The Basket

T
wenty-two years ago, my family didn’t celebrate Purim. Twenty-two years ago, we heard the Megillah, gave mishloach manos to only one person, distributed gifts to the poor to only two people in need, ate a simple seudah — and that was it. There were no parties, no music, no endless stream of visitors, and no costumes.

Twenty-two years ago, my older brother died just before Purim, and we were in mourning. My older brother and sister (l’havdil ben chaim) were born developmentally disabled. While severely challenged and limited, my brother, Moishe, always exuded a simple simchas hachaim that drew people in. He’d come to shul and wish people shalom aleichem. He loved music and would go over to people and say, “Sing to me!” He talked about Mordechai Ben David and Avraham Fried as though they were personal friends (they did come to visit him in the hospital on occasion).

Moishe was unwell most of his life and was hospitalized at least once a year. When I was in eighth grade, a teacher asked us to write an essay about what we feared most. I wrote that I feared being told in the middle of class that I had a phone call. That phone call would be from my mother, telling me that once again my brother had been taken to the emergency room, and that she had made arrangements for me to go to a neighbor’s house after school.

That fear came true. I got a phone call in the middle of class telling me that my parents were in the hospital with my brother. But this time, I didn’t panic after getting the phone call. I was fourteen and by then had some perspective. This had happened before and this would happen again, and my brother would be okay, like he always was.