Called to Controversy (51 page)

An oncologist friend (Jack Sternberg, one of the Jews for Jesus board members) suggested that low-level radiation to the spine might greatly alleviate Moishe's pain. The cancer had doubtless damaged his vertebrae, which could wreak havoc with the nerves and refer pain to various parts of his body. A local radiation therapist corroborated the suggestion.

In one of Dad's e-mails to Dr. Jack, he wrote,

I go in for my third radiation treatment today. Until last night I could say positively that I had less pain but then I had another episode. Nevertheless, I am optimistic; last night's episode of pain was less severe. . . . I was able to preach twice yesterday. Peter Sandberg who helps me said that my energy was good. . . .

I think you have helped me have a better quality of life. I wish you lived close 25 years ago. We could have had a lot of fun together. I would have enjoyed helping you sharpen your witness and your public ministry of teaching. I would have liked going fishing with you as long as you left the boat to smoke your required cigar. You wouldn't mind taking a walk on the water would you?

Moishe finished his radiation treatments, but signs indicated that the cancer was progressing again. Another hormone therapy was employed and worked, but not for long. It seemed like we were out of options. Moishe had a new oncologist who hesitated to recommend chemotherapy because of his other health concerns. From a previous conversation, the rest of the family believed that Dad did not want to subject himself to chemotherapy so we did not press him.

Thank God for our friend Dr. Jack, who explained, as Dad's own oncologist apparently had not, that many advances had been made and that unlike the old days, the chemotherapy for prostate cancer had relatively mild side effects. “My oncologist told me not to expect to celebrate Thanksgiving this year,” Dad had told Jack.

“If you get started on taxetere,” Jack said, “You'll be around for Thanksgiving. Trust me.”

Jack was right. The chemo, begun in June, was no picnic, but it wasn't nearly as bad as Moishe feared, and was well worth it. It looked as though it would be a Happy Thanksgiving after all. Then in October 2009, a bowel obstruction sent Moishe back to the hospital for emergency surgery. The two-week hospital stay and subsequent recovery kept him off the chemo for about six weeks.

Nevertheless, Moishe did enjoy that Thanksgiving and even mugged for the camera, holding up a turkey drumstick with an expression that was meant to look voracious, though he only ate a few bites. In fact, from the time he came back from the hospital, Moishe never really regained his strength, and needed someone with nursing skills available to attend him 24/7.

Many old friends came by to see him over the following months, and Moishe made a tremendous effort to rally for these visits, no matter how poorly he was feeling. In February 1010 Darwin Dunham came to visit for several days. After so many years it was great to see him and to hear him say, once again, how profoundly Moishe had influenced him. We traded funny stories and a few minutes later, I looked at Dad, sitting in his chair, so frail, covered in his blanket. He was smiling. Well, that was no surprise. As sick as he was, when he wasn't in pain he smiled a great deal. I'd like to think it wasn't just the morphine. It was kind of an angelic, almost ethereal smile, and sometimes he'd do it in his sleep.

But this smile was different, somehow earthier. And he said to me, “I see so much of my own humor when you talk.” I guess any child hopes that her parents will see things in her that will continue when they are gone, and a sense of humor is not the least of them.

Due to the seriousness of his illness, I'd requested that my annual speaking tour for the spring of 2010 be kept local. I still had nights out of town—never more than a few hours drive away—but was checking in daily by phone.

One evening I phoned my parents shortly before I was to speak. Typically I'd have waited until morning, but Moishe had been scheduled to have chemo that day, and I was eager to find out how it had gone. It hadn't. Clearly there was more to discuss, so after the service I called my parents from the motel. My mother broke the news: “The chemo isn't working anymore. The doctor said there is no point continuing the treatments.” It was as though I was hearing his cancer diagnosis all over again, but now there were no more barriers between my father and the progressing cancer.

Do I ask people to pray for a miracle?
I wondered. Then, in that place of intuition where God spoke, not only to my father, but sometimes to me, I knew that he really was going to die, that his time was coming and it would be soon. He had been spared for a little more than three years, and in March he managed to keep one more speaking engagement. We were very proud of him, and from all accounts, the congregation and pastor were moved by his message.

In April, Lyn flew out to be with us for Mom and Dad's 78th birthdays. She recalled,

Many people sent birthday cards but Mom's friend Gwen hand delivered her card. Dad decided to read it himself (his assistant Peter had been reading most of the cards to him) and then he told me to read Acts 2:20, which he thought Gwen had written on the card. I looked it up and read it:

The sun shall be turned into darkness,

And the moon into blood,

Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.

It seemed so inappropriate that I couldn't help laughing, along with Mother and Gwen. Then I thought perhaps Gwen had meant to write Acts 2:21, so I read that verse too:

And it shall come to pass

That whoever calls on the name of the Lord

Shall be saved.

That seemed to fit the situation a whole lot better, but Gwen said that she had not referred to either scripture in her card! Mom looked at what Gwen
had
written and saw that what Dad interpreted as “Acts 2:20” was actually “April 2010.”

It was pretty funny, but points to something so typical of Moishe. He was always quick to turn to the Bible. It's not surprising that, with his failing eyesight, he mistook Gwen's handwritten date for a Bible verse.

It was hard for Lyn to leave, not knowing if she would see Moishe again. He loved having her visit but told her, “I don't want you to come back just to watch me die.” But she wanted desperately to see him at least once more, and would return with Alan when the time came.

Soon after Lyn left, Dad entered a home hospice program. Thanks to the experienced staff, Lyn and Alan knew exactly when to fly out to be able to see Dad while he was still somewhat lucid. It turned out to be just a few weeks after Lyn's April visit. Bethany and her fiancé, Gary, had just finished their final year of veterinary school and were able to visit before returning to Illinois for the graduation ceremony. The joy of having the whole family together was tempered with the knowledge that the next time we would all be gathered was going to be for Moishe's funeral.

At times when he was awake, we all crowded around his bed, even the dog. At other times, a couple of us would stay with him while the others took a break in the large nearby den, remembering better times, and recording memories for this book.

Alan had the following to say about his father-in-law:
*

Who is Moishe? He's the little boy in the story—the little boy in Hans Christian Andersen's “The Emperor's New Clothes.” The little boy who is willing to either state the obvious when others are pretending, or the little boy who sees something that others have missed. . . .

Some decided to make a career of proving that Moishe was wrong . . . and may still be shadow-boxing Moishe to this day.

Still, there's a whole generation of men and women who have been mentored by Moishe directly or indirectly, who have embraced a lot of his philosophy—have tested it in their own arenas, and found it to be true. . . .

Who is Moishe? The kind of guy who gets a congregation physically marching around the sanctuary in a circle to the song “Marching to Zion.” Why? Not because Moishe needed to lead; but because people needed a way to register their commitment. It's good for them to provide a way they can identify with something.

When Dad was really ill, he depended on Asher more and more. Sometimes when he'd wake up at one or two in the morning either in pain or else feeling the loneliness that creeps into the process of dying, he would call on Asher (knowing that Ceil, who spent almost all day every day with him, had difficulty sleeping.) Asher recalled,

The most important thing he showed me was how, in the worst of his pain, he would always cry out to the Lord. And that was very inspiring to me. I had seen him in different situations where he stood up for what he believed in, but even through his worst struggles with cancer and the most painful situations he always cried out to the Lord . . . it showed me that even in the worst situations, I can still have that freedom.

At 2:30 p.m. on May 19, I was on an errand when I received the phone call from Barbara, Moishe's CNA. She urged me to come immediately to my parents' house. I was there within thirty minutes. The hospice nurse had arrived and stayed long enough to tell us that Dad would not be with us the next day. Standing quietly in the background was Lucy Ogden, the parish nurse from Moishe and Ceil's church. She had come for a visit that morning and had spent hours helping Barbara. When Mom suggested she go home, Lucy had told Mom very firmly, “I'm not going anywhere.” Later that day, we were all extremely grateful for her foresight.
*

We planned to be up with him all night, but he did not keep us waiting. He died peacefully at 7:30 p.m., with Mom, Asher, and me each laying a hand on his fragile body, telling him that Jesus was waiting for him, ready to say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Dave Garrett, Susan Perlman, and David Brickner were there on the spot, continuing to act on Moishe's behalf, making calls and seeing to it that everyone was informed. Susan had already put together a press release that would go out the following day. The content of the press release (it was picked up by more than a dozen newspapers) saw to it that one of Moishe's longtime wishes was fulfilled: that even in his death, he would preach the gospel.

At one point, David and Susan took a break from their calling to come and tell us, “Do you know what day it was today? Moishe went before the sun went down. It was Shavuot.”

I gasped. I could hardly believe it. I'd been too preoccupied to realize what day it was—Shavuot, the Jewish Feast of Pentecost! It is also a special time in church history; according to the second chapter of Acts, Jesus' promise to send his Spirit to empower his disciples to preach the gospel was fulfilled on Shavuot. Not only that, but Dad had made his first public profession of faith in Jesus on Pentecost Sunday. There is never a happy day to be parted from someone you love, but for us, there could be no more meaningful date to see him go.

When at last the people from the mortuary came, a new flood of tears sprang from my eyes, and I sobbed, “I . . . can't . . . watch them . . . take him away.”

My nephew put his arm around me and said, “It's okay.
They're
not taking him away. God already took him a few hours ago.”

He was right; what made Moishe Rosen a real person had not died, but had been called home to his Maker. Not only would he live on in our memories, but he was actually more alive now than ever, and one day, we would see him again.

Moishe was a man with a mission, called to controversy; a man with a beautiful soul and feet of clay. Now that his race was at an end, I could imagine him on the other side of that finish line, cheering on his family and friends, just as it says in Hebrews 12:1–2:

We also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

*
I was with Susan Perlman who had a speaking engagement a couple of hours away when my mom called to say that they were at the hospital.

**
This was an allusion to the biblical symbolism of oil representing God's Spirit.

*
Early in Lyn and Alan's marriage, Moishe had told Alan, “You're not just my son-in-law; you're my son.”

*
Having Peter and Barbara there was important, but Lucy was God's answer to our prayers that we would have “official medical help” at home when the moment came.

CEIL'S POSTSCRIPT

H
ow do you say good-bye to a husband you've loved and lived with for almost sixty years? My cowlicked, lanky young sweetheart and I were barely out of childhood when we started our new lives together—forever, whatever that meant to an eighteen-year-old. I don't think either of us fully understood what marriage involved, but we were convinced we could meet any challenge together.

The challenges came, and sometimes we survived only by God's grace. There was the melding of two headstrong personalities into a cohesive family unit. There were worrisome threats, like possible military conscription and financial uncertainty of temporary unemployment. There were heartbreaks—renunciation by family, friends, and community that followed our commitment to Y'shua (Jesus) as Savior, and perhaps most devastating, the loss of our precious unborn son.