Am I really doing this again?

I

t’s 1987.

I’m nine years old.

My mother is in the hospital.

The adults speak in secrets, behind closed doors. When my mother returns, we have a rotation of nurses, aides, and therapists entering our house. Her arm needs rehabilitation as a result of the surgery.

When I come home from school, Mommy is usually resting on the couch. This went on for four years… four years of a lack of clarity, four years of tefillos, four years of knowing something is wrong, but not really knowing.

Saba and Savta send a lot of frozen food to stock our freezer. Tatty and Mommy spend three weeks in Eretz Yisrael begging Hashem for a yeshuah at mekomos hakedoshim. We kids are desperately homesick even though we are staying with our grandparents. I know that something is wrong, but will myself to ignore it. My father doesn’t want anyone to know.

And then one Tuesday night in June, my father literally carries my mother to the car. I watch through my upstairs bedroom window. When I enter my parents’ bedroom, there is blood on her sheets, on the floor, and the blankets are a tangled mess. My 39-year-old mother had been coughing up blood and is admitted to the hospital.

On Friday she dies.