Understanding Betsy: A Story

I wrote Understanding Betsy about twenty years ago. In 2007, it received Honorable Mention in an online short story contest.

It's about mothers and daughters, fathers and daughters, and mothers and fathers. I hope it will speak to you.

Going with the Flow on the River Jordan

Last week Daniel and I took a three-night mini-vacation in the northern Galilee. The August heat being what it is in the Holy Land, we concentrated our daytime activities around water: On the way up we stopped to swim in the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee); another day we sat first under a waterfall and, later, in a bubbling natural spring surrounded by fig trees.

Best, for me, was when we spent about an hour and a half kayaking down the Jordan. Besides being extremely fun, our downstream ride reinforced one of life’s most important lessons: Many of our most intense experiences are kindest to us when we let go and let them take us where they will.

In the place we started, very near the Lebanon border, the Jordan is quite lively even in the summer, many months after the last rains. The water splashes its way swiftly down over rocks and, at one point, a mini-waterfall, tossing and literally turning any object it’s carrying along. Daniel and I had our hands full, paddling and trying to keep the kayak facing forward.

I know Daniel is smiling here and I’m not, but my grimace doesn’t really mean anything other than the sun in my eyes – I really was having a great time. But there’s no mistaking the tension in my hands and arms as I grip the paddle (yes, I know, in the wrong place), doing my best to steer.

Even when the water calmed down, it was all we could do to keep our kayak straight and more or less centered. In fact, it was a losing battle. The water continually brought us to one riverbank, then the other, then back again. Every time we bumped into a rock, a tree trunk, or another kayak – or simply when the current felt like playing with us – our vessel spun around and sent us on our way facing backward – or sideways! – and we’d scramble once again to straighten ourselves.

After about a quarter of an hour of constant effort, I had an epiphany. I turned to Daniel and said, “Why don’t we just see what happens if we stop paddling?” He immediately agreed – and the trip took on a completely new quality.

We lay back, put our feet up, and surrendered to the River Jordan:

Sunlight sparkling on water below and on trees above, alternating with rippling shadow.

Cold splashes on our sun-warmed skin.

Water rushing, treetops whispering, birds conversing, children laughing.

A black-and-white-striped kingfisher darting out and hovering very close to us for a few seconds before disappearing back into the thick foliage.

A buoyancy, a rocking, gentle to the point where it seemed I might fall asleep when the water slowed down, and vigorous enough to get my blood flowing as exuberantly as the river itself when it sped up.

Letting my mind drift here and there, in and out of the physical world.

Truly knowing that there was nowhere I needed to be right then except where I was, in that place, in that moment.

Best of all, time stretched. Doing nothing to actively move ourselves forward, we spent as long on the river as its own pace would allow, which – inevitably – felt much too short.

The Jordan is not deep, and it’s far from wide. But it does offer milk and honey – though not “on the other side,” as a place to be attained, a goal to be reached. The river’s sweetness, for me at least, is in its process – its essence, its very flow.

To be embraced, borne, rocked, and gently taught by the River Jordan – now, that is a true privilege.

Chocolate-Flavored Resilience

What has chocolate got to do with resilience? (You may ask.) I invite you to read on, and see if you agree with my take on this crucial issue.

Chocolate is a wonderful example of the tension that all of us in the modern Western world live with every day – that between pleasure and responsibility. When it comes to chocolate, the “pleasure” part of this dialectic is obvious – everyone (well, almost everyone) loves chocolate. Even better: It’s been discovered that chocolate loves us back, or at least pretends to love us by containing various substances that cause our bodies to release chemicals that make us feel happy and loved.

The “responsibility” side of this tension is not immediately obvious, but it’s very real. It’s composed, really, of two kinds of obligations: to ourselves and our families, on the one hand, and to society on the other. On the personal plane, it’s easy to abuse chocolate as one might abuse any substance. For one thing, we might substitute chocolate for “real” food, thus avoiding our duty to keep ourselves and our children healthy by eating and serving nutritious meals. It’s also possible to use chocolate as an easy way of keeping children quiet – much like plunking them down in front of the television – or of getting them to do what we want, thus avoiding some of our educational obligations toward them.

On the societal level, chocolate is often based on “plantation economies” that exploit, abuse, or even enslave their workers. In addition, some of the larger cocoa plantations were carved out of rain forests, thus contributing to the destruction of ecosystems that are vital to their countries’ – and indeed, the world’s – environmental health, perhaps even survival. Finally, in a hungry world, the land, water and financial resources presently used to make cocoa – a plant without nutritional value – might be better devoted to raising that nourishing food which, if we were really good, we’d be eating instead.

Put this way, it would seem pretty clear that we should act in accordance with personal and social responsibility, and shun what has – despite or perhaps because of its sinful qualities – become a kind of icon of Western culture. The Protestant ethic (which, Jewish as I am, I’ve absorbed together with everyone else in the West) would pretty much unconditionally seem to demand no less.

But I wonder if the very opposition of “pleasure versus duty” is as simple as that. We need to nourish not only our bodies, but our souls as well. An emotionally balanced person knows how to enjoy herself. Overly duty-oriented people tend to be rather grim, and can make their own lives miserable – as well as the lives of everyone around them. Moreover, people forced (whether by others or by their own conscience) to spend all their time tending to their responsibilities tend to get exhausted, thus rendering themselves far less efficient. Injecting enjoyment into our lives can give us the strength, and the good humor, to fulfill our obligations with a smile. If we spread the sunshine, others will also enjoy the lightness of heart to do what they need to do – and to pass the sunshine on.

So pleasure greases the world’s wheels, so to speak. Freud, of course, knew this well, as did the composer(s) of the well-known Jewish folktale in which God temporarily suspended the Yetzer HaRa (the “Evil Inclination,” including our most basic drive to pleasure), which caused life itself to stop.

To take the argument further, recharging our batteries regularly with pleasurable “fuel” can strengthen us not only to do what we need to in our personal lives, but to go beyond the call of immediate duty and work for the greater good, for example by volunteering for organizations working for social justice, or for sustainable development, or for any number of good causes.

I know that I personally am much more effective in my own work helping people who are suffering from depression, anxiety, and trauma when I'm making sure to spend time and energy on myself, doing – including eating! – things that make me feel good. As a matter of fact, I would go so far as to say that my ability to enjoy myself without guilt is one of the gifts God has given me to make me resilient. Put more simply, when I do good stuff for myself, I can bounce back that much more easily when the bad stuff happens.

Finally, life doesn’t have to be all or nothing! We don’t need to choose between Spartanism and Hedonism; we can take our pleasure in moderation. And nowadays the choice between social vice and virtue need not be so sharp, either. For example, one can find lists of “slave-free” chocolate brands, and there are several international organizations now advising cocoa-producers how they can make their farms environmentally sustainable.

So go ahead and eat that (Fair Trade!) chocolate every day. It might just be a mitzvah.

Unblocked, and Grateful

Here’s another entry in my Grief and Gratitude series.

Today I’m planning to submit a short story to a literary journal for possible publication, the one I mentioned in my previous post. I’m very excited about this, partly because finishing a story always moves me, but also because this story is palpable proof that I’ve become unblocked – I can indeed go on writing even after publishing my memoir.

I’ve been writing stories, in fits and starts, since I was six. My first was called “Susan the Clown,” and told the story of a clown whose big, awkward feet saved the day by outrunning the bad guys when her circus was robbed. Since then I’ve had long dry periods, but have come back to writing time and again as a way to process my experience and express my creativity.

While I was writing my original blog, and when I started to transform it into And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, I was afraid I’d never again be able to write about anything unconnected with my daughter’s death. Then a friend told me about a three-day workshop on writing dialogue that was to be given in my area. Thinking it would help me with the book, I signed up.

Well, it did help with the memoir but, equally important, it showed me that I could still make stuff up – and stuff that had nothing to do with illness or death, at that. Since then I’ve participated in several workshops run by the same program, a writing group, and a regular writing course. These allayed my fear that I'd never write again once the book was out.

Then a new fear replaced my original one: Perhaps I could do writing exercises or even start stories, but I’d never be able to finish an entire story. Worse, all I seemed able to write was fictionalized memoir – stories so closely based on my own experience that I felt they didn’t “count” as fiction. True, one if my stories was accepted for publication in Israel Short Stories, an anthology of short fiction written by English-language writers living in Israel, but I’d written it about twenty years ago and only slightly revised it for submission last year. I was afraid the well of my creativity had dried up.

But for the past several weeks I’ve taken a short memoir that I started in the writing group and transformed it into a story with a completely different protagonist and message, as well as a main plot that I invented. And today I’m submitting it.

In my post Writing and Resilience, I related how writing about Timora’s illness and death has helped me process my traumatic experience, and how writing helped Timora deal with hers. I think that moving forward – beyond my trauma – with my writing is integrally bound up with moving forward in my life; that is, with my resilience.

And I’m truly, truly grateful for that.

Virtual Tour: Reiki and Resilience

Wow, I see it's been two full weeks since I last posted. I've been writing a short story to submit for publication; hopefully it will be accepted and I'll be able to let you know when it actually appears.

In the meantime, the final stop on my virtual book tour for my memoir was Moonlight, Lace, and Mayhem, in which I wrote a guest post on Timora's experience with the Japanese healing technique Reiki. Here's the post:

At the age of twelve, my daughter Timora was diagnosed with leukemia. I’d like to share with you how Reiki, a traditional Japanese healing technique, helped her for a good part of her time in this world, until she left it at the age of eighteen. The story is, I believe, a wonderful example of how body and spirit are intertwined, and how attending to our spiritual side can help us even as we face physical hardship.

Reiki, which means “mysterious atmosphere; spiritual power,” channels healing energy from the spiritual world through a practitioner’s hands into the body of a person who is physically or emotionally suffering. When Edna, the Reiki Master to whom we turned, laid hands on Timora, her pain would decrease, the color would return to her face and lips, and she would relax as she could under no other circumstances. She told me it was if a gentle light was radiating from Edna’s hands and spreading throughout her body. Edna taught her to lay hands on herself between sessions, which relieved not only her pain, but also the depression that would grip her from time to time, and helped her sleep on nights when everything seemed just too much to bear.

No less important than the treatments themselves were the five Reiki Principles that Edna taught Timora to recite every day:

Just for today, I’ll let go of anger.

Just for today, I’ll let go of worry.

Just for today, I’ll be grateful for what I have.

Just for today, I’ll work with integrity.

Just for today, I’ll be kind to others and to myself.

Timora, raised in our observant Jewish family, had always had a strong religious sensibility, but Reiki gave her the opportunity to express her spiritual leanings directly and practically. After three treatments, she asked to study Reiki in order to practice it herself.

I’ve written a memoir entitled And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, which describes my journey with Timora over the six-plus years of her illness, and without her after she died. In it, I describe how she delighted in her ability to relieve other people’s suffering, even when she herself was undergoing the most extreme of treatments:

Timora was a natural healer, a vessel for a life-affirming energy that would pass through her to others when she laid hands on them…. Once, while she was hospitalized for her second bone marrow transplant, Tehila, [a hospital] volunteer… came to visit her feeling nervous and upset about something that was happening in her life at that time. Timora got out of her bed and made Tehila lie down. She then stood by the bedside and gave her a Reiki treatment. Tehila fell asleep almost instantly and woke up a short time later feeling much better, saying she hadn’t had such a refreshing and relaxing rest in a very long time. Timora later told me the healing energy that had passed through her body into Tehila had refreshed and eased her as well – physically as well as spiritually.

Timora’s Reiki journey didn’t end, it seems, even with her death. Edna has told me that sometimes, when she is treating a client, she feels Timora right there alongside her, strengthening the energy that is pouring through her and into the person they’re both helping.

Edna told Timora the day we met her, “Reiki won’t cure you, but it can heal you.” After my daughter’s experience, there is no doubt in my mind that whatever our burdens, if we open ourselves to what the spiritual world has to offer us, it will help us heal – by easing and enriching our path through this unpredictable, and often cruel, material world.

Virtual Tour: Another Very Positive Review for Twice the Marrow

As part of my virtual book tour, Jody Nicholl reviewed my memoir on the blog Susan Heim on Parenting. Susan Heim is editor of the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series, and author of other parenting books. Here is the review:

I can’t even imagine losing a child, and I pray that I never have to deal with that. My husband lost his sister when he was 10. She got sick with a brain tumor when she was 2 and passed away when she was 12. It was 10 hard years of being in and out of the hospital for them, and I am sure it took a toll on the whole family. She was loved so much and, still to this day, 27 years later, tears are shed at the mention of her name.

Reading And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones made me thankful for my healthy little girl. Susan Petersen Avitzour writes this heartfelt memoir of how she lost her daughter, Timora, to cancer. She talks about the journey she went on with her daughter, which started at the young age of 11, the struggles they had to endure, and the way they had to sculpt their lives to meet the needs of not only Timora, but the other children in the family. All this makes this mom a hero in my eyes. It must have been so hard for her to stay strong and keep positive in the eyes of others. The writing is beautiful, and even though some people try and stay away from a non-cheery read, I really suggest you give it a shot. There is just something about this book that made it hard to put down … something about this mother that made me want to try harder and do better. It’s one of those books you will want to read and recommend to others.

Virtual Tour: How I Learned to Live in the Present

This is a post I wrote for Stephen Tremp's blog, Breakthrough Blogs, as part of the virtual tour for my memoir:

We usually think of a personal breakthrough as a realization, or a new idea, that all at once changes the way we see things. I’d like to tell you about a more gradual kind of breakthrough – a personal process that slowly but dramatically changed the way I experience my life.

Like so many others in the modern world, I spent most of my adult life preparing for the future. But the future I anticipated never really came, because by the time my plans actually worked out I was so busy planning the next stage of my life that I barely had time or energy to appreciate the fruits of my labors.

Then, just after my daughter Timora turned twelve, she was diagnosed with leukemia. Suddenly, there was no way we could predict what would happen the next day, let alone the coming weeks, months, or even years, and so planning became nearly impossible. Daily tasks like cooking and shopping gave way to scheduled and unscheduled visits to the doctor. Weekly schedules became subject to the possibility of sudden hospitalizations. And longer term? Well, with almost no notice I could lose my daughter. How could I possibly prepare for that?

I coped by developing a new skill – I learned to live in the present. I cultivated what I now recognize as mindfulness – attentiveness to whatever was happening in the present moment. I didn’t stop all planning, of course, but I directed most of my thoughts to the here and now. Most of the time I left the future to God, in whose hands it rested anyway.

This new (for me) way of being turned out to be a true blessing. Paradoxically, as I let go of the idea that I actually had the power to determine the course of my future, I also let go of a great deal of anxiety – and found myself better able to experience my life more fully as it unfolded. Also, realizing the extent to which nothing in this world is truly permanent made me stop taking the many good things in my world for granted, and appreciate them more deeply.

Especially people. Although I’d always been happiest spending time with those I love, I began to cherish more than ever my moments with them. I also found myself able to give them more of myself than I had before I understood just how fragile our lives really are.

Having learned to live in the present stood me in good stead when the worst finally happened, and Timora died after a six-year struggle. Losing her brought into the sharpest possible focus just how important my surviving loved ones are to me.

I’ve written a memoir called And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, which recalls – among other things – my personal, philosophical, and spiritual journey over almost sixteen years, beginning when Timora’s first symptoms appeared. One of the themes I explore there is the one I’m discussing here:

“When I can say, ‘I’ve done whatever I can for now,’ and at the same time manage to acknowledge the limits of my own power and give my fears and anxieties up to God, I come closer to becoming both whole within myself, and wholly with the other people in my life.”

Our family survived the tsunami of Timora’s illness and death not only intact, but closer than ever. And while I will always carry with me the grief of a bereaved mother, I know that my newfound mindfulness significantly contributed to my resilience – and, ultimately, to that of the rest of my family.

Virtual Tour: Another Glowing Review for Twice the Marrow

As part of my virtual tour, Joyce Anthony reviewed my memoir in her blog Books and Authors. Here's the review:

This is my seventh or eighth attempt at what has to be the most difficult review I have ever written. And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones has a fairly straightforward synopsis. Susan Petersen Avizour had a good job, a loving husband and seven children that meant the world to her. Their lives were ones many yearn for--until the day her middle daughter was diagnosed with leukemia.This book follows Susan and her family through the several years leading up to her daughter's death--and into the aftermath. Through weekly updates at her church, a blog written five years later, based on these updates and poems written by Timora, we get to see how Timora's life, illness and death impacted not only her family, but those around her.

What is complicated about reviewing this book is finding words to describe pure emotion. The author holds nothing back in the telling of her story. You feel her pain, the anguish of feeling that all hope is lost. You feel her great pride in a daughter that tries to make the most of every minute she has on Earth.

Words do not flow from the pages of this book. And Twice the Marrow of her Bones is an exercise in capturing and sharing pure, untainted emotion. The subtitle is "A Mother's Memoir" and that doesn't come close to describing this book. The closest description I can come up with is that this book IS a mother's love.

Women everywhere (and men too) will feel themselves in this book. Even if you have not physically lost a child, every parent fears that chance. As your child moves from babyhood to school and from school to adulthood, you feel a sense of loss for the being they once were. Take that feeling and multiply it a hundredfold and you can come close to what a parent feels when physically losing a child.

This is not an easy book to read. You will find the need to step back and get your emotions in check before continuing. You will have not only the wish, but an undeniable need, to hug your own child. You may even find yourself having to force yourself to let them go. In the end, you will feel as though you have been given one of the greatest gifts in existence, a mother's pure, unconditional love.

I am afraid there arent't enough colors on the Rainbow Scale to rate And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones.

Virtual Tour: Keeping Your Balance When the Earth Shakes

I wrote the following guest post for the blog Leadership Garden Coach, as part of the virtual tour for my memoir. It's called "Keeping Your Balance When the Earth Shakes":

Sometimes it takes a tsunami – serious illness, bereavement and grief, or another disaster – to bring us face to face with our own imperfection. And sometimes recognizing our limitations and reaching out to others for help can ultimately empower us.

We’re all familiar with the myth of Superwoman – the belief that women nowadays should be able to do it all, balancing the demands of workplace and family without batting a well-groomed eyelash. In the early nineties, many people called me “Superwoman,” and I admit that I too tended to think of myself that way. I was working full-time-plus as a lawyer, and my husband Daniel was working almost full-time as an engineer. Together, we were parenting seven children. We had a fairly stable balance worked out; whichever of us was free would do whatever needed doing at home, with some help from the older children. Life seemed manageable.

Then an earthquake struck when our fourth daughter, Timora, was diagnosed with leukemia right after her twelfth birthday. Suddenly, one of us needed to be with her in the hospital, physically and emotionally, all day every day. Someone had to take care of the other children, physically and emotionally. And both of us had our work to keep up.

I’ve written a memoir, entitled And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, about the six-plus of Timora’s illness, and about my emotional, philosophical, and spiritual journey after my world collapsed when she died in 2001. In it, I describe (among many other subjects and themes) how we managed to keep our lives together while Timora was in treatment. It certainly helped that both our workplaces demonstrated great flexibility regarding our work hours. Our older daughters were amazing, staying with Timora in the hospital when they could, often sleeping at her bedside. Our friends and community pitched in as well; we didn’t have to cook at all for the first year, and there were always volunteers whenever we needed errands done.

But no one but Daniel and I could do the most important things for Timora, or for our other children. These overwhelming responsibilities exposed each of our own particular strengths and weaknesses, and I found myself unable, for the first time, to handle certain aspects of my job as a parent. As I write in Twice the Marrow:

“As willing as I was to run around the hospital, the city, or even the country if required to meet Timora’s needs, and to sit by her bedside for long, boring days, there were some parts of the new routine that I wasn’t at all good at. I identified so strongly with her pain or her low mood that I was often unable to keep my perspective. Sometimes, when she felt she couldn’t take it anymore, she’d refuse to take her medications, to allow the nurses to take blood, or otherwise to cooperate in her treatment. At those times, my sympathy for her paralyzed me. Daniel, in contrast, was able to separate himself enough from his empathy to do what had to be done.”

(Daniel discovered some of his limitations, too, as I found it easier than he did to deal with the other children and their increased emotional neediness.)

Almost unbelievably, our family has proved resilient; Daniel and I made it through the inferno of Timora’s illness and death with our marriage strengthened and our relationships with our surviving children closer than ever. What’s more, in the past few years I’ve studied for and embarked on a new career as a psychotherapist, which I find much more satisfying than law.

I’m quite sure that for me, at least, much of this resilience has to do with having learned that I really can’t do everything, and that I can and should count on those around me to do what I can’t do as well. No one is superhuman, after all.

Twice the Marrow and Pastoral Care

Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz, co-Director of Kashouvot, and organization dedicated to Pastoral Care, has written some very kind words about my memoir:

In And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, Susan (Sara) Petersen Avitzour offers us the gift of her soul.

For even the best intentioned physical, spiritual or mental health provider, there is always a barrier of privacy, silence and distance between the experience of the people and families they try to help/ serve. Sara gives us a peek into the experience of one family's loss of a precious daughter and simultaneously shares with us Timora's talents, wisdom and zest for life.

She chronicles in minute detail the experiences of seeking medical care, grappling with illness and navigating the medical system.

In parallel she uncovers her spiritual journey through journaling, poetry, theological reflections and ambivalent return to daily life.

No topic is too private and all are related: food, holidays, parenting, support groups, community, travel, music, career, apathy and depression.

Her labor of love is useful to many different audiences:

-Families of children grappling with serious illness can open their eyes and process their own unique experiences with more lenses and on a variety of levels, without self judgment but with the benefit of time and experience.

-Psychologists and social workers can see the benefit of relating to siblings and the whole family dynamic.

-Pastoral caregivers will find deep insights into prayers, synagogue experiences and Torah text that can help universalize or open up the experience of their patients.

-Rabbis and synagogue staff will become sensitized to the volatile and intense effect holiday times have on memory, pain and alienation of grieving families.

-People of faith may grow from hearing the story of a faith retained yet burnished with more doubt and nuance.

For your mind, your heart and your spirit, get this book and open the first page. You will not put it down, and you will be transformed.

Virtual Tour: Healing and Spirituality

This is a guest post that I wrote for the blog All Things That Matter, as part of my virtual tour:

My daughter, Timora, was diagnosed with leukemia just after her twelfth birthday, and left this world shortly after her eighteenth. Those years took her on a remarkable spiritual journey, which I’d like to share with you today.

Timora’s spirituality combined a relationship with the God she’d been brought up to believe in with a more universal connection to the divine cosmic energy that sustains all life. The memoir I’ve written, And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, tells how she came to me one day with a thoughtful look:

“‘You know, Eema,’ she said, ‘I used to be really angry with God. I couldn’t understand why He seemed to be ignoring my prayers.’

I put down the book I’d been reading, and moved a little closer.

‘Last year, on [the Jewish holiday of] Shavuot, I got so mad that I started screaming at Him. I said that He was stingy and mean, that He wasn’t helping me even though He could.’

I remembered that time well. She’d been weak and depressed, hurting all over. Sores burned her mouth every time she tried to eat, and made every bite taste revolting. She was sleeping even worse than usual, and was haunted by bizarre, obsessive dreams.

I put my hand on hers. What could I say?

‘... You know what happened then?’

I shook my head, still mute.

‘I lay down, and suddenly I started to feel a wave of new strength filling me, flowing into my blood. I told God I’d make a deal with Him. He’d go easier on me, and I’d stop being so angry at Him. That night I was able to get out of bed and say to myself, I won’t sink into this cesspool. I can be strong, I do have someone to give me the strength to live like a person. And I will, and that’s that.’”

Timora later discovered Reiki, a Japanese healing art that teaches its practitioners to become vessels through which spiritual energy flows into people who are suffering. It helped her so much that she eventually became a practitioner herself, laying hands both on herself and on other people, whose discomfort she delighted in alleviating.

Timora departed this world much as she had dwelled in it, in deep connection with the spiritual forces that animate it. As I relate in my memoir, her Reiki teacher visited her in the hospital a few days before she died.

“As Edna touched Timora and the energy flowed between them, Edna felt, through her fingertips and deep inside herself, that part of Timora’s soul was already on the way to the next world. Another part of her spirit was lingering behind – hesitating to leave us because she was worried about us, not wanting to cause us pain – but at the same time longing to be released.

As the energy between them intensified, Edna experienced herself as being together with Timora, in a corridor suffused with light unlike any she’d ever seen or sensed. The corridor led toward an even stronger, more beautiful light, which could not then – and cannot now – be depicted in words, but seemed to be the source, expression and richness of everything that is Good.

When Edna removed her hands and said her last farewell to Timora’s earthly form, she was left with a feeling she can only describe as a kind of completeness, a fullness. This feeling, she says, has not entirely left her to this day. Timora gave her an incomparable gift: Having experienced those few minutes of light together with Timora’s spirit, Edna now knows in the deepest sense possible that she has nothing to fear from the other side.

After her release (Edna tells me) Timora’s spirit did not stay away for long, and soon returned to become a kind of spiritual guide and teacher. Every so often, she comes to Edna during Reiki sessions, and Edna sometimes asks her for help and guidance. When she comes, she adds her own spiritual energy to the currents of Reiki moving through Edna’s hands, making them that much more powerful as agents of healing.”

I believe that God provides us with a well of strength that we can draw upon to go on, even to help others, despite life’s – and death’s – trials and tragedies. We may draw from this well through prayer, or receive it in the form of the energy that Reiki teaches us to harness or, doubtless, in other ways I don’t know of. This strength, this continually replenished energy, is none other than God’s healing presence in our hearts.

Virtual Tour: Nikki Leigh Interviews Me About My Writing

In my latest stop on the virtual tour I'm now on to promote my memoir, Nikki Leigh interviews me on her blog, Your One Stop for Free Information. Here's the interview:

I would like to introduce you to Susan Avitzour, she is the author of And Twice the Marrow. It is a memoir where she shares the very personal story about her daughter and her family after her daughter’s cancer diagnosis. It is a daughter’s struggle and a mother’s struggle as she works to help her daughter navigate a journey no mother and child want to face. Through the pages of this book she shares their personal story and shows others how they can face illness, disappointment, loss and find resilience in their lives despite trials and hardships.

Your Name: Susan Petersen Avitzour -

Nikki Leigh - Where you are from and where are you now?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - I’m originally from Coney Island. I’ve lived in various places including Connecticut, Berkeley California, and Paris, but for the past thirty-plus years I’ve lived in Israel – Jerusalem, to be exact.

Nikki Leigh - How did you get started writing?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - I’ve been writing since I was a child. I wrote my first story in second grade, and have been doing creative writing – both fiction and nonfiction – on and off ever since then.

Nikki Leigh - What do you do when you are not writing?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - I’m a clinical social worker, and work as a psychotherapist both in a public hospital clinic and in private practice. Besides that I love to read, sing, dance, hike, and (most important) spend quality time with family and friends.

Nikki Leigh - What would readers like to know about you?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - I raised seven children – six girls and a boy. I’m now on my fourth career, having been a lawyer, a mediator, and a translator/commercial writer before going back to school to get my MSW.

Nikki Leigh - What inspired your first book?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - My fourth daughter, Timora, died of leukemia in 2001. I knew early on that I wanted very much to capture my experience both as the mother of a child with cancer, and as a mother who lost her child to cancer, in a way that may help and possibly even inspire others who have or are experiencing hardship – or are interested in how others overcome life’s challenges.

Nikki Leigh - What are the titles of your books and what genres are they?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones – Memoir

Nikki Leigh - Why are you specially qualified to write about this topic?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - I happen to be a person who has always both felt my experiences keenly and reflected on their meaning for me; this is exactly what I do in my book.

Nikki Leigh - How do you manage to keep yourself focused and on track when you’re writing a book?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - Because of its special nature, the book I wrote was on my mind all the time anyway. But even when I’m writing stories that have nothing to do with the loss of my daughter, once I’ve started them they kind of take me over, so that I don’t really have any trouble staying focused.

Nikki Leigh - Do you write to make money, for the love of writing or both?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - For the moment, for the love of writing, but also in order to reach out to my readers – kind of start a conversation with them. I wouldn’t object to making money, though I intend to donate any profits from my memoir to charity.

Nikki Leigh - Where can people order your books?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - On Amazon – http://www.amazon.com/Twice-Marrow-Her-Bones/dp/9659146426

Nikki Leigh - What format are your books – e-book, print, audio etc?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - Print, though I do intend to publish to Kindle as well.

Nikki Leigh - What do you have in the works now?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - A collection of mixed-genre stories that I’ve tentatively entitled Scenes from My Life and Other Stories.

Nikki Leigh - What does the future hold for you and your books?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - If only I knew! I hope very much that my memoir will reach as many people as possible who may benefit from it.

Nikki Leigh - What was the most successful thing you did to promote your books?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - I spoke about the book in several public forums.

Nikki Leigh - What makes this book special to you?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - The book is a memorial to my wonderful daughter; and the culmination of an intensely creative and therapeutic process in which I revisited and explored my own tragedy and its personal and philosophical implications in a way that can help other people deal with their own difficulties – all rolled into one.

Nikki Leigh - What sort of comments have you gotten about the content of the book?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - All the comments I’ve gotten have been very positive, and very intense. A great many people have told me they couldn’t put it down – and many of those stayed up all night reading it. Some have told me they found it uplifting or inspiring; others have thanked me for writing it and told me that it’s helped them deal with difficulties they are facing in their own lives, even if these difficulties are very different from those I describe in the memoir. No one has said anything noncommittal or polite, such as “it was interesting.” Everyone has used expressions such as “beautifully written,” “powerful,” and “extremely moving.”

Nikki Leigh - What makes this a book that other people MUST read and WHY?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - Life is trauma. All of us, at one time or another, must confront the loss of someone who is precious to us, or some aspect of our lives with which we find it difficult to part. Many of us must also deal with the disruption of normal life that serious illness or disability brings with it. My book both shows others that they are not alone in the emotional, physical, and family stress that inevitably accompanies these tragedies, and depicts how I personally have dealt with it.

Many people also struggle with their faith in a loving God under these circumstances. My book deals with this question head-on. Although the memoir deals specifically with my relationship with Judaism, and how it affected and was affected by the loss of my daughter, my reflections are relevant to people of all faiths.

Nikki Leigh - What people NEED to read this book and WHY?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - People need to be interested in entering into the book’s intense emotional world, as I pull no punches and describe my experiences and thoughts directly and honestly.

Nikki Leigh - What sparks your creativity? Any tips to help others spark their own creativity?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - I wish I knew! I mostly find that sitting down and actually starting to write is the best spark to creativity, but (of course) it’s no guarantee.

Nikki Leigh - If a potential reader thinks that your book wouldn’t interest them, what would you say to convince them to buy? I’m thinking something better than “Its the greatest book ever.” Give me something more specific

Susan Petersen Avitzour - If you or someone you care for has ever faced extreme difficulty or loss, or if how others confront such difficulty or loss interests you, this book will speak to you. It also both tells my story in an emotionally evocative narrative, and reflects on it in a personal and philosophical journal, so that if you like either genre it has something for you.

Grief and Gratitude: Hot Showers

I’ve just finished taking my pre-Shabbat shower. For this week's post in my Grief and Gratitude series, I’ll write today about how grateful I am for my daily full-body cleansing.

There’s an incredible amount to be thankful for in my experience of showering:

I have access to clean water. Over a billion people in the world lack access to safe drinking water, two and a half billion lack access to adequate sanitation facilities.

My apartment has running water. Only 3.5 billion people in the world have this privilege. And my running water is hot and cold.

My water pressure is not so bad. OK, it’s not great, but it’s not the trickle that the residents of East Jerusalem, for example, have to live with. (See the first episode of Sayed Kashua’s “Arab Labor” to see what I mean.)

My bathroom is clean and safe. My bathtub is long enough for me. I am fully mobile, and can easily get in and out of by bathtub.

I have enough money for Dead Sea products with which to wash my dry skin, and for good shampoo. Several years ago I read a heartbreaking article about teens in Israeli development towns who could not afford even the cheapest kind of soap.

I have a healthy body, including all the parts, to wash. I can let the water run over all my body, and don’t have to watch out for a cast or a catheter.

I’m sure there’s more, but Shabbat is fast approaching.

One of the nicest things about my shower is that it’s usually the last thing I do, so that no matter how frustrating or crazy my day may have been, and no matter how low my mood may be by evening, I can always perk myself up by using my gratitude.

Virtual Tour: Faith in Times of Crisis, or Crisis of Faith?

This is the guest post I wrote for The Book Connection, as part of the virtual tour I'm now on for my memoir:

I am a religiously observant Jew, and have been for thirty-five years. Ten years ago, my faith was challenged in the starkest way possible, when my eighteen-year-old daughter Timora died after a six-year struggle with cancer. Her illness and death brought me up against perhaps the most perplexing of all questions facing all people of faith: How could the loving God in whom I believe have allowed all this to happen? And, conversely, how can I continue to love God even after all that has happened? Indeed, how can a loving God preside over a world in which people – including millions of children – have suffered and died unjustly since the beginning of human time, and how can any thinking person remain faithful to such a Being?

I address this issue (among many others) in a memoir of my journey with my daughter during her illness, then without her after she left this world, entitled And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones. I respond – tentatively and humbly, as one must necessarily answer such questions – with my own concept of a personal God.

Children, and many adults, believe in a simple, one-to-one relationship with God. It’s a kind of bargain: If we lead a good life, evil will not befall us. But I consider my connection with the Divine somewhat differently. I see God as having created the world, set it in motion, and given us the principles by which we may live our lives as spiritual and moral beings. I do not see Him, however, as continuing to directly cause everything that takes place in our present world. Rather, I understand His presence in this era as providing us with a well of strength to draw upon when life presents us with its inevitable trials and tragedies. Perhaps even more importantly, He continually grants us the capacity to love and draw comfort from one other. These gifts empower us to survive our losses, and to build new lives for ourselves when our old ones seem to have fallen apart.

As I write in my memoir: “Loving God keeps me from bitterness, cynicism and despair, by opening me to the healing energy that keeps me from paralysis and gives me the strength to go on. Especially, to go on performing acts of loving kindness, and raising my children to do the same, even after our devastating loss. For by engaging in acts of kindness, by forging loving relationships with those around me, I become – so I believe – a vessel for giving, and for receiving, God’s own love….

God has been an enormous source of the strength and resilience that has enabled me to face the suffering I’ve both experienced and seen others experience in this world. And my faith enables me to feel grateful for my life despite that suffering, and to look toward the future with hope.”

Bereavement – even the loss of a child – need not cause a crisis in faith, if we decide to go on living and loving as we were created to do, and trust our Creator to bestow upon us the spiritual gifts that allow us to do so.

Seraphic Secret Reviews Twice the Marrow

It was Robert Avrech, a Hollywood screenwriter, who inspired me to start this blog when he began blogging about the loss of his son Ariel. Robert reviewed my memoir last week in his blog, Seraphic Secret. Here's the review:

And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones is the profoundly touching memoir of a mother who lost her young daughter, Timora, to cancer.

Avitzour lives in Jerusalem with her husband and children. Her memoir is driven by a unique narrative voice. The support of her community and unique synagogue—Kehillat Yedidya, a liberal modern Orthodox congregation—are powerful reminders that sharing joy, sorrow and tragedy is how we endure the vicissitudes of life.

The life and character of Timora are exquisitely rendered. Timora is young, bright, creative and deeply compassionate, even as Leukemia does its terrible work. Through a mother's voice, personal diaries, and Timora's poetry, Seraphic Secret is left with the powerful wish that we would have had the pleasure of knowing Timora when she was a presence on this earth.

Timora's radiant character can be gleaned from one of her unfinished poems:

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

I thank Robert very, very much for his kind words.

Virtual Tour: Healing and Spirituality

As part of my virtual book tour for my memoir, I wrote a guest post last week for the blog "All Things That Matter," about Timora's experience with Reiki, healing, and spirituality. Here's what I wrote:

My daughter, Timora, was diagnosed with leukemia just after her twelfth birthday, and left this world shortly after her eighteenth. Those years took her on a remarkable spiritual journey, which I’d like to share with you today.

Timora’s spirituality combined a relationship with the God she’d been brought up to believe in with a more universal connection to the divine cosmic energy that sustains all life. The memoir I’ve written, And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, tells how she came to me one day with a thoughtful look:

“‘You know, Eema,’ she said, ‘I used to be really angry with God. I couldn’t understand why He seemed to be ignoring my prayers.’

I put down the book I’d been reading, and moved a little closer.

‘Last year, on [the Jewish holiday of] Shavuot, I got so mad that I started screaming at Him. I said that He was stingy and mean, that He wasn’t helping me even though He could.’

I remembered that time well. She’d been weak and depressed, hurting all over. Sores burned her mouth every time she tried to eat, and made every bite taste revolting. She was sleeping even worse than usual, and was haunted by bizarre, obsessive dreams.

I put my hand on hers. What could I say?

‘... You know what happened then?’

I shook my head, still mute.

‘I lay down, and suddenly I started to feel a wave of new strength filling me, flowing into my blood. I told God I’d make a deal with Him. He’d go easier on me, and I’d stop being so angry at Him. That night I was able to get out of bed and say to myself, I won’t sink into this cesspool. I can be strong, I do have someone to give me the strength to live like a person. And I will, and that’s that.’”

Timora later discovered Reiki, a Japanese healing art that teaches its practitioners to become vessels through which spiritual energy flows into people who are suffering. It helped her so much that she eventually became a practitioner herself, laying hands both on herself and on other people, whose discomfort she delighted in alleviating.

Timora departed this world much as she had dwelled in it, in deep connection with the spiritual forces that animate it. As I relate in my memoir, her Reiki teacher visited her in the hospital a few days before she died.

“As Edna touched Timora and the energy flowed between them, Edna felt, through her fingertips and deep inside herself, that part of Timora’s soul was already on the way to the next world. Another part of her spirit was lingering behind – hesitating to leave us because she was worried about us, not wanting to cause us pain – but at the same time longing to be released.

As the energy between them intensified, Edna experienced herself as being together with Timora, in a corridor suffused with light unlike any she’d ever seen or sensed. The corridor led toward an even stronger, more beautiful light, which could not then – and cannot now – be depicted in words, but seemed to be the source, expression and richness of everything that is Good.

When Edna removed her hands and said her last farewell to Timora’s earthly form, she was left with a feeling she can only describe as a kind of completeness, a fullness. This feeling, she says, has not entirely left her to this day. Timora gave her an incomparable gift: Having experienced those few minutes of light together with Timora’s spirit, Edna now knows in the deepest sense possible that she has nothing to fear from the other side.

After her release (Edna tells me) Timora’s spirit did not stay away for long, and soon returned to become a kind of spiritual guide and teacher. Every so often, she comes to Edna during Reiki sessions, and Edna sometimes asks her for help and guidance. When she comes, she adds her own spiritual energy to the currents of Reiki moving through Edna’s hands, making them that much more powerful as agents of healing.”

I believe that God provides us with a well of strength that we can draw upon to go on, even to help others, despite life’s – and death’s – trials and tragedies. We may draw from this well through prayer, or receive it in the form of the energy that Reiki teaches us to harness or, doubtless, in other ways I don’t know of. This strength, this continually replenished energy, is none other than God’s healing presence in our hearts.

Virtual Tour: A Peek Inside My Memoir

Today Dianne Ascroft published on her blog an excerpt from my memoir, And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, as part of my virtual book tour.

The post can be found here.

Virtual Tour: The New Book Review

Today my memoir visits Carolyn Howard's "New Book Review." The post, which focuses on my readers' reactions to the book, can be found here.

Virtual Tour: Touching on What We All Share

As part of the virtual book tour for my memoir, I was invited to write a guest post for The Cuckleburr Times, an online magazine for writers. This is the post I wrote; it's called "Touching on What We All Share." This is how it starts:

I recently published a memoir, And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, about my daughter Timora’s struggle to lead a normal life while battling leukemia, and about my own journey as a mother while she was ill and as a bereaved parent after she died at the age of eighteen. To my delight and deep gratitude, “compelling,” “moving,” and “inspiring” are just a few of the kind words readers and reviewers have used to describe their reactions; many have said they couldn’t put it down – even stayed up all night reading it. I believe this is so partly because I wrote the book straight from my heart, the way I wanted – needed – to write it, rather than thinking about marketing considerations in mind, or obeying accepted wisdom in the publishing world.

You can read the rest here.

Twice the Marrow Virtual Tour: Review

Today Yocheved Golani's review of my memoir was republished in her blog: It's MY Crisis and I'll Cry if I Need To. The post, which is entitled Death and Dying: Addressing the Hardest Medical Subject with Compassion, starts thus:

"B'SD 28 Nisan 5771 Today this blog is part of a Virtual Tour for the book you see above. I reviewed it months ago and came away deeply impressed."

You can read the entire post here.

Overwhelmed - and Grateful

In this installment of my “Grief and Gratitude” series, I’d like to talk about my thankfulness for something that many may think a strange thing to be grateful for – the fact that I have too much to do.

In my former life, I too would have thought this strange. When I was raising seven children with a full-time-plus career, I always had too much to do, and I was always exhausted and often distressed. I dreamed of a time when every hour of the day wouldn’t be over-booked. A time when I’d be able to read, meet my friends, take a nap…that would be Heaven, I thought.

After Timora died, I found myself with all the time I wished for back then, in my old life – and it was Hell. As I expressed it in my original blog (and described in my memoir), “Not only did I lose [Timora] herself, but I lost a whole world of experience, as the activities on which I’d been spending a great deal of my time suddenly became irrelevant; I literally didn’t know what to do with myself.” Unable to work, unable to concentrate on anything other than what I absolutely had to do, I awakened every day to the prospect of hours upon hours of empty time stretching before me.

Now, ten years later, my life is full again – perhaps too full. I have my work, my marriage, my children and grandchildren, my writing, my improvisational theater group, my book club…I’m sure I’m forgetting something. But after going through that emptiness, I appreciate every single activity I’ve crammed into my overflowing life.

Now, whenever I start to feel overburdened, I think of all the reasons for which I could have too little to do. I, or a significant other, could be ill, or severely disabled. I could be unemployed. I could be poor, and not able to afford drama groups, books, or even train fare to visit my children and grandchildren. I could have no friends to meet. For that matter, I could be in prison…. You get the idea.

Yes, I’m tired, and sometimes feel overwhelmed. But I thank God that the opposite is not the case, and that my life is now filled to (and over) the brim with stimulating, meaningful, and satisfying doing.

Irrepressible Hope

One of the things I’ve written about more than once is the irrepressibility of hope - both mine and Timora's; I believe that resilience is hope's natural corollary. While she was ill, hope burned in me throughout her first year of intensive treatment and through her remission, as it would in anyone. When the cancer returned and we learned that to date no one had survived a relapse following a bone marrow transplant, I managed to push the knowledge out of my mind, and concentrated on hoping it wouldn’t apply to my daughter.

A friend whose wife died of breast cancer a few years ago once told me that he and she had, at one point, “decided to live in a Fool’s Paradise.” I know just what he meant, and remember lingering until the very end in that false Eden. Even as Timora was being rushed to her last sickroom, I was still there. As I wrote in my memoir:

“When I came back to the pediatric ward to get her things after accompanying her to the ICU, one of the nurses came up to me and asked how I was doing. ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I understand that Timora’s in the ICU because she needs to be on a respirator for a few days until we get her lung infection cleared up. It’s good she’s being sedated, because it would be terrible for her to be awake while she’s on a respirator.’

‘It’s really good you’re taking it that way,’ the nurse said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, most parents get very upset when their child is taken to intensive care, because of what that so often means.’

What that means? Oh my God, could she be saying –

‘No, I don’t think about it that way,’ I said to the nurse quickly, and went out the door.”

Ten days ago, I wrote about my trip to Athens with my high school friend Laurette to visit our friend Danae, who three weeks before had started chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer. I’d been feeling quite desperate about her situation; try as I might, I could see no hope. The prognosis for her type of cancer is truly awful. Worse, she’s been a widow and a single mother for eight years now. What will be with her boys?

But the visit cheered me up, because we found Danae in much better shape – with more energy and fewer chemo side effects – than I’d feared. It was especially encouraging to see the resilience I’d always admired in her. She's staying far from the depression into which someone in her position could so easily sink, but rather calmly going about doing all she can to optimize her medical treatment, get her affairs in order for her children, and enjoy as much of her life as she is able. She also has loyal Athenian friends who want nothing more than to help her any way they can, some of whom are very close with her sons.

Being with Danae kicked me back into my hopeful mode. Now I look at the situation differently: Even though I lost my daughter, I can say that if Timora could be on the bad side of good statistics, Danae can be on the good side of bad statistics. As long as there is still something to try, there’s no reason to assume the worst will happen. Despite bereavement, despite lasting grief, hope’s embers were still present in my heart after all, and my visit with Danae stirred them back to life.

No Words

I’ve just come back from pretty much the last place in the world I wanted to be today, or any day – Mt. Herzl, Israel’s military cemetery. My dear friends Haim and Ilana Watzman just buried their twenty-year-old son Niot, who died yesterday after a diving accident while on leave from his compulsory military service.

I of all people know that this happens, that children leave this world before their parents. But my shock at hearing the news was no less than if it were the first time I’d ever encountered this affront against nature. All I could think was, My God, it’s happened to them; what happened to me has now happened to them. I’ve been alternating between intense distress and stubborn disbelief ever since; it’s amazing how the disbelief lingers, even now, after my heart was torn out watching the family put their son and brother into the ground.

A mutual friend told me that she’s glad the Watzmans have me as a friend – someone who knows what they’re going through. But as I said back in January in my post Grieving and Sharing, my fervent wish has been all along that I would have no occasion to use the special knowledge and ability to help other bereaved parents. Especially if they’re friends.

I hope very much that I really will know what to say to help them on their journey through the pain of bereavement and, ultimately, towards healing. But for the moment, I can’t think of anything.

There really are no words.

Gratitude and Grownups

As I’ve written more than once in my Grief and Gratitude series, I believe that one of the main things that’s made me resilient in the face of my life’s many traumatic experiences, most recently and my daughter’s death, is having learned to nurture a sense of thankfulness. I had a special opportunity to do just that at our family’s Passover seder this past Monday evening.

People often ask me before Passover where we will be for seder, and I always reply, “Where we are every year – at home.” One of my happiest times of the year comes when Daniel and I sit at the seder table with our children. The more children who come the better, as far as I’m concerned. When all seven lived with us, of course, they filled all the seats. But in recent years their number at the table has diminished. As they got older, some went abroad for a time, some got married, and some have started building lives as parents. And one stopped coming forever, just as she reached adulthood.

This year, we had our smallest seder yet, with only A., S. and her husband G. (with their sweet daughter, four-month-old Arielle, as a bonus) representing the younger generation of adult Avitzours; our friend Steve joined us as well. (D. went to visit E. and her spouse O. in London, where she’s studying, and El. and T. flew with grandson Imri to Nice, to visit a friend who’s studying art there. Ash. and husband Er. mad the seder at his parents' home this year.)

At first I was a bit upset that only a third of the children we have in this world would be with us for this most family-oriented night. But then I realized that this is just the price I pay for having adult children. And I certainly love having adult children - partly because they are so much fun to be with, but also because the alternative, after all, would be for them not to have grown up.

In the event, the seder was lovely. The six of us read the Hagaddah together, pausing whenever anyone had a question or a comment. We sang the series of songs at the seder’s end energetically, acting some of them out and laughing harder and harder as we progressed. We deeply enjoyed each other’s company; although I missed my other children (and grandson!), those present reminded me of their siblings’ continued presence in our lives. They reminded me, too, that in future years the others will also claim their places at our Passover table, which will always await them.

And for that, I am extremely grateful.

You Always Think There's Time

One of the lessons I’ve learned from losing my daughter is that we should never put off spending time with people we love because we assume there will be plenty of time. We can always, we think, cultivate our relationships after we’ve finished written this important report, after we’ve studied for that exam, after we’ve cleaned the house, after we’ve earned and saved enough to buy a new house…. You know just what I mean. That’s what modern life is about, most of the time. I’d thought I was pretty good at putting this lesson into practice – as I've written in my memoir, I try my best to make time to see my children, my grandchildren, and my friends, and have even arranged my work schedule to facilitate this. But as it turns out, in some important ways I’ve been no wiser in this regard than anybody else.

This past week, I spent three days in Athens. Normally, I wouldn’t go to the effort and expense of flying abroad to stay for only three days. I wouldn’t choose the week before Passover to leave the country. I wouldn’t go without Daniel. But this was far from a normal trip; I went to Athens to visit one of my two best friends from high school, who very probably has no more than a few months to live.

Danae (at her request, I’ve changed her name to protect her privacy) and I met in seventh grade, on our first day at Hunter. Her parents had immigrated from Greece when she was six years old and, despite having had to master a completely new language, she’d passed the entrance exam to New York City’s highly selective public high school for girls. We immediately became close, even though – perhaps because?– we were so different in so many ways. She was deliberate, methodical, and thorough, while I was the ADHD queen – impulsive, disorganized, and never, ever on time. Whereas I’d sit down to write my papers, well, not even at the last minute, but sometimes months after the deadline had passed, she always handed in her work on time, with each “t” crossed and every “i” dotted. Her tales of the Greek immigrant community fascinated me, and I in turn introduced her to my family’s (admittedly untypical) version of the Jewish American experience.

Together, Danae and I weathered the normal turbulence of adolescence – and not-so-normal times, as when my father died suddenly when I was fourteen. Like most teenage girls, we kept nothing from each other – we shared our frustrations with parents and teachers, our crushes, our strong opinions about the issues of the day, and our dreams for the future. Hard as it is to believe, we never had a single fight during our five-plus years together.

In eleventh grade, she introduced me to her new friend Laurette, and we very quickly became a trio. Amazingly, again, we didn’t suffer from the jealousy and competition that so often plagues young girls’ threesomes. But after high school we dispersed, in keeping with contemporary American custom, to our respective higher studies and careers. Interestingly, none of us ended up living in the United States – Danae returned to Athens shortly after graduating in our school's accelerated program, I moved to Israel after law school, and Laurette settled in France, where her mother had been born and grown up, after her post-graduate studies.

Until last week, I’d seen Danae only twice since graduating high school – once in 1974, when I crossed Europe by train to visit her in Athens, and once in 1986 when she and Laurette visited me and my family in Israel. At first we were in touch only once every year or two (or three) - Danae defines herself as the "world's worst correspondent" - but with the advent of inexpensive international calling, we began to speak more often. Athens is only two hours from Israel, and I thought many times of going to visit. But the years went by and she got married, had two children, and built a whole life for herself, and the visit never happened; I never met her husband (who, sadly, died of cancer eight years ago) or her children. There was always some reason not to go, and it just didn’t seem urgent. There would always be time next year.

Then, two months ago, she was diagnosed with the nastiest form of pancreatic cancer – the one with a prognosis of a few months at most in ninety-eight cases out of a hundred. (If she’s in the lucky two percent, up to two years remain for her.) Suddenly, there may not be a next year. So Laurette and I decided, more or less on the spur of the moment, to surprise her for her birthday, which fell last Tuesday. (We knew there was no point in trying to arrange it with her, as she never wants anyone to take trouble for her, and also because she – like so many of us – chronically puts things off, especially enjoyable things.)

The visit, such as it was (three days after twenty-four years!), succeeded beyond our expectations. Danae was utterly, and very happily, surprised when we showed up at her apartment Tuesday late morning. Everyone she spoke with on the phone heard all about it; at least I thought I could make out the Greek words philae (friends) and gymnasium (high school) in each of her conversations. We found her in much better shape than we'd feared – she had enough energy so that we could organize a birthday dinner-party for her that evening, and she could organize an outing for all of us the next day to a café by the sea. She even had enough energy to worry that she wasn’t being a sufficiently good hostess, and kept saying, “If I’d known you were coming, I would have arranged more for you to do.” We kept replying, “If you’d known we were coming, you would have said no and we wouldn’t be here!”

We also had the kind of frank conversations that we used to excel at when we were teenagers. This time, though, the subjects were radically different; we spoke with her about getting her affairs in order, and her plans for her sons, who are eighteen and seventeen years old.

I hope very much that there will, indeed, be time for me to return to Athens, and that this past week’s trip will not have turned out to be my last. But I am certainly grateful to have had the chance to see my dear friend - and the chance to say goodbye, if our goodbyes when I left for the airport were really our last.

My relationships with those I love have comforted me more than anything else in my grief for my daughter. I think it’s a sign of my resilience that I’ve put a very high priority on nurturing those connections. But, I now see, I can do better; I hope very much that I will.