Once upon a time, many years ago, my father-in-law Irwin died and then-named-Sam started to go to the local Conservative synagogue in the afternoons to say Kaddish with me along as his sidekick. We were the youngest people there (by many decades). A few months later, another young couple came in one afternoon. We hadn't met them before, but Erik's father had just died and he was coming to say Kaddish and Rhona was there as *his* sidekick. And thus began a beautiful friendship.
We both had our first children the following year, and both struggled with how to name a girl after a grandfather. Rhona and I became "coworkers" and hung out together pretty much every day. We began to cook together every Friday (while trying to amuse small children) and we would eat Shabbos dinner together every week, usually with a few guests brought home from Friday night services (a proud moment was when someone we had to dinner exactly once wrote on his application to JTS Rabbinical school that the Shabbos dinner he shared with the four of us had inspired him to become a rabbi).
When I was in labor with Chana it was Rhona, Erik and toddler Avigail who walked over the two blocks from their house in the middle of the night to stay with Batsheva (their comment: "It wasn't so weird to walk down the street in pajamas at 2 a.m. But it was REALLY weird to go home at 9 a.m. in pajamas :)).
So why am I telling you this? Because Erik, on Thursday night, had a very serious heart issue which they thankfully caught in time. He's had three surgeries already and has a long road to recovery. And I am asking you to please join me in keeping him in your thoughts and prayers and say tehilim for him:
Because we want the last line here to be "And they all lived happily ever after"
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