It started out with a chuckle and ended – at least we hope it ended – with a sigh of relief, after two previous sighs that didn’t amount to a hill of beans. Barbara had received the following set of instructions, entitled, ‘Preparing for your Colonoscopy with Picolax’ (a routine diagnostic procedure, nothing to worry about), which included the following unexpected bit of advice: ‘Arrival for an exam performed under sedation with a firearm is strictly forbidden.’ (They’re going to sedate you with a firearm? They’re going to shoot you first and ask questions later?)
We, of course, shared this morsel with Natania when she, Gil, Liel, and infant Gefen spent Shabbat with us. Natania, because she is my daughter, thought about the matter overnight and, at lunch, posed the following question. Let’s suppose that something bad happens, and they have to stop the procedure in the middle. Would that be a semi-colonoscopy? At which point, Barbara wondered if the procedure was a success, would she get her period back?
The next day (Sun. Jan. 25) Barbara and I were sitting in the waiting room at Asuta, waiting for her turn. She decided to use the facilities one more time before she went in, at which point I saw a message on the ‘AJ and Byna Lee’s friends’ WhatsApp group that AJ had just died. Not exactly a surprise but very much less than welcome news.
The couple were part of the ‘Class of 2008’ NBN arrivals. We ran into them the very first day they were in The Land, standing in Yaron’s hardware store, looking for a shower curtain. There was that expression on their faces, the ‘Deer in the headlights’ look, when you’re in a new country, don’t speak the language, and don’t even know what something is called, but you need it anyway. Fortunately, Barbara was there to help out, and we celebrated their arrival and first successful purchase with a cup of whatever at Aroma.
Even then, AJ was not in ‘the pink.’ In The States, he had worked, among other things, as a trader on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and as an auto mechanic. He was as handy as it gets. Let’s say your washing machine is on the fritz. Most of us would pick up the phone and call the ‘instalator’ to come over and get it working again. AJ would take the thing apart, figure out what was wrong, head into Jerusalem to the one store that sells random parts, get what he needed, and fix it himself. But, as I implied, his days of full-time employment were at an end, and as the years went by, his condition got worse and worse. Still he was the most cheerful guy around, full of funny stories, which made him beloved by the proverbial ‘one and all.’
And then…. Barbara and I had arranged to meet them recently in Jerusalem when they had come in from Beit Shemesh for one of AJ’s many medical exams, and the change in him was obvious. All the joy, all the energy had been drained from his face; he seemed a shell of his old self. Even though, potentially, there were some new promising treatments for his Krohn’s, it was all too little and too late. AJ had had enough. It was just a matter of time until the final curtain. Barbara was offered a ride to the funeral that night in Beit Shemesh, but we were going straight home after Barbara’s procedure. Sometimes you gotta (not) do what you gotta (not) do.
And on that Sunday while Barbara was waiting for her colonoscopy, Iris was finally about to undergo her follow-up surgery, which had been delayed several times, partly because of bureaucratic snafus but essentially because the doctors out at Ein Kerem had to come up with a plan to remove the over-sized stone in the bile duct of a woman who already had several other debilitating surgeries over the years. The original plan was to let her go home for a few days before her surgery, but that would have involved the medical staff successfully doing something, which in the end didn’t work. So Iris remained stuck in the hospital week after week, and I kept going to her apartment every day to take care of Harley and Rafiki, promising, with the best intention, that their human mother would ‘be back soon.’
Barbara and I and The Levines had visited her a few days before her surgery. Iris was sitting in the food court adjacent to Hadassah-Ein Kerem when we arrived. She had crocheted a sweater for baby Gefen; all it needed was a button, which she would affix once she ‘got out of jail.’ Except she never did. The surgery on Sun. was not successful, and the follow-up on Mon. was no better. There was nothing more the doctors could do, and she died on Tues. AJ and Iris, two stalwarts of the Oy Vey Club, gone within two days of each other. Not what you expect to happen in one week – to put it mildly.
They bury them fast in our part of the world. Barbara was already on her way into Jerusalem to stay with our step-grand-daughter, when she got the word: the levaya for Iris is now. Another funeral she couldn’t attend. At least, we can pay some shiva calls. Iris’s daughter, Shira, would be staying with friends in Ma’ale Adumim, and we could head over there the next day.
Does anyone out there agree with me that when you’re walking into a shiva house, you never know quite what to expect: who will be there, what the mood will be, and what will be talked about. It might be chit-chat about the family by those in the know; it might be words of Torah; it might be non-sequiturs – like regurgitations from cable news that aren’t quite appropriate for the occasion. You might learn something about the deceased and the family, or maybe you won’t. You’re always glad that you are not the topic of conversation.
I had one worry, and it was quickly dispelled after we arrived to where Shira was sitting. Having spent a month taking care of Iris’s two cats, I was afraid that I would get stuck finding a new home for them. You’d have to be obtuse not to realize that Iris would come back from the grave to haunt those involved if the cats were not taken care of properly, so I’m told that somebody will do something, and Harley and Rafiki won’t be on the street waiting for the local cat lady to feed them.
There’s also the matter of cleaning out Iris’s apartment. Can we call our late friend an ‘avid collector,’ or more to the point, an impulsive and overly-enthusiastic shopper, and leave it at that? Except that the apartment, too small for all the stuff that was in it, can’t be left as a Museum of Random Objects. (It’s all gotta go!) I mentioned that I would be available to help, but, mercifully, others in the community will be available. The least we can do for our departed friend.
Often if you ask the right question, you learn something – especially about names, as in ‘Shira’ and ‘Phillip.’ The young physically fit Irwin Blank (Iris’s late husband) served in the IDF, I believe in the Border Patrol. He had every intention of remaining in The Land, except that his father was sick, and Irwin reluctantly went back to The States. (Barbara went back because her mother was ill. I wonder how many other stories there are like that.) And then, ‘life’ intervened, as it always does. Irwin met Iris at a B’nai Zion dance. (They’re the folks who paid for our music conservatory, library, and one of the parks.) The couple had every intention of high-tailing back to Israel. So when their first child was born three years later, they gave her a Hebrew name. By the time their son was born two years after, they realized that it would be a while before they returned to the Land of Their Dreams, so they gave him a good-old American name. At least the couple did get the opportunity to return to The Land – also as part of the Class of 2008 – and live to enjoy two grandchildren, although Irwin had unfulfilled dreams of seeing Asher in an IDF uniform, and Iris… But, as I have stressed, ‘all’ often doesn’t go according to plan.
And then there was the next day to prove my point. But that’s for next time, when we describe our ‘sighs of relief,’ the real one and the distressing false alarms.
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