Huge shockwaves rippled through a Jerusalem Beis Yaakov girls’ school this month, after it was revealed that 28-year-old teacher Mrs. Miriam Brim had been silently battling cancer. Mrs. Brim was a beloved teacher, who dedicated her spare time to help students and prepare lessons. Even fellow faculty members had no idea that she had been undergoing treatments for nearly two years.

It was only when Mrs. Brim collapsed that it became clear something was very wrong. Her final decline was brutally rapid: The same month that she was hospitalized, she passed away. Her students were inconsolable to hear the news after a month of praying for her recovery. No one imagined her situation could have possibly been so serious.

Perhaps no one was more tragically bewildered than Mrs. Brim’s own three children. Eliezer Yaakov, 3, appears in levaya pictures, being held by his father. Dressed in a light blue dress shirt, he looks silently at Miriam’s shrouded body, as the crowd sobs, and eulogies are said. At the Brimchildren’s ages, they cannot possibly process the magnitude of their loss.

Rabbi Brim, Mrs Brim’s husband, has been forced to ask for the help of strangers to keep his family afloat: He does not make enough money to pay their most basic bills without her. One month ago, as far as the Brim kids knew, everything was normal. Now their mother is gone, and their father is consumed with not only grief, but fear for the future.

Money is being collected to help them keep their home and afford necessities such as groceries, school bills, transportation, and other essentials which were covered by Mrs. Brim’s teaching salary. Donors are urged by Vaad HaRabbanim to give what they can: The Brims’ lives may have deteriorated quickly, but the future of mourning ahead of them is painfully long.