Weeping husband delivers special heartbreaking tribute to teacher and mom of 4 who died after driving SUV into Long Island pool
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The weeping husband of a Long Island teacher and mom of four killed when her car plunged into the family pool paid heartbreaking tribute to her Sunday — reciting a moving Jewish wedding prayer at her funeral.
“I’m sorry I didn’t say that at her wedding. I can’t imagine more fitting words for the woman you were,” said Allison Rahmani’s stricken husband, Matthew Rahmani — who was supposed to embark on a romantic getaway to Paris with his 40-year-old wife the day she was laid to rest.
Matthew, president of Irving Place Minyan Modern Orthodox Synagogue in Woodmere, read from the “Eshet Chayil,” or “Woman of Valor” prayer, which is often sung by the groom to his new bride at traditional Jewish nuptials.
The husband told mourners at Boulevard-Riverside Chapels in Hewlett, Nassau County that his wife supported him through everything, even when they had “lived paycheck to paycheck” in their first apartment as the young couple built their life together.
“Every major decision point in our lives, you took me by the hand, you pulled me, you said it would be OK, that you believed in me, in us,’’ he said.
Praising her as a devoted mother to their four children, he described how Allison had “nurtured them like delicate plants” and said he would “pick up where you left off” as a parent.
The mom and educator died Friday when she lost control of her SUV and plunged into the backyard pool at the family’s Hewlett home.
She managed to call for help but died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Her death remains under investigation.
Friends said the tragedy came just days after her 40th birthday that and the funeral was held on the same day Allison and her husband were set to go on a European vacation.
“We are broken,” Allison’s mother, Rachelle Rohde, said in her eulogy at Sunday’s service. “We will never be the same.
“Now Allison is in shemayim [heaven] with her favorite people in the world,” she said. “To my beloved grandchildren — Nathan, Jake, Zachary and Princess Chlo Chlo — and of course to the one-of-a-kind, her beloved husband, Matthew, Mama loves you all more than you will ever know and will be with you day and night.
“I know you are watching, I know,” Rohde said, speaking to her daughter. “We won’t let you down.”
Shayna Unger, a close friend and fellow teacher, said Allison was fiercely passionate about the children she taught.
When a school mom passed away, Allison went to incredible lengths to fill the void for her grieving children, the pal said.
“She thought about the little girls who no longer had their mother to do their hair,” Unger recalled. “So Ali set up what was basically a beauty salon in her classroom — brushes, hair gels, barrettes, scrunchies, snacks waiting for them. And every morning, Ali did those girls’ hair.
“She wanted them walk into school looking and feeling like every other girl. She wanted their school days to feel as normal as possible.”
One of Allison’s sister described her as “the life of the party,” and an educator who taught “because she loved to.
“You were supposed to be the one sitting on the floor with me and our kids playing games while our kids made fun of us for our laughs and how similarly we sound,” sister Dana Hess told mourners. “It’s so hard to fathom that these things are never going to happen.”