I got a call from a hospital about an hour and a half away, asking me to come visit one of their patients who had requested a rabbi.
When Harvey* saw me standing in the doorway of his room, tears welled up in his eyes.
“Rabbi,” he cried. “I’ve been a bad Jew!”
I calmed him down and asked him to tell me about himself. I learned that he’d abandoned the faith of his youth, marrying a non-Jewish woman. It’d been years since he’d last thought about his Judaism or contacted a rabbi. Now that his health was failing, he felt a sudden urge to reconnect.
I pulled out my tefillin and offered him a chance to put them on. Harvey cried and his hands shook as he held the small black boxes.
“I haven’t worn tefillin since my bar mitzvah!” he said.
After we put on tefillin, I asked Harvey about his end-of-life plans, delicately explaining the importance of a Jewish burial.
“Of course!” Harvey agreed. “I don’t want to be cremated! I’d also like for you to be here when it’s my time to go.”
I asked the hospital to inform me when Harvey’s condition changed. The call came not too much later.
“You’d better come, Rabbi,” they told me. “He’s not doing well.”
I rushed straight over and was shocked by the differences. Harvey’s eyes were closed, and his breath rattled. He wasn’t conscious, so I whispered Tehillim by his bedside until his neshama left his body.
I informed the hospital of Harvey’s last request to be buried in a Jewish cemetery. When I called to get an update a few hours later, they told me he was going to be cremated!
His wife had assumed complete power-of-attorney and wanted to cremate her husband. Although I tried arguing, begging, and persuading in turns, nothing I said made a difference. I even tried to contact a lawyer, but I had no legal recourse to countermand her power of attorney.
Although I was saddened at my failure to grant him his last, most important request, I was happy that I helped him put on tefillin one last time and facilitated the peaceful departure of his neshama.
*Names changed to protect privacy
