A Letter to Kivi’s Chabura

I watched you accompany him for the last time on that autumn day exactly 30 days ago…  All of you, so many of you, as you had so many times in the past 20 years,  On your faces were concentration and concern to protect him, to carry him with so much love.  “Keep your hands near the casket and don’t step back,” said the funeral director, and I watched so many loving hands reach out to gently protect him for the last time any of us would see his physical form. 

How many times did you encircle him with your love and joy?  You were all so young – mere children really – when we first called on you to help him face this almost insurmountable challenge.  On that first Pesach, when we first were told his diagnosis, this house was filled with friendship and support and even laughter, and of course, nosh.   It seemed like within hours of the moment when he could have visitors, you were all there. How could we have asked you to brave the frightening, nightmarish scene of the ICU?  We were his parents and we could only see him and what might bring a smile to his face, ease the terrible darkness for him. Please accept our apologies for not even considering what a toll, what a terrible favor we asked of you.  Equally we must ask forgiveness of your parents who never seemed to hesitate as we stole your innocence of life’s dark side.

Your incredible Rabbeim set the stage and you filled your roles heroically.  R’ Chaim Segal, zt”l, said: “Tell us how many bochurim you want and when they should come and they will be there.  Don’t worry about sedorim.” And we didn’t worry, we asked you to come and you came.  I hope that you did not have nightmares, in spite of the machinery, the tubes, the pipes, Kivi’s inability to speak or even move, and of course that terrible, sickening hospital odor.  You managed to smile and to talk, to give him what we, his frightened, overwhelmed parents, could not – a bridge to normalcy, a support system of his peers, who would not abandon him, but who came to sit, to banter, to squeeze his hand and mostly, by your very presence in that terrible place, to give him a taste of normalcy, of proof that all of that he had been was still there, waiting for him to return. 

Can you even remotely fathom what gift you gave to him and to us, his parents and family?  You gave us that same reassurance, that chance to sit back and exhale for just a moment as you gave him that which we could not.   Many of you are, B”H, parents yourselves, now.  I hope that none of you have experienced, but probably you have, that helpless, painful frustration of trying to make “the hurt go away.” Physical or emotional, we are the grown-up, the all powerful parent who is supposed to make everything right, who is supposed to protect and surely make the pain go away.  What greater pain than when that is so, so far from the reality?  All of you were really the only “band-aids” we had in our helpless, empty attempt to try to make the hurt go away. 

You came for all those weeks in the hospital – and on that triumphant day seven weeks later, on Erev Shavuos, as the ambulance drove slowly up East 18^th street, you all seemed to rise up out of the sidewalks, and the street in front of our house was filled with your joy and laughter as you gave him a hero’s welcome!  Shavuos was no different, though just a shadow of his former self, his body locked in the halo’s terrible grip, his face scarred, his throat invaded, speech and eating taken away from him. you did not let it stop you from coming, from cheering him on, from, once again, reassuring him by your presence that he was still the Kivi who was part and parcel of  the chevra.

We came to Camp Morris when he was strong enough to travel and within hours you slid him out from under my overprotective mother’s “eagle eye” and escorted him down the road to the grocery store, a campfire and the basketball court. You outwitted my paranoiac fears and gave both him and us our first respite from the terrible darkness of this new nightmare. You came when there was another hospitalization and you sang and you shmoozed when he was weak and weary.  

Briefly returning to his beloved Yeshiva and Rabbeim, you joined hands and encircled him, protecting him as he “danced” on Simchas Torah, even with the metal cage.   I looked down from the Ezras Nashim and I thanked Hashem for each and every one of you.   You came and you came and you came – all that year when he could not return to Yeshiva – computer games, board games, talking, joking… I don’t know what you did together, but the doorbell rang and I knew that I could step back and let you all do what only you could do – give him a connection to what his life was supposed to be and hope that it would, someday, be just that – normal.. 

I insisted on coming when my husband drove him on that glorious day when he returned to Yeshiva. I will always return to the memory, when I am feeling sad, of the singing and dancing that accompanied him as, once again, you encircled him for his triumphant return after the year of suffering.

When, less than two years later, the terrible beast returned to invade his body, once again you did not falter in your devotion.  Basketball court, swimming pools, campfires were abandoned as vans made circular routes from Camp Morris to Brooklyn and back again. You arranged rides, grabbed rides, shared rides as the summer passed and Kivi was too weak to come to you in Camp Morris. Once again we stole some of your youth as your sixteenth summer was turned upside down.

You gave him a standing ovation at your High School graduation, when really all he wanted to do was take the podium to express his Hakaras Hatov.  “K’ish echad b’lev echad… I want everyone to know what this yeshiva and this chabura are like.”  Those were his words and those were his feelings for all of you. I really can not elaborate on that. 

I did not see you all in Israel.  He snuck me into your dirah on Succos and I saw his joy in being there with all of you – as dirahs go, it was pretty civilized and I will always look back with true happiness as I remember him proudly showing me what he was part of… Why did you have all those bottles of water around the top of the kitchen cabinets?  It is you, actually, who have given me insight into what that period was for Kivi.  You shared that happy, fulfilling moment in his life.  You, once again, gave him, experienced with him, that which I could not give but only pray he would have.

You encircled him with joy that had no bounds, neither his nor yours, when he became a chasan.  The pictures of his vort still reverberate with the exuberance of pure unadulterated simcha that reflects off Kivi’s face and all of yours as each person who had walked the walk so many times with him saw that Hashem had heard and answered all of our fervent prayers. And the flight that carried his joyous chabura to Chicago to share in the pinnacle of his happiness needed no fuel, for surely the happiness of its passengers was sufficient to launch rockets to outer space.

But truly, the picture, perhaps, most treasured in my minds’ eye is the sheva brochos in Chaim Berlin. Was the catering five star – oh yes, it was prepared with such extreme delight and presented with the enthusiasm that only those who have suffered together can experience as their suffering turns, 180 degrees, into total happiness. You spoke, you laughed, you sang, you danced and you danced.  You danced him and his new Kallah out of the Yeshiva down Coney Island Ave, surrounding the car and its passengers with such a level of simcha that surely the Heavenly spheres felt the forces of pure selfless joy you all embodied that night as you escorted him into his new life.  Baruch Hashem the moment was not tainted with knowledge of the future and how brief would be his time to savor and enjoy his role as husband and father.

It was the voices of his friends that called me on the phone and told me of the terrible accident that had occurred. It was the voice of his dear friend who told me he was still alive, as I heard the voices in the background: “I’ve got a pulse, I’ve got a pulse.”  It was his “brothers” who pulled up at the door and drove me to Methodist, who walked the halls, who kept watch with us, updating us, shepherding us through yet another and ultimately final nightmare.   Seven years and five months to the day, throughout it all you did not abandon him or us.  Kingston, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island – you followed him, you continued – to the astonishment of any outsider – you sang, you learned, you spoke, you wrote, you davened, you beseeched.  You put your phone numbers on my speed dial, “in case of emergency,”  and, indeed, I called and you came, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes after your own simchas, in spite of the fact that you were no longer “boys” but men with B”H  wives and children  and jobs and responsibilities – and still you came.  You gave him a gift, you gave us a gift of your loyalty, you validated that he was Kivi, part of you and your chabura, and for those who have not heard it directly from me, you gave his daughter that same gift.  “My Tati couldn’t come to Israel with us because he is too busy, learning Torah.  His friends come to learn with him all the time.” 

You did not abandon us, even when his neshama left us, one month ago.  I called you in the middle of the night and you were there.  You never left him alone, nor us.  You were waiting at the hospital and waiting at our door when we returned from that last trip to the hospital.  You assured and reassured that all would be as we wanted it to be, as he would want it to be. Indeed it was as we wished it would be, with respect, with love, with kavod, with admiration for all that he was and continues to be to his beloved chabura.                                     

Thirty days ago, you completed your tafkid, you encircled him in your protective love, and I watched from the sidelines, as you did, once again and for the final time, what I could not do for him.  Thank you for a life time of all that you have shared with us and given to Kivi and to us, his parents and family.  You have been and will continue to be like sons to us, for you were brothers to our son and thus (mathematical formula), became our sons.  I will thank Hashem “ad me’ah v’esrim” for blessing Kivi and us with your chabura, your smiles, your warmth, your concern, your endless devotion, which were often the life raft that kept us afloat.   I know that you will say that Kivi gave to you, but you returned it, to us, his family, to me, his very fortunate mother to be blessed with so many very special sons.  In the zechus of this chapter in your lives – may Hakadosh Baruch Hu (and we know that Kivi will be making sure) give, to you and your families, only bracha and hatzlacha.

Ahava Ehrenpreis and all the Ehrenprei’