I know that we are not supposed to ask or question when things happen to us that seem extremely difficult, or even unfair, if I am allowed to say that, but at this point in my life, I am having a difficult time understanding how certain things can actually happen. I had expected to report on the exciting Shop ’Til You Drop in Jerusalem trip at this time. Little did I know that just three short days before we were scheduled to fly to Israel we would get a telephone call that would radically change our lives.

The voice on the other end of the call was the coordinator of the group home where our daughter Naama is a resident, telling us that she had been rushed to the hospital and was a patient in the intensive care unit of the Jewish General Hospital. She had pneumonia which was caused by aspiration and had been intubated. Within minutes, we were out of our house, together with our daughter Chavie, driving to Montreal. At 2:30 in the morning we were at Naama’s bedside. Her body was attached to myriads of wires and tubes.

Looking at Naama—who has literally never killed a fly, never said a word of lashon hara, never hurt anyone, ever—how could she be so close to dying? How could this awful condition befall her? I even asked myself if it was something that we had done—are we being punished for something that we do not know about?

Naama, an angel of innocence. Born with severe cerebral palsy. Always with a smile on her face, friendly, outgoing, blowing kisses to everyone. She had breast cancer eight years ago. One year later she had four tumors in her chest wall removed. We decided to go with radiation instead of chemotherapy, not knowing how we could explain to her that if she had the chemo she would become deathly sick and lose her hair in order to hope to become better. Three years ago, an innocent procedure to crush a gallstone caused her to almost bleed to death. She was once again resuscitated and was on life support for several days in the ICU with a remarkable recovery.

How much, someone please tell me, how much is she supposed to endure? Now, once again, she is in a critical state; pneumonia, lungs that need to be drained, many tubes and the thought that she probably will never be able to put any morsel of food or liquid into her mouth again. How can we explain that to her? What will she do when everyone is eating pizza in front of her; making Kiddush, biting into a piece of challah, enjoying ice cream, partaking in a birthday party?

Please someone explain this to me. I no longer can understand anything. Nothing seems to make sense. Is she not one of the most righteous people who was put in this world? Why? I wish someone could explain it to me. We sit by her bed and the tears roll down our cheeks and she looks at us not understanding either. I suppose that in her innocence there is a special bracha. She doesn’t seem to worry the same way that we do. She doesn’t have that ability. In fact, she just looks at us as if to ask, “What is going on here?” I hold her hand, but little makes her smile anymore. We ask her to smile and she tries to get a drop of a movement of her mouth to form something. This will never make any sense to me.

I beseech everyone to please daven for Naama Bracha Bat Dvorah.

By Nina Glick