Awareness dawned. In seven hours, my entire family would be gathering for my mother’s levayah, and there was a chance that I wouldn’t make it,
T he day I missed my mother’s levayah fiery leaves whirled in an azure sky and dappled light lay lonely scattered in our empty succah.
My mother a pillar of love kindness strength and goodness had left This World surrounded by whispered tefillos and then a resounding heartbreaking Shema. After a grueling six-month battle with her terminal illness and strokes in the wake of my sister’s petirah my mother returned her pure bright neshamah to her Maker.
Although we had brought my mother across Canada to live with us so we could care for her my mother’s levayah was to be held in Vancouver where she was born lived and fostered an enormous loving community. This is where my grandfather her father lives and the synagogue cemetery is peppered with family names going back three generations.
Mommy was nifteres on a Thursday the second day of Chol Hamoed the 18th of Tishrei — which happened to be my sister’s a”h birthday. My husband and I asked my uncle and grandfather to hold the levayah the next day Erev Shabbos but my grandfather felt strongly that we needed to wait to gather those who cherished my mother so much all the way to the ends of the earth. A psak was given to defer to my grandfather who at 91 was already doing the unthinkable in burying his 62-year-old daughter next to his 31-year-old granddaughter.
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