Her Dying Breath

She lies supine.

Gasping

Every breath a supreme effort

Her chest heaves.

Struggling

Her neck muscles assist

In the united effort to draw in oxygen

Even so, the oximeter reveals the declining saturation.

All is failing.

These agonal breaths takes me back.

Imagining my own first breath

Most likely inverted.

My tiny ankles grasped by some stern

White-starched nurse in Florence Nightingale uniform

As they would have, circa London 1950.

When was my first cry?

had she smacked my tush already?

to awaken me to what would be a long litany of smacks.

(An appropriate welcome for this naughty child’s arrival)

gasping as I must have, inhaling the cold March air,

in response to the shock and pain

a harbinger of the trauma to follow.

My muscle memory surely fails me,

It might alternatively been an angelic hand.

Realizing I had emerged from the Edenic warm amniotic safe harbor

To the cold British air:

Having been tutored in kol hatorah.

Able to see misof olam ad sof olam.

With the help of the ner daluk al roshi

Maybe it was her known as Leylah

Who swiped me on my frenulum?

Or clouted me on the head (like my German nanny Crystal)

That angelic concussive blow

That forced my first breath.

And for-getting all I had learned.

On the inside.

In this steely ICU another ping from the ventilator

Awakens me to the stark reality.

After decades of unconscious breathing

Her ventilation now increasingly faltering

What was once taken for granted now demanding every ounce of her effort.

I have failed her.

She begged me to take her home.

From this ghastly inhuman sterile space.

I failed her.

Having promised her that once she was off the pressors, I would.

But that never happened.

I watch powerless over my broken promise.

And her diminishing breath sounds.

And when the Almighty breathed into Adam’s nostrils

His first breath,

From the depths of the Holy One…

Into the lifeless flesh already formed

Awaiting this vital humor,

Suddenly Adam becomes.

Separate from nature and God.

A sentential being.

Self-aware

Of not being God

Of a self as separate,

Pulsating with the rucach chayim, inhaling the breath of life

Ensouled.

Was God smiling at him?

Did Adam feel pain?

Did he imagine his dying breath already then?

And when God buried Moshe Rabeinu

And sucked out his dying breath with a kiss.

Did He too cry, as the midrash tells us,

The divine mourner receiving nechama.

For His beloved deceased

On this isolated mountain top?

Did Moshe Rabbeinu remember his earliest cries in the basket on the Nile River?

As he gave up his ghost for the last time?

We watch her final breath.

Whereupon Sarah shrieks “Ema Ema!”

Sobbing in agony “she’s not breathing.”

But now she is calm.

There is no further struggle.

Chest does not rise.

All is silent.

The machines are silent.

The silence is deafening.

After so much struggling

The final breath had left.

A lifetime of effortless breathing has ceased.

With a final divine kiss

Misas neshika

A life dedicated to learning.

And intellectual mastery

Her legacy aligned with her forebears.

How she readily accepted the mantle of the royalty of the Beis Harav

Instilled by her father.

Now she too is gathered to her ancestors.

Who will no doubt welcome her?

Approvingly

Of her life’s trajectory

Committed above all other priorities.

Instilling in her children and grandchildren this one singular task

To perpetuate the particular avodah in torah scholarship that characterized the Beis Harav

And the ethos of Volozhin

Her Lithuanian Camelot

Demanding no less that perfection, mastery, and dedication to this singular purpose

Ignoring all other demands of modernity

Or caring not of others criticisms.

Rest calm now Ema

Your struggle is over.

No more need to climb that mountain of inhalation.

No more need to struggle and toil in learning.

Your life’s work is finally complete.

Rest easy Ema

You succeeded.

Your father and forebears approve.

They are smiling and welcome you to the yeshiva shel maalah.

All your fears and anxieties are allayed.

Rest assured.

You have left descendents.

Who are following your example and charge.

Proof of your dedication

Each one a reflection of the light you imparted.

And they received a facet of the diamond of Volozhin.

You shone forth like a beacon from a lighthouse in the fog.

In your departing breath

The Divine kissed your life, your legacy.