Mishpacha - always my malky

Always My Malky
Avreimie and Rivka Klein
sit at the kitchen table as if meeting an
insurance agent or contractor.
As if their world hasn’t exploded into a
million little pieces.
As if the words of the past months —
words meant to comfort, stories
of others who’ve lost and
grieved, compliments
about their poise and
dignity — have come
close to reflecting their
new reality, when
nothing could. Reality
is suspended now,
because for so long, in
such a deep way, their
essence and identity
and reason to live were
the role they were given:
Malky’s parents.
SO WHAT NOW?
A
this very table, a commitment was made long ago, a decision as hard
as the tabletop’s marble.
And once it was made, the Kleins never looked back.
Rivka Klein, just a few weeks after sitting shivah for her beloved
daughter Malky, who died of a heroin overdose on June 29, looks up,
fire in her eyes.
“I don’t like when people say, ‘Oh, you did everything you could, you’re such amazing
parents, you never stopped trying.’ You know, parents with a child in Sloan Kettering,
lo aleinu, sit there day and night, and no one says they’re so amazing. They’re just parents.
It’s what parents do.”
Avreimie gets up, paces a bit, sits down by the computer, and now suddenly
turns back to us. “Okay, I’m ready,” he blurts out. “It’s worth the whole article if
you can get out this one message. There is no such thing as a bad child. There
are no bad kids.”
He refers to a recent video in which popular speaker Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak
Jacobson told Malky’s story and drew relevant lessons.
“I watched it, and then read the comments, and I thought to myself,
‘Wow. Some parents are lucky enough to be clueless. I’m happy for them.
Others aren’t as fortunate.’ ”
He turns to face me, a question in his eyes, as if he’s searching for something
dear and can’t find it.
“I once wrote an article in my mind, the title was ‘Foresight, Hindsight,
and Insight.’ Insight is actually getting it, the reality of being inside the
topic, not outside.”
The dining room wall in the attractive Klein home in Boro Park
features an exquisite picture of Rav Shmuel Tzvi Horowitz, known as Rav
Hershe’le of Spinka, the rebbe of the Klein family.
“The Rebbe once advised a friend of mine to switch his son from a chassidish
mossad to Torah Vodaath. I remember my surprise. I didn’t get it. I was blissfully
naive. Some things you need to experience in order to understand.”
The pain that colors Avreimie Klein’s face subsides for a moment as he speaks
of his rebbe.
“Years before we got into this… this… parshah,” he says, shrugging as he comes up
short in finding the right word, “I got my marching orders from my rebbe.”
He goes back to a simpler time, when his oldest son was very young and not particularly
interested in attending the makeshift cheder in the bungalow colony where they spent summer
vacation. “He didn’t want to go learn, plain and simple. I was by my rebbe one evening and I told
him about the situation. I mentioned that my son really wanted a new bike, so I would use that
as an incentive if he went to cheder nicely.
48 MISHPACHA 17 Av 5777 | August 9, 2017 MISHPACHA 49