My family and I are still reeling — although we’ve seen many miracles over the past few months

Last year, on 16 Tammuz, my brother Yehuda Leib Greenwald sent uplifting voice notes to his family and friends, sharing heartfelt blessings on the occasion of his 36th birthday. This year, we listen to those messages with pain in our hearts. Who could ever have imagined that by this year, this healthy, energetic, happy man would no longer be in this world? My family and I are still reeling — although we’ve seen many miracles over the past few months.

The first miracle involved Jaclyn, a non-Jewish lady who’d recently moved to Brooklyn and got a new phone number. Jaclyn was still getting calls for the person who’d previously had that number — “Yossi the esrog seller,” who, it turned out, had moved to Canada.

On March 11, as Jaclyn was on an errand, she noticed a man with a red beard walking his bike. He sat on a bench and started having what looked like a seizure. He was actually having cardiac arrest. Jaclyn immediately called 911.

The ambulance arrived four minutes later. Jaclyn watched as the man was defibrillated and rushed away to the closest hospital. Of course, there was no way for Jaclyn to know what happened to him.

Meanwhile, the ER staff identified the man from his driver’s license, but his address was a post office box, and they couldn’t figure out how to reach his family. He was clearly Orthodox, with his tzizis and yarmulke, so they forwarded his license to Hatzalah, who posted it around the community until someone put two and two together and reached our parents in Australia.

My sister and brother-in-law, Brocha and Shimmy Blumenberg of Monsey, were the first family members at Yehuda Leib’s bedside. Brocha spent that first terrifying night alone in the hospital, watching Yehuda Leib hooked up to life support. The entire night, doctors kept asking Brocha what happened. Did he hit his head? She had no idea.