I'll sleep in your embrace at last

But you would live, 'Ponine, dear G-d above
If I could heal your wounds with words of love...

Was going to write about Princess' next few days of gan. Her stiff upper lip until I am about to leave. Her puffy eyes upon my return. Her joke: "Ima, I made friends with a Hebrew girl! (ancient hebrews, anyone?) I understand everything she says!" Joyous, incredulous mother, then--"Just joking!" Her tantrum over Shabbas and her ear-splitting declaration, "I don't wanna LEARN HEBREW!"

But then my mother called and told me that my father is in the hospital again. He was foaming at the mouth and nose (like soap suds, she tells me, and I gag at the sudden visual imagery) and could barely breathe, and had to be stabilized before transferred to the ambulance.

Thank G-d my mother found him in time, thank G-d they stabilized him in time, thank G-d we had a friend who had emergency room duty and got him a room. Thank G-d for hospitals, and hatzala drivers, and the little voice in my mother's head that told her to check on my father.

Yes. All that is thanks to G-d.

But all I can think of is, he could have died. Alone. Like that. Foaming and without breath or voice while my family sat five feet away from him, chatting in the kitchen over ice cream cones from Sweet Choice and after Shabbas dish washing.

Alone in a house full of people, he could have died.

I know that we don't choose how, or when. But please, dear G-d above, don't let him die like that. Let him die as he lived, surrounded by love.