Judge Daniel Butler's Eulogy for His Son

I always say don't stand up for me unless you're wearing handcuffs.

My big question, then, is what would Mikey want me to say? A couple of quick Mikey stories: Mikey would periodically get a minor side effect of cystic fibrosis. It's an intestinal blockage that's incredibly painful, almost appendicitis-like, and we worked out a routine in Children's Hospital of how they would treat it. Instead of waiting until it got worse and worse, as soon as Mikey said he had pain, they knew what it meant. So they started at the beginning of the cycle and they'd bring him in, and they'd bring in the radiologist, so that they wouldn't have to do it at 3 a.m. They'd do it as soon as Mikey said he had pain.

I remember one August day when Mikey was probably twelve, and he was always skinny, and he was curled up in a ball in horrible pain, and they called in the head of radiology on Sunday afternoon and he came in, and there were all these new interns and residents in the hospital, and they're all gathered around to see this procedure. And I'm kind of crowded back in the back of the crowd, and this kid is writhing in pain, and he won't let you touch him when he's in that situation. And the head of radiology comes in and hush falls over the little crowd, interns and medical students and nurses, and he turns to the kid on the table and says, "Okay, Mikey, what do we do?"

And Mikey from his pain starts to make up a list of the things he'd need and what he does in the procedure, and "make sure you tape this so it doesn't come out." And I'm standing in the back behind an obviously new intern and an obvious veteran nurse. And the intern turns almost in confusion to the nurse and says "What's going on?"

And she turns to him disdainfully and she says, "That's Mikey. Shut up and you'll learn something."

He had six finals at Y.U. one year. It's hard to believe he'd commute like this. He'd spend a few weeks here and a few weeks in Y.U. It's hard to believe.

He commuted back and forth to YU and he had six finals one time and he did two of them and the people who know Mikey and know us know some of these stories, but, so he got a 104 fever after his second final and he decided that he couldn't do it anymore and he decided to go to the hospital. And his arrangement seemed to be that when it was time to go to the hospital, he would decide to go to the hospital. Otherwise, nobody bothered him.

So he called Dr. Joel Weinberg, who everybody from the cleaning people to the professors to the patients to the nurses, calls -- [Dr. Weinberg is] the vice president of medical services at Shady Side hospital, the head of the ICU, the only person who handles adult cystic fibrosis patients for three states around -- everybody calls him Joel. And he calls Joel, and he tells him "I gotta come home to the hospital."

So he gets in the car, and he starts the 400 mile trek to Pittsburgh. And in the Allegheny Mountains, as seems to be common a lot of the time, he runs into a snowstorm. So I have him on my cell phone, I have Joel on third party line, and Joel tells him to just find a motel and stay there until it's over. But Mikey says, "No, I'm really sick, I've got to go home." So he finally makes it home to Pittsburgh at about 3 o clock in the morning and he arrives home.

So we take him really on his last legs. He had this big overcoat that he would wear, that he would practically live in like an Eskimo. So we took him to Shady Side Hospital and wheeled him into the emergency room. And immediately they wanted to access the [medical device] that he had in his chest that made it possible to get immediate IV access. So they said, "Mikey, we're going to access you and you'll be dehydrated."

So he turns to the nurse, this is 4 o' clock in the morning, and says "You're going to need the 22 or 24 needle."

She said, "We don't have any of those, those are pediatric."

He said that's the only kind you can use.

She says "We have 18."

He says "18 is too big."

She says, at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center for adults, that we don't have them.

He says, yeah, I was afraid of that, and he reaches into his capacious coat and pulled out the whole IV set.

And then as things progressed, this kid made it his practice, whether he was in the National Jewish Hospital for Respiratory Diseases in Denver, or here in Children's Hospital, or eventually in Shady Side Hospital, he would insist that we bring him his suit and white shirt and a tie for Shabbas. Until towards the end, he spent a good part of Shabbas alone. He read Bereshis. The last few months he wasn't able to read at all. And as things deteriorated he couldn't wear a suit on Shabbas anymore. The medications made him blind. The medications made him deaf. A little extra radiation capped it off. He could barely hear out of a hearing aid in one ear. And he was in pain. At a time months ago I remember a night at Presbyterian University Hospital. He was in the ICU. He's been in 10 different ICU's in the last 2 years, so he's in Presby, and the nurse comes in to give him... I always mix up Epagin and Nupagin, but one of the shots to enhance red blood cell, white blood cell, whatever, after chemo. And Nupagin was incredibly painful. And this debilitated kid breathing through a hole in his neck, fed by a little hole out of his stomach, he was skin and bones. The nurse came over and said "I'm gonna give you the Nupagin shot now." And she happened to be an inexpert nurse. They're very rare. There are different ways of doing it, and she was not great at doing it. She reached over and pinched up the only bit of flesh she could get on him, which was on his abdomen, right near his stomach. And she gave him this horribly painful shot. Some nurses like to give it slow because it makes it easier; some like to give it fast because it makes it easier. And he cringed horribly, and didn't utter a sound obviously because he had the thing in his throat and couldn't. And she turned to go and he tapped me on the hand and he pointed to her and I said "Oh, Mikey wants you." And she turned around and he mouthed "Thank you."

And sometimes at YU he couldn't make it all the way home and Hatzolah would take him to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. And one Hanukkah he's there and the guys at YU -- a whole bunch of guys -- invaded Columbia Presbyterian to light Hanukkah candles in his room. And security wouldn't let them in with the menorah, and they stood on the street, and they lit Hanukkah candles on the street, and someone went upstairs and got Mikey so they could see him out the window, and then the guys danced and sang for a while out there on the street. Wait, that isn't a story about Mikey -- that's a story about YU.

He loved Yeshiva University. He loved every minute he was there, and he knew so many students... he would tell them how much they should appreciate things and how wonderful it was. And they would roll their eyes sometimes because the food in the cafeteria wasn't great or some other minor thing.

It was the most meaningful, proudest day of his life when Rabbi Lamm came to Pittsburgh to award him his diploma. He would be incredibly impressed that the new president of Yeshiva University came here today.

We had a lot of help. We had help from the people in this room and the people in this community and the people who couldn't make it here today. But the words and thoughts and prayers got us through.

Mikey absolutely loved NCSY and the opportunity that it gave him to play the drums and spread the faith that he had and felt so deeply. Mikey loved the opportunity to work at Camp HASC, where he worked along with the rest of the family with handicapped children, on the periphery, as the computer geek and drummer, because he said it gave him perspective.

And he loved his doctor. I'm gonna communicate to you today a berakha from me and a berakha from Mikey. The berakha from me is that inevitably, when you have illness of your own, or illness in your family, that no matter what the outcome, that you are as satisfied and as happy and as sure that you got the best medical care that G-d would allow. People would say, "Why don't you go here or there or something?" And we would laugh. One time, we were at a bar mitzvah. Mikey was supposed to be in the band, but he was in the hospital. Shabbas night, Mikey arranged for a ride and escaped from the hospital. With an ID and a little oxygen tank, he played in the band for the bar mitzvah. And his doctor, Joel Weinberg, who was an invited guest, showed up and did a triple take. We always talked hypothetically about how could we possibly thank Joel for a thousand visits. He would come lots of times on his way to work before any of us were up. He and I would talk and then he would go straight to Mikey's room.

But Mikey had planned for a mesadder kiddushin. Mikey had also planned this. Our plan was to give him an honor at Mikey's wedding that was always reserved just for rabbis and close relatives. The way he planned it was at the wedding we would call up Joel for the first berakha. And then he would call him up for the second berakha. And then we'd call him up for the third berakha. The fourth. The fifth. The sixth. And the seventh.

In the end, besides having smart people watch his back, Mikey had passionate people watching his back, none more passionate than the mother who would not give up, who with Joel's permission, and this'll probably mess up the whole medical system, slept on the floor the night before his transplant in the ICU so that she could be there 24/7 for weeks, for weeks, watching. You know how lionesses complement each other when they see somebody protecting their cubs? Just like Nina [Mikey's mother].

Zekharia the prophet left us with a millennial blessing, a promise of sorts, straight from G-d. Ko amar Hashem Tzevakot, this is what G-d, the L-rd of Hosts said according to Zekharia. There will yet be old men and old women sitting on the streets of Yerushalayim. And each man will have a staff in his hand, a cane. From how old he was. Not because of trauma. He didn't need that cane for trauma. Not because he was sick, but because he was old and healthy and needed a cane because he was a little frail. In the streets of the city, will be filled with boys and girls playing in her streets. This is the view for what it will be. It sounds so ordinary. It sounds so normal.

That's the message of Mikey Butler. The all-time, ultimate berakha is normalcy, that people go through their old age, and get a little unsteady and need a cane. Not because they're sick, not because they suffer accident or horrible debilitating disease that took everything from him.

I asked Mikey Butler, back when he was younger, if you could have anything in the world, what would you want? It was back in the Make a Wish days, and this kid -- who said to the president, with the vice president standing by him, and Steven Spielberg and Norman Schwarzkopf, Mikey's two friends, standing behind them, he said, "This is my father, Judge Butler" -- and this kid said what he wanted more than anything else in the world was one normal day. No pain, no shortness of breath, and none of the seventy or so medications that it seemed he had to take all the time. Today is his first day like that. But it does give you perspective to realize that most of us had a day like that yesterday.

Mikey wanted normalcy. Mikey craved normalcy and that was his message to the world. The food in the cafeteria isn't so bad. This is a great educational opportunity. It's not raining so hard; it's not snowing so hard; it's not that cold; Nupagin doesn't hurt that much. I don't remember Mikey ever, not in the deepest darkest thought in his life, not having a reason to smile. You'd come in to the room and he would be on, even on his last day.

Our Shabbas is going to be normal now, the way everybody has a Shabbas. Not his mother walking sixteen miles in one Shabbas like she did a few weeks ago. Back and forth, a bar mitzvah and a bas mitzvah and back to the hospital. We may not know what to do, but we will certainly appreciate it. Next Shabbas our Shabbas will be like your Shabbas, and hopefully we'll all appreciate it. That's Mikey's message. Have a normal life and appreciate it. Have the perspective to appreciate it.

Tonight we start shiva, a new and difficult experience for us. I know where Mikey will be. He'll be up in shamayim, and he'll turn to whoever's in the line behind him, and he'll draw a deep breath, he'll smile, and he'll say what he said at so many shabbatons: "Hi, I'm Mikey Butler. First time in heaven?"