“It’s Going to Be Okay”

It was, I assumed, my final piece about Saadya in the magazine. A long and happy relationship, bringing infinite joy to the subject of the many articles and, I hoped, providing more than mere reading satisfaction to readers.

But then, the emails started arriving, WhatsApps, texts, phone calls…. “You don’t know me but I know your son through your writing and I share your loss as if it were my own,” they said. Someone forwarded a shiur given by a speaker I don’t know, who’d never met Saadya. Based on what he had read through the years, he spoke the week after Saadya’s petirah about his positivity, suggesting a “Smile for Saadya’’ campaign as a zechus for his neshamah.

An old neighbor relayed that Saadi was her first exposure to, and had formed her attitudes toward, special children. She recalled being instructed, “If you see Saadya on his tricycle, on your side of the block, gently return him to his (either frantic or oblivious) parents.” (No gates were high enough or locks strong enough to deter Saadya from his need for independence — a trait that served him far better as an adult than as a five-year-old!)

Then came a letter that took my breath away. I don’t know the age or location of the writer (and changed details to protect privacy): “I never met your son except for reading about him in Family First,” he wrote. “I have an 11-year-old brother with Down Syndrome. I wanted a brother like other guys have, and I was kind of angry at Hashem. Then I read about all the things Saadya did and how he changed people. I saw my brother in a new way.