Junior has pneumonia. It feels like being on the beach with a black flag fluttering over the lifeguard booth. Although everything is under control, there is a smell of violent danger in the air.
The “noise” ignition silences any other event occurring in the environment, just like the noise of the waves crashing on the shore in a storm. I am focused on his recovery. Encourages doctors to do tests, think again about the chosen treatments, add more and more physiotherapy, cook him chicken soup, wrap it in blankets and pamper him without limit.
Everyone who knows me feels that something is bothering me these days. The fatigue and worry are evident in me. Those who know what it is about are interested, caring and wish us all a speedy recovery. I take solace in the love sent to him and me. There’s something clean in her that I’m getting stronger from. Then the “righteous” on duty arrives and says, “Pray for his recovery. I will also pray for him”
And I want to throw the pagan on duty from the roof at that moment.
Prayer. How is this supposed to help us? How are silent requests for nothing considered to improve the situation? How are they supposed to cure someone suffering from such a complex and complex disease? Had there been somewhere that same mighty God he believes in, there would not have been this disease at all.
He does not understand the convictions in his words. If I follow his logic, then if I had prayed with full intention in time, we would have been spared the disease in general and the suffering that accompanies it. Everything that happens to us is just because we have not prayed enough, because if I understand correctly, prayer is sending a memo to God who will not forget to take care of our cause.
I wonder how this theory gets along with the masses of religious patients?
No, in case you were wondering, I’m not praying. I also do not make requests from the universe, do not believe in reincarnation, and do not practice sacrificing idols. (But likes to do on the fire occasionally). We have no mezuzahs in the house, nor candlesticks. I do not spit on black cats. And if need be, I move under the ladders. We do not speak babies and do not visit synagogues. We do not believe or fear, or respect or cherish any God. Nothing is sublime in our understanding, noble or holy to us.
Everyone who knows me knows this about me. And yet, the same messenger will always come on his behalf and recommend me to pray for recovery. Recently even Tzaddik increased and appropriated to his own God the healing of Junior that we doctors and we have been working on for weeks and achieved (even if not entirely) with endless labor, medical tricks, and hours upon hours of physical therapy. She came up to all of us with great concern, and I paid for her in lost hours of sleep.
I wanted to hit him on the head with a heavy bone when he said what he said. I looked at him, and I hated him for the first time in my life. If he wanted to help us, instead of wasting his time in the synagogue (or where he used to worship), he would come to our house and help us in practice. But he has chosen the easy and distant path from us and still feels part of the exhausted care team.
For the first time in my life, I felt I could no longer bear it. I looked at him and said to him:
“No, it was not your God who healed him. It was medicine, science. They are the ones who kept him alive to this day and will continue to do so. Your God has not and never has had a role in my child’s life.”
He shrugged and said contemptuously, “do you think so?”
And I walked away, pitying him, sorry for me for knowing him and having to hear those things. I went home, to my children, to the man with me, to a life I understand, in which there is nothing sublime or sacred. It is just a life that contains beautiful and happy moments alongside difficult and frightening moments. A life that is exactly according to my proportion. As high as the intensity of my emotions soared and as wide as I realized touching. CF life has a genetic explanation, my celiac has a statistical basis, and my local in the world has a historical reason.
