As the clock ticks towards the close of 2012 and the secular New Year, I am waiting for a call.  I do not want to take this call, but I have been expecting this call for the last few days. My dear friend, Nancy Offenberg, is about to leave this world and just like our patriarch Jacob, she was surrounded by her loving family as the time grew shorter. Nancy is the mother, mother in-law, and grandmother to my good friends back in the Boston area, the Shore Family. Her presence was a part of their home and their lives and she touched my life and my families in a special way too.

While Jacob gives out his "Blessings" in this week's parasha, VaYechi, to his sons and grandsons, Nancy held court one more time from her hospital bed. Sisters came from Maine; children from Florida and North Carolina; assorted grandchildren.  All sat by her bedside and in the hospital waiting room for a chance to say goodbye. If love could be measured by some device in the room, the device would have exploded. I could feel the emotion and love in the retelling of the story all the way in Los Angeles.  

The same can not be said for the emotion on the surface of this week's parasha. Not until Jacob passed do we see the emotions usually exhibited by a family in mourning. "Joseph flung himself on his father's face and wept over him and kissed him."  Genesis 50:1.  May we all merit to have the time to share our love with those in our lives who have shared their love with us!