Living in Perpetual Mourning

I am sitting here in the critical care unit of the Children's Hospital-- and you know you've spent too much time in one place when every staff member, every vendor and every coffee supplier knows you by name. They get so excited to see me each visit and I just don't seem to have the heart to tell them that I'd rather be anywhere but here.

He's supposed to be healthyI am here with my son, Adin, now seventeen years old. When he was two and a half he choked on a grape, sustaining a severe brain injury as a result of that horrific accident. For twelve years he remained relatively stable, but that all changed two years ago.

Suddenly, hospital visits have been much too frequent and death's door seems to widen more with each critical admission. My kids are tired of their parents abandoning them. I don't blame them. I'm tired of it too. I work as a teacher during the year and I also wanted a summer vacation. And I want to be home with Adin. At seventeen he's supposed to be argumentative and ornery. He's supposed to be bugging his brothers and sisters. He's supposed to be healthy.

I recently learned that even though the destruction of the Holy Temple happened almost two thousand years ago, we are still mourning its destruction because the concept of having the Holy Temple is not only very real to us, it is a concept that is very much alive. We are grieving for something that is not dead.

We are in a perpetual state of mourning for a life that once was and one day will be again; but in the meantime, we are in a very painful state of limbo. We sit and wait and cry as we remember Zion. There is a huge part of our soul that is filled with a sense of constant longing. Our souls are not complete. The third and final redemption will bring us the glory and splendor of the Third Temple and then we can finally be satiated and serve our Creator with a full heart.

This notion made me realize why, after fourteen years, I still cry and grieve and mourn. My soul is not complete. Adin is very much alive. Yet, I am grieving a life that once was.

I am also like Jacob - waiting, waiting, waiting for a miracle, for the sight and sound of my Joseph. Because Adin suffered a traumatic brain injury, his soul is present but I still don't quite know where he is. He is, in some ways, somewhere far away and I don't quite know where. On the other hand, Adin knows when I am in the room. He hears my voice. He feels pain. He understands and appreciates pleasure. But he cannot express any of this to me. He cannot tell me if something hurts, if he is frustrated, if he is happy.

But I know. Because I am his mother. Our souls are so connected that I can relate to him on a level that only a mother can relate to her child.

At every hospital admission the doctors never fail to ask us if we want to sign a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate). We look at them like they're out of their minds! Do they honestly believe that I would sign that thing?

We are in a perpetual state of mourning for a life that once was and one day will be againOne doctor who was treating him in the emergency department on one of our many visits was so sweet and gentle. Physically, he was very deformed, and I was so impressed that despite his disability he went to medical school and became a physician. He was so kind and empathetic, and then he brought up the DNR affair.

He literally sat next to Adin's bed and tried to convince me why Adin's life is worthless. He went straight for the jugular and gave me the absolute worst prognosis. He used every dirty and ruthless trick in the book. I was furious and appalled at the audacity of it all. I wanted to tell him that just by looking at his deformed limbs, it is clear that he's lucky to be alive because if there was anyone around with his eugenic philosophy when he was born, they would have tossed him in the river! Rather, I remained very lady-like and just politely refused the offer to sign the DNR. To this day I regret not telling him how I truly felt.

This latest hospital admission was probably the hardest for me. This time I literally cried for the ten days that Adin spent in critical care. I could not stop. One of the nurses, whom I became very close with in the critical care unit, came into my room and asked me why I was crying so much. She added that every time she has seen me I have always had this big smile on my face that went along with my hugely positive attitude.

He hears my voiceI told her that I didn't really understand it myself. I wasn't quite sure why I was so emotional and teary. All I knew was that no matter how ill Adin was right now, no matter how critical the situation, there was no way that I was about to let him leave me. I felt so strongly, with complete and unwavering faith that Adin was trying so hard to get better, and stay in this world, because he didn't want to see me cry and he couldn't bear the thought of hurting me and watching me suffer. Adin, thank G‑d, made it through another very difficult battle. We are both battered and bruised, bloody yet unbowed, but our wounds will heal, and we will sit and wait for our miracle.

The Rambam teaches that a Jew must wait each and every moment for the coming of Moshiach, to be redeemed from this exile. Most people, fortunately, have no idea what it means to wait each and every moment for healing to come into your life. But we do. For the last fourteen years not a moment has passed that we have not prayed for Adin to recover, for this nightmare to end. And we will continue, in every moment to come, until he is healed. Just like we wait, each and every moment, for all suffering in this world to end, with the coming of Moshiach, may it happen immediately!