Dear Ima,

I don’t know how to do this. I sit here beside you, watching you struggle for breath, fighting for life, and I am filled with so many regrets. The ICU is loud and quiet at the same time. I hear machines hum, alarms beep, the hiss of the ventilator pushing air into your lungs, and the nurses at their station chatting. But you are quiet. Too quiet.
Are you in pain? Oh, how I wish you could let me know what hurts.
So many numbers on the screens. The ones that should be high are low. The ones that should be low are high. They give medication to bring up your blood pressure, and it shoots too high. They lower the dose, and it drops again. Back and forth, up and down.
The doctors gently tell me, “Your mother is very sick. We are doing everything we can for her.” I nod, fighting back tears. What else is there to do?
As I sit here watching you, Ima, I keep drifting back to better times, before dementia changed everything. Before the silence. Before I lost the version of you who could ask me how I was doing, how the kinderlach were. You always knew when I was struggling, even when I tried to hide it. Your love didn’t need words. I felt it.
Things were not always easy for you, but you didn’t let that stop you. I remember you sitting in your chair near the front window and saying Tehillim. That worn Tehillim, the pages soaked with your tears, soft from years of holding. I know you had so much to daven for. Abba. Each of your children. Our struggles, our shidduchim, our health, our parnasah.
Now it’s my Tehillim that is getting soaked. Now I’m the one turning those pages, finding comfort in the same words that comforted you. There’s something about saying Tehillim; the words carry you when you don’t have words of your own. They hold your pain and give it somewhere to go. I understand now, Ima. I understand so many things now that I wish I had understood then.
When I got engaged, you took me from store to store, preparing me for my new life. You didn’t sit me down and give long speeches about marriage. That wasn’t your way. But you showed me by example how to be a devoted wife and caring mother.
Coming home to you after the birth of my first baby, you taught me how to care for him, how to swaddle him, bathe him and soothe him when he wouldn’t stop crying. When I had my first postpartum meltdown, you took the baby from my hands and told me to take a nap.
Now I’m the one tending to you. Now I’m the one sitting by your bedside. The roles have reversed, but they can never truly be equal. You spent years taking care of me. Feeding me, clothing me, worrying about me, davening for me. You gave me everything I needed without ever asking for anything in return. Now it’s my turn to take care of you, but I can never repay what you gave me. Not even close.
I feel so helpless sitting here watching you suffer. All I want is to take away your pain. To make you comfortable. To fix this. And I can’t. I can’t do anything except hold your hand and daven, and wonder if I’m doing enough. If I’ve ever done enough.
This is the part that breaks me, Ima. The regret.
I should have visited more, called more, asked more questions while you could still answer. I should have sat with you longer and held your hand while you could still squeeze back.
I know all the things I should have done. I knew them then, too.
I knew. And still, I said, “Tomorrow.”
Tomorrow I’ll visit. Tomorrow I’ll call. Tomorrow I’ll sit with you and really be present, not rushing, not distracted, not already thinking about what I have to do next.
But tomorrow became next week, next week became next month, the months became years. And here I am, sitting in the ICU, regretting all the tomorrows.
Thinking about everything I should have done differently, I know that I was doing the best I could. I was raising children, working and managing a life with a thousand demands pulling at me from every direction. I was tired. I was overwhelmed. I was human.
And yet, the excuses feel hollow now. Because the truth is that we make time for what we prioritize. And I should have prioritized you more. I should have put you higher on the list. I should have known that the list itself would one day feel meaningless, but you never would.
Now I am crying for all the precious time I wasted.
I cry for the conversations we’ll never have, the questions you’ll never answer, the things I will never know about you. What did you daven for all those years, sitting with your Tehillim? What would you tell me now if you could speak?
I cry for all the times I was impatient with you. The times I rushed our phone calls. The times I visited but wasn’t really there, physically present but mentally already out the door.
I cry because I understand you so much better now that I’m a mother myself. Now I’ve lived enough to know how hard you worked and how much you sacrificed, but by the time I understood this, you couldn’t hear me say it.
That is my pain, Ima.
A daughter’s pain.
A daughter’s guilt.
A daughter’s regret.
* * *
I know I’m not alone in this. I know that right now, in hospitals and nursing homes and living rooms around the world, other daughters and sons are sitting with this same weight. The weight of “I should have.” The weight of “why didn’t I?” The weight of realizing that time is not a renewable resource, and we spent it on things that don’t matter.
We think we have forever, but we don’t. We think there will always be another chance, but there won’t. We think that love is enough, that they know how much we care, even if we don’t show it as often as we should.
Maybe she knew, but that doesn’t ease the unbearable weight of not showing it more.
Regret is the price we pay for being human.
It teaches us to stop saying “tomorrow.” That the people we love won’t always be here, and neither will we. It teaches us that the dishes can wait, the emails can wait, the to-do list can wait, but the people we love can’t.
It teaches us to forgive ourselves. Beating ourselves up for not doing more doesn’t honor anyone. It just adds more pain to a world that already has enough.
* * *
I hope that you can forgive me, Ima. Forgive me for not visiting more. Forgive me for not giving you the kavod you deserve. Forgive me for all the tomorrows I wasted.
I can’t go back, but I can go forward differently.
Maybe the message I’m supposed to learn, listening to the machines breathe for you, is that it’s never too late. Until it is.
Al kol neshimah u’neshimah tehallel Kah. For every breath, we praise Hashem.
Sitting here beside you, I thank Hashem for every breath. Yours and mine.
I can’t undo all the wasted moments, Ima, but I can be here for this moment.
I’m here now, Ima. I’m here.

Miriam

Please daven for a refuah shleimah for Toba bas Sara Rivka