It is hard to believe I have been missing you for three years. I still wait for you to walk in the door, maybe that is what gets me through the day. Covid took you on 4/22 which is also Earth Day. I spent the day doing something you would do, cleaning and planting in the yard. I planted a Lilac tree and several beautiful flowers in a special place for you. I could hear your voice through the wind when I was planting. You will be forever in my heart.

April 23, 2020, was the last time I could celebrate my birthday without sadness. Bobby was still in the hospital and had been doing very well. They discharged him and sent him back to the nursing home. I still believed he was going to live.

That morning I called and asked, “Hey Bobby, do you know what day it is?” He replied, “Your birthday.” I teased him and asked, “did you get me something”? He said, “I tried to.” I assumed he meant he tried to get something from the gift shop. I explained how the store shelves were empty and the world was upside-down. He died six days later.

Upon retrieving his belongings from the nursing home, one of the employees gave me a painting. She explained Bobby asked around the nursing home for a pretty box because he wanted to mail it to me. That painting is the perfect final birthday gift because though he is not here, it hangs on my wall and reminds me of his love and thoughtfulness.

She called us “kids.” I thought that was so cool.

Today was the 3rd anniversary of your passing due to Covid. That fateful call that came at 5:25. But we honored you by sitting on the beach in the very warm New Jersey weather. Long Island Jones Beach boy, we smiled knowing you were with us today, watching the waves. Miss you.

Eight Days of Passover

*Erev Pesach*

Knowing how every observant Jew is absorbed in cleaning and getting ready for the holiday, I called Ben up. We hadn’t talked for days. We’d kept busy throughout March talking about him returning to work, whether a Zoom Passover Seder was allowed according to rabbinic opinion and under what circumstances; the coronavirus and where the clusters were being tracked; and my dad, home from rehab after a UTI-induced fall. He kept haranguing me about how Daddy’s reckless shopping during the lockdown was putting me at risk. “Well, your father’s an idiot!” He blurted out impatiently. I already knew to be terrified, and Ben was compounding my anxiety. I was constantly cutting the phone conversations short.

He was almost always the one who called me. But to catch him before the holiday, I called him. No answer.

The next day or so, I tried again. He picked up.

“I can’t talk right now.” He sounded like he was in an incredibly foul mood.

“Well, can I have a kiss?”

“Mmmmmwah!” He puckered. We were good. I told him I loved him and we hung up.

*First night of Passover*

How was this night different from all other nights? Since Ben’s sister hadn’t spoken to him for over 20 years, his parents always stayed home for the holiday and Ben joined them. His father led the Seder. Ben was the “kid” who asked the Four Questions.

As the firstborn, Ben was required to either fast or study a tractate of Talmud. The death of the firstborn was the scariest of all the plagues in the Seder.

According to his father, Ben entered the ER on the first night of Pesach.

*Second day of Passover*

One Pesach afternoon, Ben walked from Midwood, Brooklyn to my apartment in Washington Heights, Manhattan. Google Maps estimates the 18.2-mile journey at 6 hours, 11 minutes, but Ben always knew the route and the shortcuts. I never saw him in sneakers, nor jeans, for that matter – just sturdy walking shoes that matched his dark pants. With my roommate in either Philly or Passaic, it was a rare moment of privacy.

*Third day of Passover*

After staying in “the Heights” overnight, Ben once took me to the two-story supermarket on Brooklyn’s McDonald Avenue. As we circumnavigated the subway tracks, he showed me the places where he biked as a kid and followed the barges. At 18, he began to photograph and document them in earnest.

Inside, I selected a delectable brick block of sharp cheddar cheese along with an endless display of chocolates, soft artificial fruit slices, and other Passover foods never carried in my Nashville grocery stores. For friends in “the Heights” beyond 181st Street, Brooklyn was the place to go for cheap chicken, if they ever bothered to go to Brooklyn. I was the only one I knew who spent Sundays and at least one other night a week in Brooklyn. That was my routine in the early 2010s.

That Passover 2020, Ben’s 88-year-old dad brought food to Maimonides Medical Center while he was in the ER, receiving oxygen. Was he in the triage tent or a hallway? Did he have a bed? Why did he have to be brought food? It was a Jewish hospital in the middle of a Hasidic neighborhood, there would normally be no issue providing kosher food, or even kosher-for-Passover food. After the second day in the ER, Ben took a turn for the worse.

*Fourth night of Passover*

Sometimes Ben’s birthday fell on the holiday. I intended to bake him a kosher-for-Passover birthday cake at some point, perhaps after we were married. Not the usual dry seven-layer torte ubiquitous in standard kosher grocery stores, but a moist sponge cake torte imbued with Sabra liqueur and my love and the trial-and-error handiwork of cookbook connoisseur Joan Nathan. If I ever found that time, I never got to the point.

*Fifth night of Passover*

For a time on late Friday afternoons, Ben would call from his bedroom. I was hurriedly the candles and matches in place to light just before Shabbos. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready?” I’d ask, hurriedly running around to straighten up and get food on the table before the time came to light candles.

“There’s a Shabbos alarm on the street,” he replied unconcerned.

“Well, I’m not in Brooklyn,” I’d say whether I was in Manhattan or Nashville, “And I have to be my own Shabbos alarm.” Just then, a siren would sound in the background. “Come on, you have to get ready!”

“That’s just the first Shabbos alarm.”

*Sixth night of Passover*

After the phone kiss before the holiday started, I figured we were good. While I searched high school annuals in the hopes of seeing pics of a teenage Ben, I didn’t bother him yet. I didn’t want to argue about my father anymore. He was worried about his parents catching the virus. I was worried about my own.

*Seventh night of Passover*

It had been a while since he initiated a call.

It was rare for him not to return a call within hours.

Ben always phoned at the end of the day, when both of us were in bed. Whenever I rang first, he’d call back as soon as he saw my number on Caller ID without ever bothering to listen to the message. I learned not to waste my time leaving a voice mail. Often he would ask me to look up a news story about him. It was either an award nomination or a press conference he heckled at or when the MTA was refusing to let him take off work for a Jewish holiday. My contacts would be resting peacefully in their saline solution. Doggedly I’d reach for my 10th grade glasses and power on the laptop. Ben wanted an article read verbatim. As his retirement inched closer, and he talked about the City Council campaign, I would Google him. Within quotations. Without quotations. With different misspellings of “Schaeffer.” With Benjamin or Ben.

I Googled his name. Up came a press release from his union:

Urgent Call for Blood Donations for Ben Schaeffer, Fighting for his Life on a Ventilator
A veteran conductor once hailed a hero for his handling of an on-board emergency is fighting for his life and needs a plasma donation.

Ben Schaeffer, Local 100’s RTO Conductor Vice Chair, has COVID-19 and is on a ventilator at Maimonides Hospital. Doctors have recommended an experimental new treatment called “Convalescent Plasma.” The Blood Bank at the hospital needs blood donors who have tested positive for the coronavirus, have recovered, and have gone at least 14 days without symptoms. Ben’s blood type is A+ and he needs a matching donor or donors to come to his assistance now. The number at Maimonides for potential donors to call is 718-283-7657. If you have type A+ blood, please help your union brother.

Plasma is the straw-colored liquid in which your blood cells “swim.” According to the NY Blood Center, a plasma donation feels much the same as a whole blood donation. A small amount of blood is taken from your arm using a new, sterile, single-use needle. Ben, 57, is a 23 year Transit veteran. In October, he quickly evacuated his train at a Brooklyn stop after being alerted that a rider had poured gasoline on the floor of one of the cars.

The press release had been posted only hours before I found it.

*Eighth day of Passover*

He never said he was sick. Whenever Ben was sick, his end of the conversation was a series of crotchety scowls. My March 2, 2010 Facebook post reads: “Lisa Smid’s significant other is in bed with the bug in Brooklyn while I’m in Nashville. Calls every night. How does one comfort a cranky sicko long distance?”

I once asked Ben whether he liked to be taken care of when he wasn’t feeling well or if he wanted the pizza-and-pancake diet…just slide the food and pills under the door and leave him alone.

“When I’m sick,” he jokingly answered, “I want my mommy.” He admitted that sometimes when he was out of commission, he’d go several blocks away to his parents’ home and stay in his old bedroom while his mother took care of him.

He never said he was sick.

He never said he had Covid.