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.

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.

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.

Mourning and Meaning: Friends

Grief is not exclusively “family property;” losing a friend whom we've loved is also a kind of bereavement. Although it’s not the same as the loss of a child or a sibling, a friend’s death presents us with similar questions: What does it mean that a person who was once very much present in our lives has left her own life? What does this say about our own mortality? And when our friend has died before her time, how can we draw meaning from that which seem so senseless?

Nehama Grenimann Bauch was Timora’s first friend; they first started playing when both were less than a year old. Our families live in the same neighborhood and belong to the same religious community, Kehillat Yedidya, and they were in the same class through eighth grade. Although they attended different high schools and drifted apart in adolescence, they became closer again during Timora’s last year. During Timora’s shiva, the first seven intensive days of family mourning, Nehama came and sat with us almost every day, some days for several hours. And not just to comfort us; she felt so bereft that she felt she needed to sit shiva herself.

Different people make meaning from traumatic loss in different ways. How we choose to do this depends, of course, on who we are, but also on the loved ones we've lost - who they were, and the special character of our connection. Nehama and Timora shared many things, prominent among them a creative and artistic nature. Timora was drawn mainly to writing, theater, and music, whereas Nehama excelled – and continues to excel – in the plastic arts, principally painting and sculpture. Both girls also inherited from their families a zeal for tikkun olam – the imperative to make the world a better place.

So it shouldn’t surprise that Nehama chose to process her friend’s death by combining these two passions – by initiating, organizing, and carrying out a project that has produced art that is both esthetically beautiful and practically useful. Faraway Places has brought together ten artists – Judith Margolis, Sharon Binder, Chana Cromer, Ruth Cohn, Anat Yefet, Galina Blaikh, Julia Lagus, Mallory Serebrin, Zoe Pawlak and Yulia Polyakov – who painted and contributed works that now grace the walls of Hadassah Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit. As I’ve written in my memoir, “patients who awaken [are] greeted not only by sterile white walls and ceilings, metallic IV stands, and cold machines, but also by warm, colorful scenes into which they can escape, in their minds at least, from the harsh reality of the ICU.” The staff has told Nehama that the art is making a tremendous difference both to them and to the patients and their families.

Nehama spent months and months dealing with and mediating among the artists, the hospital bureaucracy, the ICU staff, and the Young Hadassah branch of Hadassah International (through whom she organized the project) in order to get the paintings planned, finished, and onto the ICU walls. As if that weren’t enough, she spent many additional months working on the Young Hadassah Ball, which took place here in Jerusalem a week ago. Every year, the Ball brings hundreds of the organization’s members and supporters together for dinner and dancing, to raise funds for different departments in the hospital. This year – by chance but very fittingly – the money raised will be used to renovate and expand the Pediatric Department.

At the small ceremony that was held right before the finished paintings were hung in the ICU, Nehama spoke at some length about Timora. She said that she chose this way to perpetuate Timora’s memory not because she’s no longer alive, but because of who and what she was for Nehama during her life – an intensely creative soul who actively encouraged her friend (from the time they were four years old!) to become an artist.

Timora would have been very proud indeed to have her name attached to the lovely works that these generous artists have created, and to a project that is directly benefiting the two Hadassah departments in which she was cared for so long, so professionally, and with such dedication. And even prouder to be Nehama's friend than she already was when the two were together in this life.

When I think about it, though, perhaps I can say that she is proud, as she follows her friend's fortunes from wherever her spirit has finally come to rest.

Poems of Cautious Hope, in English Translation

Timora's resilience was such that even after her cancer relapsed, and even after it began spreading rapidly, she still preserved her faith and her hope.

Her faith, in that she continued to pour her heart out to God, still believing that He might answer her prayers, even as she feared He would not:

All night I lay in bed and prayed to God.
I tried to gather myself from His hands crumb after piece
And again and again scattered back into nothingness.
I asked why,
I pleaded, “Enough.”
Such a small creature
Why should You mind
That I should be
That I should be as a human being.

And her hope, in that whenever things took a turn for the better, she dared to wish for her good fortune to continue, even as she feared it might not:

And again came the wave I’d awaited so long
Which I cried for, I moaned, bit my pillow and prayed
It lifted me high, brought me close to the rest
At the very last second before the too late
From the pit, from the suffering, the cold, chilly fear
My heart fainted before it, so glad to be near.

But I really don’t know.

Will it stay after all?

Before me tomorrow is closed, a dark wall.

There's irony for me in reading these poems now, when I know how her prayers and hopes ended. But my grief is also eased by knowing that her hope enabled her to face, again and again, unimaginable suffering and sorrow, and to find and appreciate happiness wherever and whenever she could.

Baby Resilience

Grandchildren are perhaps the greatest of comforts to bereaved parents. Grief for a child who has left this world never ends completely, but its pain is greatly softened, and even sometimes forgotten – this is true for me, at least – when we spend time with our children’s children. As I've written in my memoir:

"It’s as if a deep pit opened up inside me.... I’ll never be able to fill the hole, but what I can do is build my life around it, continually adding meaningful relationships, work, and creative pursuits, so that the pit becomes a proportionally smaller and smaller part of my being. It’s still there, but it’s dwarfed by its surroundings."

My grandchildren certainly dwarf that pit.

Daniel and I have many times had the good fortune to host our oldest daughter Elisheva and her partner Tayir for Shabbat together with their son Imri, who is now twenty-one months old (Elisheva is Imri’s biological mother, and Tayir is in the process of adopting him). Two weeks ago we were even luckier, when the couple took a two-day vacation alone (their first since Imri was born) and left him with us. Besides the great fun we had with him, we also got a bonus – the opportunity to witness his budding resilience.

When they visit, Imri normally runs into our home as soon as we open the door, shouting “Ka!” (his name for me) and “Abba!” (his name for Daniel). When they arrived that Friday, though, he refused to walk in. His mothers hadn’t said anything to him – at his age there would be no point, as he can’t yet grasp a concept like “two days” – but he could tell something was up. Eventually they carried him in. It took about an hour before he was willing to stop clinging to Elisheva or Tayir, and to come to us.

When he seemed ready, they waved to him and said, “Shalom, Imri. We’re going for a trip now, but we’ll be back.”

“Lom, Mma!” he replied, waving, and turned back to put another block on the tower he was building.

Imri’s mood remained excellent throughout the weekend. I took him to synagogue Shabbat morning, as I always do, and he played, looked at his books, and went up and down the aisle flirting with everyone in the women’s section, as he always does. At home, he played with us, ate happily, and talked and talked and talked.

The first time he asked for his mother was when I was putting him to sleep Friday night. I said, “Eema isn’t here, but Savta (Grandma) is here, Sabba (Grandpa) is here, Ayala is here, David is here,” and so on, naming everyone who was with us for that Shabbat, including his two-month-old cousin Arielle. “Eema will be back tomorrow.” He calmed down right away and fell asleep. He asked for “Mma” again only another couple of times, when he was tired or fell down, and each time we were able to calm him quickly.

Don’t get me wrong – he didn’t forget his mothers. On Sunday, we explained that Eema would be back later. A short time afterward, we were playing in the living room when David came out of his room.

“Who’s that coming?” I asked Imri.

Immediately a huge smile lit up his face. “Mma?” he asked hopefully.

“No, it’s David,” I said. “Eema will come later.”

He looked at me seriously for a second, then went back to the book he was leafing through.

For a while after his mothers returned he wouldn’t get off Elisheva’s lap, or stop hugging her. I came to sit down beside them, saying things like, “Your Eema’s back! That’s so great for you!” At first he looked out at me a bit suspiciously from the safety of the maternal lap. But after a few minutes, he suddenly gave me a big grin. “Ka!” he said lovingly. Then he looked at Elisheva and said, “Mma!” Then again at me, “Ka!”

When we took the three of them out to dinner that evening, he sat happily next to me, smiling from time to time and saying “Ka!” in that loving tone. I melted every time.

Clearly, he wasn’t holding a grudge – at least while his mothers were there. But the real proof of his forgiveness came the next day, when they were safely back at home in Tel Aviv. Elisheva phoned me for some advice, and suddenly I heard in the background, “Ka? Ka!”

“He recognizes your voice,” she told me.

“Even when you’re the one talking with me?”

“Yup. He knows telephone voices from across the room.” We finished our conversation and hung up.

About an hour later, the phone rang. It was Elisheva again. “He insists on speaking with you,” she said.

She put him on and we had our usual conversation.

“Hello, Imriki?”

“Yes.”

“Did you call me?”

“Yes.”

“Did you call me to give me a kiss?”

“Yes.”

“So give me a kiss.”

He made a loud kissing sound and gave the phone back to his Eema.

I’m floored by Imri’s ability to stay with us and feel almost no distress, and to go back afterward to his normal life, free of anger. To me, this demonstrates a resilience rooted in the deep basic trust that he's developed through the loving and patient mothering he’s gotten all his life from Elisheva and Tayir.

I believe that resilience is one of the most crucial qualities we can nurture in our children. I'm sure that Imri's will stand him in good stead, throughout what I hope will be a long and eventful life.

Poems of Disappointed Love, in English Translation

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.

Love Poems and Life-Force

I’ve been writing a great deal about resilience. So far I’ve reflected on what has contributed toward my own and other peoples’ ability to go on living full and even happy lives in spite of tragedy or overwhelming hardship; I haven’t yet touched here on Timora’s amazing resilience, although there's a great deal about it in my memoir.

As I wrote in my last post, Timora was a true writer, so it’s not surprising that the exuberant life-force that enabled her to bounce back from the extreme hardship she experienced in her young life is reflected in her poetry. These are my translations of the poems she wrote when she fell in love for the first, and only, time in her life, in the spring of 1997. She was in remission from her leukemia after two and a half years of intensive treatment and debilitating side effects – several months of concentrated chemotherapy, her first bone marrow transplant, and the Graft-Versus-Host-Disease that resulted from the transplant. She told me, when she came home from the Scouts trip where she met the boy, “I feel like I’ve gotten a glimpse of how life can be when I’m not sick – of the things I’ve been missing until now. Now I know there’s a whole world waiting for me, if I only decide to go out there and join it." And so she did.

The Hebrew originals can be found here.

April 4
Love
Purity of childhood
Innocence of youth
The truest, the best, the rightest
Thing of all
Won’t fit into a rigid frame
Of rules
Soul touching body
Childish, naïve
And so
Real
Angels’ touch
Bringing together thrilled
And amazed souls
Who discover
The truest thing
The most beautiful thing
Love.

April 17
How dark it all was,
Despair, fear, loneliness
Feeling like a third wheel in this world,
How the light came suddenly,
Hand and smile, innocent touch, love-giving
And it all changed,
Love
Can do it all.

April 20
I wake in the morning –
You float into my head.
Go to sleep,
With your name on my lips.
You are everywhere,
Fill me,
Do you also think of me?

Any bereaved parent will tell you that remembering their children through what they left behind is one of the most important - if bittersweet - ways of moving toward healing from their deep grief. I feel especially blessed that by turning her inner life into written words Timora left us so much of herself, and in such a beautiful form.

Grief and Gratitude

Grief and gratitude? Bereavement and thankfulness? Aren’t those contradictions in terms? I don’t think there’s a simple answer to that question. But I do believe that being able to be grateful for the good in life – even in the face of overwhelming loss – is a great part of what makes a person resilient.

Just about everyone enjoys having a reason to be thankful, whether for some kind of material well-being or for an emotional or spiritual comfort. I am certainly no exception; a difficult childhood taught me that I should never take what I have for granted. And I have so much. A good marriage, wonderful children, the incredible bonus of grandchildren, a close relationship with my sister and her son – it goes without saying that I thank God every day for my family. Friendship, attractive clothes, plentiful and nourishing food, comfortable shelter – even living in a small enough place to be able to enjoy the beauty and quiet of Nature whenever I have the time and the inclination – all these are incredible gifts.

Beyond the things I count as blessings, I’ve always loved the feeling of thankfulness – the visceral warmth that fills me when I reflect on the good in my life. I’ve found it to be an impressive antidote to the frustration, care, and worry. When I was the mother of five young children who populated an age range of just seven years, I sometimes – OK, I’ll admit it, often – felt as if my strength was giving out. Two of the girls, say, would be fighting, while a third was wandering through our three small rooms scattering a mixture of different puzzle pieces, a fourth climbing up the kitchen counter in order to get at the fruit I was saving for after dinner, and the fifth urgently needing to have her diaper changed. At times like this, taking a breath and remembering (for example) that I was lucky to conceive and bear children as easily as I could, would give me strength to go on, at least until the next crisis.

Even while our family was dealing with the myriad challenges posed by Timora’s leukemia, I was able to find reasons to be grateful. Timora’s doctor was outstanding, both professionally and as a human being. We belonged to a community that showered us with concern, emotional support, and any material help we needed. I even appreciated the fact that having a daughter with cancer simplified my priorities – if it was my day to take her to the hospital, it was clear that that was what I was doing that day, whatever other tasks awaited me at home or at work.

So you can imagine what a shock it was when my capacity for thankfulness seemed to disappear after Timora died. I couldn’t say “thank you” for anything. Grief and gratitude simply could not co-exist.

As I moved toward healing, my ability to be grateful returned – and expanded to embrace aspects of my life that I’d never thought of as candidates for conscious appreciation. Having had my existence turned upside down for so many years, I began to savor the small routines that, without thinking about it, I’d taken for granted before Timora became ill, and which were shattered after she died. As I wrote more than six years ago in the journal that makes up the second part of my memoir :

“In the past few weeks, I’ve finally started feeling that the rhythm of our family’s life is starting to return to normal, and that I’m in synch with that rhythm. The children are now busy with their own lives – school and friends and after-school activities. Don has his own career and interests. And on a day like today, I can go to work and be fully engaged in what I do there. I can come home and take a nap, and feel good about doing something for myself. I can sit and read and feel that I’m not wasting time – I’m just spending it pleasantly. And I can be with whichever members of my family are at home or on the other end of the phone line, and just enjoy them. Now, that is something to be truly thankful for.”

My capacity for gratitude has continued to grow, and recently has entered a new phase. Now, I spend some time almost every day actively seeking things to appreciate. I do this when some part of my life seems not to be working out as I’d like it to – something hurts, for example, or I feel I’m not making enough progress with a client, or there’s no train service to Tel Aviv just when I wanted to visit my grandchildren – and it gives me a sense of proportion, reminds me what’s really important. But sometimes I spend time cultivating thankfulness for its own sake, just for the fun of it.

If you think about it, there’s no end of things to be grateful for. I sometimes scan my body, going through every one of its limbs and organs – even each bone – and thank God they’re all whole and working properly; and that I have access to excellent health care when they're not. I can sit and savor my relationships with family, friends, and colleagues. I have my mental health – I’m not depressed, bipolar, or psychotic, and I don’t suffer from OCD, panic, or any other anxiety disorder (I count each one separately), or an eating disorder, or anything else in the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual. I have the strength to walk and close friends to walk with regularly. I work at a job I love. I live in a democracy, and enjoy a high degree of personal security. My marriage wasn’t arranged for me, and being a woman has not in the least limited my freedom or opportunities. I can go even further – no one is forcing me to work in a blood-diamond mine, I wasn’t sold into sex slavery at the age of six, or ten, or sixteen….

You get the picture.

In the end, I believe, my grief has actually sharpened my sense of gratitude. Losing Timora has made me intensely aware of life’s fragility – together with that of just about everything that gives it meaning and brings me pleasure. I could easily go through my days fearing further loss. But instead, I deeply appreciate the blessings that remain with me.

And I thank God for that.

Three More Hebrew Poems: Disappointed Love

I've just posted three more of Timora's original Hebrew poems, which express a real, and normal, adolescent experience - unrequited love. But as I write in my memoir:

"All teens take disappointment in love, especially their first, to heart. But in some ways the experience was harder for Timora than most. This brief relationship, whatever it had been in real life, had represented so much more for her than first love. Her glimpse of what life could be like was turning out to be a glimpse and no more."

As sad as they are, though, I love reading these poems. They are part of her legacy which, like all bereaved parents, I'm very, very grateful she left behind.