By JOSEPH KELLARD
Dubbing themselves the Angel Network, after Oprah Winfrey¹s charitable organization, Lisa Yoslowitz and about 16 other moms, consisting mostly of her friends and neighbors, served as home chefs for the Oceanside mom battling breast cancer. For nearly four months they took turns cooking for Antoldi-Sossi and her family a couple of nights a week while she continued her chemotherapy and radiation therapies and underwent surgery.
Antoldi-Sossi, 39, bumped into her friend, Lisa Yoslowitz, who she hadn¹t seen in months, while in the midst of her chemo ³crash,² a five-day period in which the cell-killing chemicals dispersed throughout her body. Antoldi-Sossi had been 8-months pregnant with her youngest when she learned she had cancer, and initially she had bad allergic reactions to the chemo. ³It was a rough time,² she said, noting that she lost all her hair.
Later, Yoslowitz called to tell Antoldi-Sossi that she wanted to cook dinner for her and her family until she was done with her treatments. ³I didn¹t want her to do it at all,² Antoldi-Sossi said.
³I really, really had to talk her into letting us help her,² Yoslowitz said. ³...I said to her, I don¹t care what you say, I¹m going to do it. I explained that everyone would be doing it out of love, to help you get better faster.²
Antoldi-Sossi didn¹t want to do it because she wanted to try to keep her life as normal as possible. ³Also, I didn¹t know how to say thank you,² she said. ³When I let it go and I allowed them to help me, oh my god, it made my life so much easier.²
During those four months, the network of cooks took turns preparing meals in their own homes and bringing the food to Yoslowitz, and she delivered it to Antoldi-Sossi and her family every Monday and Wednesday night. Further, each Tuesday Yoslowitz would watch Antoldi-Sossi¹s kids, picking them up at their schools, bringing them to religious instruction, driving them home, helping them with homework, eating dinner with them and playing with them until their bed time.
³We¹re a bunch of compassionate moms that came together and just wanted to lighten Christine¹s load and help get her better while she was having treatments,² Yoslowitz said, noting that none of the Angels knew Christine or met with her.
One of the Angel cooks, Nancy Levy, said, ³I didn¹t even know Christina, but Lisa is a good friend of mine, and as soon as she said she knew someone who wasn¹t well, I knew that I wanted to helpŠ. Over the years, through good times and bad, friends have always been such a great means of support for me, so when someone else needed support, it was a way for me to give back.²
Nadine Jacoby, another of Yoslowitz¹s friends, was an Angel who didn¹t cook but wanted to help nonetheless. ³Well, I¹m the typical Jewish mother,² she laughed. ³I did a good thing, but I ordered for her. I dialed and ordered from an Italian restaurant.²
Last Wednesday, the Angel Network gathered for dinner at Yoslowitz¹s house to finally meet Antoldi-Sossi, who beat her cancer but still suffers some health complications. ³Part of the deal when she was sick was that I would not let her call anyone to say thank you,² Yoslowitz said. ³I told her I¹d take care of it because to me that defeated the whole purpose.²
At the party, Antoldi-Sossi figured out how to show her appreciation by having her children walk around and give thank you notes to all the women. While there, Jacoby discovered that both she and Antoldi-Sossi have sons in the 6th grade. ³My son got a high-five from Christine¹s son,² Jacoby said, ³and he said, listen Josh, I just want you to know that my whole family appreciates what your mom did.²
The day after the dinner, Jacoby called Yoslowitz. ³I wanted to let her know how lucky we are to have such a warm person in our community,² Jacoby said. ³What she did is probably the most beautiful thing I¹d ever heard of.²
³Lisa did a tremendous job organizing the whole network,² Levy said. ³She was amazing.²
Yoslowitz said she simply wanted to help a friend. ³To know Christine is to love her,² she said. ³She¹s one of the most wonderful people I¹ve ever met in my whole life. So I just wanted to do something for her.²
³Lisa has become one of my closest friends in my whole world,² said Antoldi-Sossi. ³She was absolutely amazing.²
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
