Their own mother had been Mameh. If Mordechai Shalom remembered her at all, he showed no sign of it. But Chasya did. Once when Leah had found her sitting by the window looking out into the street, her little face somber and forlorn, she’d made the colossal error of asking her what was wrong. The little girl’s response had been devastating.

“She didn’t come to the wedding,” Chasya answered without looking up.

“Who, sweetie?”

“Mameh.”

Leah stood staring down at her, dumbfounded.

“I haven’t seen her in such a long time,” the child continued, shaking her head. “Maybe she forgot where we live? If I see her, I’m going to go get her.”

The lump in Leah’s throat made it impossible for her to speak. So she gathered the little girl into her arms and sat with her silently, stroking her hair, accepting and sharing her matchless grief. The idea of making up stories about heaven and angels and paradise and how one day she would see her mother again seemed wrong somehow. As much as Leah wanted to believe in such things, she knew that telling that to Chasya was simply a heartless detour around the inescapable heartbreak of her present reality. It was almost obscene.

“If I do a lot of mitzvoth and daven, will HaShem send her back?”

Leah swallowed hard, remembering her own magical thinking when her fiancé Josh had shockingly slipped and fallen to his death: the hope that it was all a mistake, that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed; that a doctor would come and give him a magic little pill that would cure him. He’d open his wide, brown eyes and smile his unique lopsided smile, his eyes filled with familiar, self-deprecating humor. “Wow,” he’d say. “That’s something I won’t try again!” And they’d pick up their backpacks and continue their pre-wedding hike through beautiful Zion National Park.

She held the child closer, shaking her head. “You are the best little girl in the world, Icy, and HaShem loves you just the way you are. But that’s not the way the world works, sweetheart. When someone dies, they don’t ever come back to this world, no matter how much we pray and how much we miss them.”

The child seemed to accept that as if she’d known it all along. “Mommy, I have a secret,” she whispered, snuggling closer.

“Do you want to tell me what it is?” Leah whispered, rocking her.

Chasya nodded solemnly, pressing her small soft lips so close to Leah’s ear that her breathing moved the tiny hairs inside. “Every day, I’m getting smaller. Smaller and smaller. Maybe one day, I’ll get so small, you won’t be able to see me. I’ll just disappear, like my mameh.”