Mother took her last breath. Her gold eyes stared at me with love.
But they also revealed something darker, chilling.

Her ancient body, spanning only 5 decades, exploded. And she
vanished in a quiet, cutting moment that severed all earthly ties
with me.

Possessed by a rending sadness that ripped my soul, I shrieked
and wailed and raged against my G-d who took my angel from
this house of light.

I struggled to fathom the incomprehensible. I failed.

After Mother’s death, I said the Mourner’s Kaddish every day at the
Tree of Life, my family’s synagogue for generations.

The rituals of mourning did not comfort me. The grief was unbearable.
Vowing never to return, I left my father’s house one morning, before
sunrise, and entered the vast world beyond.

Yet over the surreal years of my life, a dreamlike second in the mysterious,
oceanic universe that sustains me, I have often returned home, sometimes
at dawn or late at night in my dreams.

Now, with much sadness and shards of trauma piercing my anguished inner
child, I re-enter the dark, beautiful home of my youth. You see, I left my
wounded soul there.

I’ve returned again and again to bless it and breathe love into its fragile,
ghostly spirit. But soon, I will kiss its beauty and carry it out of the
antediluvian house. Tonight, we will sleep together under the stars,
a few steps from the Tree of Life.