“You know I’m going to be like him”

My father had a stroke Thursday night.

We got the phone call early Friday morning on our way up to pick up our oldest daughter, Eliana, from Camp Ramah Darom.  (I blogged two weeks ago about camping and the power of experiential learning.  Suffice it to say that her one-week “taste” delivered on all accounts.)  By the time my mother called, he had successfully had surgery to remove the clot from his right brain and was recovering in ICU.  After much conversation and thought, we decided that I should continue the trip as planned through Sunday and that instead of driving back with my family that I would fly out to Las Vegas on Monday morning.

Which I did.

When I arrived Monday to the hospital, they had just hours earlier removed the tubes for breathing and feeding.  I had missed the very worst, but what I had was bad enough.

My parent’s 44th wedding anniversary is tomorrow and my father’s 71st birthday is weeks away.  He will, thank God, be here to celebrate both.

First the status report.  He suffered a classic “right brain – left side” stroke.  This means that physically his left side is at risk for deficit and that emotionally his personality is at risk for irritability and unfiltered-ness.  Luckily he was already pretty irritable and unfiltered, so I feel good about his recovery to full “Mitzmacher”.

He has made a remarkable recovery these last few days.  He is eating.  He is sitting up. He has begun walking.  He has use of his left leg, arm, hand, etc.  He can speak and he sounds more and more like himself each day.  He has all his memories intact.  He knows who everybody is, knows what is going on in the world, and when awake fully lucid.  His vision out of his left eye is slowly coming back and, if it does not come back all the way, and that is the worst that comes out of this, a blessing it shall surely be.

I flew back on the red-eye Wednesday evening and as of this writing, he continues to make good progress, with the inevitable setbacks that come with his age and with the significance of the trauma he has suffered.  I am planning my next trip out to visit and hope that their next trip to us will be Thanksgiving and that we will by then truly have a lot to be thankful for.

I am writing this blog post, in part, because life required me to share this event with enough people that I wanted to take advantage of this vehicle to provide some sort of update and to thank all the people that have (and all the people who now will) reached out to me, my Mom, and our family with their well wishes, thoughts, prayers [my father’s Hebrew name for healing prayers is Mikhael ben Esther] and offers for help.  It has been overwhelming and overwhelmingly appreciated.  We will inevitably forget to include someone in this thanks and hopefully this will provide us with blanket coverage.

But I am also writing this blog post because it is impossible not to be impacted by this kind of experience.  Because there is nothing more clarifying than experiencing family pain.  There is nothing like watching your parents’ love to remind you to cherish the love you are lucky to have.  There is nothing like watching your parents’ vulnerability to encourage you to treasure your children.

To say much more will push me into cliche.  I have nothing to offer by way of wisdom that others more wise have not already said.  I simply pray that as a result of this unplanned and unwelcome reminder of life’s fragility that I will be a better husband, a better father, a better friend, and a better educator.

And I am grateful to still have a chance to be a better son.

Author: Jon Mitzmacher

Dr. Jon Mitzmacher is the Head of the Ottawa Jewish Community School. Jon is studying to be a rabbi at the Academy for Jewish Religion and is on the faculty of the Day School Leadership Training Institute (DSLTI) as a mentor. He was most recently the VP of Innovation for Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools.  He is the former Executive Director of the Schechter Day School Network.  He is also the former head of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School, a K-8 Solomon Schechter, located in Jacksonville, FL, and part of the Jacksonville Jewish Center.  He was the founding head of the Solomon Schechter Day School of Las Vegas.  Jon has worked in all aspects of Jewish Education from camping to congregations and everything in between. View all posts by Jon Mitzmacher