[COMMUNICATED]  Here they were – the night they had been waiting for.  The night of Shira’s engagement party. With girlish excitement and a healthy dose of nerves, she got dressed and descended the stairs down into her family living room.

With tears in his eyes, her father saw his little girl become a woman in an instant. Avraham Meralel gave his daughter Shira a hug, and they both held on tight. “I am so proud of you, and the woman you have become,” Avraham whispered. It was a moment they would never forget. 

The night was full of joy, laughter, song and celebration. 

That’s what made it all the more shocking when, one week later, Shira held her father’s hand as his respirator in the COVID ward was unplugged. 

Avraham Meralel became severely ill with the coronavirus just a few days after his daughter’s engagement party, and quickly passed away, leaving behind a shattered widow & 6 children. As the Meralel family sat shiva they were faced with deeply insensitive comments. “I thought corona was over,” they said. Though the worst is over, no statistics matter when it is your own husband, your own father, that has been ripped away.

Immediately, Shira thought of the upcoming wedding. “We must cancel it,” she said, thinking of her mother. Mrs. Edna Meralel works for minimum wage in a supermarket and could not possibly make a simcha on her own. Avraham a”h supported them through his work as an architect. 

Mrs. Meralel, however, would not hear of it. Her daughter had found her soulmate, and there was nothing her husband of blessed memory would have wanted more than for his beloved daughter to proceed to her chuppah.

Shira retells the story in an emotional video in which she breaks down in tears, imagining going to her wedding without her beloved Abba. 

A hachnasas kallah fund is collecting money to help Shira have a simple wedding, and start a home with the basics, an expense far beyond her capabilities at this time.