[COMMUNICATED]
There was no dry eye at the levaya this week of Rebbetzin Chana Phillip, 40 year old mother of seven children who bravely fought brain cancer for three years before succumbing to its clutches. Those present at the levaya describe how the youngest orphan, only three years of age, started to scream as he watched his mother’s body lowered into the grave.
“Though he is too young to fully understand what was happening, it seems that somehow he felt that it would be the last time he saw his mother”, said a relative as tears streamed down her face.
Chana was diagnosed with brain cancer three years ago but incredibly, she decided with her husband not to tell the children about her illness, providing them with as normal a childhood as possible.
”That is the kind of mesiras nefesh, the kind of loving, cheseddik woman that my eishes chayil was,” writes her heartbroken widower, Menachem.
“Always doing for others, thinking for others, baking cakes for local simchas and hosting guests and avreichim learning in the house, even when she was very sick…Our whole family is shattered. I don’t know how I will go on without her. How will I comfort my kids, whose lives were just shattered?”
The family was paid a shiva call by none other than Rav Meilich Biderman and received a haskama written from the Erloi Rebbe on their behalf. Donations are being urgently collected by the Vaad HaRabbanim here to help Menachem raise his seven orphaned children with security and safety after this devastating tragedy.
