It Was B'Shert

What a difference a year makes!

As I gazed across our crowded table at the serene and graceful countenance of my mother at the recent Seder celebration, my thoughts could not help but reflect on the calamitous Seder of one year ago.

The friends and relatives celebrating Passover with us in 1983 were present also at the synagogue's Community Seder on Passover 1982 — with one notable exception. That Passover, it was a somber, subdued and burdened gathering at our table. My dear mother, our fair Rose, was lying unconscious and battling for her life in the coronary care unit of a hospital less than three blocks away.

Two days prior to Passover and the feverish preparations for the holiday, my mother had suddenly collapsed with a heart block. My father (who is 94 years old and an amputee confined to a wheelchair) fortunately has a healthy set of lungs, and he screamed for help when he spied the inert and comatose form of his wife. The good neighbors came running and called the paramedics.

Due to some undoubtedly herculean efforts on the part of the paramedics and measures taken at the hospital, my mother managed to survive — but barely.

When I was finally contacted and arrived at the hospital some three hours after her initial collapse, the doctors held out slim hope for her ultimate survival. They could diagnose the stroke, as well and consequent brain damage. If she survived all the doctors gave us little expectation that she would be functional or be able to take care of herself, let alone my father. The medical indications were that following her collapse were handicaps too great to overcome.

For my mother to be incapable of taking care of herself (to say nothing of attending to my incapacitated father) would be a fate worse than death, I thought.

This chronicle could run into volumes to adequately describe my mother's special warmth, sensitivity, innate decency, gentleness, compassion and unselfishness. She has been no stranger to the slings of misfortune and tragedy, but she has always accepted the vagaries of life with grace and dignity. Her peerless manner of communicating with and listening to young and old has effectively bridged the gap so common between generations. In addition to the matriarch, she has been the backbone, sage and seer of our family.

Tempest of emotions told in few words: That was my mother lying there!

Such was the precarious and dismal situation at our Seders in April of 1982. Passover is the holiday which celebrates redemption, the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea, the coming of Spring, and hope for a new and better life for the former slaves of Egypt. So it seems another Passover miracle had occurred as regards my mother.

A permanent electronic pacemaker was surgically inserted and after several days of being comatose and several days of delirium spiced by hallucinations and uncharacteristic belligerence, she began a long road to recovery. From hospital to convalescent home, then reunion with my father in a rest home, and finally the end of the journey back to their own apartment.

Her recovery has been quite complete, although in 1982 she no longer felt she would ever again have need of her Passover dishes, utensils, pots and pans. Once again she cares for my wheelchair-bound nonagenarian father, and nurtures him with that exceptional devotion that has infused spirit and life into him for the past decade since the loss of his leg.

This year, as in the past, she methodically packed away the Chamitzdike dishes. Other than the two Seder nights, she celebrated Passover in her home with my father and the assorted friends and relatives who frequently drop by.

It was like every other Passover that I remember fondly. My mother again prepared the special Passover morsels and tidbits which are ever so delicious and ever so fattening.

During the long period of illness and the road to recovery, my mother really didn't expect to be in her own home for any Passover ever again, and certainly not in an ambulatory, self-help role. Considering her age and all the circumstances surrounding her collapse, one has to feel that a Higher Authority decided her time had not yet come. It was B'Shert.

My mother keeps marveling, and being ever so grateful for her own Passover deliverance and redemption.

So am I.