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.

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.

Poems after Relapse, in English Translation

In January I posted three Hebrew poems that Timora wrote after the relapse of her leukemia was diagnosed, as with the steady return of cancer's incomparable pain she began to lose some of her cherished independence.

As I wrote in my memoir, what stands out for me in Timora's poetry is her astounding ability to transform suffering into art. If you think about it, that is what all artists do, and Timora was a true artist.

Warning: The second and third of these poems are very difficult to read.

March 19, 1999
Don’t tell me,
I know by myself,
If I don’t do it
It doesn’t mean a thing,
Leave me.
Tell me,
Or I won’t succeed,
I won’t do it,
Help me.
Don’t decide for me,
I’m not a little girl,
I’m responsible for myself,
Leave me.
Protect me,
I’m scared like a little girl,
I can’t stand alone,
Help me.

April 11, 1999

It
is
spreading further and further
and
conquering every spot that had been free
Poisonous, black malicious
Snickering of devastation, of evil, of defenselessness, of some
dark power
Extending long and emaciated and terrible and destructive arms
that grow
like some horrible nightmare from which we’ve not awakened and we'll not
awaken
ever
And twist and twist
and distort
and deform
and hold on
Hold fast by the nails Hold and do not let go Hold fast and wound
And if it does not bring death it will bring destruction of some other kind
Because there are no few kinds (to each his own destruction) Here it’s
bringing

April 20, 1999
A black cloud of razor-sharp claws.
They scratch deeply into my flesh
If I ask who sent them, and why to me,
They continue to pierce in silence.

A black cloud of claws that wound.
They’ve pulled me toward pain’s abyss
I cannot scream out how evil they are –
After all, does a claw have a heart?

A black cloud of claws that rip.
A claw has reached my core
And there it tears off strips of my soul
And, giggling, discards them in slime.

A black cloud of murderous claws.
They’ve pulled me toward the great Pit.
But I’ve stood up to them and continue to stand –
I’ve yet to give in to despair.

I've yet to give in to despair. There it is - Timora's resilience, in her own words.

Last Poems of the Remission, in English Translation

Leukemia is an insidious disease, whose effects - both physical and emotional - last well beyond the disappearance of its malignant calling cards, the cancerous cells that fill the blood and keep it from fulfilling its life-giving duties. Even when the cancer seems to be gone, and its treatment seems to be over, its victims - especially, I think, its child victims - are left utterly changed by the experience, and often find themselves strangers to the "normal" world.

These are my translations of two of Timora's Hebrew poems that I posted in January. She wrote these in the last months of her remission, when she was worn down from trying, repeatedly and unsuccessfully, to re-enter the life she'd left behind when she became ill.

November 30, 1997
And all
Has suddenly become gray,
All has faded,
All has darkened,
Now all that’s left is cold.
Bleary eyes
Are tired of wondering,
Why,
And for what,
How,
Until when,
All is finished for me.
Enough.

January 29, 1998
There’s a precious pearl hidden deep in my soul,
It awaits the arrival of he
Who has courage enough to dive into my soul,
And to gaze in my eyes, truly see.

For perhaps I am like a sea-shell from the deep,
Whose facade glitters not, nor intrigues
And whoever would thread it with filament fine
Needs a blade that’s especially keen.

Not a blade, but love that is tender and true
Will pry open this tightly-closed shell,
And although it seems hard, if only he’d try –
Only softness he’d find, smooth and still.

There’s a precious pearl hidden deep in my soul,
If you seek it, it’s right within reach.
But your eyes are shut tight and blind to the light,
They will never discern the true me.

There's little I can add to Timora's own eloquent words.

Hebrew Poems: Timora in Love

Many Hebrew speakers who've read my memoir have asked to see the poems that I translated for And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, in the original Hebrew. So I've just started a new page, on which I'll post the original poems. I've put up the first three - with more to come. You're welcome to take a look.

Timora wrote the first four of these poems during her remission from leukemia, when she fell in love for the first, and only, time of her life.