A Higher Love

I talk to my sister often but it’s not until I come for a visit that the severity of her condition makes me cry again. Although it’s been twelve years since she developed a spinal infection, I still can’t get used to seeing her in a wheelchair. The last time I was here was five years ago, when our mother died. I have been to seven different countries within the last five years. My sister hasn’t left her neighborhood except to go to the hospital for issues relating to her condition.

Rivka lives in a small apartment in Baltimore with a part-time helper who takes care of her basic needs. When the helper goes home in the afternoon, my sister is alone with Hashem.

What is it like when you can’t dash around from thing to thing and from place to place to escape yourself, to hide from your problems or to avoid a difficult situation at home? If I was confined to bed what would I do? How would I fill those hours, days, weeks, months and years? I think I would go insane. But my sister is not only sane, she is one of the wisest people I know.

Rivka has had to grieve the loss of her health, her job, her autonomy and the ability to take care of herself in normal ways. She has very little personal privacy. She still works to stay positive and grateful, to feel good about herself and to use her time wisely. But being here I get to see close up how hard that must be, all the things she can’t do and in comparison, all the things most of us take for granted.

The fact that I can stand up and walk is such a casual act for me, the ability to just get up and get myself a drink, answer the door, clean my apartment, go for a walk, dance, jog, climb up a ladder, shlep groceries, hop in a car…

I watch closely as my sister carefully maneuvers her wheelchair into the store. We have come to buy groceries. It’s hard for her to see some of the produce up on the shelves and impossible to reach out and pick the ones she wants. I act as her hands and hold up the apples for her inspection. We go up and down the aisles examining the merchandise. My sister is grateful to be out of the house and happy to buy me some treats for my grandchildren, candy you can’t get in Israel. She takes her time like she always does. Choosing fruit becomes meditative.

My sister is a spiritual person. She speaks and moves with deliberation and drives her electric wheelchair slowly as I walk along beside her through the streets of Baltimore. People are considerate and cars slow down when approaching us. We can’t always stay on the sidewalk because the curbs are hard to get off of if there is no part that rolls down into the road.

Every day I spend with my sister brings new discoveries of what she can’t do. She sees that I get overwhelmed sometimes and reminds me that we have to live one day at a time. That and gratitude for all God’s blessings gets her through this situation, one that only gets harder with time. She has had numerous surgeries, setbacks and complications. For two months she was in a coma.

Yet she can use her upper body and her mind is clear. She is brilliant and a big fan of Rebbe Nachman. She has family and friends, good books and a laptop. Her grand-kids pop in a couple of times a week and she keeps art supplies on a shelf where they can get them. Sometimes they make jewelry or paint. It’s called a Play Date with Grandma Rivka.

My brother Chaim lives nearby. He comes over with his family and they bring pizza. I sit in the living room with my sister-in-law. The nieces and nephews crowd into my sister’s bedroom and sit on chairs around her bed. They like talking to her because she has a wicked sense of humor and you can tell her anything.

I knew that during our visit together Rivka and I would talk and laugh and clean and listen to music. I knew we would go shopping a bit and learn some Torah each day. And I knew it would hurt to see her. What I didn’t expect was to feel so peaceful in her presence. I didn’t expect to find so much comfort in the way she copes.

One evening as I made dinner, she mentioned how much she misses cooking. I leaned onto the counter top and began to tremble from the intensity of my emotions. I felt myself breaking from the sorrow flooding into my body. I began to pray quietly, begging God, “Please Hashem I want to become a bigger vessel. Please help me to stretch myself so that I can accept Your will.”

I want to be able to hold all the emuna I possibly can, all the emuna I could be blessed with. I want to enlarge my spiritual boundaries and become big enough to accept more and more of God’s love, as mysterious as that love can seem.

This situation is too big for me to ever understand. But I believe without a doubt that this is the best situation for my sister. The most inspiring thing to me is that she believes it too.