Over the past few weeks we have all been straining to hear more and more about the horrendous situation facing our brothers and sisters in Israel. Each day, we hope beyond hope that there will not have been another barbaric attack.
I remember the reaction of the thirty-eight vendors that I brought from Israel during the Intifada to sell their Israeli merchandise. The outpouring of love and support from the Montreal, Ottawa and upper New York state area that was shown to them was overwhelming. Over 10,000 people attended. The Israelis were in disbelief. At a party at our home at the end of the two-day fair, I explained to the Israelis that when there is a barbaric attack in Israel, when a bus is blown up, when young innocent families are killed in front of their children, we the people in chutz la’aretz feel each and every drop of the pain which they are going through. At the conclusion of the evening, one of the ladies who had come to sell her artwork at the fair told me that she wished that the Israeli media had been present at our party. The average Israeli, I was told, has no idea that the Jewish people outside of Israel are even aware of the hardships that they are going through.
In the past week, three staff members of The Link have gone through worry and concern for a beloved member in their family. Risa, our super advertising saleslady, is agonizing with her family over her elderly father’s hospitalization and future decisions that they will be forced to make. Does it make a difference how old a person is when it is your own flesh and blood? Obviously not.
Elizabeth, our editor, worried and tormented herself with concern over the removal of her young son Asher’s adenoids. We who have been through such procedures with our own children when they were young know that it is rare that something major could happen with this surgery. Nevertheless, until that child wakes up and jumps into his mother or father’s arms, because we love them so much, we worry.
Finally, there I was, sitting in the waiting room, waiting for my beloved to have total knee replacement surgery. If ever a prize would be awarded to the person who knows how to worry the most, there is no question in my mind that I would finally get a gold medal.
After all, he is my rock, he is able to read my mind, finish my sentences, be there for me day and night. My mind wandered to the “what ifs” during the surgery. I have the good fortune to have amazing daughters, who took turns sitting with me. Although they could not read my mind, they do know me well enough to know that I needed support at that moment. I thought about trips that we had taken together, moments when our babies were born, tragedies that had befallen our family, silly moments that only we could understand of the amazing life that we have learned to build together (all of this in two-and-a-half hours). Finally, the surgeon came to tell us that everything went well, and of course I still had to think to myself of all of the complications that could still happen. That’s why I deserve the gold medal—I am an ace at figuring out every possibility of “what could be.”
I remember as a child my mother standing at the beach, watching my father swim in the ocean. He loved to swim and my mother did not. In fact, she was petrified. She would stand there and watch him and I wonder to this day what she thought she could have done to protect him had something terrible happened. She loved him so much and wanted to control the consequences of his actions.
Together with the joy and exhilaration of loving a parent, a child or a partner deeply and completely can come horrific pain from worrying and concern. In a sense, how foolish are we in wasting time over what we really have no control. All is in the hands of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, yet we kid ourselves into believing that we do have some sort of say in the matter.
We need to concentrate on the wondrousness of having the ability to love so deeply, and accept the pain of worry as an accoutrement to the mystery of life.
By Nina Glick
