I didn't really know her, but....

I have had the good fortune to be befriended by Zlata's z'l oldest
son, Sender, the most stellar study partner, and also to learn and
daven and kibbitz with Rabbi Geisinsky Sr. There have been a few
Simchas in the past year for which I'm sure we are all grateful. But
to my loss, I barely had the chance to exchange more than a few words
with the ba'ale busta, one of the few Yiddish words I still remember
from my grandfather. So with some hesitation I offer this 'story' of
the day of her passing. I picked up the unbelievable email Saturday
night. The next day a series of phone calls suggested the worst.
Sunday afternoon I was preparing food in the oven for the week. When
they were done, I took out two meat loaves in pyrex dishes on a metal
baking tray and placed the whole thing on the kitchen counter to
cool. I went in to the dining room to talk to Barbara. While we were
sitting there we heard a pop and the sound of something falling on the
floor. We walked in to the kitchen and found one of the pyrex dishes
had exploded into a few big pieces. I had never seen this happen to
pyrex before. In my experience, the mysterious shattering of glass
has been linked to the death of someone important to me. There are
three instances that stick in my mind: the shattering of our van's
rear window by vandals the morning we were to go to Pittsburgh for the
funeral of Edith Lauer z'l, a survivor of Terezin and surrogate
grandmother to our children; my accidental shattering of a large glass
shade on my desk lamp shortly before the death of George Lauer z'l, a
survivor of Terezin and surrogate grandfather to our children; and the
jumping out of the casement of the upstairs bathroom window in my
father's house while we sat downstairs at home the day we buried him,
Julius Diamond z'l. So I was leaning toward dismissing this
occurrence until Shachreis service Tuesday. As I was leaving the shul
and the house of mourning, Rabbi G buttonholed me and said, "It's good
what you're doing. It's more important now, she would want it." The
hair on the back of my neck stood up. So maybe the little minyan we
started in the Irene on Thursday mornings just two weeks earlier was
already getting the nod from a wise soul. I hope the Geisinsky family
will forgive me if it is too presumptuous to say all this. I could not
forgive myself if I did not report these events. Her memory is no
doubt a blessing. All of our hearts are with you.

Micha-el Sholom ben Yussel v'Chanachiyah