A

year passed. It was a year of treatments, of pain, of bravery, and hope. It was a year of crushing despair and dire predictions. But our family did not despair. We couldn’t, with our mother as our role model and leader, teaching us true emunah: It’s not about everything turning out okay, but being okay with the way everything turns out.

There were treatment options in the US that we didn’t have at home, so my courageous mother, stubborn in her faith in the One Above, chose to go there — alone. I hoped she’d return healthy and healed, bringing life back to its blessedly boring routine. I wanted this painful saga behind us.

But the Creator of the World had a very different plan.

Again and again, I traveled to New York to visit my mother, shedding more tears and feeling my hopelessness rise. Hashem was asking me to climb higher and higher, and I wondered sometimes, “How on earth can I do this? I am so young! My strength is waning! What more, Hashem, do You want from me?”

But we had His chesed, too.

We saw firsthand how strongly Klal Yisrael care for each other, how they help out those in need. We were witness to tefillos and kabbalos taken on on our mother’s behalf. We were strengthened by the support we experienced: singers visiting to lighten the atmosphere, packages of food, trips for the patient and her family, medical assistance, kind neighbors, caring friends and family….

We held on to every kindness as a gift from Hashem and thanked Him for these streaks of light amid the inky-black darkness.

We grew, one step at a time, because if Hashem had brought us to this, we knew we would be able to go through it. Emunah was our anchor. It gave us hope, helped us survive, and we grasped tightly on to it. It held us steady as the waves raged around us.

There were others in the hospital, lonely and sad, with nothing like the hope and support that kept us afloat. What a gift we had! How fortunate we were to have all this faith and hope, this love and care.

After two years of treatment in New York, a family simchah brought my parents home. My hope soared. Maybe the yeshuah had finally arrived. Maybe the time had come for my mother to be healed.

It was not meant to be.

And so began the decline in my mother’s health.

To me, it felt like an avalanche: rocks falling from every angle. I’d get to brush away the dirt, and the next boulder would come hurtling toward me, threatening to bury me under its wreckage.

I needed a protection, a shelter. I found one in my siddur, its pages warm and yellowed by my desperate tears. And when I couldn’t outrun the boulders in time to grab my siddur, my heart would burst forth in raw prayer. It was a connection that saved me from falling into the abyss.

As the end drew near, every day brought more pain and deterioration. But every day was another chance to be with my mother, to caress her hand, to feel her warm skin against mine. To be nourished by her closeness and reliance on Hashem. Every day brought more opportunities for growth, more proclamations of Hashem Hu HaElokim — He is One, with a plan, with love, with the possibility to do anything.

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hen I was only 17, Hashem asked me to step up yet again. My mother returned her pure neshamah to an exalted, lofty place near the Shechinah.

Those of us who have endured a loss know there is no explanation. There are so many unanswered questions.

Loss is so vast, so deep, so excruciatingly painful.

But as Avraham Avinu said, “Hineni” for his nisyonos, I said, “Hineni “for mine. All I asked of Hashem, all I pleaded with Him, was tein li koach — give me strength — not only to survive, but also to thrive.

True strength, I found, was in allowing yourself to feel the pain, in chasing away the shame after a weak moment, in giving your tears the freedom to fall. And through it all, to rise through the darkness, to believe in the dawn coming again.

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our years later, I have so much brachah in my life.

I still miss my mother. I long for her treats, her compliments, her love, her pride. I wish to hear her gentle advice one more time, and I cry for the big moments in my life that she couldn’t attend in her physical form. I yearn to share all that a child might share with her mother.

I still find it hard to make this new journey into adulthood alone, without my beloved guide. I so wish that I could give her the nachas a grandmother deserves and show her my beautiful family, kein ayin hara.

Yet I carry on each day with strength. With the raw understanding of the value a mother holds in her mikdash me’at. I know what a mother is. I know that a mother’s strongest values will be passed on to her children.

My mother’s courage pumps through my veins, her emunah beats in my heart. I hope to make my mother proud by building my own beautiful palace. Ff

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 954)