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In Memeoriam Beate Keller Zilversmidt, 1942-2021

From Adam Keller: a personal message on very deep mourning - and on
overcoming pain

As you may have noticed, during July and early August there had been a
complete cessation of articles hitherto posted by myself and by my wife
Beate Keller Zilversmidt on this website. Beate - my wife with whom I spent
thirty-five years of the happiest marriage imaginable and with whom I was at
least as much in love as on our first day, was hospitalized at Ichilov
Hospital in Tel Aviv, where she died on the morning of Friday, August 6.
Beate had waged a very long struggle against cancer, won quite a few battles
over the past two decades, but it was cancer that had the final victory.

I must admit that in those weeks of hospitalization and of my wife`s final
struggle, and in the weeks of mourning that followed, I could simply feel no
interest in political events, struggles and demonstrations. For some weeks,
deep personal pain completely overwhelmed and dominated my life, to the
exclusion of everything else.

This is a difficult moment, possibly the most difficult in my life. But
Beate and I always knew that this moment would come sooner or later – very,
very much later, we hoped. Beate struggled with all her might against
cancer, especially because she did not want to leave me alone. She told me
many times that had she been single, without someone who deeply loved her
sharing her life, she would not have fought cancer so long and so
persistently.

At least it is a bit of comfort that Beate had a peaceful, painless death.
Cancer destroyed her lungs and therefore the oxygen level in her blood
dropped to the point where life could not continue. As I now know from my
eyewitness observation, when cancer kills you this way, you don`t suffer any
pain - you just go to sleep and never wake up again.

I was there, I heard her say `Good Night` in a perfectly ordinary way and
saw her put her head on the pillow and fall asleep immediately - not knowing
that I would never hear her voice again.

There are many varieties of cancer and very many ways in which cancer can
kill. Many cancer patients die in prolonged nasty pain. At least Beate was
spared that.

I will never ever forget her. To my own last day I will again and again hear
her voice speaking inside my head, warm words of love and good advice from a
wise woman. I had gotten to know her so well during 35 years of marriage
that I can know quite accurately what she would have said in various
situations. I could have sat down for a whole day and written about Beate
and still it would have been no more than a fragment of what can be told of
her. And indeed, I intend to write more about her, things which might be of
interest also to those who did not personally know her.

Beate and I always knew that when you have great happiness, you will have to
pay for it with great pain when that happiness comes to its end. In our last
two weeks together, when a hospital room became our home - a home in every
way - we spoke very much of her approaching death and the pain I would feel
afterwards. We discussed it again and again and again, and we always came to
the same conclusion - that the coming pain was a price worth paying. Very
much so.

A few days after Beate`s death, her family members in Holland, along with
her friends in Israel and with some people from other places (Palestinians,
Americans, Germans...) held an online memorial via Zoom. Esther, Beate`s
highly capable granddaughter, took care to record it and place it on
Youtube. You can access it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3wxPtbpAuc

Beate`s children and grandchildren in Holland have made it very clear that I
will always be part of the family, and have invited to come and stay with
them - which I certainly intend to do, as soon as the Corona Virus
restrictions are lifted.

In the past weeks I have been making a great effort to rebuild my life, with
the generous help of very many friends and family members. I received an
enormous outpouring of condolences and warm support. Without this help, I am
not sure I would have been able to overcome my great pain, even partially.

I will go on mourning Beate for a very long time, probably for as long as I
live, but I must go on living. I must go on doing the things which Beate and
I did and which gave meaning to our lives. This of course includes the
struggle against the occupation and for peace, in which she was my full
partner and which I intend to continue with all my strength - on her behalf
as well - and to commemorate her.

***************************************************************

Beate, Me and the Cancer

I saw Beate for the first time at an evening hour on February 14, 1986, at a
conference hall in the Dutch town of Amersfoort. On the morning of August 6,
2021 I said goodbye forever, knowing I will never ever see her again, at
Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv. In between these two dates there were thirty
five years of a wonderful togetherness, the most happy marriage imaginable.
(To be precise, these were thirty five years - and a half. I would not have
given up this last half a year, not for any price. This half a year included
some of our most wonderful moments.)

Beate was a cancer patient for 21 years out of our 35 years of marriage. The
last fifteen were stage 4 cancer which is the highest. Not many stage 4
cancer cases survive for 15 years, she was a bit of a medical miracle. Even
more remarkable, for 14 of these 15 years, she was mostly unaffected by the
cancer and could live a normal active life. Indeed, there were whole weeks
where I hardly thought of my wife`s cancer. I remember one evening when we
were sitting in our favorite vegan restaurant in Tel Aviv and eating a very
good meal and feeling happy and relaxed, and she took out of her bag a box
with two small pink pills and took them with a glass of water, and I
thought: `Could anyone looking at her right now guess that they just saw a
stage 4 cancer patient taking chemotherapy?`

Oncologists at Ichilov were actually competing with each other to get Beate
as a patient. She was a very interesting case medically, and I think it also
gave them a good feeling to have a patient who was doing so well for such a
long time. They have so many cases which are much worse and so often meet
people who suffer horribly and for whom not much could be done.

Beate`s long survival was partly due to the cancer in her body being a
relatively `lazy` one, spreading only slowly. She used to joke about her
`roommate` and say `He knows that if he kills me he will die himself, so he
is not in a hurry`. But it was not only the relative luck of having a `lazy`
cancer. Beate helped that luck by being very critical of the oncologists,
not taking anything for granted, refusing treatments which she thought
unreasonable, stopping treatment for a time when she felt the side effects
increasing and then resuming it when the cancer increased. She called this
`The Zig Zag Method`. She always said that many cancer patients die of the
treatment rather than the cancer itself.A good friend of ours who died ten
years ago was one very clear such case. In Beate`s opinion, dying of
chemotherapy was more painful and messy than dying of the cancer itself.

I was present when Beate told an oncologist `No, I will not do this. I
think it will do me more harm than good`. And the oncologist said `All
right, I rely on your judgement`. I think very few cancer patients - or any
kind of patient - get to hear such words from a doctor.

And Beate also made a very big effort to live a healthy life and eat healthy
food and take long walks in the night with me. She used all kinds of
alternative and complementary methods but was very critical of them too. She
used to enter all kinds of websites advertising supposed miracle cures for
cancer, look very carefully at what they had to offer and why they said it
would work, and she would order only one of a hundred such Miracle Pills on
offer on the net - and then try to take a careful look to see if they
really had an effect, otherwise they would go to the garbage. Beate made
such extensive study of the subject that I think she knew about cancer more
than anyone who is not a trained oncologist. She was for years actively
participating in an international online network of breast cancer patients,
offering useful advice and words of support to others less fortunate than
herself. I estimate that at least five of her fifteen years of surviving as
a stage 4 cancer patient were due to her own tireless efforts and struggle.

But we always knew that even medical miracles don`t last forever and that
even a lazy cancer would eventually get to a vital organ, and that is what
happened this year.The cancer got to her lungs.The right lung collapsed
completely within a few months and also the left one was affected. Walking
any kind of distance became a great effort for Beate. Even so, we continued
to have our vegan restaurant evenings. There was the evening when we found
the restaurant where we wanted to eat unexpectedly closed, and she suggested
that we go to another one, three city blocks away. In her condition that was
an enormous distance. I was surprised and asked `Do you think you can make
it?` She said `Sure I can`. And she did. Determined, she walked on and on
without stopping, refusing to rest on a bench, and eating with great
appetite when we got to the other restaurant. For a Stage 4 cancer patient
with ruined lungs, that was running the Marathon.

In these final months she was inspired by her very musical daughters and
granddaughters and took up playing the piano after a 45 years break. We got
a simple electric piano which could be easily ordered and delivered to the
house. She could master only a few simple tunes, but did them beautifully
every evening. Afterwards we would sit eating watermelon and listening to
classical music concerts and recitals on youtube. This continued until our
last evening at home.

We live (I must sadly now say `we lived`) on the fourth floor of an old
house without an elevator. Every day, she was still able to climb these four
stairs. Very slowly, with big effort, but she did. On the day when it was
necessary to call an ambulance and get her to the hospital, she still walked
the stairs on her own feet. A medic walked behind her, holding an oxygen
tube connected to her nose, and she walked slowly down the stairs.

In these last weeks we effectively moved our residence to room 8 of the
`Internal Diseases A` section of Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv. I stayed with
her all the time, only twice taking a taxi home to get a few things and
immediately back to Ichilov. Actually, I felt that `home` was not an empty
apartment. Home was where Beate was.

Every night I spread a camping mattress beside her bed, put some blankets
on it and slept very contentedly at her side. One night I did a very daring
and utterly forbidden thing. In the middle of the night we spread the
curtains around her bed and I lay in the bed which was big enough for two,
for three wonderful hours. We did no more than tenderly holding hands and a
bit of caressing, but it felt like a second honeymoon.I crept out long
before first light. We reluctantly decided not to risk it again. Being
caught in such a flagrant violation of hospital rules might have led to my
being altogether expelled from Ichilov.

The oxygen level in Beate`s lungs was dropping to very dangerous levels.
With a healthy person, it should be 95%. A level in the 80s is bad but still
tolerable. With Beate, even when she was perpetually linked to oxygen, it
was sometimes dropping to 72 or 73. Beate devised some breathing exercises
which would raise it. They worked. She would lie down quietly and calmly,
with the oximeter on her finger, and I saw the figures jump up from 75 to 85
and 90. But it did not last long, and it was a constant effort.

A radiologist came and told Beate there was still one thing the hospital
could try. Five radiation treatments on her neck, on five consecutive days,
might have stopped a tumor which was pressing down on a major blood vessel -
though it would not have helped her ruined lung.

I urged her to try it, it was the only chance left. We spent a whole
sleepless night debating it. She was adamant: `No, I will not do it. If I
go lying flat on my back in the narrow inhumane tunnel of that radiation
machine, unable to do any breathing exercises, I will not come out alive`.
In the end she convinced me. In the morning she told the doctors she was
rejecting the radiation treatment. Later on, the friendly radiologist came
back and admitted that she was right. The proposed treatment had been
marginal.at best. Ichilov had suggested it simply because they had nothing
better to offer.

Beate`s grandson Sam, who is a fourth year medical student in Holland, read
one of our updates from the hospital, and he wrote to Beate `As a medical
student and a grandchild, I am very proud of you.`

Every day she was weaker. She could no longer take even one step outside
her bed, her legs would not hold her.Beate did not fear death. She very
stoically accepted that it was near and inevitable and tried to prepare me
for it, having long calm practical conversations and giving concrete advice
- very good advice - about what I should do after her death. There was one
afternoon when I burst out crying and crying and crying. Her arms were still
strong enough to hold me and her hands were caressing my head. I said while
still crying `It is easier to start mourning you when you are still here to
consolate me`. She said `Exactly so`.

What she did fear was the loss of cognitive ability, loss of who she was. A
very real danger when you have low oxygen in your blood. Two days before her
death there was a very frightening incident. She was suddenly babbling
gibberish and saying nonsense, like asking if the nurse was har grandmother.
Then I could see her making a conscious effort to get hold of herself. She
declared `I am Beate Keller` and then named, one by one, her children and
grandchildren. I helped her by asking questions `Where do we live?` `What
were the names of your parents?` `What is the best restaurant on Ibn Gvirol
Street?` to which she answered promptly and correctly. Within minutes, she
was completely herself again. But there was no guarantee she could do it
again if a second such lapse occured. On the following morning - which was
to be the last of her life - she told me she wanted to die before that
happened.

On the afternoon of that day she had very happy hours with Elja, her son,
and Jedida, one of her daughters, who had come especially from Holland after
a titanic struggle with the Israeli Kovid bureaucracy. I gave Beate a cup of
tea and moved aside to give her children their time with her, and they sat
for hours chatting in Dutch.

At about 10.00 that evening Beate asked me to give her a cup of her
favorite vegan vanille pudding. She ate it all, smacked her lips, and said
`When I have a dry mouth, I prefer pudding to water. Good night!`. These
were her last words.

She put her head on the pillow and was asleep within minutes. At some time
during the night sleep deepened into unconcosciusness. By the morning she
could not be woken, and she had strictly forbidden the doctors to use any
kind of resuscitation on her.

I was sitting at her side all the time, but I did not notice the moment when
her breathing stopped. At about 9.00 on Friday, August 6 2021, a woman
doctor came, examined her and told me she was dead. Then several other
doctors came and very warmly expressed their condolences and told me how
highly impressed they had been with her.

I was strangely calm and dry-eyed. I had indeed shed my tears when she was
still there to consolate me.

The doctors gave me an hour with her, before the hospital staff arrived to
deal with the body. I caressed her wonderful hair for the last time, and I
told her for the last time that she is the most wonderful woman in the world
- though I knew she could no longer hear me. I did not need the whole hour.
Beate never liked long goodbyes.
In less than half an hour I told the hospital staff they could come deal
with the body, as far as I was concerned.

I knew that that body was no longer Beate. If the Monotheristic religions
are right, Beate is now somewhere up in Heaven. If they are wrong, Beate is
nowhere - except in my head and my heart, where she will stay until the
moment of my own death.

*****************************************

Snapshots from THirty Five years

The following is based on words said in the Zoom online memorial to Beate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3wxPtbpAuc

How do I sum up in a few minutes thirty five very happy years of a life
shared with the most wonderful woman in the world? Let me give some
snapshots, in more or less chronological order.

- An international activist conference in the Dutch city of Amersfoort. A
Dutch woman gets up to speak. I listen carefully but, I must say, I was not
yet in love with her.

- I am in a car, the Dutch woman has offered me a ride. She asks what I will
do in Amsterdam and I say I will look for a cheap hotel. She says `No need,
you can stay with me`.

- I am in the same car with the same woman six months later, going over the
French countryside towards the German border. It is in effect our honeymoon
though we are not yet officially married.

- We go into an empty apartment in the Tel Aviv suburb of Holon. There is
nothing but an old table and two broken chairs. Beate says: `Here we can
build a life`.

- Twenty years later, the same apartment is overcrowded with our furniture
and bookshelves and the walls covered with our posters and pictures and
newspaper clippings.

- Beate takes a wrong step while helping Palestinian villagers near
Jerusalem, and her leg is broken. I go with her in the ambulance to Mukasad
Hospital in East Jerusalem.

- Beate says `My leg is healed. I don`t need doctors to get rid of this damn
hot plaster. Give me the hammer, I am going to do it myself!`. Afterwards
she luxuriates in her first bath for two months.

- We go into an apartment in Jerusalem to meet a three and half years old
boy. At first he is very shy, but soon he lets me join him and his toy
train on the floor. Beate whispers `Remember, don`t yet tell that you are
his father. Leave that to the second meeting`. Half an hour later, Uri tells
his mother Rama: `Adam is my friend!`

- We are on the way to Gaza to deliver food. Extreme Right-Wingers block our
way, shouting `Leftist traitors!` and one of them tries to grab my bag of
supplies. Beate jumps on his back, wildly beating his shoulders and
shouting `Leave him alone! Leave him alone!`.

- In a small German town a stall offers nice blue caps with various first
names on them. I find one with the name `Beate` and pay the young German
woman. She says `Ah, Beate?`. Clearly she is curious about my wife or
girlfriend with the German name.

- The time of the Oslo Agreements. In central Tel Aviv opponents of the
Rabin government push into a peace demonstration and there is wild
confusion. Beate starts shouting `Rabin, Ha`am Itcha` (Rabin, the people are
behind you!). Many others join her, and we realize there are many more of us
than of them.

- Beate is being operated on, to remove the breast in which cancer was
found. The doctor calls me and asks `Are you the husband?` I cry out
`Doctor, what went wrong?`. He says `Calm down, I just wanted to tell you
it is a complete success.`

- Beate and I take part in a march in central Jerusalem. Activists shout
`End the occupation! Make peace!`. Suddenly we hear a far off explosion. An
organizer gets an call on his mobile phone and then announces: `A suicide
bombing just happened a kilometer from here!`. Confused demonstrators ask
`So what do we do now?` and the organizer says `We go on marching, this just
shows all the more why we need peace`. Beate says to the others `He is
completely right, let`s go on`.

- Uri had refused to join the army and we visit him in the military prison.
Beate embraces Uri and he tells her `Don`t worry, I am getting along well
with both the prisoners and the guards.`

- A tense nighr at Yasser Arafat`s headquarters in Ramallah. I phone the
Israeli media: `If Sharon thinks of sending commandos in here, he should
know there are dozens of Israeli citizens right in front of Arafat`s
office`. Beate is chatting with very young Palestinian militiamen who speak
basic English. A few hours later, the two of us watch the first light over
the roofs of Ramallah. The commandos did not come

- We sit at our favorite vegan restaurant, contently eating a good meal.
Beate takes two small pink pills with a glass of water. I think `Who could
have guessed that this is a cancer patient with metastasis in various parts
of her body, taking chemotherapy?`

- Gush Shalom had sent warning letters to IDF officers who had committed
acts contrary to international law. I, as the Gush Shalom spokesperson, find
myself the target of very hostile media coverage. The phone rings
ceaselessly: “God Damn you, leftist traitor!” “Leftist, we are coming for
you!” Beate says: `They can know where we live! The phone company just gives
our address to anyone who asks! They may be waiting for you downstairs. For
the coming week you`re under house arrest, you don’t get out of the front
door. We just don’t take chances!` I say:`It is lucky that our cats were
moved to my sister’s home in the Galilee. If we still had cats going out
every night, I would go crazy with worry.” Beate says: `Cats know how to
take care of themselves!`

- Like on many mornings, I wake up at six and listen to Aryeh Golan`s
morning news bulletin.I use earphones on my transistor radio in order not to
disturb Beate`s sleep. While listening to the news I hang the wet laundry
for which I did not have time on the night before. When I get back to bed,
Beate half wakes and asks `Was there anything on the news?` I answer
`Nothing special, just the usual nastiness.` I stroke her hair and she falls
asleep, and I also go back to sleep for a few more hours.

- Beate says `I`m not sure I`ll get to see my children again.` I say `But
the Corona Virus limitations will be dropped within a year, and then Dutch
people would be able to visit Israel again.` Beate says `I`m not sure I will
still be alive by then.` I rush over and hold her tightly. We both say the
same thing in the same moment: `However much time we have left, we will make
the most of it, we will enjoy it - every day, every single moment!`

- Our restaurant is unexpectedly closed, and Beate suggests another one,
three city blocks away. I am astounded and say `But you now get tired so
quickly, can you walk that far?`. She says `Yes I can!` and she did, walking
determined and not stopping to rest - though at the end she was totally
exhausted.

- The Occupation Anniversary. Beate says: `I am quite tired. I don`t know if
I can stay until the end`. We arrive anyway at the rally in the square.
Beate takes up a sign `Jerusalem - Capital of Two States` and stands
together with our friend Rayna. After half an hour she is exhausted and we
take a taxi. That was the last demonstration in which Beate took part.

- We install the electronic piano which we ordered. Beate says `I think I
can play quite well, considering that I did not touch a piano for 45 years`
`. After playing Beate gets up from the piano and goes to the other room,
where she puts on the oxygen processor and installs the oxygen tube in her
nose. This is called `oxygen glasses`, since you have to wrap the tube
around your ears, like glasses. I go to the kitchen and get slices of
watermelon. We sit down and eat watermelon and listen to a Chopin recital on
Youtube, and then we go to sleep.

- Uri is visiting from Berlin and tells about his work in a computer games
company. Beate calls from the kitchen `Adam, I can make pumpkin soup, but I
can`t lift this heavy pot`. I take the pot to the room. Uri says `This
smells good`. Beate says `It will taste even better. `

- On Tuesday evening we go out to meet an old friend at a restaurant in Tel
Aviv. That was our last eastaurant outing. On the following night Beate
tells me: `The situation is getting worse. I think my days of walking around
free in Tel Aviv and getting home and then linking to oxygen for only a few
hours are over. It`s time to get to Ichilov Hospital`. First we intended to
do it by taxi, but Beate feels she can`t afford to disconnect from oxygen
even while on the way to the hospital, which means she needs an ambulance.
At 4.00 AM we call the medical emergency line. Within minutes, a team of
friendly young female medics arrives. Beate says `You don`t need to carry
me. I will go down on my own feet`. She slowly descends the four flights of
stairs, to the waiting ambulance. Behind her a young medic holds the oxygen
tube linked to Beate`s nose.

- a Very late night hour at Ichilov Hospital. I close the curtains around
Beate`s bed and crawl in. I repeat for her the words of the old song about
the two lovers who were very long separated and who were so happy to meet at
last in an old hut that they did not mind the rain coming in through holes
in the roof. I tell Beate `This bed is our Leaking Paradise`. Beate says
`Yes, the Leaking Paradise is ours` and lightly touches my face.

Here I would like to conclude this collection of snapshots from.my life
with the most wonderful woman in the world.

Adam Keller

********************************************************

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