Matchmaker Melody
Jeff, the man I had met at Side by Side seven months ago, was going to convert to Judaism for me. I’d had a big crush on him from the moment I laid eyes on him. He had finally become my real boyfriend. This was thanks to a little help from Melody who was one of my new PCAs.
Melody was always having long chats with both of us separately. She had learned that we were both secretly head over heels in love with each other. Yet we were terrified to ask the other one out because of the fifteen-year age difference. Finally, she had urged me to bite the bullet and go for it. When I finally did Jeff turned bright red and admitted he’d been waiting for this moment for over seven months. Now I just needed to convince my family that Jeff was the right guy for me. For that he had to convert to Judaism. Otherwise, no one except for my mom would accept him into the family circle.
Before dating, Jeff and I were inseparable. Now we were literally glued together at the hip and would need surgery to be torn apart from each other. We spent every waking moment together and never got tired of each other’s company.
How Jeff is Going to Convert For Me
Jeff had immediately told me the first thing he wanted to do was convert.
“I will go to any lengths of the world to be with you. I know how important your family is to you too, and I don’t want to screw up anything with your family,” he told me.
He had started going to synagogue with me every week as the first step of getting ready to convert. Even though he couldn’t sit still unless he was working on his remote-control cars, or on the computer. Jeff would usually only ever step out of synagogue services for a cigarette break. That was only once or twice, and the service was over two hours long. I had to give him credit, he was putting his all into this attempt to convert.
After three weeks of him attending synagogue services, we had a meeting with the rabbi at my apartment.
“What does this mean?” he would ask me pointing to a certain confusing line of text, and I would explain it to him.
“What is he talking about that for?” he would ask me.
I would clarify what Rabbi Daniel was talking about in the sermon. Then I would fill in any important information that would help Jeff understand the basis of where he was coming from better.
“So you’re sure you want to convert to Judaism?” Rabbi Daniel asked when he came to my apartment to meet with Jeff and I.
“Yes, definitely,” Jeff told him.
“Why do you want to convert?” Rabbi Daniel asked.
Jeff is Going to Convert No Matter What
“Well, originally, the main reason I wanted to convert was so that I could go out with Becca. But I see how happy Becca’s Jewishness makes her and I watch her and her family celebrate all different holidays. Those holidays are so special and so beautiful and make everyone so happy. Also, I want to believe in something out there more than just an accident causing the universe to exist and this just seems right,” Jeff explained.
My mouth almost dropped open. I had never heard Jeff speak like that before about anything except maybe me, but I guess this was sort of an extension of me.
“Those are great reasons,” Rabbi Daniel said. “It’s a lot of hard work to convert though. You’ll have to take classes, write up a paper at the end, and learn Hebrew. Then you’ll have to go through some rituals.”
I saw Jeff’s face crumple, I immediately butted in.
“Rabbi, Jeff has a traumatic brain injury, ADHD, and learning disabilities. He can’t take classes or write up a paper, or learn Hebrew. His disabilities won’t allow him to. Isn’t there some other way?”
Jeff was twisting and untwisting the hem of his shirt. However, as I spoke to the Rabbi, I saw glimmers of hope trying to light up his hazel eyes again.
How to Convert and Crazy Hazing Rituals
“Well, we can work around that. Maybe he can work one on one with me for some of the time, instead of in a class. We can do oral testing where there’s no pressure and it’s not like a normal test or paper. We can just teach you a few words of Hebrew. You would still of course need to do a Brit Milah, and go in the Mikvah in order to convert though.”
“What’s that?” Jeff asked.
“The Mikveh is a special holy bathhouse that Jewish communities have. A Mikvah is a pool filled with collected rainwater. To convert you need to take off all your clothes and fully submerge yourself in the water. While you’re in the water I will guide you in saying certain blessings. When you get out of the Mikvah I give you your Jewish name and you are then a full-fledged Jew.” The rabbi explained.
“What’s the other thing you mentioned?” Jeff asked. “The ‘brief meal-a ’ or whatever?”
I cringed, horrified to hear what the Rabbi was going to say.
“Are you by any chance circumcised Jeff?” the rabbi asked him, looking very serious.
“Yeah, I got circumcised when I was a baby,” Jeff told him.
“Well then this will be a lot easier for you,” the rabbi let out a sigh and leaned back a little against my daybed/couch set up.
“What do I need to do?” Jeff was suddenly on high alert and I noticed one of his hands went to cover his crotch subconsciously.
“All you need to do is prick yourself in the glans of the penis with a little lancet. One of the kind they use for testing blood sugars. It really doesn’t hurt at all. It will just draw a drop of blood. You do this in my presence or in the presence of a different rabbi, then we will say a blessing. Then you shower and take your dip in the mikvah. That’s the last thing you need to do to convert.”
Needing Jeff to Convert and Being a High Maintenance Girlfriend
Jeff had stopped twisting the hem of his shirt he just sat there frozen for a moment.
“Everyone says that the needle stick doesn’t hurt. It just goes into the extra skin on the penis and it only draws one single drop of blood. We then just wipe away with a cotton swab and you’re in the club.” The rabbi assured him
“This is some hazing ritual you have to go through to convert into the club!” Jeff said.
The rabbi and I just laughed uncomfortably.
“There’s a class called “Intro to Judaism” starting up in a couple of weeks. It’s every Monday night for eight weeks at the synagogue. It gives an overview of all the history of Judaism and all our holidays and rituals and the reasons behind them. I know you’re not big on classes, but do you think maybe if you and Becca took the class together and Becca helped you out with it you’d get something out of it?”
“Maybe,” Jeff said. “I’d be willing to try.”
“Well let’s start with that as your first step to convert. We will have you do that and keep coming to synagogue on Saturdays, we love having you there.”
“I will for sure,” Jeff told him.
After the rabbi left, Jeff looked at me.
“You are the highest maintenance girlfriend I have ever had. I am about to get naked in front of some crazy rabbi who is going to make me stick myself in the dick with a fucking blood sugar testing needle and then go skinny dipping in a collection of rainwater while singing prayers in a language I don’t know and know I will never be able to learn. Before I do that I’m going to have to sit through eight weeks of classes that I won’t be able to focus on or comprehend.”
“I’m sorry Jeff!” I told him through my laughter at the blunt way he had put it, but the amazing thing was, he was really going to go through it all just so he could be with me. That he genuinely was growing to love Judaism was even cooler.
I put my arms up in the air. He came over to me, leaned in, and gave me one of his great big bear hugs, the kind that squished all the air out of you but you didn’t care because there was so much love flowing through it.
Happy New Years as a Future Convert
We started going to the Monday night “Intro to Judaism” classes. I would sit next to Jeff and explain to him in a whisper what the teacher was talking about. That he could understand better what was going on in the class. We did get assigned reading. I would do the reading, take notes and condense it in my head to explain it to Jeff in my own words. That way he would understand it better. He really was learning new things about Judaism from the class. The best part was that he loved pulling out little Jewish factoids to impress my mom with. When we went home for one of the high holidays he had a bunch.
“Shana Tova,” he told her on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year.
“I told Becca she’s going to need a whole sack of old bread to throw in the river for all of her sins this last year!” He added referring to the Jewish tradition of Tashlich. When doing Tashlich, the tradition is to go to a stream or river or any moving body of water on the first day of Rosh Hashana. Then you throw in little pieces of old stale bread and name a sin you’ve committed. This symbolized getting rid of that sin so that you could start the year off pure, and with a clean slate.
Creating Sinful Ducks
“Are all those ducks going to turn black inside from all of the bad deeds they’re absorbing?” Jeff asked me with a smirk.
“Only the ones that eat your sins,” I told him smirking back at him.
All joking aside, he got really serious during the actual process of throwing in the “sins” of bread into the stream in Forest Park. He would pull out a piece and look deep in thought. Then he would whisper something to himself. After that, he would use his gun show arm to hammer it into the water. Then he would watch a duck eat it or see it drift away down the flowing stream.
“That duck ate my lying to my mom about forgetting to call her back!” Jeff announced eventually when he could tolerate being serious no longer.
“Well that duck will probably have some serious indigestion then,” my mom laughed as I agreed. She was also starting to also see how serious Jeff was about wanting to convert.
“Not as bad as the poor unsuspecting ducks that ate Becca’s sins,” Jeff quipped, “that duck is in Ducky ICU on life support.”
“Hey, I’m not that bad,” I told him.
“That’s what you think,” he told me.
Kiss and Show as a Future Convert
Then when he saw my face fall, he leaned into me and hugged me. He cupped his large callused yet gentle hand under my chin.
“You know I’m only kidding, right? I love you forever and always and think you’re beyond amazing, I hold you on the highest pedestal. I just love to tease you because you’re so cute and adorable and fun to tease, but I love you beyond belief. You make the world move for me and I think you’re the sweetest, kindest, most awesome person I know.” He told me very seriously, and then leaned in and planted his firm full lips full on mine and kissed me hard right in front of my mom.
At that point I didn’t care
- Because she had seen how serious he was about wanting to convert,
- She had seen what an amazing guy he was
- I knew she genuinely cared about both of us
So, I leaned into Jeff and kissed him back. Waves of pleasure rippled through me. My body was almost electric. I longed to entangle myself with him, to become one with him as he stroked my back and left tingles of love electrifying behind as parts of me woke up that I hadn’t known existed. My tongue entered his mouth and entangled with his and then pulled back in before we finally pulled apart. Even though I wanted more of that, I didn’t know how to get it.
On Rosh Hashana when we had been staying at my parent’s house, Jeff had been doing all my care during the day. He had been sleeping on the pull-out couch at night. My mom had been doing my middle-of-the-night care.
Appointment to Check on Jeff’s Liver Cancer
After the holiday, we drove back home to Side By Side and went back to our daily lives.
I was still having frequent ER visits for things like dehydration, low potassium, rapid heart rate, and low blood pressure. The good news was that I hadn’t been admitted in a little while. Jeff had an appointment with Dr. Xander the more local GI doctor coming up.
I think both Jeff and I were trying to stuff that appointment away and out of our heads. No matter what, it was fast approaching. There was no denying it no matter how much we tried to distract ourselves by working on stuff like the “Intro to Judaism class” and helping along the process to convert.
When it finally came time for Jeff’s appointment, I was taking the ride down with him. I had made sure to grab copies of his notes from his appointments with Dr. Swizzer and the transplant team that he had tried to stuff in his pocket. I had rescued them and put them in my backpack and when I got home found a folder for them. The day of the appointment with Dr. Xander, I had grabbed that folder and put it in my backpack.
Even though Dr. Xander was more local to us, he was still an hour away. Jeff and I tried to talk on the way down there, but we were both too nervous that our conversations kept straying and then petering off. Finally, we just let the radio take over and we spaced off into our own zones of panicky worry thoughts.
Keeping Jeff in the Waiting Room
Dr. Xander was in the same office as my GI doctor. I knew exactly where to direct Jeff to go once we got to the building. We waited a good twenty minutes before being called in. Jeff kept getting up and pacing the waiting room and asking me if I thought he had time for a cigarette break.
“They can call you at any time now. If you’re not here, they’ll skip over you and go to the next patient. You’ll miss your whole appointment,” I had to keep explaining. Part of me wondered if he was subconsciously or even consciously trying to do just that.
Just as I seemed to be fighting what was turning out to be a losing battle on the “going out for a cigarette break argument”, a young woman stepped out from one of the side doors that led into the inner “tank” that was the offices. She called out Jeff’s name. He finally stopped arguing with me, put the cigarette pack and lighter back in his pocket, and began wheeling me toward the door.
I’m Not the Patient
At first, the young woman seemed confused about who the patient was, me or Jeff. It was probably because I was the one in the wheelchair with all the IV bags and tube feeding attached. Not to mention the G tube drainage bag hanging down between my legs. Plus, she’d seen me there before to see Dr. Hussein.
“No, this is Jeff’s appointment,” I explained. “I’m his girlfriend. He has a traumatic brain injury, so I keep track of his medical issues, medications, history, and everything, he just has to push me around because I’m handicapped. I have a rare degenerative neurological condition.”
I always felt kind of bad that Jeff had to lug me around with him. But he never seemed to mind. Hell, he loved me so much he was getting into an over a year process to completely convert his religion for me.
Once the medical assistant finally understood that part, things went more smoothly from there. When she weighed Jeff and got his vitals, his weight was down another three pounds. I didn’t like that. That was bad news. Jeff had only ever weighed about 170 at the most to start with. Now he was under 160, that really worried me. Panic was threatening to strip and run naked through my brain again, I did my best to force myself to breathe, stay calm and dress it back up for Jeff’s sake.
Sitting Down With Dr. Xander
Jeff had his doctor’s office face on, an expressionless mask face that showed really no emotion at all.
When Dr. Xander came into the room, he shook both our hands and then got right down to business.
“You’re here because oncology at Umass Memorial hospital had a question of whether the shadow on your liver is cancer or not.” He stated instead of asked as he sat down in his leather office chair in front of his fancy desktop computer. Jeff nodded with the doctor’s office face still on.
I handed him the file folder from his appointment that awful day at Umass Memorial Medical Center when my life had been turned upside down and I had started a constant worry stream in my head about Jeff and what his life had in store for him and how much longer this life would be.
Dr. Xander accepted the paperwork.
“This is great you guys are very organized,” he said impressed.
I smiled, taking that as a compliment.
“So you have liver failure from excessive alcohol intake in the past?’ Dr. Xander asked Jeff.
“Yeah, I fucked my liver up pretty good” Jeff said. “But I had a really fun time doing it. Everyone loved me at parties.”
“Are you still drinking now?” asked Dr. Xander.
“No way,” Jeff said. “Becca would kill me. Plus, I had to get completely sober and swear off drinking for the rest of my life in order to get on the liver transplant list. Only now it looks like that was all for nothing because if I have cancer again I’m off the transplant list for the rest of my life. That’s going to do me in any way.”
“Well, here are some of the images that they sent me,” Dr. Xander pulled up those same grainy images. All I could work out were gray and white blobs and an external body structure. Everything on the inside looked the same.
Jeff and I both gazed at the images and nodded our heads with no idea what we were looking at.
Almost Definitely Not Cancer
“There is a little gray spot right here,” Dr. Xander pointed to a random part of the blob,” but it could just be artifact (inaccurate images on the picture due to movement of the patient during the time the scan was done), it’s definitely not something I would automatically call cancer or even go as far as wanting to biopsy. It could be something as simple as a mild infection.”
Jeff and I exchanged glances, his face still stayed blank for the most part. Most people wouldn’t have been able to read the imperceptible change in his eyes, but I could see a look of relief flash through his eyes before they went back to his doctor’s office expression of blankness
“My recommendation,” continued Dr. Xander, ” would be to wait three months and then repeat the MRI. If you have any symptoms that could be even remotely linked to liver cancer or any cancer you will need to contact me immediately. “
“What would those symptoms to watch out for be?” I asked. I knew most of them from nursing school, but it was different when it was hitting a loved one. You wanted exact answers and to be completely and totally on top of every last detail.
“That would be easy bruising, change in sleeping habits, unintentional weight loss, unexplained fevers, unexplained pain anywhere in your body, feeling tired all of the time, any type of sores or cuts that won’t heal, unusual bleeding, or low red blood cell counts. ” Listed Dr. Xander. “I really don’t think you have too much to worry about though. By how slow this has grown and by the type of shadow this is, I’m not too concerned. I feel pretty comfortable waiting another three months before doing a repeat MRI which would totally rule out cancer. This scan makes me fairly certain that this is not a repeat of your liver cancer, though.
Jeff and I looked at each other, I could see his famous cat-ate-the-canary expression spreading across his face, I knew my smile was splitting my face wide open. I was smiling so big my chapped lips were cracking and bleeding.
Suddenly our entire lives had turned around, suddenly Jeff’s life didn’t come with a really close expiration tag.
Why We Never Give up Hope
“Never lose hope,” I told Jeff. “If you had lost hope and gone and drank all that Molson Ice and shot up downtown Pittsfield like you wanted to, and then turned the gun on yourself like you were talking about, you would have missed Rosh Hashanah with my family, you would have missed learning about Judaism, you would have missed all of our snuggles in bed watching movies, and all of our internet monopoly games and so much more. If you had lost hope, you wouldn’t have the whole rest of your life ahead of you again now that you no longer have a death sentence. We can get married, move out of here to our own place and get PCA care there, get our own vehicle, we will have an amazing life together.”
“You are right,” Jeff told me, “And mark this down in the bible or the history books or Encyclopedia Brittanica or something because you will probably never hear me say those words to you again.” He grinned at me to show he was teasing.
“That’s why we never give up hope. We fight until we can’t possibly fight anymore and then we keep fighting.”
“I don’t know how you do it, Becca,” Jeff said. “But if it has anything to do with the whole religion thing, I sure am glad that I am planning to convert. I definitely need God on my side.
“I’ve had to do it my whole life. It’s all I’ve ever known.” I explained.
