Another funeral, she thought as with a heavy heart she walked down to the funeral home on Sixteenth Avenue. She couldn’t believe how many people were there! Only the death of a Hasidic rebbe draws more, she thought proudly.

Little Malka Ruth Alter. She shook her head. As frail as a bird with her skinny legs and long, scarecrow arms. And that was before her illness, God should watch over us. But from that scrawny body, she had brought forth six healthy children, four of them sons. A true miracle. It had never been easy for her; she was never robust. But she had done her duty toward her husband and her family, may her memory be forever blessed! Fruma Esther pressed her lips together tightly as if she could say more about the burdens that had been put on this good woman, some of them enormous and unnecessary.

As the rebbitzen of a community that encompassed one of the most respected yeshiva gadolas and kollelim in the neighborhood—known all over the haredi world for its depth of commitment to learning and to strict observance—as well as the synagogue attached to them, she had overseen an empire that required endless participation and dedication. Dozens were hosted for meals every Shabbos, and double that for the holidays. Of course, she had help. But to oversee all the buying and storing and cooking was also no small thing.

And this was her reward: packed crowds waiting to recite psalms and prayers that would accompany her soul on its journey to the highest levels of the World to Come, where a chorus of heavenly angels would sing her name to welcome her soul’s arrival.

At least, that is what Fruma Esther so wanted to believe even when all the evidence of her eyes showed her nothing of the kind. There was only the plain pine box covered with a velvet, gold-braided cover wheeled in on a metal gurney by bearded men. And there it sat at the front of the room, as the women and men, separated by an impenetrable mechitza, crowded each other to catch a glimpse of the strange and pitiful sight that was all that remained of this fine woman’s existence in this world, the same as for any ordinary, even evil, person whose soul had left their body.

It was an unfathomable thing, Fruma Esther thought. Unfathomable. You could never understand how the sacred life that had flowed so strongly through a person suddenly stopped, leaving behind this useless carcass that one could do nothing but hide away in the earth as quickly as possible.