In this honest diary, Batya Sherizen recounts how encountering death shaped her into the woman she is today

Batya Sherizen with Rafaella Levine

Prologue: What’s in Your Kugel?

IT’S 11 weeks since baby Abi’s birth, and I finally feel healthier and stronger. I can take walks, I’m more capable in the kitchen, and I can climb the stairs to do the laundry.

We’ve been receiving meals for almost a year by now, and I’m ready to be a functioning adult, so I request that our lifeline come to an end. Even when friends call me begging to make food, and organizations insist I would be doing them a chesed if I would accept, I hold my ground. Even if we eat frozen pizza, I will be the one to warm up the slices. I need to give, to perform this simple act of love.

It’s a windy Friday in April, our first Shabbos on our own. We have some things in the freezer, and my husband Moshe made chicken. Now I want to make something special, something from my heart.

I decide on potato kugel, since it makes the whole house smell like Shabbos.

I smile as I locate my food processor, dusty and neglected in the back of a cabinet, count out my potatoes and onions, and find all the other ingredients. Finally, everything is lined up and waiting on my counter, like dancers poised for the music to begin. I sit on the barstool next to the counter — I’m still not able to stand for long periods — and open my cookbook to my favorite recipe, which I’ve tweaked over the years: a little less oil, a secret sugar infusion, a drop of lemon pepper.

I chuckle at the utter simplicity and joy of just being in the kitchen, peeling potatoes, grating them, repeat with the onions, getting everything ready to place it in a 9x13 pan. It takes me nearly 45 minutes, and I’m  shocked that something so simple would take so long and require all my focus and energy.

“Really, potato kugel?” I think. “I used to make that in eight to ten minutes tops while doing 500 other things! Oh, well, I’ll be capable like that again soon, once I’m strong enough.”

And then I stop. Do I want to go back to being the quick, capable, rushed person I’d been? Absolutely not!

That powerhouse Batya who could throw together a potato kugel without paying any attention was the same person who bulldozed her way through life. She didn’t appreciate things, she didn’t stop to feel how wonderful life was, and if I’m being brutally honest, she didn’t love herself all that much. Instead, she pushed herself to the limit because she was never happy in the moment. It was always about doing more work, being a better mother, running faster, earning more income….

Would she have been able to appreciate the beauty of being in the kitchen, slow, quiet, and happy? How would she have felt if she had the strength to make just one small dish?

For all her impressive accomplishments, she’d never experienced such bliss and delight while cooking anything. That Batya had been wonderful and well-meaning — she did her best. But she has evolved into someone else completely.