Remembering Ilana

On the counter at CBL Fine Art, Connie Lior’s gallery on Pleasant Valley Way in West Orange, a framed photo of three girls is displayed prominently. New customers admire it. “Your daughters?” they ask.

Regular customers pause and smile, recalling memories of Ilana, the girl in the middle. “I look at that picture every day,” Ms. Lior said. “It reminds me of how large a life my daughter lived.”

Connie Berkowitz Lior grew up in Maplewood, a stone’s throw from what would later be her own art gallery. After she graduated from Douglass College of Rutgers University with a degree in sociology, she worked in the hotel business. “I later became an advertising executive and eventually owned my own advertising business, Direct Mail Marketing Associates of New Jersey,” she said. She met her husband, Uzi, who came from Azor, a rural town on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, at a Chanukah party at Columbia University.

“He arrived in the United States in the early ’70s, shortly after serving in the IDF,” Ms. Lior said. “We both worked in NYC during the summer of 1973. I had a summer job with the Israeli mission to the United Nations, and he was working full time with the Israel economic mission. We dated for a while, fell in love and married in 1974.” Mr. Lior worked during the day and attended Queens College at night. He became an accountant with Price Waterhouse, then with Panasonic.

“When I sold my advertising business in March of 1986, Uzi and I traveled to Israel on vacation,” Ms. Lior said. “While scanning the wares at Kibbutz Pelech, I met a prominent art dealer and local artisans who were hoping to market their crafts in America. It was the beautiful tufted tapestries, almost like a wall carpet, that caught my eye. I bought eight of them, hoping to sell them.”

Back home in New Jersey, Ms. Lior began finding buyers for the tapestries. She began to work with Nissim Tshuvah, an Israeli art dealer and sold framed art from him out of her home and at house parties. After eight years she went out on her own, showing art from her basement.

“I did this for about two years,” she said. “It was a little inelegant, though, trying to sell beautiful artwork while caring for a 2-year-old daughter, my middle child, Dina, who was running around in diapers. I knew it was time to move my business to a larger space.”

Ms. Lior opened her first gallery in Maplewood. It was only 600 square feet, including storage. “We displayed unique jewelry, Judaica, custom framing, art, decorative kitchen accessories, and American crafts to a good-sized Jewish crowd who come for the Judaica. And we had non-Jewish clientele as well,” she said. Her business thrived, so “I bought space at a corner location in West Orange.”

CBL Fine Art has expanded twice since then. “Our 2,500-square-foot gallery has remained in business for 40 years, serving customers through website and in-store sales,” Ms. Lior said. After 20 years in the accounting world, Mr. Lior joined the CBL team. The gallery manager, Dori Sobin, has been there for more than 30 years.

Ms. Lior turned to her personal life.

“I had three daughters, Ilana, Dina, and Tali,” she said. “Ilana, the oldest, went to Muhlenberg University, majored in communications and worked as an executive in a media agency for years. She and her husband, Dave Ginsberg, who’s also in advertising, were always on the go. They had a full life that was jam-packed. They were always taking interesting vacations and spending quality time with their kids, Sean and Emma.”

In August 2023, Ilana and her family took a trip to Italy and Croatia. Ilana called home and told her mother that she was extremely tired. “I suggested she go to an urgent care center, but it was hard to find one in Croatia,” Ms. Lior said. When the family returned from their trip, Ilana went to urgent care. The doctor suggested a chest X-ray that confirmed pneumonia, and Ilana was sent to Chilton Hospital in Wayne for an infusion of antibiotics.

When she was at the hospital, she was told that she had a giant mass on her lungs.

Ms. Lior regrets that her daughter was alone when she received this news. “She was never a smoker,” she said. “The tumor was gigantic. It was on one part of her top lung, extending into the space between her lungs.” Ilana went to Morristown Medical Center for a biopsy of her liver. “Since there was metastasis to the liver and bones, the surgeon there staged her cancer at 4. Soon, Ilana was evaluated by Dr. Adam Schoenfeld at Memorial Sloan Kettering. In November 2023, she began chemotherapy at MSK’s satellite office in Basking Ridge. “She was only 41 years old,” her mother said.

While her daughter tolerated the treatments pretty well, Ms. Lior knew they “just had to stay one step ahead of the grim reaper.” At the end of May 2024, Ilana suffered excruciating back pain. Her radiation oncologist told her that the cancer had metastasized to her spine. “Nothing relieved the pain,” Ms. Lior said. “She was sedated for her scans. The last four months of her life were simply unbearable. But she continued to put on a brave face.”

When Ilana asked why this was happening, there was only one answer Ms. Lior could come up with: “This was rotten luck.”

A week before Ilana died, Ms. Lior brought 20 tallitot from her gallery to Ilana and Dave Ginsberg’s home in Wayne for her grandson, Sean, who was 11 then, and her granddaughter, Emma, then 8, to try on. “I knew Ilana would want to prepare them for their b’nai mitzvot,” Ms. Lior said. “It was an extremely emotional but meaningful experience for all of us, watching them select their tallitot.”

Ms. Lior remains astounded at the outpouring of love and support from the community throughout the 13 months her daughter was battling her cancer. “How do people get through unspeakable circumstances without a village?” she asked. “How do they manage?”

Sean’s elementary school graduation was videotaped so Ilana could watch it from her hospital room at MSK. Meals, carpools, playdates, and anything else the family needed was coordinated by friends, neighbors, parents of Sean and Emma’s friends, and school staff. “Everyone showed up for Ilana,” Ms. Lior said. She credited her gallery manager, Dori Sobon, considered part of the family, for holding down the fort during Ilana’s ordeal.

The Liors’ other two daughters, Dina Aponte, who lives in Rockaway, and Tali DeVoe, who lives in Westfield, were constantly there to help. The family stayed as close as possible throughout the harrowing months. “Everything happened so fast in the end,” Ms. Lior said.

Ilana Lior Ginsberg died at home on October 18, 2024. “There were hordes of people at her funeral and at shiva,” Ms. Lior said.

“While it’s a club you never want to belong to, so many people have reached out to me who have experienced a similar tragedy — the death of a child,” she said. “Everyone has different ways of coping, but somehow it’s a comfort to know I’m not alone.”

A celebration of Ilana’s life was planned on the first anniversary of her death so the family could gather to share stories, photographs, and joyful memories. “But I wanted to do something more tangible to honor her,” Ms. Aponte said. “I began combing the internet for ideas and came upon no-sew flannel blankets. They were soft and cozy. We could make them by hand and donate them to patients in the cancer unit at MSK.”

Ms. Aponte wanted the mitzvah project to be something that her 7-year-old son, Benny, and her sister Tali’s 6-year-old daughter, Stella, and 2-year-old son, Jeremy, could take part in. Connie and Uzi, Dave, Dave’s parents, Ilana’s sisters-in-law, and many cousins planned to participate.

“I chose fabric with patterns and themes that Ilana would have been interested in, like sports teams she followed or basketball,” Ms. Aponte said. “Some of them weren’t themed at all. Some of them were just pretty — like Ilana.” She bought fleece fabric from Michaels and ordered supplies on Amazon for October 18, the day of crafting and remembrance.

Once 20 blankets were finished, Ms. Aponte sent an email to MSK and learned that “they could not take in items like blankets from outside the hospital, to comply with infection control protocols.” Next, she wrote to various Facebook groups like Morris County, White Meadow Lake, and Rockaway Moms. “Within a short period of time, I heard from Emily Kullmann, a volunteer and board member with First Friends of New Jersey and New York, a nonprofit organization in Kearny,” she said. “She suggested we bring our blankets to Delaney Hall Immigrant Detention Center in Newark, where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees were held, and family members waited outside in the cold for hours for status updates.”

Ms. Aponte delivered the blankets to Ms. Kullmann for distribution to the relatives waiting outside. “It was a small gesture, but we were helping people keep warm during periods of extreme duress,” she said.

Ms. Lior and her daughters hope to do a mitzvah project in Ilana’s memory for her yahrzeit every year. “We’ll think of something meaningful to do next October,” Ms. Lior said.

“Nobody escapes this life unscathed,” she added.

In September 2024, Ms. Lior insisted on a chest X-ray during her annual physical. “Only because of what had happened to Ilana,” she said. The X-ray revealed a giant mass on her lung. She had stage 2 lung cancer. “I knew I wanted to be treated by Dr. Schoenfeld,” Ms. Lior said. “Dave had researched oncologists thoroughly when Ilana got sick, so I knew he was the best.” Ms. Lior had preoperative chemotherapy, and a year ago she had surgery to remove most of her right lung. She receives immunotherapy and bloodwork every three weeks at MSK in Basking Ridge.

“We caught it early,” she said. “I credit Ilana with saving my life.”

“Every first is hard,” she added. “Ilana’s daughter, Emma, will soon be in her second-grade play without her mother present.”

Unexpected things can trigger her family, Ms. Lior said. “Uzi, our three daughters, and I played Words With Friends and other brainteaser games every morning. We post our scores daily and are very competitive.” About two weeks after Ilana died, Ms. Lior received a gob-smacking message on her phone from Words With Friends that said, in large blinking letters: CONGRATULATIONS… YOU WON… ILANA TIMED OUT! “While I knew it was just an algorithm responsible for sending me the alert, it was a gut punch,” she said.