Oomis, my mom was niftar Oct. 4, the 27th of Tishrei.
I met this young lady when I volunteered at an alternative school for at risk kids 8 years ago after my aunt was nifter. At first she ignored me but then we clicked. She became a daughter to me and we have been through some highs and lows along her journey. I told her two basic rules in HS at that time, she was a senior and wanted to go to seminary. I said hang with the winners and keep your eye on the prize. B”H she did go to E”Y and I was zoche to visit her there. To make a long story short she, B”H, became a nurse like her mother who passed away when she was only 11. She married a very nice yeshiva bochur and settled in my neighborhood. She is a very huge part of my household and is one of my most frequent Shabbos Guests. She has said to me a million times that she doesn’t know what she would do without me, but in return I have replied that she is a gift to me from Hashem and I don’t know what my life would be like without her.
This young lady, this angel of a nurse, administered to my mother the last 2 days of her life. For some reason she was cancelled from her job on these two days and so she was available to come over. As we always say, there is no such thing as coincidence in Yiddishkeit. She dealt with the doctor and made sure not only that my mom was comfortable and did not suffer, but kept me and the rest of my family calm and in control. My mother died peacefully in her own room in her own home without tubes or wires just oxygen and some medication to help her breathing. My mom died on her own terms in her own way. Her name was Malka and she left like a queen surrounded by her family al pi halacha before and after her petira.
I told my young nurse, THIS is why Hashem sent you to me and you became a part of my life. I could not have helped my mother on her journey without you. You were the sheliach, really the angel that allowed my mother to pass without suffering and if you were not in my life I could not have been mechabed my mother in this way. I myself could not have supported my mother without the normal and usual emotional hysterics which would normally accompany watching your own mother die if you did not stay calm and keep us calm through the process.
I have said it many times throughout my work with at-risk teens. It is not difficult to love someone else’s child because they are all Hashem’s children. Hashem literally placed this child in my arms to love and nurture and she in turn loved and nurtured my Mother and eased her in her final journey to olam habah.