Life is Your Story

 I am walking along a path somewhere in the wilderness. I’m alone at first but then I feel someone’s presence, someone who vanished from my life. I think about all the people I have met and loved, yet there was nothing as intense, as omni-powerful as the connection of which I speak. Sometimes I wonder if some people are meant to only visit us once in our lives, because what they hold in their hands, their offering, is so sacred, so special that the moments of time, find it unbearable to hold onto them – to grasp them in their wholeness. So, I am on this walk and I have that feeling in my gut and I come around a bend and there he is, that person who vanished from this earth we walk upon and for whom I have waited to pass to the other side, so he can visit me in my dreams. But this is not a dream. This is not a hologram. This is not an illusion. This is him. This is what I have been waiting for, hoping for because I really never got to say a proper goodbye. I wasn’t there to kiss his for

When you witness death, life no longer scares you. You find yourself comparing the end to the beginning. You forget that it’s the middle that counts because that is where everything happens. When you are waiting for your phone to ring and you are on a marathon of hospital runs and standing in elevators where everyone looks down instead of up; you transform into a shackled zombie shuffling along a single track always looking over your shoulder for an oncoming train. By the bedside watching a loved one slip away, you are reminded of how they lived. Tiny snapshots expand into full cinematic view. The heart rate machine seizes to reach its highs and lows and collapses into one final long beep. The oxygen mask is removed and your entire childhood slips through the palm of your hand leaving your soul robbed and barren. You die a little each day but on this day you die more. If there is one thing you learn from death; it is this: The beginning is for learning. The

It’s getting dark. I’m heading home. You won’t be there. I’ll eat alone. I’ll wonder how I ended up Where I’ve ended up. I’ll put on the TV but I won’t watch. I’ll open up a book but I won’t read. I’ll get into bed but I won’t sleep. I’ll stare at the walls. The shadows staring back at me. I’ll close my eyes. I’ll hear your voice. I’ll see your face. Your lips will move. I’ll ask the question That everyone asks But you won’t answer You’ll walk away Into the white Into nothing I won’t get to tell you What I should have told you... You are the rhythm As I breathe in As I breathe out You are the reason I am here In the black Bumping into everything I love you I feel you somewhere Everywhere Nowhere And as you continue to fade As you move further away As every memory of you Comes crashing down I will open my eyes I will bite my lip

There are dark cold days when nothing falls into place and my heart drops and my mind spins. I can’t grasp onto anything or anyone. There is no exit from the heavy sorrow that fills and overflows seeping through my pores. There are slices of light and seconds of sun that lift me and push me upward and allow me to breathe fuller and escape what seems to be the unrelenting noise of my thoughts. And between these states of dark and light, between the flow of the ocean and the moon rising, I reach out and search for those I’ve lost, those I’ve loved, those I will never touch, see, hug, hold again in this life. I can’t find them because I don’t know where they are only that they are somewhere around me with me watching over me moving forward with me and forever connected to me.   When I close my eyes I see them and sometimes in my dreams I hear them. They are telling me they are okay and they will be there for me, they wait for me, their arms will

If you sit down on the grass in the sun with the wind quietly purposefully listening for spirits of souls you have loved you will hear them if you let your mind at ease and stop thinking they will come to you and speak with a whisper you will feel them in the tall grass with your fingertips their voices will tell you they miss you as much as you miss them they'll surround you before they leave you they won't tell you where they are going just that you can't follow you'll stand up and walk away and just when you think they will never return the wind will blow the sun will shine and somewhere in the distance you will hear a hum

The Jewish New Year is quickly approaching. There will be honey and Challah and prayers and rejoicing. There will be families and loved ones and grandparents with grandchildren and aging parents with their own children. There will be laughter and jokes while enjoying dinner and lunch and walking home together arm in arm, hand in hand with the people most important to you. But there will also be fresh cuts that will turn into raw scars and never fully heal. There will be lasting images of the end of a life well lived packed with pain and suffering that served as a great injustice and indignity to the person that they were - a person who cared for you with every molecule of their soul and left this world too soon and too brutally. And you won't forget because you can't forget. Just when you think you may be having an okay moment, your stomach turns and you feel as if you are going to be sick except you are sick already - sick, exhausted, beaten and torn and there is