Losing my mother (Frida Levona bat Shalom), and my kids’ bubby (Yehudis Chava bat Yakov) the same year has been very difficult. I’ve shared a lot about my mom on this site, in the videos and on Clubhouse. I wanted to share a bit more about my kids Bubby (Mrs. Baitz), as she was such an inspiration to me the living personification of Chesed (loving kindness).
I have never met anyone like Mrs. Baitz before, someone so full of life, love and light at every turn, every single moment, it inspired me to be more loving, more giving, more full of a zest for each moment in life and she had so many blissful ones with all her 11 kids and their kids. I can’t imagine a world without her in it, showering her family with goodness. May her neshama (soul) have an aliyah (elevation).
Her daughter/my kids mom (Nina Safar, @kosherinthekitch) wrote this and I just had to share it:
“When my mother passed, a piece of my heart went with her. Buried in a place I couldn’t reach. A week later my father ended up in the hospital on a ventilator, fighting Covid for months and that space was quickly filled with fear. When he returned home the fear slowly left but the space was still there, a hollowed heart begging to be filled only nothing could fill it.
Inhaling her perfume, reading her texts and staring at photos of her unleashed memories that only hurt more, like paper cuts to the heart. The grief of missing her was a constant reminder of the distance between us and the finality of it…..
What I’ve noticed these last few months….
…..is that when I’m with my family. My boys…my siblings…and most of all my father it almost feels like the love that we share for her can somehow fill that space up. Almost. Not completely. But when I am laughing with my siblings, filled with pride over something my boys are doing, or looking at my father resting in our childhood home…..
…….in those moments if I close my eyes and reach for her, I can feel my mother there with us. Her love. Her warmth. It wraps over me and in those few moments my broken heart feels full.”