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.

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.

Writing and Resilience

In one of my first posts since renewing this blog, Grieving and Sharing, I wrote about how reaching out to others who are experiencing (or have experienced) loss or other kinds of hardship has been healing for me. Writing my memoir, of course, is one of the ways I've done this, as is (for that matter) writing this blog.

I find writing to be one of the most effective ways of processing the traumas, surprises, and puzzles life has thrown my way over the years. But writing is more than therapeutic for me - the artistic process of transforming the bare facts of "what happened" into stories that can affect others satisfies a deep creative need. I neglected this need during the long period when I was developing my career(s) and raising my family. But in the past couple of years I've been catching up - participating in writers' workshops as well as one retreat and a year-long course, writing short fiction and creative non-fiction based (so far) on my own life. Part of me is terrified that after And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones there won't be any more - that my creativity has dried up - but I'm determined not to give up. In this, Timora is my role model.

Timora was very gifted in several branches of the arts - notably theater and music - but above all she was a writer. She wrote and wrote, no matter how ill, tired, or discouraged she felt, all the way up to the week before she entered the ICU for the last time. She had an extraordinary ability to take her experience of life and put it down on paper gracefully, beautifully, and movingly. She began to seriously develop her writing - especially her poetry - in ninth grade, when she was still suffering from the side effects of her first bone marrow transplant. The first really serious poem she wrote expressed, passionately but at the same time wistfully, her take on her life at that time:

I might have been now
A tranquil girl, with a smile on her face,
And not perpetually cross.
A serene and confident girl,
Who doesn’t fear every shadow.
I might have been now
A regular schoolgirl,
And a girl who returns home from school
With quick, light steps,
Without arriving panting and in pain.
I might have
Joined all the trips and camps
I missed and will go on missing.
Slept at night, with pleasant dreams,
Made peace with myself – no one’s perfect.
I might have
Had friends
Who come to my home and host me at theirs,
And all could have been self-evident,
And clear, that I truly deserve this.
I might have had something to do with my life,
Accepted love from my sisters
And finally stopped weeping
And have been fourteen and five months.
I might
Have
Been.

(The Hebrew original can be found here.)

I'm sure that Timora's ability to give creative expression to her inner life is part of what made her so resilient. If I find myself only half as able as Timora was to transform the stuff of life - whether it be grief, joy, fear, or wisdom - into art, I'll be eternally grateful.

Hebrew Poems: Timora's Last

I've just posted Timora's last two poems, which she wrote just before her second bone marrow transplant, a bit more than a year before she died. It's hard to believe she wrote them only a week apart, they are so radically different. Although translations of both can be found, each in a different place, on my original blog, I'm reproducing them below, together.

They speak for themselves:

You’ve imprisoned me in a cold dark room
And I can neither stand nor sit
And my lying is uneasy
Hard and restless
And I cry –
Let me out
Or let me stand,
Or rest at least, or take away the cold
And if you can’t,
Please,
Open up a little crack
So I’ll know –
The world still contains a little light.
(November 5, 1999)

And why.
Why live.
Suffer.
Fight, struggle.
Why pull and pull like a wretched, miserable beast –
For what.
In loneliness, in darkness, in the cold.
How much have I asked, and how much will I ask
And I am not the only one
Not only when sorrow blinds the eyes like a veil of tears.
But within me I know
And sometimes, like a flame
The answer blazes before me –
Love.
(November 12, 1999)

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.