Dream Keeper

B"H, 

Some Miracles Are Easier Than Others

How is it that Hadassah, Dassi for short, could live without eating.  Everyone wondered and marvelled and felt burdened by this miracle of life.  After Dassi passed away, her daughter, Penina, learned that their housekeeper had been visiting Dassi in the late evening hours.  That wonderful lady made the nursing home staff swear on the word of G-d, a big old leather bible in the chapel, not to reveal her late evening visits with Dassi to the family of Dassi.  Over the decades of working for Hadassah and Jakob, and then for Penina once she married and had a family of her own, they all had become dear friends.  More than an exceptional employee with exceptional employers, Carmela became a dear friend and confidante of Dassi.  And Dassi returned the loving friendship and confidence to her beloved companion Carmela. 

When Dassi suffered a stroke, Carmela nursed her as well as tending to the house.  When Jakob suffered his stroke, she nursed him with the same respect, attention to detail and love that she gave to his wife.  When their only daughter, Penina, was widowed suddenly with four beautiful babies the oldest only in kindergarten, Carmela did what Dassi would have done if only she were able-bodied.  And so Penina went to work while Carmela did for her everything that Dassi said she wished she could do for her only child.  Carmela was the surrogate maternal grandmother with Dassi's confidential blessings and instructions.

What of the paternal grandmother?  Roz ached in her heart when her son had dropped dead on the handball court at the local YMHA.  She wanted to help Penina and the children but she herself had been forced to remake her own life after the father of her dead son had dumped her for a bimbo with two silicone bazookas up front.  She became a librarian in the college town where her father had been a professor.  Roz lived simply in a compact one bedroom condo.  She paid Carmela to be her proxy with the children.  And so, Carmela, whose blood was so secretly Jewish from Spain's  Inquisition that even she did not know her roots, became a grandmother twice over times four. 

When Dassi needed more help than was possible at home, Jakob found a nursing facility that could take her in and help her.  Retired from his job to recover from his own stroke, Jakob spent every lunch and dinner with his beloved wife.  The mornings he devoted to his own rehabilitation at the University Clinic... physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy.  He was always frustrated because Dassi would barely eat when he visited her.  She would smile her golden smile.  And doze before her meal tray, in and out of her reverie filled with music, ... violin music in Vienna of her childhood.  Finally she would waken completely in the late evening when her beloved Carmela, her dream keeper, would arrive.  They would share food and confidences... a world her husband never knew to enter.