She found that idea frightening. For what is a life, especially the life of a family, if not memories? It had been a good life, she exhorted herself. A life filled with blessings. After all, what is a handful of funerals and sick days compared to thousands of ordinary good days of waking and sleeping and kissing the young, and caring for them as you watched them grow up strong, healthy, God-fearing, and good? Every moment, one must recognize with gratitude the overwhelming goodness one had been granted in life.

That was the way it should be, she mourned, even as she knew it was not. The death of Zissele at such a young age by her own hand had canceled out so much of the light and blessing of her life, casting a shadow over the past and the future that obscured what she wanted to believe in and hope for. She would never recover from it, the way you could hope to heal from the inevitable death of a person racked with disease or simply old age.

Was it my fault? She shrugged, the question like a carpenter’s sharp tool used over and over to deepen already chiseled grooves, each time threatening to destroy the good wood that was the center of her being. It was dangerous to think that way, she scolded herself. As God was compassionate to repentant sinners, so must she be like Him, and find a way to forgive herself, for she was truly, abjectly, profoundly sorry for her part in her life’s tragedy; for every tiny moment, so vividly remembered, where she had gone wrong: the second she had held the phone in her hand and began to dial the hospital, then put it down. The moment she had let her mouth utter the words, “Give her more time!” to her son-in-law, convincing him that it was possible for Zissele to heal on her own, with their help. Even the moment when she had turned her head and pretended not to see when Zissele had slumped to the floor, wetting herself.

It’s enough, enough, she pleaded with the relentless foe lodged in her soul, unconvinced and unappeased. Like the prosecuting angel that appeared before the Throne of Glory every Yom Kippur, clutching his laundry list of your sins that could not be pried loose no matter your tears or atonement, she held this enemy close to her heart, almost welcoming his wounding thrusts against her. One day, she thought, when her battered soul had had enough, she would finally be released to join her Yitzchak Chaim, her dearest. And then the prosecuting angel would have both of them to face as well as the good Lord Himself, Who—kind and forgiving and compassionate as always—would, she had no doubt, be standing there by their sides.