I've noticed that many readers have been interested in my post about the poems Timora wrote in 1997, when she was in remission from leukemia and fell in love for the first and only time. Sadly, her love turned out to be unrequited.
I posted the original Hebrew poems here; these are the poems as I translated them into English in my memoir:
May 31
It’s easy to say: “He’s found another?
It’s nothing, I’ll just move on,
I’ll not think about him any longer,
It’s not really so bad that he’s gone.”
It’s easy to say: “This is truly silly,
There are plenty of others around,
And he and I in any event
Wouldn’t find any real common ground.”
It’s easy to say, it’s easy to speak,
If there’s one thing I have it’s my words.
So why, when it’s time to put them to use,
Do I cry, though I know it’s absurd?
August 24
I don’t push
Don’t stand out
Don’t stand on my rights,
Don’t invent witty comebacks
Only stand
And suffer
And absorb
And miss out
Afraid to be a bother
Afraid to be judged
Self-confidence – about zero
Hopeless
Lost,
Slowly disappearing
Melding into the wall.
Trapped.
If I only had the courage
Just for a tiny moment
To raise my head
To look straight ahead
And say:
“I’m here”…
October 26
True,
She hasn’t loved him
For some time,
True,
Nothing remains from that old
Story,
And the fire has been quenched,
And the flame is dead,
And with it hope,
They’re all gone.
And with them
The glittering, blinding light saved
For the knight on the white horse.
But every time they meet each other
By chance, on the street,
Her heart fills with pain,
As if pierced
By a white-hot arrow.
Resilient as she was, Timora dealt with her disappointment by throwing herself into
a whirl of normal-life pursuits. But she never did get the chance to "find another" and experience the joy of a real, mutual romantic relationship. Somehow, this is one of the most wrenching of my many losses as a bereaved parent.
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