off the gym ceiling. The men were mostly silent, as if this were the moment when it really sank in: no home, no bed, no “good night” from a wife or a child. The blowers roared.
An hour later, Cass, his work finished, lifted himself on his crutches and hobbled to the vestibule. The lights in the gym were dimmed. The men were down for the night.
“Remember, next time, I tell you
Okay, sure, Cass, I said. My hands were dug into my pockets, and my arms and torso were shivering. I couldn’t imagine how these men slept in this cold, except that the alternative was on a rooftop or in an abandoned car.
I was about to go when I realized I had left a notepad up in Henry’s office. I climbed the stairs, but the door was locked. I came back down.
On my way out, I took one last peek into the gym. I heard the steady hum of the blowers and saw the shadowy bumps under blankets, some lying still, some tossing slightly. It’s hard to express what hit me then, except the thought that every one of those bumps was a man, every man once a child, every child once held by his mother, and now this: a cold gym floor at the bottom of the world.
I wondered how-even if we had been disobedient-this wouldn’t break God’s heart.
My eye caught a flicker of movement across the way. A large, lonely figure sat in the darkness. Pastor Henry would remain there for several more hours, watching over the homeless like a sentinel, until the overnight guy arrived. Then he would bundle up, go out the side entrance, and walk home.
I had a sudden urge to get to my own warm bed. I pushed through the door and blinked, because it had started to snow.
I walked a mile with Pleasure;
She chatted all the way;
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne’er a word said she;
But, oh! The things I learned from her,
When Sorrow walked with me.
ROBERT BROWNING HAMILTON
The End of Autumn
“Something happened.”
It was the Reb’s daughter, Gilah, who had called me on my cell phone, something she was unlikely to do unless there was trouble. The Reb, she said, had suffered a setback, maybe a stroke, maybe a heart attack. His balance was off. He was falling to the right. He couldn’t remember names. His speech was confused.
He had gone to the hospital. He’d been there a few days. They were discussing “options.”
Is he going to be…? I asked.
“We just don’t know,” she said.
I hung up and called the airlines.
It was Sunday morning when I arrived at the house. Sarah greeted me. She pointed to the Reb, released from the hospital and now sitting in a recliner near the back of the den.
“All right, just so you know,” she said, her voice lowered, “he’s not so…”
I nodded.
“Al?” she announced. “You have a visitor.”
She said it loudly and slowly enough that I could tell things had changed. I approached the Reb, and he turned his head. He lifted his chin slightly, pushed up a small smile, and raised one hand, but barely above his chest.
“Ahh,” he expelled.
He was tucked under a blanket. He wore a flannel shirt. A whistle of some sort was around his neck.
I leaned over him. I brushed his cheek with mine.
“Ehh…mmm…Mitch,” he whispered.
How are you doing? It was a stupid question.
“It’s not…,” he began. Then he stopped.
It’s not…?
He grimaced.
It’s not the
He tried to smile.
“No,” he said. “I mean to…this…”
This?
“Where…see…ah…”
I swallowed hard. I felt my eyes tearing up.
The Reb was sitting in the chair.
But the man I knew was gone.
What do you do when you lose a loved one too quickly? When you have no time to prepare before, suddenly, that soul is gone?
Ironically, the man who could best answer that was sitting in front of me.
Because the worst loss you can suffer had already happened to him.
It was 1953, just a few years into his job at the temple. He and Sarah had a growing family: their son, Shalom, who was now five, and their four-year-old twin girls, Orah and Rinah. The first name means light. The second means joy.
In a single night, joy was lost.
Little Rinah, a buoyant child with curly auburn hair, was having trouble breathing. Lying in her bed, she was gasping and wheezing. Sarah heard the noise from her bedroom, went to check, and came running back. “Al,” she said, hurriedly, “we have to take her to the hospital.”
As they drove in the darkness, their little girl struggled terribly. Her airways swelled and tightened in her chest. Her lips were turning blue. Nothing like this had ever happened before. The Reb pressed the accelerator.
They rushed into the emergency room of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden, New Jersey. The doctors hurried the child into a room. Then came the wait. They stood alone. What could they do? What can anyone do?
In the silent hallway, Albert and Sarah prayed for their child to live.
Hours later, she was dead.
It was a severe asthma attack, the first and last of Rinah’s life. Today, most likely, she would have survived. With an inhaler, with instructions, it might not even have been a major incident.
But today is not yesterday, and the Reb could do nothing but listen to the worst imaginable words-
