Heartbreaking pause in fun vacation blogging

If you want fun vacation blogging, see the previous post.

G’s first cousin died in California over Shabbos. She was 27 and had complications after going into remission from real bad cancer. I believe it was Graft Versus Host Disease that killed her – I know she had it – though I’m not completely sure. That’s when you get a bone marrow transplant, see, and some of the immuno-whatever cells inside the new bone marrow attack the rest of your body, because they think it’s “foreign.” Which it is, of course. So the cells are only doing their jobs, but dear God, do they have to do their jobs so well?

It’s a miracle, you know, the human body. What would happen if those cells didn’t know that they should attack foreign stuff? Nothing, that’s what, because we’d all be dead. To think that God has programmed those cells so powerfully that they can continue working – and working well – after they’ve been removed from your body and stuck in someone else’s – well, it’s overwhelming. מה רבו מעשיך. Powerful stuff, indeed.

If only we were powerful enough to reverse it.

I suppose the miracle of modern medicine can sometimes only go so far.

It’s so cruel. She was in remission, which hadn’t seemed possible. Nothing had worked. “I think we can see where this is going,” G said over a year ago, a little before the Boy was born. And then something worked. The last thing they said they could try. It was – again – a miracle. “Cancer-free,” my mother-in-law told us. We were shocked. I cried. I couldn’t believe it. Remission. She was getting better.

She lived in LA, but her only sibling, a brother, lives in NJ with his family. The brother had his first child, a boy, the day of my son’s bris. Only one of the new grandparents came in from LA, while the other stayed home with their sick daughter. At my son’s bris, G mentioned her in his speech. “My cousin is very sick in California, and we daven for her refuah shleimah.” Or something like that. She had a new nephew that very morning. And then, she was getting better. Remember how on May 24, I said we’d been to “a place stuffed full of Rabinowitzes (baruch Hashem)”? That place was her brother’s house, and she was visiting. She was still sick, but she was so much better that she was able to travel to NJ and attend an open house in her honor, at which millions of her cousins from both sides were present. She looked fantastic. Not perfect, but fantastic, and it was so wonderful to see.

Know when her second nephew was born? Two weeks ago. The bris was the day we left on our trip. And again, only one grandparent was there.

It’s so hard to believe this has happened. We knew on Friday that it was imminent, but all Shabbos long, I davened for another miracle. Why not, I thought. It had happened, against all odds, once before.

“Cousin M in California is very, very sick again,” I told the girls when we were getting ready to light candles Friday night. “When we daven after we make the bracha, we should ask Hashem to make her better.” RS’s face fell. “But she was getting better!” she protested. “I know,” I told her. “She was getting better, and baruch Hashem she came to visit and we got to see her, but now she’s sick again.” We talked a bit more, and then we lit, and all four of us davened for the miracle. For the many to defeat the few. For the host to defeat the graft.

I didn’t know her as well as I would have liked. When she was in NY for college I saw her sometimes, and we had lunch together once. We invited her for Shabbos several times, but she always had plans. She made friends very quickly, everywhere, or at least that’s my impression. She was smart and talented and every time I saw her, she was friendly and warm, and lovely to talk to. She was 15 at our wedding, and I remember how charmed she was by our four month-old nephew.

So, we’re in St. Louis, and G caught a plane to LA first thing this morning. He’ll be back in St. Louis with us tomorrow evening, and then we’ll continue our…. vacation.

I guess.

None of the family simchas will ever be the same. Every time there’s a cousin missing, usually for a reason like living on a different continent, it’s always noticed, and the absence is felt. There are 12 members of G’s generation. Twelve. That’s how it is, and ever shall be. There’s a harmony and a balance to the “mob scene” pictures from the weddings, and when one of them isn’t there it never quite looks right. They belong together, all 12 of them, bound by those invincible Rabinowitz genes, and by everything that goes with them. There’s just something about each one of them. She belongs with us, and it will never be whole without her.

Her parents are amazing and powerful people. Her brother and her grandfather are too. If anyone can get through this, they can, but as a mother and a sister, I can’t imagine how.

Dear God, grant them, and us, comfort and strength. תהי זכרה ברוך.

Tags: Relatives