2/14/21

Published in Spotlight on Recovery Magazine, August 2021

God’s Answer

By Miriam Weiser

I was forty-one years old, about to marry off my oldest child and expecting my youngest. At this age, pregnancy didn’t come easy. It was my seventh pregnancy, and my body felt too old to be carrying again. My bones were achy all the time. I had great difficulty moving around in general and twisting and turning from side to side in bed, as I found myself doing several times a night. My hips were pleading for me to stay on the couch, but I had things to do. I had a family to take care of and a wedding to plan.

2013 was the year. And what a year it was. Personally, it was the worst year of my life. Worse still than 2020. Contrary to the way I felt about my body being pregnant at my advanced age, I felt too young to be losing my mother.

When she was finally diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor in August, after about six months of visiting doctors for various ailments including minor and ultimately severe seizures, my siblings and I were numb. Not ones to lament loudly or with great distress, most of us rather dealt with this news the easiest way possible. That was denial. It’s been seven and a half years and I still don’t think I’ve properly dealt with the news of my mother’s death.

I spent two days a week at my sister’s house where my mother stayed during her illness in between hospital stays. While there, I made some calls regarding wedding details and tried to get stuff accomplished. I sang songs to my mother, who sat on the recliner motionless and emotionless. I spent the time my mother slept being emotionally there for my sister who had to be busy with the minutia of caretaking while the rest of us could go home to some normalcy some of the time.

I will forever remember how, from the moment she heard her diagnosis, when she was still aware of her surroundings, until she became unconscious, my mother never shed a tear, nor did she complain and ask ‘why me?’

I don’t know how I managed to get through that year, but I did, because here I am, and lots of things have happened since then.

At the same time that my mom was sick, and we tended to her with all our strength physical and emotional, one of my other sister’s kids, a twelve-year-old boy was also sick. He had been diagnosed with a rare genetic disease three years prior and my sister was consumed with finding a cure and taking care of her son the best way she knew how.

But he only got worse with time. And in January of that year, my sister lost her son, after a three-year excruciating battle. She didn’t have a mother to lean on, for my mother, unbeknownst and completely against her character, was leaning on all of us.

As the sister closest in age to her, I took it upon myself to be at the shiva house every day for the week. According to Jewish Law, the people sitting shiva are forbidden to do anything for themselves, they’re supposed to just mourn. I took breakfast and lunch for the crew of six people, which included my sister, her husband and four children over the age of thirteen, plus the two other children who were too young to sit shiva, but nevertheless were around, every one of those seven days.

I was highly pregnant by then. My mom was extremely sick and getting worse by the day. And my son’s wedding date in February was looming closer. In our circles, once a wedding date has been set, there was no changing it for convenience.

My son got married and my mom, already quite sick at the time, attended in a wheelchair. It was a bittersweet affair. Most of the time she was not coherent and didn’t seem to understand what was going on. But as the wedding day grew closer, she kept asking when the wedding was and when she was going. That was the last event she attended. He’s now been married eight years and has two little girls.

By the time I gave birth to my youngest son on the last day of March, I was a mental and physical wreck. I had five other kids at home spanning all ages and the brand-new couple who visited often. But an emotional birdie came to my semi rescue when it put into my head the notion that I needed space, and recuperation as I had gone through an emergency C-section giving birth, to top it all off. I stayed in a convalescent home for a week even though I wasn’t the type to sit around for so long, especially knowing that my family needed me, and my mother, rather, my sisters needed me.

I hit the ground running and resumed rushing over to be with my mother as soon as I returned home with a ten-day-old baby.

It was sometime in the summer when I found myself lying in bed one night trying to fall asleep, my brain running full force with despair, regrets and fear. By that time, my mom was already completely immobile. She was in bed all day long. She needed a twenty-four-hour aide. Things were looking very bleak. I also prayed. I did a lot of that on a daily basis. I begged and pleaded for an end to the suffering our family was going through. I prayed for a miracle.

And lying there in my bed, the world settling into the dark night, the house quiet, the following words suddenly entered my mind like an epiphany:

When you answer my prayers, will it be yes or no…

My drowsy eyes popped open with astonishment and wonder. As a writer, I knew this was a line I could and should use. Perhaps in a song.

I turned back to my bedside table where my cellphone lay shut down for the night. I reached out for it and opened it under my covers for fear that the noise it made when it opened would wake my sleeping husband. As soon as I was able to, I opened a fresh page in the notebook app and typed this line in, followed by more lines that consumed me. I didn’t have a tune in mind yet, but the words flowed.

When you answer my prayers, will it be yes or no

Does it depend on what I do

Does it depend on how I pray

Because my life, my God, depends on what you say.

I’m praying for my loved ones, they should be happy and healthy

They should feel security,

They should always succeed,

Because their lives, my God, depends on your decree.

             I’m not asking for just things, mere trivialities,

             I’m only begging you, please for solace and relief.

             Give me the strength to persevere,

             Please take my cries, and hear,

             I have only so much energy, could use some clarity.

I eventually continued writing the song, recorded it, and sent it to my siblings, hoping for them to receive some comfort and consolation in that dire time.

As I prayed and begged for an answer, it was subsequently apparent what that answer was going to be. No, God said. It is time for me to take her home.

No, He said. And I could do nothing but accept. I went along with the motions of mourning. I accompanied her to the grave. I visit every year and I continue my life. There is work to do. I am not here in this world to waste time and energy fighting for something I could do nothing about or complaining about something I had no control over.

Since that awful day in October of 2013, two more of my kids have gotten married to begin their journey as adults and to live their own lives responsibly, and four grandchildren were born. Two of them are named after my mother.

And her memory lives on. Forever. We think about her all the time, mimicking things she’d be wont to say on any occasion. We laugh. We cry. And we go on.

It was a difficult no. It was a heart wrenching- never thought I’d survive it, no. But miracles do happen. And one of those is that as much as it hurts, time somehow softens the blow.

Listen to the song on YouTube, Miriam Weiser, When You Answer My Prayers.