HASHEM’S PLAN

Dr. Mel Waldman

Mother 
often said in my youth, “We make plans, and G-d laughs.” |
She spoke divine truth. 

I 
remember her soft, radiant smile a lifetime ago—
a quiet rhapsody of overflowing love and 
revelations, opening our souls with joy and 
wisdom, illuminating the hidden universe of 
Hashem. 

Gazing 
across space-time, I see her face, blessed with a 
numinous presence, evoking the beauty and 
magnificence of the sacred universe. I envision 
monarch butterflies—adorned in orange, black, 
and white—soaring high into the heavens 
on a long journey of rebirth. 

Blessed 
with a vast, sweeping soul of kindness and compassion, 
she was the spiritual cynosure of the family. Our home 
was a holy omphalos. Relatives and friends often visited 
us to spend time with her. 

But 
Mother, a little woman of majesty and vision, suffered 
immensely, her fragile body beset with harrowing 
heart disease, always threatening her being and stealing 
Hashem’s cosmic breath. A bestial Shadow of Death 
entered our home, encircling Mother. 

Still, 
she did not cease to believe in Hashem, for she 
possessed an unalloyed faith, a pure efflorescence perched 
in her soul—a sphere of celestial light nestled in the 
invisible universe within, with hidden sparks of divinity
coming forth from her gentle being. 

I 
watched Mother die in her room sixty years ago, an 
oxygen tank, like a loyal soldier standing guard or 
an angel blessing her, on the night table by her bed. 

Mother 
lay in bed. Her gold eyes looked up lovingly at me, 
and then blankly, gazing into the nowhere of the 
other world. 

Mother 
died yesterday, for time is a gorgeous mustang, 
galloping around in a circle and vanishing into 
the Without End. 

Mother 
died at fifty—too soon for a young man of twenty, 
crushed by overwhelming loss and grief. I 
could not fathom Hashem’s Plan for me. 

Rushing slowly 
through chimerical time and lost, lacerated decades, 

I 
sometimes imagine, in a prophetic dream, my 
neshamah dancing in phantasmagoria, or in the 
starless, moonless, blackness—a vision of 
Hashem’s Plan—an evanescent glimpse 
vanishing in the invisible universe. 

Hashem’s Plan 
is unfathomable, I believe. But still, after Mother’s 
death and my unbearable grief, Hashem empowered me 
to transcend ineffable pain, and honor Mother’s 
memory by becoming who I was meant to be—
a Jewish psychologist helping others, emotional/
spiritual sufferers on an inner journey of healing. 

Mother 
died at fifty, too soon. But she lives in me; her 
everlasting love, a cornucopia of blessings, feeds 
my being. 

Mother 
often said in my youth, “We make plans, and G-d laughs.” 
She spoke divine truth.