Easter And Passover Greetings 2020

Littlechild@emperorsnuclothes.com/ April 7, 2020/ Uncategorized

In 1959, when I was seven years of age, I came very close to death. It was mid February, deep into one of the dark and horribly frigid winters that were not infrequent back then. Public elementary schools at the time were (and probably STILL are, to some extent, even today) virtual miasmas of communicable disease. I became terribly sick with one of the respiratory afflictions that spread like wildfire that winter. Despite loving care from my family, I got worse and worse. I developed astonishingly high fevers and found it increasingly difficult to breathe. My parents brought me to Saint Vincent’s Hospital where intravenous fluids were started and I was given penicillin and placed in an oxygen tent. I was said to have “double pneumonia” which, presumably, was twice as bad a “single pneumonia.” I was fascinated no end by the stainless steel needle that poked into a vein in my arm.

Although I was unaware of it at the time, by the evening of that first inpatient day, I had been administered ALL of the treatments that were available in 1959. There was nothing more. Had I not responded to the treatment rendered, death waited at the door. And, it was not terribly unusual, back then, for children to die in such circumstances.

Throughout my hospital stay my family kept a vigil round the clock. But only some of that vigil was actually INSIDE the hospital. During the day my mother, father and many family members visited EVERY time they were allowed to do so. During the evenings and nights, however, when family was not allowed (hospital rules were much stricter back then), one family member kept watch by standing ON THE FIRE ESCAPE that went by the window that was next to my oxygen tent. My grand father, Daddy Sam, would come right after work, roughly from five to eleven o’clock. My Uncle Jack stood guard on the “overnight shift.” I would sometimes poke my head out of my oxygen tent and wave to them, which often drew a reprimand from the nurses. I always knew when Uncle Jack was out there, because I could see the red light of his ever present cigarete glowing in the very dark night. Looking back on it now, I am awed by their devotion. And, I am amazed that, under those arctic conditions, THEY TOO didn’t get pneumonia.

Over the next three or four days, the treatment I was given did begin to work, and after a week or so, I was deemed recovered enough for discharge. Although much improved from how I was on admission, I remember still feeling very sick, drained and weak. Indeed, I needed the entire month of March to recover. During that time I was kept, of course, out of school. I was also kept mostly on bed rest and completely in doors. The days seemed to drag on forever and my room began to feel like a dungeon.

The first time I was allowed outside of the house was on Sunday, March 29, for Easter Mass. I remember squinting at the strong sunshine I hadn’t seen in a very long time and being amazed to see that our backyard grass had a touch of green to it. I also remember a most wonderful scent in the air. I know now that the scent I experienced that day was the smell of soil bacteria, mostly erythromycetes, coming alive in the early spring thaw. Nothing before or since has ever smelled so sweet to me.

We went by car to church and celebrated the Easter Mass. At Mass I thanked God for my salvation, for the doctors, nurses and medicines that saved my life, and for my devoted family.

The sense of having survived a devastating disease, the opportunity to thank God for His saving grace, coupled with the delicious feeling of spring in the air and the world born anew, was one of the most remarkable moments of my life. There is, I think, a word that expresses my feeling on that day. It is a word that is part of both the Christian and Jewish traditions: the word is “hosannah.” It comes from the Hebrew, “hosi a-na,” which means “thank the Lord for our deliverance.”

So, as we approach both Easter and Passover in this Holy Season, I invite all of my friends and family to think back to the times of deliverance in your live, and join me in saying: HOSANNAH…. HOSANNAH IN THE HIGHEST!

Have a Blessed and Happy Easter!
And Chang Pesach Samech!