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7 Nissan 5763 - April 9, 2003 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Home and Family


After Death
by Sudy Rosenberg

The house was ready for the holiday. The stove and fridge were lined with aluminum foil and packed with borsht, latkes and potato kugels and home-made egg noodles to put into the chicken soup. The shank bone was roasting on an open flame, the gefilte fish was bubbling. A tantalizing smell filled the house.

On the vacant lot outside our kitchen window, children had raked together dead twigs and with kerosene soaked rags, started bonfires into which, for a few coins, people threw whatever chometz still remained in their possession. Before doing so, young fathers lined up all of their children and carefully brushed out all the pockets and cuffs of their jackets and pants.

Six-year-old Ben Zion had still not joined his friends outside. With brows drawn together in worried expression, he stood in the doorway, waiting for his grandfather.

Mayer looked at the clock, turned to his father and said gently, "Pa, it's time to burn the chometz."

Pa merely repeated what he'd been saying all week, "Ya, ya," in variations of grief, disbelief and confusion.

"Here are your shoes," my husband told his father, as he bent down to tie the laces. He looked into Pa's face with deep concern. Pa's face was blank and as grey as his beard.

"Ya, ya," he sighed again, but on seeing Ben Zion staring at him in fright, he forced a smile and patted the child's freshly cropped head.

"Go bring me my bag of chometz," he said to the child. "We'll burn it together."

*

In Ma's room, everything was just as she had left it. I lit the memorial candle for her soul and covered her table with a white cloth on which I put her siddur.

The dress she was to have worn on yom tov hung on the closet door. I slid my hand over its texture, remembering how difficult it had been for her to decide which one to wear.

"Now your dress is that of the angels," I addressed her presence in the room, "the royal raiment of the queen returned home from her exile on earth."

For to Ma, life had always been an exile. Her world, the world she really belonged to, resembled more heaven than earth, with its tzaddikim and rebbes and yearning of the spirit.

I looked at the clock and rushed back home.

*

The men left for shul. The children excitedly made plans for stealing the afikoman. Between their father, three older brothers and a grandfather, there would be enough afikoman for each child to steal. As a price was demanded from the owner before he could get back his special piece of matza, everyone was discussing the best way to go about it.

The men were back. The Kiddush was recited in its beautiful traditional chant. When Pa said the Shehechiyonu, blessing Hashem for having sustained him and given him life for this day, his voice broke and failed him. We all blinked back the tears and downed them together with the wine.

We were relieved when Esty distracted everyone by drinking so much wine, which she had insisted on having, rather than grape juice, that she was unable to focus and ended up laying her head down on the table and falling asleep.

There was much whispering and swooshing in the circle of the little ones. One by one, each of them innocently sauntered past the pillows where afikomans had been hidden, fussed over this or that... until somehow, deftly, quickly, nimbly, they were lifted and with a whoop, hidden inside a bedroom closet. It sometimes happened that a child switched his hiding place so often that by the time he had to give it back, he wasn't sure anymore where the spoils were buried, and we had to make a search for the matza!

The Seder was over.

*

I woke in the night to the sound of stifled crying but was unable to figure out which child was in distress. Then I heard six-year-old Ben Zion, who was sharing his room with Pa, shushing him softly and saying,

"Don't cry, Zeidy. Bubby's in shomayim. She is a angel praying before Hashem!"

 

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