Yahrzeit

December 16, 1999
Timmi was hospitalized this last Sunday in the bone marrow transplant department at Hadassah. Because she had a strange blood count, though, the chemo preparation for the transplant did not begin right away, so the doctors could figure out the reason for the abnormal count. This morning, the doctors aspirated and tested her bone marrow, and found that the reason for the abnormality is that, unfortunately, the cancer has spread beyond her bones themselves and into the marrow. This is, of course, not the most reassuring news that we could have gotten, but it was explained to us that this development does not significantly affect her prognosis or her planned treatment, as these already reflected the fact that the disease is active. She took the news in that spirit, and this evening went out with Shari to a movie and dinner.

Tomorrow morning her treatment will start. She will receive chemo that will not have serious side effects during the first few days, and will probably be able to sleep at home tomorrow night but after that she will probably start sleeping in the hospital for at least a month. Next Wednesday Shari* will start receiving daily injections to increase the number of bone marrow cells in her peripheral blood, and then the next Sunday and Monday the cells will be harvested and the transplant will take place.

Timmi definitely does not want adults, even those she knows well, to visit her in the hospital.

As hard as we expect it to be, we are very glad that the process will finally start tomorrow, and pray, of course, that it will be successful. Thank you all for your wishes and prayers as well.

Love,
Sara

*Lisa (our oldest daughter) was Timmi's bone marrow donor for her first transplant; Shari (number three and just before Timmi) was the donor for the second.

December 25, 2004
Last Wednesday was Timmi’s fourth yahrzeit (Yiddish for "anniversary of death"). This year we put a lot of thought into how to mark Timmi's yahrzeit. On the one hand, it's important to Don and me to hold the traditional ceremony by her graveside, as we have for the past three years. The ceremony is public, and announced to our religious community, friends and extended family. This is important for two reasons – first, the presence of a minyan (quorum of ten men) allows us to say Kaddish, the prayer sanctifying God’s name that is recited by Jewish mourners at the funeral, during the mourning period following the death, and on the yahrzeit of a close relative. Second, it recognizes Timmi as a person who affected many others beside her immediate family, and gives them the chance to mourn her as well.

Some of our children, though, have a problem with the public ceremony. For them, mourning Timmi is an intensely private affair, and they strongly dislike having others – especially adults, and even more especially adults with whom they have no relationship - present at this most personal of moments. For many of the same reasons that Timmi didn’t want adults to visit her while she was in the hospital, the children become upset when people who are almost strangers come up to them, look at them pityingly and try to touch them – even to hug them. Although I understand that these gestures come from a deep caring, the children find the experience profoundly disturbing. On the other hand, they do want a graveside ceremony at which they may express their mourning on the day of the yahrzeit.

So this year, we decided to hold two ceremonies on Wednesday – a public traditional ceremony followed by private time for just our family. Two days later, the girls in Timmi’s high school class also held a gathering in her memory; I’ll write about that gathering in my next post.

At the public ceremony, we observed the traditional customs of reciting Psalms chosen in accordance with the letters in Timmi’s name, the mourners' Kaddish, and the prayer for remembering the departed, “El Male Rahamim” (Most Merciful God). In the middle of the service, the mother of Timmi’s oldest friend, Nechama, read aloud a very moving letter that Nechama had written from Italy. In her letter Nechama (who knew Timmi since they were babies together) expressed her pain at losing Timmi in words that reflected my feelings and those of many others of the many, many people who loved Timmi. The letter opens thus (I’m translating from Hebrew):

“Four years have already passed, years that seem like an eternity. Years without you. Years of explaining about you, and anger at having to explain at all. When you lay in your deep, final sleep toward the end, your mother invited me to write you a good-bye letter. Good-bye!!! To this day, that letter is somewhere in my head, and I haven’t been able to write it the way it should be written. It’s still not everything I wanted to say. When you left, you tore off a huge piece of me. And not only did that piece go with you, but there’s only one person to whom I could explain it, and that’s you – and you aren’t here. But at the same time, something was added to my life – a greater desire to live, memories and scenes that I take in for both of us, things you never got to experience. How beautiful this world is, how many incredible views I see in my head… and how these views fill with sadness every second that you’re not here.”

At out family’s graveside gathering, we found ourselves especially remembering Timmi the writer. Some of our memories were tinged with the sadness of being reminded that some things have been lost forever. Lisa told us that when Timmi was in high school and Lisa was spending a few months with my sister in California, Timmi mailed her a story she had written. “I’m not going to insult your intelligence by interpreting the story for you,” Timmi wrote in the accompanying letter. Lisa remembered that the story was extremely subtle and complex, and that in fact she did find it hard to understand. But she couldn’t bring herself to ask Timmi to explain it to her. “What, here I was, her big sister, whose intelligence she said she wouldn’t insult by interpreting the story – was I really going to ask her for an explanation?!?” But now there's nothing she’d want more than to ask Timmi what her story meant, and to hear her answer.

Elaine also remembered a story Timmi had written when she was in sixth grade, and Elaine was in third. “I can’t remember the details of the story,” Elaine said. “But I remember thinking at the time that it was the most brilliant story I’d ever read. Years later, I wanted to read the story again, and asked her whatever became of it. She told me she’d thrown it away because it wasn’t good enough.”

But not all of Timmi's writing was lost. Thankfully, she left behind many stories, poems and drafts of poems. And so, as the afternoon drew to a close, as the sun set over the Jerusalem hills, Don sang us one of Timmi’s unfinished poems, which he's set to music. The poem, like much of the writing she left us, is beautiful and painful. But I’m grateful for this pain, because it’s one part of Timmi that’s remained with me.

Again, I translate from the Hebrew:

To live this moment
To breathe this time
Not to think what the future will bring, if anything
Not to remember what hurt, what was missed, what was lost
To enjoy the here and now.

Or

To move away from what is
To glide out of time
Toward a dream that was, that will be, that can be
And to forget all the tormented present
Because the truth is unthinkable.

Reversals of Fortune

December 5, 1999
Well, as seems to have happened quite often since Timmi's relapse, the plans for her treatment have been interrupted. As I mentioned in my last update, Timmi was formally hospitalized in the bone marrow transplant department last Wednesday in anticipation of the transplant, although she has slept each night since then at home and was home for Shabbat as well. The plan was for her to start the preparatory chemotherapy tomorrow, and for the transplant itself to take place in about two weeks.

Unfortunately, a low fever that Timmi had been having on and off over the last few days, instead of going away as we had hoped, developed over Shabbat into a serious fever (39C). As a result, she went into the hospital tonight (Saturday night) and will probably receive antibiotics there (pediatric department) for several days. Because she cannot get chemo during an infection, the transplant will have to be deferred.

This is unfortunate for two reasons. One, the in-between period after Paris and before the transplant has been difficult emotionally for Timmi; dragging it out will not do her much good in that department. In addition, Timmi has been feeling cancer pains again recently, which is a sign that things are again going in the wrong direction. While she never achieved full remission this time around, we had hoped that she would start the transplant process with as few cancer cells as possible in her body. The delay in commencing treatment just gives the existing cells that much more time to be fruitful and multiply.

I will write again when I know the revised schedule. Until then, Shavua Tov* to you all.

Love, S.

*Shavua Tov – A good week (a greeting for the day after the Sabbath).

December 10, 1999
Yesterday Timmi was released from the hospital, after having been hospitalized since Saturday night with a fever, apparently due to a virus. As a result, the transplant was deferred, and we must call the hospital on Sunday to see if there is a bed in the bone marrow department. If there is, she will start her preparation then, rather than this past Sunday as was originally planned. If not, she will get the first bed available.

Her mood is rather brittle - she can easily go from up to down, from happy to annoyed and angry, and also (luckily) vice versa. As for me, I am quite tired, having run around all week, and with Chanukah on top of everything. Actually Chanukah, though a fair amount of work, has been fun; Monday evening we all brought the latkes I made to the hospital and had a party with Timmi.

If the transplant really does start next week, at least it will be when the kids are back in school, and for a pretty long stretch before the next holiday.

Shabbat Shalom to all -
Sara

December 15, 2004
Last Shabbat, the Torah portion that we read in the synagogue left us in the middle of the very dramatic story that ends the Book of Genesis – that of Joseph and his brothers. Joseph’s is a story of near-constant reversals of fortune. In one day, he went from his privileged life as Jacob’s favorite son to being sold by his brothers into slavery in a foreign land. In one hour, he went from his status the trusted servant of the wealthy and influential Potiphar to that of a prisoner, with no knowledge of how long he would remain in prison. He was taken from his prison to rule second only to Pharaoh and to marry the Egyptian High Priest’s daughter, ultimately to be reconciled with his brothers and reunited with his father.

Each of the future lives that Joseph might realistically have envisioned for himself at any one time – as a shepherd, as a slave, as a prisoner and as a stranger to his family - turned out not to be his ultimate fate. Though he was a visionary who could interpret dreams to predict the future, he surely couldn’t have mapped out in advance the turns that his life was to take. But Joseph learned to accept that very unpredictability. He learned, and repeated first to his fellow prisoners and then to Pharaoh himself, that all things come from God. That faith allowed him, in each new life in which he found himself, to refuse to give in to the despair that might have paralyzed another in his position. Instead, he strove to be the best person he could be in the circumstances in which he found himself, and to transform evil into good. Through that faith, he was able to redeem his own personal life - and to save the lives of his own family as well as those of countless others in Egypt and its surrounding counties. I am trying very hard to learn, remember and apply this lesson in my own life.

If someone had asked me when I was twenty what I believed was in store for me thirty years down the line, I probably would have answered quite confidently. Clearly, I would be living in a pleasant and stimulating city in the United States. I would have a family of two or at most three children, who would grow up to share my (and my husband’s) values and ideals. These children would already be either starting out in their own careers or advancing in their studies. I would have a high-powered job - most probably in a profession in which I was saving the world, or at least some part of it, for example as a public interest lawyer - and would have reached the apex of my career. Life would be orderly and fulfilling, and the traumas and sadness of my childhood and teenage years would be far behind me.

And here I am living in a pleasant, stimulating city – where it’s normal to see men in civilian clothes walking around with automatic weapons. Just now, I’m contemplating my third career change. I raised seven(!) children, none of whom (so far) started university studies before the age of 24. (OK, so Sheila started studying drumming at a music school when she was 20, but she didn’t go on with music.) To my great pride and pleasure, all of my children share Don’s and my values and ideals, and act on them. But not all of them grew up.

Everyone knows that life throws you curve balls. But some curve balls are harder than others, and more unexpected. Becoming an observant Jew after growing up Jewish but belonging to no religious stream, marrying an Israeli and moving to Jerusalem, changing my career plans, having the formerly unimaginable number of seven children, all those things weren’t in the original plan but were still in the realm of the conceivable. But having a child die of cancer at the age of 18 was - literally - unthinkable.

While Timmi was ill, our family’s life reflected in “micro” – on the day-to-day level – the dramatic reversals that I had experienced on the “macro” level in my own life. Like other families of children with cancer, we lived for years with unexpected developments and changes in plans, any of which could have meant life or death. A delay in starting any one of Timmi's many courses of treatment could have meant the treatment would come too late. Putting off a transplant isn't like putting off a trip to Paris. For six years, I lived with the almost-constant awareness that, as Arundhati Roy writes in one of my favorite books, The God of Small Things, things can change in a day.

Under these circumstances, I had pretty much two choices as a person of religious faith. One would have been to believe at every stage that things would go as we were planning right then. But this would have caused me constant anxiety and frustration at each of the many setbacks we experienced in the up-and-down course of Timmi’s battle with leukemia. Ultimately, it would have thrown me into despair as my expectations were shattered time and time again. When it means blindly believing that all will be well, faith is easily lost when real life trumps expectation.

My other option was to learn a deep kind of patience based on a different kind of faith. This kind of faith doesn’t make any assumptions about the course my life, and the lives of my loved ones, will take. Rather, it keeps me believing in a loving God even in a cruel world. It enables me to go on, even though I know that life holds absolutely no guarantees. It teaches me that I have and will continue to have the strength to do the right thing at any given moment, even when everything around me seems completely wrong. It helps me to try to be the best person I possibly can be even in what sometimes seems to be the worst of all possible worlds. This is the faith I've chosen, and I try my best to nurture and to live by it.

Joseph started out with a dream that made him so sure of his future that he had no trouble bragging about it to his envious brothers. That smug assurance brought about his original downfall. It was only when he learned to concentrate on doing God’s will in the present, and to leave the future in God’s hands, that Joseph’s dream was ultimately fulfilled, and that good came out of all the evil he had experienced in his life. I wish for all of us the wisdom and the serenity to do the same.

The Bare Necessities: Food

December 6, 2004
This post is a continuation of the previous one, "Paris," in which I descibed Timmi's and my trip to Paris five years ago.
Tonight we’re taking Aimee and Danny out to dinner. This is part of a revolutionary new system that we’ve very recently adopted – regular meals. OK, so it’s not revolutionary, but it is a re-normalization of a very important part of our family's life, a part that had fallen victim to our chaotic lifestyle when Timmi was ill, and to Don’s and my emotional exhaustion after she died. It’s one more example of our having to work hard to get to a place that most families take for granted.

Food, as everyone knows, is more than just a bare necessity. Eating can be one of life’s true pleasures, or it can be a source of tension or obsession. How we eat together also has a great deal to do with a family’s dynamics, and with the various relationships and interrelationships among its members. I was always proud that we made sure to have a family dinner every night. I’ve heard that the members of two-career families often eat separately, each according to a seldom-overlapping schedule. But I love eating with my husband and children. As a mother, especially, eating with my children gives me the biological satisfaction of seeing nourishment go into their bodies, and the deep happiness of spending enjoyable time together.

One of Timmi’s symptoms when her cancer first surfaced was a loss of appetite, and she started getting thinner and thinner. This was especially striking because Timmi – like all my children – had loved to eat. As with her other symptoms, we couldn’t figure it out. Because her Bat Mitzva was coming up, it was easy to think that she’d stopped eating out of worry or nervousness. Many people told me stories of other girls who at the age of eleven and a half had stopped eating or suffered all kinds of inexplicable symptoms, which miraculously disappeared after their Bat Mitzva ceremony and celebration.

A scarier possibility was an eating disorder. When Timmi was first hospitalized for tests, doctors and nurses kept asking her about her eating habits. One of them asked her if she thought she was fat. She answered, “Are you kidding? Look at me! And you might as well accept it – No, I am NOT anorexic.”

As it turned out, her bone marrow was stuffed solid with leukemia cells, and the resulting anemia was what caused her appetite to fade away. And that, of course, was only the beginning.

During the treatment for Timmi’s first bout with cancer, and then again after she relapsed, food became a source of near-constant worry and tension. Chemotherapy, radiation and the effects of her bone marrow transplant made her unable to eat for much of the time. Things lost their taste, or tasted different, or hurt her mouth to eat. Just when she could have used any physical comfort she could get, food lost its pleasure for her.

We set about trying to get Timmi to eat any way we could. Hospital food was, of course, out of the question; it didn't appeal to her in the least. We ran all over the hospital – and the city! – buying food that we thought might tempt her or that she felt she wanted. More often than not, she would take two bites and reject the rest. It didn’t taste the way she had fantasized it tasting, or she just wasn't hungry enough to make the effort. She continued wasting away, and there was nothing we could do about it.

(There were, of course, those wonderful times during remissions, when Timmi could again taste and appreciate food. For me, few pleasures matched watching her eat with appetite and enjoyment. The restaurants we visited in Paris were every bit as central a feature of the trip as the city’s museums, monuments, parks and cultural events. She especially loved those chestnuts that sidewalk vendors there wrap up in a paper cone and serve hot. And just as I loved feeding her and watching her eat, she loved sharing the bounty by feeding pigeons and other animals in the Paris streets. I have several pictures of her, for example, sitting outside the Notre Dame cathedral with birds perched along both her arms, on her lap and on her head, where she had pretty much invited them by scattering bread and other goodies for them.)

Our food troubles didn’t stop at Timmi. Due to the demands of her care, the other children’s needs and my job, I was unable to cook for that entire first year. We hired women to take the kids in the afternoon and to cook dinner, and members of our religious community cooked us nearly all of our Shabbat meals. After a while, the children started complaining that they didn’t like the food in the house any more. So I constantly worried about getting food not just into Timmi, but into the other children as well. And as for myself – well, I gained about 16 kilograms (35 pounds) that year, from grabbing meals here and there when I could, from eating out of anxiety or depression, from eating the sweets and snacks people brought Timmi and she could barely look at, and from hundreds of hours sitting on my behind in the hospital.

After a year of no cooking, I lost my love for it. Cooking became a chore and a burden, and meals at home became simpler and less creative. But at that point there was still some stability for the children. They didn’t complain about our meals because we did manage to have a family dinner most evenings, and anyway children can happily eat pasta or potatoes every night. The main thing was that Mama made it. So, as time went on and Timmi’s remission held, we regained a certain equilibrium as far as food and meals went.

After Timmi died, I lost what balance had remained in my life, and cooking, like most other non-emergency activities, fell by the wayside. Don was also emotionally squeezed out. So we started bringing home bagels, ordering pizza or Chinese, or scraping together fast meals from the freezer. We tried splitting responsibility for cooking into his days and my days, but our lack of energy for the task meant that very little got cooked from fresh or whole ingredients. Don and I developed dietary limitations, and the children adopted others (Elaine became a vegan for a while), so that between these limitations and the children’s differing tastes it became almost impossible to serve one meal that everyone could and would eat. As time went on and the children became busier with their own schedule, we cooked fewer and fewer fresh meals. (Shabbat saved us from total abdication - we continued always to honor the Sabbath with hearty meals.)

In a sense, we were repeating what Timmi had gone through. Can’t eat this, won’t eat that, what I want isn’t available without going to a lot of trouble, and I don’t have the energy to take the trouble…

As things got worse over the past year – at least from the point of view of home-cooked meals – Danny and Aimee reacted by absorbing our home’s culinary chaos into their own lives. Most nights, Aimee would stay out with her friends and would eat either nothing or something fast but not particularly healthful. Danny’s eating habits also became increasingly irregular; he would sometimes go for almost 24 hours without eating at all or eating nothing but plain bread. Needless to say, this didn't do much for his emotional or physical state. Explanations were useless, and more than once he told me flat out: “Mom, if I hear another word about protein and vitamins, I swear I’ll go nuts!”

Recently, we brought up food, eating habits and mealtimes with the parenting consultant we’ve been seeing. It was clear to both Don and me that things had to change. We missed having family dinners, and for that matter nutritious meals. We quickly decided to reinstate dinner together as a regular and reliable part of our family life, whether or not everyone is home to eat it; it is worth cooking for “only” two or three people. And once we gave meals together a high priority, we were able to think of ways to accommodate everyone’s dietary needs and preferences, involve Danny and Aimee as active partners in the process, and make eating into a fun activity once again.

Now we have a schedule that really seems to work; it’s been in place now for about two and a half weeks, and I hope it continues to go smoothly. On Sunday, Don works late and I cook for myself and the two children who live at home. Monday is restaurant night, and we take them out to an inexpensive place (they alternate choosing the restaurant). On Tuesday, Aimee plans and cooks diner. Wednesdays, Don and Danny plan and cook together, if Danny has no other plans for the evening. Thursdays we improvise, and I cook for Shabbat – as I've always done – on Friday.

Preparing meals is very routine for most people, and you may be wondering why I’ve spent all this space on the subject. The answer is that I've found the subject to be absolutely crucial. Our new dinner routine has brought our family closer together, just as the old lack of routine was driving us apart. Aimee now comes home for dinner most nights, and Danny has begun to eat a more balanced diet – both at dinner and at fairly regular intervals during the day. He’s even willing to listen when I speak to him about nutrition. The four of us are all pulling together, and enjoying each other’s company in the process. When our older daughters drop by at dinnertime, they find both good food and good company.

In this small (or perhaps not so small) part of our lives, I believe, our family has taken one more step in our journey toward healing. Now, when I think of feeding my children, I feel far less of the frustration and failure that I felt first when I couldn’t feed Timmi at all and then when I couldn’t seem to manage to feed my other children properly. Now, I feel far more strongly an echo of the joy I felt in Paris, as I watched Timmi munch happily on warm chestnuts and share her pleasure in being alive with the other living creatures that she loved to feed.

Paris

December 1, 1999
Here it is, as promised, the full scoop and lowdown on Timmi's and my trip to Paris. I can write this for two reasons: (1) Timmi will be sleeping at home for the first few nights of her hospitalization, including tonight, and (2) I sprained my ankle so I can't run around doing anything else.

As I mentioned to some of you in synagogue, Timmi had a terrific time and the trip did for her what we had hoped - she was very active and so came back stronger physically and emotionally in good shape, with lots of good memories and plans for future trips. The weather was quite bad - very cold, and cloudy all the time (I think we saw a half hour total of sun during the whole trip) but there's so much to do indoors in Paris that it didn't matter. As a general rule, we took cabs to our first destination, but as cabs can practically not be hailed on the street in Paris, we got around the rest of the time by Metro. Timmi at first found the steps hard to negotiate, but eventually the effort strengthened her legs so that by the end she could take several trains a day.

The day we arrived we had to get organized, so the most we could do was go to a restaurant (meat). Nothing to write home about, but an outing, and afterwards we walked a bit around the neighborhood of the restaurant. By the way, we had been seated for all of five minutes when who walked in but Moshe K.! Pretty small world.

The next day, Thursday, we went to the Picasso Museum, which is located in one of the two Jewish areas of Paris. Timmi found it fascinating. By the way, as a general comment she is the best possible travel companion, being interested in absolutely everything and having interesting things to say about all of it. After the museum we went to lunch in a very nice dairy restaurant on the rue des Rosiers. Altogether Timmi's appetite improved in Paris, due probably both to her improved mood and to her increased physical activity. We then went all the way up the Eiffel Tower, which was fun but freezing! We then went back for a quiet evening at the apartment of my high school friend Laurette, with whom we stayed.

Friday we had to prepare for Shabbat so couldn't do much, so we went to see the outside of the Louvre, ate roasted chestnuts and walked through the Tuileries to the obelisk at Place de la Concorde. We then had a lovely Kabbalat Shabbat* with Laurette and her family. Timmi and I sang most of Kabbalat Shabbat and her kids were quite fascinated, never having heard anything like it before.

Shabbat was lazy - we tried walking outside but it was too cold so we just rested (that's what it's for, after all).

Sunday we drove with Laurette and her family to Versailles, and saw the palace inside and out. Despite the sub-freezing temperature we took a mini-train ride around the gardens as well. This was the only part of the trip during which Timmi used the wheelchair we brought, because the palace is simply so large. She loved it, of course. Afterwards she and I went to an experimental dance performance in a very small theater. The first dance was a bit too depressing for us, but the second was fun, being based on childhood games.

Mondays almost all of the museums in Paris are closed, and besides we were both quite tired, so all we did during the day was go to Notre Dame, and out for lunch (again the dairy place on the rue des Rosiers). It was the first time Timmi had ever been in a church, and she found it very beautiful. She was very disappointed that she couldn't climb up the three-hundred-and-some steps to the tower where one can see the gargoyles up close, but we put that on the list of things to do next time. That evening we went to another, somewhat more established experimental dance theater. What can I say? We've both decided we have had enough experimental dance now to last us at least a good year or two.

On Tuesday we went to the Museum of Music (Veronica, bless your heart for having told us about it), where one can see a fascinating collection of old and modern musical instruments, and hear them in great music on headphones. This was really great! After the museum we went to Kookai and got Timmi several items of very fashionable clothes, many of which were on sale, and went out to dinner (again a meat restaurant and nothing special, but pretty nice).

Wednesday morning we went to the Doll Museum, then to a different dairy restaurant in the 5th arrondissement (also very good), and then to the Musee d'Orsay which, like everything else, Timmi loved. We didn't get to see all of the museum so this also went onto our "next trip" list. That evening Laurette drove us around Paris by night - the bridges lit up on the Seine, various monuments lit up, the Champs d'Elysees with every other tree wrapped up in white like a Christmas package (I'm not joking) and altogether the Christmas lights, which of course were new to Timmi. We also drove all around Montmartre and to the Sacre Coeur.

Thursday we flew back home. I must add that both our flights were exceptionally smooth, and the El Al attendants very nice.

As I said, Timmi expects to spend her time during the transplant process planning the next trip, back to Paris and to London and to Italy and and and.....

If you've gotten this far, and even if you haven't, I wish all of you a very happy Chanukah.

Love, S.

* Kabbalat Shabbat – Friday night prayers welcoming the Sabbath.


December 1, 2004
What can I say about that trip to Paris? I’m extraordinarily grateful that I was able to do it with her. There are so many things to say about that trip, and so many themes connected with it – fun, food, clothing, art and beauty, Timmi’s plans for the future…

But the description of the trip is long enough so that I won’t wear out your patience by adding my reflections today. Maybe in the next few days. But for me, for the moment, the memories stand by themselves, and I want – just for now – to simply allow myself to remember, and flow with the many and mixed feelings with which that amazing week has left me.