapter 1

MY

mother, Nechama Witler, was known as the “Ayin Tovah Lady” of Manchester.

As a kid, I took it for granted that my mother was always thanking, praising, seeing the good. It took me a while to appreciate that she didn’t exactly have an easy life. During the war, she’d been evacuated from London, while her parents, older and already infirm, stayed behind. She never saw them again. Parnassah was a constant struggle, and my father passed on 30 years before she did, leaving her a widow for decades.

During Mommy’s final illness, I traveled from my home in Beit Shemesh to Manchester to be with her.

My mother sat on the sofa and said to me, unexpectedly, “When I pass on, don’t mourn my death.”

What?

She cleared her throat, “What I’m saying is, Chaya, celebrate the life that I lived.”

That was Mommy. Positive to the end.

My daughter was engaged then, and it so happened that Mommy passed away 30 days before her chasunah. Instead of a shloshim seudah, we made a wedding. It was exactly as Mommy had said: Don’t mourn, celebrate.

It was a whirlwind time. Mommy’s passing, the wedding, the sheva brachos. Countless arrangements, grief mingled with joy. I held my daughter’s hand and danced even as my siblings couldn’t actively participate in the simchah. So many feelings; my mother’s smile urging us on.

In the midst of all this, on one of the mornings of sheva brachos, my almost-18-year-old daughter Rivky turned to me and said, “Ima, my leg is hurting.”

“Go see the doctor,” I told her distractedly.

The doctor couldn’t find a cause, and we thought it was just one of those things.

A few weeks later, on a Shabbos, I noticed that Rivky, in her beautiful Shabbos clothes — she always had a flair for style — was limping.

After the meal she said, “I can’t sweep up, my leg hurts too much.”

Alarm bells tolled. This was not Rivky.

We made an appointment at an orthopedist, who suspected the dreaded disease and sent Rivky for an MRI.

Rivky — fireball of energy, opinions, and life — lay under the machine, holding herself deathly still. When the scan was finally over, she said to the technician, “I hope I’ll never have to do that again.”

The technician bit his lip. Rivky had cancer in her leg; he knew she’d have to repeat that procedure many times in the journey ahead.

None of us could compute what was happening. Suddenly, this gregarious, vivacious girl was bedridden, confined to the hospital ward.

Just shy of her 18th birthday, Rivky was technically still a child, and so she was put in the children’s ward. It was the first small kindness along a hard road lined with them. The children’s ward was colorful and bright; while fear stalked the floor, you couldn’t help but be touched by hope. It was there, in the nurses’ kindly smiles, in the doctors’ resolve to try like never before, in the faces of young, bald children who didn’t quite believe what was happening to them — holding out, as only children can, for everything they deserved.

Rivky started chemotherapy treatments right away. She got weaker, and then her hair started to fall out. Still, from the get-go, she was the Rivky who we knew. She wouldn’t wear a hospital gown, she wouldn’t slouch around in pajamas. She’d get dressed, put on makeup. She wore all sorts of hats and poked fun at her own reflection.

“I have to look good to feel good,” she said.

She knew what she needed; she gave herself what she wanted. She had the self-awareness others work years to attain.

She didn’t like the hospital meals, and we were happy to help out. In our large family, there are enough people to cook an extra portion for her or buy her something to eat. And she would make sure it happened. Rivky wouldn’t wait for someone to forget and become resentful of having to eat the hospital fare; she’d call me or her married sisters and ask for her supper.

In all the time she was hospitalized, Rivky was never on her own. We all came; I, my husband, Rivky’s sisters and brothers, our married kids, not to mention friends, teachers, people from the community.

Rivky had a large circle, and while she had an illness, the illness never had her.

People loved visiting. She was just herself, and people loved that person; at her core, Rivky was strong and optimistic as anything, truly the Ayin Tovah Lady’s granddaughter. But she was also self-aware; she knew when she was tired and weak, and she didn’t feel pressure to be present when she couldn’t.