Throughout the day, every time one whispered a blessing over food or drink, over thunder and lightning, one was reminded of one’s connection to the dear Lord of the Universe, and that it was He who had taken the living to “sleep with their fathers.” You accepted this, of course you did! What choice did you have, after all? But each acceptance of the proper order of things in the universe was also a reminder and a reinforcement of your human powerlessness and utter vulnerability, your inability to stem the ravaging tides of time and chance that swept in suddenly to drag those you loved out to the endless sea from which none have as yet returned.

The only real comfort, she considered, watching the rav’s ravaged face, was to surround yourself with life: your children and grandchildren, your friends and neighbors. But that, too, she pondered, was never enough. The Talmudical saying that “a man only dies to his wife” was equally true of the death of a wife to her husband. The loss of a longtime partner was the cruelest loss of all.

She would do what she could, she thought, to make it easier for him to bear. At least, she could bring him the foods he loved. Now that Leah was cooking for her grandchildren, she had time on her hands. She thought of all the delicacies she hadn’t prepared in so long: stuffed cabbage, falsche fish, gribbenes, latkes, tzimmes, knaidlach … But maybe not. Gribbenes had been banished by the know-it-all young doctors along with schmaltz, she mourned, even though plenty of Yidden had been brought up on such things and died peacefully in their nineties. She herself hadn’t touched such foods in decades. Never mind, she would prepare traditional foods the new way, with olive oil, she told herself, her nose wrinkling in distaste at the very thought.

Just then, Suri Kimmeldorfer, the matchmaker, walked up next to her, nodding hello.

“May we meet only at simchas,” she said primly.

The two had only recently reconciled, Fruma Esther holding her fully responsible for the debacle of Yaakov’s recent remarriage. It was her fault that instead of a proper, Boro Park bride, he had wound up with a baalas teshuva. And even though she had decided to make the best of it, it still rankled.