Yizkor - Are We Ever Too Old for This Homework?

This morning I plan to attend the Yizkor service to pay a mindful tribute to Jill Bernstein (my sister-in-law) who passed away in June from breast cancer, and to Dalia Leibowitz, my friend and a teacher in our school for over 15 years, who passed away in September from kidney cancer.  I hope to not "be" depressed, although I'm sure the service will raise depressing thoughts about not only Jill and Dalia, but also my friend Jill who died a year ago September from cancer, and my mother, who died in 2008 from lung disease. 

It's a sad service (as its name implies, Yizkor, meaning will remember, in which we are supposed to remember those who have gone) but it can be very uplifting as well.  I hope to leave it with a renewed determination to live my life in a way that makes Jill, Dalia, Jill, Mom, my grandparents, and a little boy I never met, Sam Sommer who died in December from cancer, somehow proud.  It's a huge job, and I'm not sure why we as Jews take on such an enormous "homework assignment" every day - to live like you are THE ONE who helps keep things going well here on earth while you're able.

Why would I voluntarily get all cleaned up to go to the synagogue on a day when I don't have to?  To remember, and to get a reminder about my homework. I doubt I'll get it all done by bedtime, but I hope to have many more days to polish my final draft. 

Fairway and the Oncologist

 It's not so odd that I always end up having an oncologist appointment during Passover.  Of all the appointments that I put off (dentist, etc.) so they're NOT exactly at 6 month intervals - like they're supposed to be - I will always see Dr. Ligresti right on time.  And, since as a Jewish professional I have Passover off from work, it makes sense to schedule appointments then.  As a matter of fact, on Monday I'm seeing the plastic surgeon, but that's another anxiety-inducing story...

Although I am not thrilled with the location of Dr. Ligresti's new office (I loved that I could get to her in less than 15 minutes, all back roads, for the first 8 years of our acquaintance,) there is a silver lining and its name is Fairway.  A year ago, as I was busy being upset at the new office - I didn't know the people, the bathroom was all the way through the waiting room, and I had to travel on Route 17 and find a new destination - stupid reasons - I just couldn't calm down so I sat in my car for a few minutes.  And there, like a vision, was the famed then-new Fairway Market, right across the driveway from the medical building.  (Do you hear the choir of angels?)

I don't know much about Fairway in general, except there was quite the uproar and hullabaloo and cheering when it opened in Paramus.  "Oh my God you wouldn't believe the produce!  And the meat!  And the fish!"  It is, in fact, a wonderland of food.  But shopping there is more like going to the Museum of Natural History; you can't do it all in one visit, and you'd be crazy to try.  It's sensory overload in the coffee aisle, for one thing.  There's a dizzying array of olive oils, the mind-numbing selection of chocolate bars, and the place is a rabbit warren of aisles and nooks.  Spices and cheeses and candy, oh my!

But my favorite spot is the smoked fish guy's station (henceforth referred to as "the fish guy.")  It's not just lox (salty? nova?) it's also Scottish salmon, Norwegian salmon...there are easily 6 or 7 huge fillets of smoked salmon, plus herring, whitefish (also salad) and goodness knows what else.  The lox is not cheap ($8.99 per 1/4 lb) but it is good and it is SO hand-sliced that it's kind of painful to watch in this hurry-up-and-get-someplace-else-quickly world.

My son Andrew clued me in to the "scrap" containers; if you go later in the day they have filled deli tubs containing the lox edges that they carefully sliced off the lox when you buy it, and the contents of the tubs are just as yummy, and far less expensive.  So I learned quickly to buy a little lox and a tub and I get just what we need, which is lox slices for Alex and ready-made little pieces for me.

THIS time when I went after my appointment, it was 9 a.m. and there weren't any scrap tubs yet.  So I asked the fish guy if I could buy my own scraps and as he s-l-o-w-l-y and c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y sliced my lox he created a fresh scrap tub.  While I'm standing there, a man comes to get in line (the line consisting of me and him) and waits patiently through the slicing.  He waits patiently while I also get a little creamed herring (a treat) and then...he asks to buy the scrap tub that he's been (patiently) watching get filled with the smelly, oily, yummy pieces. 

 "Oh no," I think, feeling simultaneously guilty and outraged.  "It's mine!  Why didn't he ask before he waited all this time?"  As the fish guy informed the customer that I had already claimed the scraps and he walked away, I resisted a (very small) urge to go after him and give him the container. But the bit of cotton and tape stuck to the inside of my elbow where they took blood at the doctor's office hurts and itches a bit and reminds me that I get to have some luxury (read: lox) in my life.

(Pause for fond memory that is ALWAYS brought on by the lox scrap tub acquisition:  my mom always cut her lox into little tiny pieces and placed each piece "just so" on the freshly cream cheese-d bagel.  I thought it was so she could get some lox in every bite but now I'm pretty sure it was so she wouldn't get the stuff stuck in her teeth. To this day, I cannot just lay an entire slice of lox on a bagel when I don't have a knife and fork to tidy it up without a twinge of regret.)

But I regress.  (Regression is the entitlement of a blog writer.  I'm sure I will come up with other "entitlements" as I need them.)

My visit to Dr. Ligresti this past week was fairly uneventful.  She asked me if I was taking my medication (yes) and if I was having side effects (yes, but apparently not badly enough to have me stop) did I get to that colonoscopy yet (sadly, no) and what about an updated bone density scan? (getting there.)  She verified that considering the current studies, I'm going to need to take medication for 10 years.  For a person who never really took medication, the nightly reminder that I have cancer (still) will be with me for another 7 years or so. 

Long-term depressing thoughts aside, April 2015 will be five years since my diagnosis and surgery, and so I will be able to call myself a five year survivor. Dr. Ligresti confirmed that all the studies still maintain that after 5 years of non-recurrence, you have a much better chance of long-term non-recurrence.  I know that compared to others I have had a bounty of better results than others, so maybe I shouldn't still be listening for data to make me feel "better" about my prognosis, but I can't help it.

The "Annual" Letter

This is for everyone not on our mailing (or emailing) list.  It does give a good summary of 2013, so I include it here.  By all means, if you'd like to be added, let me know.  It's been in continuous publication (except for one year) for almost 30 years.

This year's "Family Photo"

Dear Friends,

At many Passover tables, people sing a song called “Dayenu” (pronounced die-ay-noo.)  It means, more or less, “it would have been enough;” if one good thing happened instead of two, it would have sufficed. So, if Alex had graduated from college, it would have been enough.  If, in addition, Ari had graduated from high school and gotten into college, that would have been enough.  If also Andrew had gotten married, it would have been enough.  If I was honored for 10 years as educator to my congregation, that would have been enough. That was May and June.  Were they the only things that happened last year?  Nope.  But they were definitely the highlights.

January of 2013 was greeted with our host of friends, and the winter wore on as we prepared for Andrew and Jackie’s wedding.  In April we traveled to Cape Cod for our nephew Isaac Bernstein’s Bar Mitzvah, and celebrated with my Dad and the rest of the family.  We knew that my other brother’s wife Jill was still fighting a breast cancer battle far tougher than my own, but did not know that weekend was the last time we would see her.  Jill passed away on June 17.  She left behind my “baby” brother Jonathan, our beautiful niece Emily and our very cool nephew Aaron.

July took us to Cape Cod for some R & R.  Each son had a friend (or wife!) along and that made for some wonderful mini golf outings and great dinners.  We now needed two cars to go anywhere, but it was worth it.  Ari started Ramapo College (his first choice) in September, and made the Dean’s List! Although it is 5 minutes from home and 1 minute from the synagogue, he lives on campus and we really don’t see him as often as one might think.  He is getting ready to register for the fall semester and is hoping to land a room in one of the campus’s apartments with one of his suitemates from this year. 

Alex graduated from Montclair State University in May with a Bachelor’s degree and a paralegal certificate and a more than respectable GPA but now is not sure that paralegal work is something he can be “passionate” about.  So, he is going to take on some temporary jobs and see what the rest of the working world has to offer.  He has, however, been extremely helpful around the house when it comes to grocery shopping, running errands, shoveling SNOW, and helping to keep Mario and Luigi, Andrew and Jackie’s chinchillas (my foster grandchildren) healthy and happy. 

After a 10-year courtship, Andrew and Jackie tied the knot on May 19.  It was a rainy day, not what anyone would have chosen for a planned outdoor wedding, but the bride was gloriously stunning, the flowers were beautiful, the music was fabulous, and the food was delicious.  Everything was perfect, right down to Jackie’s blue peep-toe pumps.  The McVeigh men were decked out in gray Vera Wang tuxedos.  Our own rabbi and cantor performed the ceremony under Jackie’s family heirloom lace and my grandfather’s tallis.  They left for their honeymoon in Iceland the next day.

Memorial Day weekend the rest of the family flew to Denver for Francie Amdurer’s wedding to Jens Kuhlers high up (imagine even higher than the mile-high city) at a gorgeous castle with Colorado vista all around.  It was a whirlwind time, but Alex, Ari, Rod & I enjoyed our adventure.  I think a highlight for the boys was all the iPads at LaGuardia Airport!

Rod is still very busy at Konica Minolta, and also has a hand in Project Literacy and the Bergen Community College Foundation, as well as volunteering time at the synagogue.  Project Literacy’s annual gala and the BCC Foundation Medallion dinner dance were both great events that gave us a chance to dress up a bit and win a few things at the silent auctions.  He also regularly sees his parents in Teaneck, sometimes just to say “hi” and sometimes to help out.  Andrew and Jackie, who live about 5 minutes away in Hackensack, are also around if Maggie and Tom need a quick hand.  With everyone so close, it’s been easy to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries and holidays.  Alex, Andrew, and Jackie were in Teaneck with Rod’s sister Lindsay (in from Indiana) and her family for Christmas.

Rod, Ari and I were not in the United States for the holidays – we were in Israel!  Along with Ari’s girlfriend Liz and members of our congregation, I acted as co-leader with Joel Mosbacher, our rabbi while we did some traditional touring (Dead Sea, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Eilat, Masada) and then some non-traditional things like picking fruit, helping prepare lunch at a soup kitchen, seeing East Jerusalem from two distinctly different political points of view, and hearing from the leader of the Women of the Wall and a prominent reporter from the Jerusalem Post.  We walked the Old City, of course, but we also took a day trip to Jordan and REALLY walked as we viewed the wonder of Petra.  We returned home early on the morning of New Year’s Day, and so did not host brunch this year.  (But Rod drove over to the Shearers in Ramsey to visit our friends after we got home and I heard they were wonderful hosts!)

Two weeks after that we drove to the wilds of Pennsylvania for our congregational retreat, picking up Liz along the way from her dorm at Muhlenberg College.  I had helped to plan some of the activities and so was running most of the weekend at the camp we had rented, but it was terrific to see so many of our families (over 100 people) together in such a relaxed, informal atmosphere.

I did have another surgery in August, but it was more reconstruction, which I needed.  Although my doctor says one can never be “cured” of breast cancer, every 6 month visit that goes by with a clean blood test helps me get to that “5 year survivor” point that they say decreases one’s risk of recurrence. Before the weather got cold, I had started doing a lot of walking at a nearby park, and I think that has helped with some of the side effects of my medication AND I lost some weight, so win/win!

I was able to travel to San Diego earlier in December for the URJ Biennial convention with 3 other leaders from our synagogue, and I now supervise not just our school staff but also our youth director, so I’ve done some professional stretching.  I’m finding that responsibility, risk, reward are all part of one package, and my renewed confidence has been one of the best rewards.

It seems like we’ve been in the process of removing snow forever at this point.  As I write, there’s more on the way, but it may only be a dusting.  Still, it’s got to be cleaned up and honestly, we’re all a little sick of snow.  (The snow blower we bought Rod a couple of years ago has been a huge help, though.)

Just one amazing thing to greet with joy in 2013 would have been enough.  But we wouldn’t have missed all the others for the world.  In July Rod and I will celebrate our 30^th anniversary while we are on Cape Cod with the family.  For those of you who have shared all or part of this journey with us, can you believe it?  We wish you all a wonderful year filled with good health, the company of loved ones, and celebrations large and small.

Rod, Rebecca, Andrew, Jackie, Alex, & Ari

31 Seton Hall Drive, Oakland, NJ  07436

 mcveigh@verizon.net ~ 201-337-0255

Stupid, Stupid Breast Cancer - An Apology to Jill

Yesterday afternoon, at about 4:30 p.m., my sister-in-law Jill Bernstein passed away after what everyone will call a long "battle" with breast cancer.  She was diagnosed at about the same time as I was in 2010, but her disease had progressed much further than mine when it was first found.  She had the best doctors, the most advanced treatment in the world, and my brother would have gone to the ends of the earth to find that one medication that would be the "miracle."

And, for a while, some of those toxic cocktails worked.  She did not have any surgeries, but every chemo out there that could be tried, was tried.  She had good days, and she had awful days.  And things looked very hopeful for a while, although no doctor (including my own) will ever say of breast cancer that it is gone, and it was never in any way "gone" for Jill.

She was amazing - my niece and nephew are pretty wonderful kids (and I will say that because they are still kids and that is awful too) and my brother is a better person for having had these 24 years with her.  She could pick up the phone as she was waiting to go from blood testing to chemo treatment, sitting in a hospital hallway, and call me just to pass the time.  Although I never knew her as a child - we both grew up on Cape Cod but she was almost 8 years younger than I am - for some reason we could talk for a long time, or not talk for a long time, but we could talk.

I am so, so sorry that we did not talk enough, that I did not have the courage to pick up the phone in these last few months, to call just to say....I don't know what I would say.  She was already not well enough to make the trip here for Andrew's wedding, and at our nephew's Bar Mitzvah in April she looked to be in pain, but I did not know it was because the cancer had spread to new, bad places.   I thought she was sore and stiff from treatments.

I am not sure how many times I have to learn this lesson.  One of my dear friends, also named Jill, passed away near the end of last August from a cancer that was diagnosed less than a year earlier.  And again, I had no idea how close to the end it was when Ari called (she was his best friend's mother) to tell me the news that she was gone.  I cried then, and I cry now.

Only I cannot go back and say anything to Jill to let her know that I loved her indomitable spirit, that I loved how patient she was with my sometime impossible "baby" brother, that I loved how she handled her son's innumerable food allergies when he was young.  (I think he couldn't have egg, wheat, peanuts, strawberries, tomatoes, chocolate....and goodness knows what else.)  But she did it all and his big sister, my niece is a beautiful person and a beautiful dancer and a caring child and I don't know what to say to her or her brother.

We are not geographically close, and we have never really been "physically" close; it's just the way our family tends to behave.  But it is at times like this that I cry for a sister-in-law, for a friend who was nothing but kind and loving to me, and one more person whom I did not have the strength to see beyond my own fears to comfort.

http://brezniakrodman.com/obituary/bernstein-jill-meredith-weiner/

A Night to Remember

Friday night, May 17, 2013.  It was a 7 p.m. "family" service.  Dad was down from Cape Cod for Andrew and Jackie's wedding, Andrew and Jackie were there for their aufruf, their Torah honor and special blessing before their marriage, lots of Jackie's family was there for the aufruf, all the teachers were there for Teacher Appreciation Shabbat, lots of grandparents were there for Grandparents' Shabbat, and I was there for "Honoring Rebecca McVeigh for her 10 years of service" night.

O.M.G.  It was amazing.  Ari was singing with the adult choir, the junior choir sang, for the first time ever my kids had a grandparent to go up on the bimah with for the grandparent blessing, we had a cartload of teachers and aides on the bimah for me to thank, and then they started thanking me.  I tried so hard to be "in the moment," as we tell our Bar and Bat Mitzvah parents to do, but boy oh boy, that was tough. 

Lucky for me, we had started live streaming our services and they were saved in archives so later (much later, like last week) I went back to the archive video and actually watched what had swirled around me.  There were flowers, my friend Terry, who NEVER speaks in public, got up and spoke, there was an album of notes that people had written to me...

Then there was a plaque, such a beautiful plaque, and so heavy I still haven't figure out how to hang it up - but I will!

And there was a beautiful tallit, which I do not have a photo of, yet, but it's all soft purple with photos of Rod and the boys and it has a quote taken from the famous "A Woman of Valour" text.

The fact that this was happening on this night was not a surprise.  After all, they needed to know I'd be there, right?  But all of these things - they were surprises.  Such thoughtful, lovely, loving surprises.

And so I had to thank them back:

My teacher Rabbi Mosbacher says we should never waste an opportunity to thank people, so….

Thank you to all my partners in this work, which includes the teachers and aides, students of all ages, and the lay leadership. In particular I am grateful to the presidents of our congregation during these years: Harvey, Ranan, Art, Harvey, Ritch, and Harvey….  My dad says I’m crazy to actually enjoy what he calls “temple politics,” but I don’t think it would be quite so enjoyable without the kind of leadership we have. HARVEY – thank you especially for being the one to let me in on all the fun.

Thank you to Iris, whose personal AND professional advice is pretty much always correct.  Lisa, you help me remember my priorities when things get a little crazy, which is so helpful.  Walter, some days the most important thing is the logistics, and you make sure the school is good to go, even if I don’t always know where that is.

Thank you to everyone involved in planning tonight, and for successfully keeping secrets despite the fact that not much goes on in this place that I don't know about.  Thank you to teacher/friend and advisor Terry Sitomer, and her able successor as chair of the Education Committee, Lauren Einhorn.   Between the two of you, I never feel like I stand alone.

Cantor, I have told you this before, but like the word that means both wind and spirit, ruach, you too embody both.  Your beautiful voice and ready humor lighten the load and enrich the spirit.

I would not even be up here tonight without Rabbi Mosbacher, who convinced me in the summer of 2003 that taking this position would be a good idea. I only said yes at the time to help out until we could find someone who was really the "right person."  Rabbi, you thought that person was me all along, and apparently, you knew something I did not.  Thank you for your continued confidence in my abilities.

To my 3 brilliant and beautiful “EMs” – Ellen Mass, Evelyn McGilloway, and Elyssa Mosbacher – you and your families’ friendship over the years means so much to me.  I am wealthy beyond measure in your steadfast affection.

Thank you to Andrew, Alex, and Ari who are the most loyal, loving sons a mother would want. I could not even begin to imagine what I would have hoped for in my children, but whatever it was, you have made it come true.

Thank you to Rabbi and Laurie Weinberg of blessed memory who greeted our family as friends 16 years ago when we arrived as strangers.  He encouraged me to get involved in the education committee as if he could see what was coming.  Rabbi Weinberg taught the intro to Judaism class Rod and I took before we were married.  So I really, really wouldn't be here today without Rod. 

Thank you Rod, for bringing me here, for supporting our children’s Jewish identities, for enabling my renewed Jewish identity, and for helping me through the ups and downs in every part of my life.  Your love has helped me to not just BE, but to thrive, and to not just DO but to love what I do.  

 Thank you.

And I very nearly didn't make it through without crying.  Frankly I was crying at everything during those days; getting ready for the rehearsal dinner/wedding (5/19 and another blog post) Alex graduating from college (5/24) Ari graduating from Kadimah (5/21)  it was really one big sobfest waiting to happen.  So I decided to just look down at the paper and "get 'er done," to quote one of the Blue Collar Comedy guys (which one, I no longer remember.)

It was such a joyful evening, I hope that the families of younger children who optimistically thought they'd be out of services within an hour managed to hang in there.  And Iris ordered me a most beautiful cake for the oneg :)

It was all really quite perfect.  I bet my Grandma and Grandpa, my Nana and my Pop-pop, and my mom (especially my mom) would've loved it, too.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to Dr. D. we go....

I remember Dr. D'Amico saying "Come back after the wedding" so I did.  I brought my dress with me, since he's always asking me to wear something slinky to take photos of.  Since I don't wear something slinky on a regular basis (unless you count the amazingly lightweight full length modal nightgowns I got from Kohl's a while back) this required bringing the dress to the appointment, and changing into it, and hoping the effort was worth it.  So this afternoon Rod and I showed up for my appointment complete with my mother-of-the-groom dress in a bag, and as a little surprise I put it on instead of the laughingly-named paper "gown" to wait for the good doctor. 

Totally worth the effort.  He called in not only his nurse, but someone he was training (for what, I don't know; she certainly didn't know much about breast cancer/treatment/reconstruction.) AND he asked for photos.  (Then all the girls in the office wanted to see it and where did I get it and their son is getting married and ooo it's so light and silky and how come THEY didn't find anything at Nordstrom's as nice as that?)

Then I disrobed and gave him my own inexpert opinion about why the scar on the right is dark and brown and wide while the scars on the left are thin and pink: since the temporary expansion that was done on the right was done sort of beyond what he knew he wanted (on purpose) not only did it stretch the skin gradually, but it also stretched the scar as it was healing.  And (she takes a bow) I was right.  As a matter of fact, he was kind of sorry that I hadn't left it to the trainee to try to explain :)  Which she couldn't have done anyway.  Hah.

I swear I am not becoming (or have I ever been, Sen. McCarthy) a plastic surgery addict.  HOWEVER, I will never want the aureola etc tattoo as long as the only thing that draws my eye is this brown line across what I'm supposed to make myself believe is a breast.

I have always known that the "soft tissue deficit" pockets which are actually kind of hollow places created by the original mastectomy, still exist to a certain extent.  But after the liposuction that gave him what he used to "transplant" fat was so very uncomfortable, to say the least, I had figured the hollows were here to stay, and I'd just have to live with them.  I knew a lot of that fat had, technically, died (hadn't latched on to a blood supply) and hadn't done its hollow-filling job very well. Today, after he said that scar revision was absolutely on the menu for a next step, he said I could store "coins for the toll booths" in those little pockets of nothing.  And then he convinced me to go through another (much smaller-scale) fat transplant procedure to try to correct this some more.  He showed me where he would take it from, and call me gullible, but I trust the man.  And I'm not-so-secretly relieved that he feels the hollows should go, if at all possible.

I'll tell you what else he wants to do, that I figured I'd just have to live with - the right mound (that's what we in the biz call reconstruction sites) sits a bit lower than the left one.  You'd never notice that, but I sure do.  It has something to do with the fact that the left implant has support from all that extra muscle from my back, and the right implant is just "regular" - so supported by one muscle and some skin.  (The downside of the left-hand radiation that caused the whole thing to go bad right from the get-go turned into the upside that the "back flap surgery" creates a better outcome.)  So, the left sits higher, and the right has, as he said, "settled."

He says that while he is doing the scar revision, it's time to lift the right a bit to match the left.  Now, who wouldn't want that?  I do!  I do!

He's off to Europe for a few weeks, and knowing him it could either be for a fab vacay or it could be to do free surgeries on children who need it - he does both.  He says we should try for after we get back from Cape Cod, and he's got the one employee who has been there since this whole odyssey started - his office manager Marie, to check on the insurance stuff.

(Marie, by the way, showed me her mother-of-the-bride dress that she just picked up today, and it is beautiful too.  After the wedding she's going to use it for her ballroom dancing competitions.  Marie is very cool and strong enough to survive working for Dr. D. all this time, AND she always says "don't worry about the money" and then she's right, so she is my hero in more ways than one.)

So, this thing was on Facebook today, and I love it, and I hope I can do it, EVERY DAY.

Helloooo Out There

It's useless to look back and see when I last posted - I can't even imagine that any of you had the incredible PATIENCE and determination to stick with me when I've been quiet for so long.

I don't know what started me up again, unless it's a scheduled visit to Dr. D'Amico next week, or unless it's that our rabbinic intern, now Rabbi Josh Stanton, was such a wonderful writer that he has inspired me to start up again.  Or, it could be that I "stopped" because I was worried that my writing had less and less to do with breast cancer and more and more just about stuff in general.  But my bff Elyssa reminded me that as long as I'm still dealing with this thing, even if it's not endless rounds of doctor visits and surgeries, my blog title still applies, and of course she's right.

Plus, I recently enrolled in an online course (gasp!  the first course I've taken since college) and now I'm beholden to actually answer to someone, and I'm scared.  So, in the ultimate act of overcompensation, I logged on today and did the first 3 assignments posted.  They weren't hard; introduce myself, choose my favorite photo representing online learning, and check off one of the things that is a unique characteristic of online learning.

Introducing myself was the writing part, and PROBABLY I wrote way more than the instructor intended when she asked for a brief piece telling everyone a little about yourself :)

But I guess they'd better get used to it now.  Some of the future assignments, like creating a whole online class, are scary to me.  Here's how I plan to be not scared:  my secret weapon - Elyssa is going to "audit" some of the classes with me, so I don't feel so alone and incapable.  She is the BEST!

And, to get back "on topic," I fooled around with temporary tattoos again for a week or so a while back.  It. Could. Work.

But I'm still not sure.