Every year, as her yahrtzeit on 10 Iyar nears, I’m grateful again for our last goodbye

I

was very close to my mother. A teacher by profession, she was always teaching me, well into adulthood. Though she died 37 years ago, I still hear her voice directing me in certain situations. And every year, as her yahrtzeit on 10 Iyar nears, I’m grateful again for our last goodbye.

I grew up in Cleveland, then moved to Eretz Yisrael after I got married, as did most of my siblings. Shortly after my wedding, my parents joined us in the Holy Land. Fifteen years later, my mother fell sick with a terminal illness, and she flew to New York for treatment. We children took turns flying to New York to help my father care for her.

I was in the hospital with my mother, due to fly home shortly, when the doctors told us there was nothing more they could do and that our focus had to be on keeping her comfortable. After conferring with my siblings, we decided the best option would be to have Ima transferred to a Cleveland hospital, where her former talmidah’s husband was the head of a department. He told us he could give her a private room with an adjacent room for the family, and assured us he would care for her like his own mother.