Rivky hadn’t just abandoned our organization — she’d sabotaged it. Why does no one agree with me?

R

ivky moved to Lakewood today. Someone mentioned it to me in passing, assuming I knew, and I acted like I did. She moved to one of those 55+ communities.

“She wanted to be closer to her kids,” the woman said. She was too polite to admit it, but we both knew that was a farce. Rivky still had boys in yeshivah, a daughter in seminary, and only two married daughters in Lakewood. She was moving away because of me. Well, because of Tikvah Refuah, the organization we’d run together for the past 30 years.

I know I’m supposed to feel bad. But I’m more bewildered than guilty.

The woman was a yenta, baiting me with information and comments, waiting for me to say something she could tell an acquaintance while waiting in line to pay at whatever supermarket she’d be in next. I’m not an idiot, though. Years ago, my mother taught me, Smiling and nodding is always a lady’s option.

Once she realized she wasn’t getting anything, the woman had said she had to run. I wished she’d stayed and told me more. How was the packing? Who was at her goodbye party? Did she have one? Did she say if she planned on visiting? Did she come back to the office one last time?

I should’ve been at the office then. I still can’t believe she’s not.

I settled into my office and closed the door. I should’ve been working on our Chanukah fundraiser and the hospital board meeting, but I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t get Rivky off my mind. Did she drive to Lakewood or fly? How were she and her husband getting both their cars there? How did people make these cross-country moves? We’ve been living in Cedarwell since we got married. Nachum’s parents lived here, and I was from Chicago, just four hours away, which is nothing in the Midwest.

My phone rang, and I glanced at the screen. Devorah. I knew I should answer, but how do you tell your daughter you’re not in the mood for her right now, that you’re too sad thinking about the person she replaced? I let the call go to voicemail and clicked my computer screen to life, pulling up the pictures from last year’s Chanukah fundraiser. That would get me in the mood.

I clicked through the pictures and felt better. My idea had been brilliant: having an interior design contest for our two new bikur cholim apartments. All the furniture and home goods were sponsored, and we got great ideas. Those apartments were our most requested ones. We should really redo the others.

Redo apartments, I jotted on the sticky notepad in front of me. The official brainstorming meeting was in 30 minutes, and I needed more content to kickstart the session.

What would be the incentives, the prize, the draw, the cry, the decor? Rivky never appreciated the money we spent on the fundraisers; she was old-school like that. I twirled in my chair. Who cared what Rivky thought? She’d left the organization to me and my ideas.