Even before his mother managed to recover fully, Heishke fell sick. * The doctors were pessimistic about his chances of recovery and he felt his strength ebbing. * With the last of his strength, he managed to squeeze out a request for forgiveness. Delirious, he tried to say Vidui. Then he lost consciousness.
A few days after my mother returned from the hospital where the doctor saw no chance for her recovery, I became sick with abdominal typhus. I collapsed. I could no longer watch how my mother fought and won the starvation illness. I lay on my bedding on the floor with a high temperature and a splitting headache. The pain seemed to settle in my brain and it continued to get worse.
The doctor came and he was nearly certain that I was sick with a serious case of abdominal typhus. “He needs to be hospitalized, but the hospitals are so crowded. The hospital is more dangerous than being at home.” In any case, my mother was not interested in hospitalization, and I understood why.
My temperature was so high that I couldn’t find a moment’s peace from the fever. The pain in my stomach and bones throughout my body were nothing compared to the terrible headache. In Soviet Russia in general and Samarkand in particular, surely during wartime, there barely existed medication to bring down a fever, let alone pain medication.
I experienced the fear of death more than once in my thirteen years, but in the delirium of the pain and the feverish body, I was unafraid of the end. Although (or because) I clearly felt that I would not withstand this, I felt that I was being emptied of life, that all my limbs were on fire and simultaneously frozen and weak.
I was delirious from the high temperature and I did not sleep, but behind my closed eyes there moved nightmares with strange creatures. In the periods of clear thinking in between nightmares, I had a fleeting thought about myself and my sins against G-d – sins in prayer, in learning, lying, etc. – though the Heavenly Court does not judge a person before the age of twenty, so I heard from my grandfather. I had also sinned greatly against my father; I had made tzaros; I had also caused pain to my sisters and had not asked them to forgive me. I was unsure about how and when but maybe, over “there,” I would ask for their forgiveness.
I was very troubled about having to ask forgiveness from my mother and grandfather. This was particularly hard for me, both because I knew that my mother would not be able to handle a parting request for forgiveness, and because I felt guilty over the fact that when I died my mother would remain alone. Alone? Remain? But I had to ask forgiveness! When I felt my life about to end, I mustered the last of my strength to utter the words, “Mother, forgive me … Zeide, forgive me.”
I became disoriented and faint and yet I wanted to say something else, what Jews say, like my younger sister had said shortly before she left this world, “Master of the universe …” but in my confused mind I mixed up the words, “Shma, Shma Ashamnu,” and I did not know whether I had uttered anything (my mother told me I had muttered: Shh, Shh, Shh a number of times).
I lost consciousness immediately afterward. I don’t remember how long I lay there with fever and writhing in pain until I lost consciousness. My mother barely moved from my bedside. She put cool cloths on my burning face, fanned me with a hand fan and gave me cups of water to drink. Late at night her sister Chana relieved her for a few hours. How my mother battled with her own starvation illness, I don’t know, and how she prevailed, I did not ask her.
Nor did I ever ask how long – how many hours, days – I lay unconscious. Obviously, I could not know, but it was a severe attack of typhus and the doctor gave very slim chances that I would survive it.
When I woke up one morning in a weakened state after the break in fever, I was so weak that I could barely raise my hand. And yet, I felt like a new man, as though G-d had brought me down from somewhere to this world. The dark room looked more luminous; the band of light from the ray of sun that shone in and the innumerable dust motes that gleamed from the light of the one crooked window, blinded my eyes with a clarity that seemed to originate from some far off place, a place of calm and tranquility, goodness and light.
This combination of weakness and rebirth provided me with strength and rejuvenation as I saw my mother’s glowing face and her quick movements. That meant she had gotten better, she had recovered, she had won! My mouth was very dry; my body was bathed in sweat from head to toe, my head hurt, my stomach too, and yet, I felt like a new man.
A short while later, Zeide returned from davening with his tallis and t’fillin. With a restrained and wondrous smile he looked at my recovery. It was a smile that only such a special grandfather could produce.
“Nu – enough, Heishke; enough pampering. You need to be healthy and the first thing to do is thank G-d. You were nearly ‘past tense,’ and it was only your mother’s T’hillim and tears that saved you. Nu, boruch Hashem, I’m telling you, your mother is a great woman.” (He said that many times about my mother).
Zeide wasn’t the type to kiss a child, a grandchild. I don’t remember him ever kissing me. But he could kiss with his deep, penetrating glance. For a long time, he did not remove his gaze from me so that I had nowhere to avert my eyes. My mother kissed me, and for Zeide too, even though she wasn’t from the big “kissers” (it is possible that it’s because I hated kisses from my youngest childhood).
As I said, I did not know how long I was unconscious. I did not even want to ask my mother or grandfather. Or maybe they told me and I did not file it away in my brain. Why? For a long time I did not know the reason why. Years later, I dug deeper and extracted the reason from the crevices of my soul. I think it was because I did not want to know whether I had missed a day or days of putting on t’fillin.
Even this conclusion did not absolutely remove the lack of certainty – did it come from excess Yiras Shamayim (is that a small thing to you, not to put on t’fillin for a day or days? And I, with all my faults, was a big Yerei Shamayim), or was it the opposite, due to my laziness in searching for a tikkun and t’shuva?
To show you that I had a bit more Yiras Shamayim back then – I remember that the first word that left my dry mouth and my weakened body was “water.” I meant water for drinking but my mother brought me water for netilas yadayim. The second word was “t’fillin.”