Brandeis Magazine

By Caryn Hirshleifer ’76

Photo Credit: Yana Momchilova / Getty Images

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Three days before Jenn’s 31st birthday, an artery in her left frontal lobe exploded. My irreverent badass daughter — in perfect health, or so we thought — had suffered a major hemorrhagic stroke that almost destroyed her brain and nearly killed her.

At the beginning, we were told Jenn’s chances of survival were slim and any rebleed would likely kill her. After a series of drains failed to eliminate the blood that had poured into her brain from the ruptured blood vessel, doctors removed a piece of her skull to stabilize her intracranial pressure. A neurosurgeon then identified and removed the cause of the bleed, a cavernous malformation she was likely born with.

As she lay in a coma, I breathed a sigh of relief she had made it this far. But I was terrified that the brain she was born with — the brain I knew and loved — was gone, its pathways washed away. Her old brain wasn’t perfect; emotional baggage from the past could cause her to be distant and aloof. Like a concert violinist, though, she had learned to master its idiosyncrasies.

Over time, like a laptop, Jenn’s new brain began to boot up, and her Jenn-ness began to reemerge. I watched her intelligence return, as did her skill at self-expression, even her feisty sense of humor.

But there were also differences. She now possessed an ease, an unguarded openness that enabled her to connect with people more freely. The defenses that had distanced her from friends and family before the stroke had vanished, and her new brain brimmed with self-acceptance. I was thrilled to see the emotional richness her new brain offered her. At the same time, I missed who she had been.

The more I told friends about Jenn’s progress, the more they’d tell me how excited I should be. And yet a profound sense of loss gnawed at me. My friends’ words made me feel alone and self-indulgent, as if I were selfishly nursing a loss that wasn’t real. Jenn’s unlikely survival had left no room for sorrow or grief.

When the Jewish holiday of Shavuot approached almost two years after Jenn’s stroke, I thought about the upcoming Yizkor service. Yizkor, the Hebrew word for “remember,” is a special memorial prayer for the dead recited in synagogue four times a year. Perhaps I could recite a prayer for Jenn’s old brain.

I was torn. Yizkor is intended for those mourning someone’s death. Not only was Jenn alive, but her new brain promised a fuller emotional life. Did I have the right to share such sacred space with those mourning a true death?

Ultimately, open to possibility, I decided to join my fellow congregants in the sanctuary. At the rabbi’s direction, we rose as one and began to chant silently to ourselves.

“May G-d remember the brain of Jenn Goldman. May G-d remember the brain of Jenn Goldman,” I repeated over and over. Eyes closed, I continued to recite this even after the rabbi had moved on to the next prayer.

I let the words move through me. I held the words. The words held me. Perhaps for the first time, I let myself genuinely feel what the stroke had stolen from me.

There was something powerful in the silent, anonymous meditations of the congregants, a shared coming together of the brokenhearted in search of stillness and peace.

It wasn’t just Jenn’s old brain that was lost, I realized. It was the peace of mind that comes from pretending life is predictable and certain. I could no longer deny that perfectly healthy 30-year-olds can and do suffer hemorrhagic strokes that leave them unable to walk and talk, and sometimes even kill them.

The terror of this revelation — seared into my connective tissue, its scent still acrid and biting — had changed me, leaving me no way to escape the reality that life can, and often does, turn on a dime.

Some might see this knowledge as enlightening, even game-changing, leading them to refocus on how to create meaning in an arbitrary world. In time, I hope I’ll be able to do the same.

Right now, though, I’m most at ease among the desolate and despairing, those whose joy is muted by the pain of loss. In the company of those who struggle, I don’t have to feign joviality or worry that the darkness I carry will diminish the light of others. I can be myself. 

Caryn Hirshleifer and her daughter Jennifer Rose Goldman are the co-authors of “In the Face of Catastrophe: How a Traumatic Brain Injury Became a Blessing” (Greenleaf Book Group Press, 2024).