There I was, only fifteen years old and unable to participate in my own Miss Teen-Age life. I was in my bed, too depressed to think, talk, read, dance, or even care.

One day I was a cheerleader and an honor roll student who studied piano, ballet, jazz, and contemporary dance. And after “real” school I went to Hebrew School two days a week and to a Saturday Service to honor the Sabbath. I studied a lot. I worried a lot. I volunteered with Downs Syndrome kids at a local residential facility at age fifteen. I was a busy kid until one day, I just no longer was. The hideous disease of depression had stolen my life.

Mom, Dad and I didn’t really know what to do or even who to ask what to do. Much as I wished to spare them ME, there was no way to hide my hysterical despair from them. And that was one of the most pain-filled aspects of the whole disastrous mess. I loved them so much; to see them agonize about having lost their Toni Lisa to this crazed, stupefied, replacement-daughter was like living through a sordid B movie. Without warning, their active, involved, spirited, often too contemplative, maze-like-complex, fun and funny daughter had evaporated. She had vanished without a trace or any clue as to how to retrieve her.

And that was a large part of the story of our next over twenty years. But neuro-chemical depression is cyclical; it’s episodic. Between these crushing periods of depression, I would always slowly return to the person who had been MIA. I would pick up the pieces of my scattered and tattered life and marshal on.

My Mom’s twin suffered from clinical depressions too, so I knew the drill. The depressive period would abate for eighteen months to two years, but I knew from watching my aunt that depression would descend again and again, stealing my life and all sense of reality.

Time passed in its inexorable way, and we tried new doctors, established drugs, experimental drugs, psychiatrists and psychologists. My parents never gave up, never lessened their involvement. And that’s how we lived, one day at a time, from one depression to the next.

* * * * * * *

O.K., so there was that …. a recurring disorder that stumped neurologists and psychiatrists and research physicians and chemists.

BUT …..

Clearly my life was not like the lives of the kids in ANNIE ‘s (The Broadway Musical) “Hard Knock Life,” but it was a demanding life that didn’t leave much time for something I believe is called FUN.

I’ve been perusing a myriad of family photos over this past year, and some photos of me at five years old show my nails being bitten down to the point of extinction. Now that’s sad, don’t you think? Why in the world would a five-year-old be so nervous and downright scared? HHHMMMMMMM ?!?!?!?!?!

* * * * * * *

Recently, I was watching INSIDE THE ACTOR’S STUDIO. James Lipton was interviewing the cast of MAD MEN and its writer\creator, Matthew Weiner (a Jewish guy). Lipton asked Weiner, “So, Matthew, what was it like growing up in the intellectual power arena of having one parent a psychiatrist and the other an attorney?”

Matthew said, “High pressure and humiliation.”

Here’s the point; I was a scared little bird at five years old because of “high pressure and humiliation.” I know you must be thinking, “Is she nuts? She couldn’t possibly have been under that much pressure at five years old.” Well …..  I think I could have been, and I think I was. And if I weren’t being pressured in a way that others could observe, my sensitive heart picked up on something that flew beneath the radar, because it was there; I wasn’t dreaming.

Here’s a point of far weightier importance to me. My parents adored me, and I adored them. That was never the issue. That was never even a point of discussion or contention. But that which shaped their lives, slid down the slide-of-life and affected me and my sister profoundly. My parents couldn’t help it. Especially my immigrant father who entered America at age ten, speaking six languages, but not English. The Bolshevik Revolution forced him and his family to leave everything they knew.

Mom and Dad did their absolute best every day of our co-mingled lives, and today, as an adult with an advanced perspective, I get it.

So, I am first generation American on my Dad’s side, and second generation American on Mom’s side. Their expectations and achievement demands were shaped by the persecution they and their families had personally endured in Romania and Russia. I think Dad must have believed that toughening us up by making us feel close to worthless, would prepare us for the persecution that just might lie ahead. He wagered we would have to dig deep to fight off his assessment of us and we would emerge all the stronger for it.

WRONG-O!

We were just American kids. We had no reason not to believe that every word Dad spoke about us was golden with truth. His approach boomeranged, though, and both my sister and I fought an almost unwinnable battle to overcome his derision, undermining criticism, and the unachievable level of excellence he expected. We were fighting Dad’s demons and didn’t even know it.

He and his three siblings and parents were quite literally thrown out of their home in Russia. The Bolsheviks, with rifles and “manhandling,” made it clear that the family had only a few hours to accumulate some personal belongings. Then, the family had to start walking, because their home, property and tobacco plantation now belonged to the Bolsheviks. Dad and his family then walked, yup, WALKED, from Russia to Cherbourg, France to catch a ship going west to that alluring country of milk, honey, prosperity, and opportunity.

Forever I have been awed by people who can “make it” in a country other than their own. These immigrants usually come with little or no money nor an inability to speak the language. Most had little choice because of persecution, but still ….. when I think about leaving America to try to make it in China or Belgium, I get squirmy and want to hide in a cave. I don’t know that I have their degree of bravery. I don’t think I do.

When their ship was pulling into New York’s Harbor, my Dad’s Mom, my Bubbi, noticed that her youngest daughter’s hair was no longer on her head. The three-year-old kid was so traumatized that her physical reaction was to lose all her hair. We’re talking Telly Savalas bald.

The officials decided that the baby girl could be contagious, so she was quarantined, with no access to her family. Obviously, the family would not leave Ellis Island without their three-year-old, so they slept on the floor of an office for many, many days until it was decided that the whole lot of them had to return to France; they did not meet American standards of acceptability. May I take the liberty to declare, OY ?!?!?!?!?!

Once they got to France, my ten-year-old Dad, now the only one who had not lost his mind, called Uncle Max, Bubbi’s brother, who lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and told Max to meet them at Ellis Island on a particular day in July of 1922, because they were not taking “NO” for an answer. Max had served in WW 1 and could easily vouch for the family, which he did. So, off they went to Uncle Max’s store-front shop and the little apartment above it that he and his family shared. Now the apartment was bulging and bursting from housing two families. But a family has got to do what a family has got to do, so they made it work.

Dad’s Dad, my Zazzi, got a horse and buggy and he and Dad sold chickens, pots, pans, shoes, used clothing …. anything they could find. Life in America ultimately became familiar. Bubbi and Zazzi talked haltingly in English and read Yiddish newspapers. The four kids picked up the language swiftly. Then the bottom fell out of the world; the Market crashed, and life was a nightmare. It helped that Dad’s family was familiar with real-live nightmares.

GET THIS: Before leaving Russia, tribunals were set up across the path from Dad’s family’s home and everyone watched phony tribunals convict innocent people. They then watched while these innocents were shot dead, or hung from wooden gallows with rope nooses. How could my precious Dad and his family not have been scarred, twisted, terrified and bewildered?

Dad walked his family across a continent to board a ship going west and then re-boarded another ship going east to France and then re-boarded another ship gliding once again toward American shores. AMAZING!!!!  

Dad was awarded scholarships to major Universities, chaired a gazillion committees, was the Debate Captain in high school, college and graduate school, earned an MBA from Wharton at The University of Pennsylvania, started a union for teachers in a small PA town, and he co-chaired the Building Fund Campaign so that we could erect a gorgeous new place of worship when we outgrew our Synagogue. He became a stellar businessperson whose clientele adored him.

He and I had major issues and a contentious relationship, but truly, I was wowed by the man and believe he would have made a superior Supreme Court Justice. Now that he has left the dimensions of Earth, I miss him daily. I even miss him misunderstanding me. I miss our arguments. I miss watching him painstakingly remove a stain from a silk tie. I miss his guidance. I miss the love he had for me, but did not express, because I knew his love would surpass the love from any other man. I miss his scent, his distinguished demeanor, his oratory excellence, the timbre of his voice.

Mom and Dad wanted a child badly. But conceiving was difficult for them, and they endured all the tests that were available those many decades ago. I’ve been told that finally, three years into their marriage, my arrival was a grand and gay celebration. I was brought home to their modest apartment in a water-front town near Philadelphia.

Dad realized his teaching position of both English and American History (and this from an Orthodox Jewish immigrant??? ENGLISH AND AMERICAN HISTORY?) was not going to provide the funds he wanted for his little family. So, he bought a business that was faltering and created a small empire.

He worked like a Trojan for the rest of his life. The man had the Midas touch, the knowledge, vigor and vision to create this enterprise and insist that it flourish. He had no quit in him.

* * * * * * *

Dad had his sights set on my Mom for years. He was seven years her senior and when she was only seventeen, he decided SHE was HIS. Dad rarely lost, so if Nina Kline was whom he wanted, Nina Kline was whom he was getting. It took him eight years of “courting” her, but he won.

Mom was reluctant to marry Dad. He was brilliant and steady, and she knew he would protect, provide for, and love her and their children. But he was by no means easy or fluid. He was hardened by his early life, and there was very little of a willow’s bend in him. He was birthed into a family where mental illness was a complex and unforgiving disease. His parents were anything but light and bright and Dad became stern, often melancholy, and usually deadly serious.

Dad believed the point of life was “to suffer.” I drank his Kool Aid and came to believe unflinchingly his was the accurate assessment about the point of life. I proved this to myself by getting a Masters’ Degree in a field that I had no business even considering. Yup, I sure did. I got myself a Masters’ in Speech Pathology, a medically allied field that held no interest or lure for me AT ALL.

I worked in Childrens’ Hospitals, Rehab Centers, and Schools for Developmentally Delayed kids. I had a gift with autistic kids and my Masters’ focused on that challenge. If I weren’t a kid-junkie, I would never have stayed in the field as long as I did. Because, except for the kids, I loathed Speech Pathology. But because I honestly, cross my heart, bought the propaganda that life’s purpose was to suffer, I thought I was definitely on the right path and in the right field, because I suffered daily.          P.A.T.H.E.T.I.C.

The problem was I just didn’t get enough guidance about a career choice. Not from my parents. Nor my teachers. Nor my guidance counselor. Dad insisted I get degrees in a field that would financially sustain me, and since I loved language and kids, Speech Path seemed logical. But no one, not even I, considered my gifts from G-D that were already apparent.

I started writing in diaries when I was thirteen, and never stopped. Am I being unreasonable to think it might have been clear to someone that I loved to write? I was lauded by high school English teachers, and my parents did read report cards and teachers’ comments about my skill. I was an accomplished dancer too. I could play the piano with emotion and proficiency. I landed the role of ANNE FRANK in the play The Diary of a Young Girl in my senior year of high school and, non-modestly speaking, got standing ovations, thunderous applause, and BRAVO’s every night of the run.

So, shouldn’t I have been guided into creative writing or the performing arts? BUT …. let’s get real, there’s no practicality in any of the arts. No siree. What kind of “job” security is there for a writer, dancer, actor, playwright, poet, musician or novelist? Just pie-in-the-sky nonsense.

True to my form, it didn’t occur to me that I might be in the wrong field until my mid-thirties, when I went back to school AGAIN and got a Masters’ in Interior Architecture and Design. That was closer to my heart, but still, not the perfect fit.

I graduated and worked for a Design firm in Philly for a couple of years. They kept me at go-fer status until they discovered I could present, with the articulate aplomb of a pro, complex proposals with detailed blueprints, and present the finishes and furniture exhibits to Boards of Directors of major and minor corporations. Whooppee! Not exactly what I had signed up for.

I ultimately left and started my own firm. WHAT WAS I THINKING!!!!! O.K., so I can design. But I can’t even keep a personal checkbook balanced, much less run a successful business. Wealthy clients saw “NOT A BUSINESS WOMAN” scrawled across my forehead in neon, so they often just didn’t pay their bills, or they decided they didn’t like the dye-lot on the $15,000 custom made sofa I had designed for them that they had signed off on.

I know for certain, though, all those years of training and work were not wasted. I learned things I never would have learned had I been well suited to a career path from jump. Although I’m positive “suffering” is not the purpose of life, it does build strength, tenacity, empathy, courage, and a willingness to stay with something until something better materializes.

Working in Childrens’ Hospitals and Rehab Centers with kids who endured treacherous medical conditions, taught me things I never could have learned in any of The Arts.  Speech Path was the career that fully acquainted me with “suffering” from watching parents who watched their children suffer. Those kids, some born with half their faces missing, showed me the depth of character and bravery encased in the human spirit.

I couldn’t cure their medical anomalies, but I could be a cheerleader, a friend, a companion, an empathic listener. I could hold the babies and send love through touch and smiles and walks down hospital corridors. I could bring their parents a pastrami on rye and coffee and cupcakes. I could phone them from my home. I could be there for them in the ways in which I could and feel so privileged for the opportunity.

Here’s what I learned: Every life situation has unsuspected benefits, and nothing was wasted by choosing a career path that did not overflow with artistic euphoria. I’m so grateful I detoured and that it took decades before I was able to say I am a writer, painter, photographer, designer. I gained the unimaginable by electing to “suffer” through illogical degree choices. Hallelujah Glory!  I applaud the choices life helped me make and I know it was all part of a plan to enhance my own budding growth and development.

I love writing to you. It settles and calms me to just sit still and let my mind and fingers move. And there’s so much to tell.

My salvation story is a WOWSER! I adore people’s reactions when I speak publicly about how I found Him, or just sit on someone’s sofa and let the story fly. And I will tell you. The story is also encompassed in the first book I wrote: AWAKENINGS: A JewishWoman’s Search For Truth. And more elaborately explained in my second book, GABRIEL AND ESTHER.

But I’m not going to write that story today. It will keep.

Today I want to begin to tell you about the theme of GABRIEL AND ESTHER. Long before I knew much of anything about anything, certainly before I came to embrace Jesus as my LORD and SAVIOR, I had two abortions. One was illegal, in 1966, and one was legal, in 1977.

The experiences were quite different, but the aftermaths were not. And I didn’t even know I was in the midst of an “aftermath” until twenty-three years after my second abortion. Denial is a lion-strong, self-protective human device. Its effectiveness is unerringly decisive. If I could have stayed in denial for the rest of my life, I might have chosen that. But I wasn’t the one who rattled me out of denial. That was the LORD’s handiwork. All His.

One budding Spring Day in 1990, the LORD nudged me and said in that still small voice that you know isn’t yours, because you would never in 13 zillion lifetimes say this to yourself: “Toni Lisa, it’s now time for you to deal with your two abortions that were, in fact, not equal to tooth extractions.”

“OH NO!!!!!!!, was all I managed to silently scream. “NOT THAT. NOT THOSE.” He was not impressed. He did not back down. He did not stop nudging me until I had found a Crisis Pregnancy Center that offered group and individual counseling programs for post-abortive women and the men who were willing to admit it was their child too, who was aborted.

I signed up as reluctantly as I would for camping in the Everglades in mid-August (which I have done) or scaling Everest (which I would never do.) I felt totally ill-prepared to look squarely in the face of this aspect of my long-ago past. But by that point in my faith-walk, I knew how to recognize G-D’s voice and to shun His counsel seemed foolish beyond reasoning.

 * * * * * *

Long before post-abortion counseling, there were these two “tooth extractions” that were slowly eating away at the very fabric of my life. And I honestly had NO idea. I was, after all, in the rock-hard protective shell of denial.

Lean back with me now to 1966. I was a sophomore in college. I had plans. I had dreams. I was a nineteen-year-old who didn’t know much of nuttin’, but unequivocally thought I knew a lot about a lot. I was a teenager, for Pete’s sake. How much could I really know? (Who is Pete, anyway?) This was the most inconvenient and altogether horrendous occurrence possible for me as a nineteen-year-old college sophomore.

Here is an embarrassing fact: The one and ONLY outcome I considered was an illegal abortion. It never, not for a red-hot minute, occurred to me that I had other options. I knew from jump I would not be telling my parents. I knew they would demand that I abort, so why bother them with the details? And twenty-five years later, when I did tell them about the two abortions because I was writing GABRIEL AND ESTHER, they assured me I had done the right thing and they would have seen to it that what I did, was what they would have insisted I do.

I had a very different code of ethics at nineteen than I do now. Because my ethics weren’t based on anything of value. I had a plan, damn it, and a baby was just soooo not part of the plan. I would have a baby after I had at least a couple of degrees, a husband with a bright and lucrative future, a lovely home, and a nursery, painted butter-yellow with a drawer full of onesies. PERIOD.

I didn’t allow myself to identify with the baby or “fetus,” as we euphemistically call these soon-to-be-people. I didn’t bond. I didn’t love. All I wanted was for that growing thing to be 

OUT OF MY BODY.

After all, I had work to do, exams to study for and papers to write.

* * * * * * *

Ah, the folly of youth, particularly a youth who never placed G-D in the scenario. A youth who never considered that G-D might have a plan for that “thing.” A youth who was really only interested in her own agenda and had the value system of liberal, leftist, North-East sector of America, Jewish parents who would not have even allowed me, at nineteen, to have a baby.

So, there wasn’t much guilt, in fact none, for about thirty-three years. But when I grew to be a committed Believer of the Bible and was tapped by G-D to acknowledge and “deal with the tooth extractions,” my whole life shifted into a different gear.

I do not doubt that G-D knew I would ultimately write a book about the loss of these two kids and would have to deal with the childless life that is now mine. After all, He knows our thoughts before we think them and our needs before we need them. I don’t believe that any of this, every miserable scrap of it, came as a big dark surprise to Him.

The following may be hard or impossible for some of you to believe, but not being an ignorant, ill-informed, overly naïve nineteen-year-old, I used two forms of birth control both times I conceived. Both times. Two forms of birth control.

What I can say now, twenty-four years after all of the post-abortive counseling, is that I know G-D and my kids have forgiven me, and though it took far longer, I ultimately forgave myself. That’s why I’m able to write and speak publicly about this subject and not fall off a wall into shattered pieces of dirty crystal.

I am healed.

BUT, I am not able to easily live with the knowledge that I made choices that lead to a life of such deep loneliness. Regret cannot possibly describe how I long for the children I chose not to have, or children I might have had later, but never did.

My life circumstances and the many choices I made during sixty-seven years of living, have brought me to exactly where I am. There is no one to blame. I made the choices. I got a divorce. I never re-married. I couldn’t consider adoption because I wasn’t mentally stable or financially capable of raising children until I was far too old for feasibility.

Paul (Biblical, historical Paul) had a life-long “thorn in his side” that he wrote about but was never released from. Not to seem melodramatic or attempt to out-suffer Paul, but I feel as though I have an entire row of steak knives in my side. Forget the thorn; that would have seemingly been a summer breeze.

So, yes, I am healed enough to go public. But I suffer daily as a result of my decisions because my life is desolate and lonely in a way that only intimate relationships within the context of family could provide. I say this because this is how a child-less life has affected me. I’m not implying that everyone who is child-less suffers. For some it’s a voluntary choice not to parent and there’s nothing aberrant about that.

But I believe I was born to parent, and I would have been good at it. Kids really are drawn to me and as I to them. I would feel comfortable saying I have a Pied-Piper sort of personality that draws kids to me like steel to magnets.

So sure, in order to be around children, I’ve volunteered to work with them in various venues. When I was fifteen, I worked with Downs Syndrome kids at a local residential facility near where I grew up. I’ve volunteered in a Children’s Hospital. I worked as a Speech Pathologist in two Children’s Hospitals in Philadelphia. I’ve also been deeply close to the children of a few families since the 1980’s.

But for sure, it’s not the same. Not even close.

There are volumes more inside of me to share with you, and so I shall. But for today, I am spent. I need to take a walk and read something mindless.

The one continuous thread through all of my time, the thread made of strings of gold and specks of silver, has been my Mom. Unlike with Dad and me, Mom and I did not struggle with our relationship. We were mother and daughter and shared all the dimensions of that relationship; but we were so much more. This woman was adored, adorable and lovely beyond what is measurable.

All of her artistic gifts were granted to me. Our gifts encompass the precise expressions of art I would choose if a Convention Hall Showroom was filled to capacity with every known gift of G-D. What a stupendous blessing to create and grow through a variety of expressions. Art and writing and the WORD of G-D engross me and have my undivided attention.

An aside: (“Did Toni Lisa just say,” THE WORD OF G-D“? Does this Jewish woman even know what that means? We are missing a sizable puzzle part that she has purposely omitted or just isn’t willing to share.”)

Hold on, you guys, there’s a LOT more to this story; we’ve barely begun. And yes, you heard or “read” me correctly. I did say “THE WORD OF G-D,” and I know precisely what that means.

Back to Mom …

I often marvel that G-D gave us to each other and that I’m the one she paid rapt attention to. I’m the one who got to giggle with her and lie in bed and hold hands.

We designed her last home together. We went to movies and shows and traveled together.

I had no fear of telling her my most personal stuff because she got it without judgment or recrimination. I benefited from her balanced logic and non-hysterical wisdom. (Oh yeah, and my Mom was not a Jewish Mother. My Dad was a Jewish Mother.)

One of her most sterling qualities was that this woman was simply not a gossip, a snoop, a busy-body, or a yenta. Secrets were safe with her; and that’s no doubt why so many people confided in her. She had a seasoned sense of human fragility and did not cross boundaries that could injure others.

I’m not implying that Mom was flawless or that we did not hurt each other on occasion, over a lifetime. We just swiftly apologized, found a solution, were genuinely sad we had hurt one another and then we moved ahead with our shared lives. If we didn’t bicker-a-bit or disagree about some things, the relationship wouldn’t have reflected depth and breadth; and neither of us could tolerate superficiality. We invisibly yawned through conversations with others that were empty or vapid. We remained polite, but getting off the phone or away from the encounter was our primary objective.

There is a piece included in my first book: AWAKENINGS: A JEWISH WOMAN’S SEARCH FOR TRUTH that is called “THE FOUR PR’S”. They are: “PRETENSE, PROTOCOL, PROPRIETY, and PRETENDING”. Mom was overly adept at these human behaviors. This was an outgrowth of her pristine etiquette and propensity to keep peace at any cost. Watching her utilize these qualities with proficiency, realizing that I knew how to utilize them too, caused me to eventually never want to use them again. I slowly rid myself of behaviors that seemed insincere and dishonest.

But for a long time, I was an ACE at these stances because I learned them from a woman with a PH.D. in “THE FOUR PR’S.” But no more. I worked hard to clean up my act and now attempt to live a life that is pleasing to G-D, having realized that attempting to please man is fruitless, futile, and wrongly directed.

* * * * * * *

I wrote a piece about Mom on the occasion of her 70th Surprise Birthday Party. It captures her essence. Dad, my sister and I all wrote things to share with party revelers.    I will share mine with you now:

A Birthday Tribute

The roaring twenties were about to roll in and Mom’s parents were in for a seven-pound surprise. They hadn’t been expecting twins. But ten minutes after Aunt Lauren was born, a second daughter spilled from Rosie’s womb, and my Mom was born.

It was a physically comfortable life, but there wasn’t much emotional or demonstrative support. Perhaps nothing shapes a child’s life more than the quality of care, interest, and enthusiasm that parents offer during those early years. To do without, can encourage a life handicap: from bravado to withdrawal, from a sugar- coated veneer to cavernous depth. Nina is a complex and subtle being, shaped by her parents, her heritage, her life as a twin and the decades that have encompassed her seventy years.

Forever I have been proud of her. I found her so lovely, so feminine, so socially adept, that all through the awkwardness of my own adolescence my pride in her competed with jealousy. But there was always hope that on the other side of awkward, I would resemble her, move like her, offer love and comfort like her.

I wish I’d known my Mom through the 1920’s, ’30’s and ’40’s. We would have been friends. I’d have pushed her to exploit her gifts. We’d have planted tomatoes, corn and flowers together in our side yard. We’d have fantasized about Douglas Fairbanks and Leslie Howard. We’d have had pillow fights, jump rope contests, and would have scurried out of the house for ice cream at 10:00 p.m.

I love that people find Mom easy to love and easy to protect. She is a delicate vibration in an often-discordant world and I have long secretly thought that “The Princess and the Pea” Fairy Tale was written about her.

Yet she is sturdy, has courage and deep resolve. She buried every member of her birth family and bravely fought the invasive illness of cancer, twice.

I have watched her struggle and I have watched her win. I honor her. She is a brave soul, with quiet and enduring dignity.

I love the inside of her drawers. They’re perfect: piles of silken beauty, sweet scents, soft colors. Everything has a home. Every tiny item knows where it belongs. She never wears anything out. Heels are never run down, purses never scratched, scarves never soiled. She has a light, nearly air-borne touch. I love her best in silk and cashmere. She was born for them.

It takes a while to really know your parents. It wasn’t until my idolatry waned that I could truly understand Mom and become her friend. I also had to figure myself out before I could know her. And then I had to look squarely at the forces that shaped her and those that shaped my Dad.

I had to experience blame, rage, and disappointment. I had to resolve my own life-issues, create physical distance between us, and forgive myself for being so challenging to raise.

Now, I know my Mother. I know her fears, insecurities, and laments. I know what excites her, delights her, moves her, bores, and annoys her. We have been a lesson in unconditional love for each other. Perhaps there is no surer way to find comfort in this world than to be completely known and loved anyway.

NINA JOY KLINE …. is now entering her seventh decade with style, charm, grace and beauty. Thank you, my adoring and adored Mom …. for being my best friend, my champion, my soul-sister, my heartbeat.

I honor you this day and every day, Mom, right on through our eternities. May G-D’s protection and mercy follow you all the days of your life.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU !!!

From The Official President Of Your Fan Club,

TONI LISA

It took nearly thirty years for me to write the book, GABRIEL AND ESTHER, that was launched in July, 2022. And although ades have passed since I began to write this book, I was not writing the work continuously. I wrote other things. And life inevitably got in the way.

There was the terminal illness and death of my Dad. I watched this lion of a man who had always been the Man In My Life, no matter our issues, wither into physical ‘tininess’ from the ravages of cancer. We tried everything. Chemo and radiation. Alternative treatments that required us to go to Philly twice a week for infusions of … I have no idea what. His lungs were tapped several times. He was in and out of hospitals.

Dad was hypochondriacal. But something emerged in him during this process of hideous decay. Stoicism. He became the fiercest of jungle lions, always ready to pounce on the diseased prey. This new aspect of Dad looked remarkably like heroism and was a surprise to those of us who knew him best and loved him most. He didn’t whine or whimper, complain or ask “Why me?” He longed to taste every drop of life he could. He wanted to extend his stay for much longer than the doctors’ projected.

That ten-year-old boy, who marched his family from Russia to France to catch a ship headed for Ellis Island, and then conquered the American dream …. re-emerged. That young Russian boy, that take-charge leader, re-appeared in a new and almost Four-Star General way. All leanings toward melancholy, negativity and hopelessness waned. He studied the accumulated research. He listened attentively to every medical person’s position, then all of us digested the info, and from our legal pads crammed with notes, we crystallized a plan. This physically small man became a giant and never for a moment lost his position as …

PATRIARCH OF THE CLAN.

Family from all over the world visited. He luxuriated in the attention and was humbled by the number of people who really cared. I was never prouder of him. Although I didn’t actually buy a home in our hometown and move back, I did move my computer, books, Bibles and clothes back home and lived with my parents for seven months.

I was so scared. All the love I ever had for him quantum leaped into full-blown admiration. We worked through the nonsense of our shared past and let it go. We took the time and put effort and energy into tabling our issues and talking them through until there was nothing left to talk about.

He was earnestly apologetic. Most of the examples of our troubled relationship surprised him. He kept repeating, “I did that?” Mom would confirm that yes, indeed, he had. He hugged me and apologized. I thought I was dreaming. But instead, it was just me melting into gooey caramel and soft, sweet chocolate.

* * * * * * *

The Passover Holiday was a huge event for our family, as it is for most Jewish people around the globe. The Passover Seder is the happiest of all family Holiday festivals because it represents our flight from Egypt and ultimate freedom. For multiple decades, Mom prepared food weeks in advance. Dad poured over scholarly material and Haggadas (the official Holiday handbook of stories, songs and history). All the kids looked forward to the four cups of icky sweet Mogan David wine we would be permitted to sip. Excitement heightened as the night approached.

On this particular Passover year of 2000, since Dad was in the hospital, we decided to have our Seder at a lovely hotel. It was a kosher hotel that was accustomed to serving Passover meals to Jewish families.

Dad was in a hospital in Philly, and while at home, when Mom and I were dressing to leave for the hotel, we heard an ambulance siren so close, it had to be in our driveway. It was. Two huge dudes carried Dad, by stretcher, into our home and deposited him on the sofa. Dad decided he was not going to miss his last Seder, so he insisted the doctors release him without their medical sanction.

We carefully dressed him, placed him in the car with a wheelchair, a briefcase bulging with his books, 3″ x 5″ cards of notes and years of accumulated research. As we wheeled him into the room that had been set up for our family of about seventeen people, everyone cheered, applauded, cried and ran up to him with love-filled arms to embrace him and to place kisses on every part of him they could reach. IT WAS GLORIOUS and Mom and I were overwhelmed with joy and with a sadness and finality we had never known. (My sister and her family were in Europe watching Adam play soccer, that’s why there is no mention of that little clan.)

Dad’s voice was weak, but his words were stunning and academic; they flowed from him in an easy cadence threaded with authority and command. I was awed. I was struck almost numb with some of the deepest emotions of my life.

It was a celebration, and it was the end of an era. Never again would my Dad lead us in the story of our people’s flight from Egypt.

 I captured all of it on film and created little albums for everyone who attended that Seder. I handed them out at Dad’s funeral just ten days later.

 It is now twenty years since he passed out of this world. It seems like forever ago; it seems like the week before last. I miss him more than I ever would have dared believe possible. He had so radically changed during his walk toward death, that by the time he was truly gone, he was the Dad I had yearned for all my life.

He was kind and gentle with me. He touched my hair to push strands from my face. He looked directly into my eyes that reflected pride and unfailing love. He was broken, and all the anger and aggression were gone. He saw me clearly and both loved and admired what he saw.

It was late, but it was not too late. It changed the trajectory of my life and allowed me to slowly grow into a woman of strength and determination, knowing that I had my Dad’s approval. This knowledge permitted me to soar into my own destiny and give the world the gifts G-D has given me. I was released to fly with eagles. I was released into the kind of freedom that breaks metal chains and pierces rigid armor. I was released to be all that G-D had planned for His TONI LISA, a herald, a harbinger to the nations.

There is a P.S. about Dad and me that is worth reporting because of its utter preciousness and absurdity. He was nearing his end and Mom and he and I were in our kitchen. Dad asked me, “Toni Lisa, what’s the thing you regret most about your life?” The answer slid easily from me like beads of water flowing down a windowpane.

“Not having kids.”

“Well, that’s not an unfixable problem. How about I just buy you one?”

Mom instantly stopped whatever she was doing at the sink, sat down between Dad and me, and said, “SOLOMON, DO NOT BUY HER A KID!! (I cracked up.)

Mom continued, “Toni Lisa is fifty-three years old, Sol. She has a life. It may not be the life she dreamed of when she was fifteen, but I know Toni as well as I know you, and parenting is not something she needs to start NOW! We don’t get everything we want in life. And a child is not something our daughter is going to have. She’s got a life, children or no children, and she is not prepared to start that kind of journey when she’s middle-aged and single. DO NOT BUY HER A CHILD! PROMISE ME! (By now I’m nearly rolling on the floor.)

Poor Dad looked at me and said, “What’s so funny? I thought I was just going to fix your life with a simple purchase before I die.”

For a brilliant man, Dad could be just so so … what? Ludicrous is all I can come up with. But ya gotta love the guy. I just stood up behind him, hugged his neck, gave him a kiss   on his cheek and said, “That is so sweet of you, Dad. Thank you so much for wanting me to have what I don’t have and what I most regret about my life. You’re the best.”

Today is a day, not unlike many days, when I am so grateful G-D gave me the ability and desire to write. I think I may have exploded into thousands of human fragments if I hadn’t had this expressive outlet of pushing thoughts and emotions through my mind onto paper and later onto a monitor. For me, it has been a literal lifesaver.

 When Mom and Dad gave me my first Dairy for Hannukah, at age thirteen, it quickly became the most beloved item in my physical world. She became my G-D Friend, because although I didn’t know The Lord of Lords yet, I did have a relationship with ABBA\Father G-D, and knew He knew everything about everything. So, there was no point in lying or exaggerating.

 In other words, I understood monotheism, but for Jews, to consider a man, Jesus, to be The Son of G-D, or a part of G-D in any way, was tantamount to treason. (We don’t grasp the tri-unity concept, or the fact that in Genesis, G-D writes, “Let US make man in OUR own image.)

 I was conditioned through millennia of teachings to believe Jesus was a swell guy and a superlative Rabbi. But Son of G-D? Not a chance.

Somehow, my young heart and spirit knew and loved the Creator, and the diary was my path to deepening that relationship and sharing my angst, stress, terror, joy or happiness with someone I knew cared. I never saw the Creator as a man or woman, but as a giant, invisible, all-knowing Spirit, or elaborate Energy Field.

As a teen, before I went to sleep, I wrote in my diary …. a never to be broken chain of words that painted the stories of my life. I developed a passion for words, their ability to rid me of some excess emotion, the intimacy that writing created with G-D and the fact that writing to G-D gave birth to our own private and undisclosed world.

Take a stab at how shocked I am, that over fifty years later, I am sharing my diary entries with YOU!!!  Strangers. People from many cultures. People who might never have met a Jewess. People who will despise my life-choices and disrespect me for making them and sharing them. I am putting out into the ethers, the filthiest of my dirty laundry. I am exposing my core and the long-held secrets of my life.

One might be prompted to ask, “WHY IN THE HELL WOULD YOU DO THAT?”

Because maybe, just maybe, somewhere, somehow, someone will be affirmed or affected or provoked-to-thought by the words I offer in GABRIEL AND ESTHER. This is my motivation. This is my reason. There is no hidden agenda.

AWAKENINGS, my first book, is a series of stories, essays, quips, and observations. GABRIEL AND ESTHERis far more. It allows the reader into the life I’ve lived and the consequences of my choices. It is raw and gritty. It’s explicit, graphic, pathetic, and redemptive. Maybe it took over twenty-five years to write this book because of the ambivalence I’ve felt about sharing so much of myself. But I’ve never been one to shy away from the truth. Mental illness often forces one to look squarely into the eye of the tiger. 

Writers, write. It wasn’t my assignment to write about the National Parks of North America or the latest trends in fashion. What I have to offer in words is a life of choices. And just maybe, someone may choose to avoid making my choices after reading GABRIEL AND ESTHER.

It’s important to me that you know I am not given to proselytizing. I’m not here to shake a finger in anyone’s face or look askance at those who are not touched by Biblical precepts.

I am here to tell ONE WOMAN’S STORY. My story. My joy. My suffering. The choices that shaped my life.

My first book was published in 1993. I have probably given almost two thousand copies of that book away. I’d hand them out to toll booth operators, bank tellers, grocery store clerks, fellow passengers on airplanes, doctors, people I’d meet in other people’s homes …. whenever I felt led to or urged to or just wanted to.

 The maximum “high” from handing out those books is the stories that drift back to me. These are G-D given gifts because the fact that these stories reach me at all is miraculous. That G-D has allowed dozens of people’s reactions to AWAKENINGS to filter back to me, has His stamp all over it.

The responses have urged me to write more and expose more and to never stop until I breathe my last breath.

The responses to AWAKENINGS, carried on clouds and airwaves, are unimaginably glorious. Stories of people who claim their lives were forever changed. A painter who hadn’t painted for years and is now artistically prolific. A young-ish girl who found my book in a library I’ve never been to and to which the book was not distributed. People who call the book one of their favorites.

Here’s my “Favorite” story: I was getting a pair of sunglasses fitted at Lens Crafters, and the woman who was fitting me said, “Your name is familiar.”

“O.K.” I said while thinking, “That’s nice and la dee da.”

She started talking casually about visiting her aunt in South Carolina the week before. Then her face lit up like sun on fallen snow and she said, “Did you write a book called AWAKENINGS, or something like that?”

“Yes, I did!”

“YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS!” said she. “On my Aunt’s coffee table in South Carolina, I saw a book with an iris on the cover. It was called AWAKENINGS, I’m pretty sure. When I flipped the book over, I saw the author’s photo and she looked a lot like YOU!”

“WOWOWOWOW!! It probably was me, I said. There’s an iris on the cover of my book called AWAKENINGS.”

She said, “I asked my aunt where she got the book. She said a patient had left it on her hospital bed and when my Aunt went to say good-bye to the patient, who’d already been discharged, she saw the book and took it home. I asked my Aunt if I could have the book and she said ‘NO!’ ….. I want to keep it.

“I was thinking I’d jump on Amazon when I got back home, but I just haven’t had a chance yet.”

 This was getting juicier by the second.

“Why did you want the book?” I asked.

“Because from the words on the back cover, it sounded like a book that might help me. I’m going through some really hard stuff.”

“Well, Darlin’, consider this a gift from our LORD, because I carry a carton of books around in the trunk of my car. I can get you your very own copy right this second!”

She jumped up and down like she’d won the three-state-lottery and all the people in the store wanted to hear the story. She cried and laughed as she told them. She hugged me approximately two dozen times.

I went to the car, retrieved a book, wrote a long note to her on the inside cover sheet and handed it to her.

She held the book as though it were a treasured newborn. She clung to it like something of great value and fragility.

And here’s the really snazzy part: she called her Aunt in South Carolina and said, “Aunt Rose, you will not believe this. Remember that book on your coffee table you didn’t want to part with? Well, the author walked into our store and is sitting right next to me holding my hand and she just gave me my own signed copy!!! Do you believe this? Sure, you can talk to her. Hold on ….”

That was the kind of day that made writing, for almost all of my life, worth the sky, moon, stars, firmament, air, beauty, and Spring’s blossoms.

It made the eight years it took to get that first book in print worth every agonizing rejection from editors, agents, and publishers. It eased the remembered anguish of setbacks, publishing hassles and tedious labor.

It made every frustrating, isolating, and pain-laden aspect of being a writer worth as much as no wars forever and ever, as much as poverty, thirst and hunger erased from the human condition.

 It has vindicated and validated my life-long effort …. and I am so blessed.

     

Today is a day, not unlike many days, when I am so grateful G-D gave me the ability and desire to write. I think I may have exploded into thousands of human fragments if I hadn’t had this expressive outlet of pushing thoughts and emotions through my mind onto paper and later onto a monitor. For me, it has been a literal lifesaver.

When Mom and Dad gave me my first dairy for Hanukkah, at age thirteen, it quickly became the most beloved item in my physical world. She became my G-D Friend, because although I didn’t know The Lord of Lords yet, I did have a relationship with  ABBA (Father) G-D, and knew He knew everything about everything. So, there was no point in lying or exaggerating.

In other words, I understood monotheism, but for Jews, to consider a man, Jesus, to be The Son of G-D, or a part of G-D in any way, was tantamount to treason. (We don’t grasp the tri-unity concept, or the fact that in Genesis, G-D writes, “Let US make man in OUR own image.”   NOT: “Let ME make man in MY own image.”)

I was conditioned through the teachings that sprinkled down through millennia to believe Jesus was a swell guy and a superlative Rabbi. But G-D? Not a chance.

Somehow, my young heart and spirit knew and loved the Creator, and the diary was my path to deepening that relationship and sharing my angst, stress, terror, joy or happiness with someone I knew cared. I never saw the Creator as a man or woman, but as a giant, invisible, all-knowing Spirit, or elaborate Energy Field.

As a teen, before I went to sleep, I wrote in my diary …. a never to be broken chain of words that painted the stories of my life. I developed a passion for words, their ability to rid me of some excess emotion, the intimacy that writing created with G-D, and the fact that writing to G-D gave birth to our own private and undisclosed world.

Take a stab at how shocked I am, that over fifty years later, I am sharing my diary entries with YOU!!!   Strangers. People from many cultures. People who might never have met a Jewess. People who will despise my life-choices and disrespect me for both making them and sharing them. I am putting out into the ethers, the filthiest of my dirty laundry. I am exposing my core and the long-held secrets of my life.

One might be prompted to ask, “WHY IN THE HELL WOULD YOU DO THAT?”

Because maybe, just maybe, somewhere, somehow, someone will be affirmed or affected or provoked-to-thought by the words I offer in GABRIEL AND ESTHER. This is my motivation. This is my reason. There is no hidden agenda.

AWAKENINGS, is a series of stories, essays, quips and observations. GABRIEL AND ESTHERER is far more. It allows the reader into the life I’ve lived and the consequences of my choices. It’s raw and gritty. It’s explicit, graphic, pathetic, and redemptive. Maybe it took over twenty years to write this book because of my ambivalence in sharing so much of myself. But I’ve never been one to shy away from the truth. Mental illness often forces one to look squarely into the eye of the tiger. 

Writers, write. It wasn’t my assignment to write about the National Parks of North America or the latest trends in fashion. What I have to offer in words is my life of choices, and the hope that someone may choose to avoid my choices after reading GABRIEL AND ESTHER. It’s important to me that you know I am not given to proselytizing. I’m not here to shake a finger in anyone’s face or look askance at those who are not touched by Biblical precepts.

I am here to tell ONE WOMAN’S STORY. My story. My joy. My suffering. The choices that shaped my life.

My first book was published twenty-three years ago. I have probably given almost two thousand copies of that book away. I’d hand them out to toll booth operators, bank tellers, grocery store clerks, fellow passengers on airplanes, doctors, people I’d meet in other people’s homes …. whenever I felt led to or urged to or just wanted to.

The maximum “high” from handing out those two thousand books is the stories that drift back to me. These are G-D given gifts because the fact that these stories reach me at all is miraculous. That G-D has allowed dozens of people’s reactions to AWAKENINGS to filter back to me, has His hallmark all over it.

The responses have urged me to write more and expose more and to never stop until I breathe my last breath.

The reactions to AWAKENINGS, carried on clouds and airwaves are unimaginably glorious. Stories of people who claim their lives were forever touched. A painter who hadn’t painted for years and is now artistically prolific. A young-ish girl who found my book in a library I’ve never even been to and to which the book was not distributed. People who call the book one of their favorites.

Here’s my “Favorite” story: I was getting a pair of sunglasses fitted at Lens Crafters, and the woman who was fitting me said, “Your name is familiar.”

“O.K.” I said while thinking, “That’s nice and la dee da.”

She started talking casually about visiting her Aunt in South Carolina the week before. Then her face lit up like sun on fallen snow and she said, “Did you write a book called AWAKENINGS, or something like that?”

“Yes, I did!”

“YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS!” said she. “On my Aunt’s coffee table in South Carolina, I saw a book with an iris on the cover. It was called AWAKENINGS, I’m pretty sure. When I flipped the book over, I saw the author’s photo and she looked a lot like YOU!”

“WOWOWOWOW!! It probably was me,” I said. “There’s an iris on the cover of my book called AWAKENINGS.”

She said, “I asked my Aunt where she got the book. She said a patient had left it on her hospital bed and when my Aunt went to say good-bye to the patient, who’d already been discharged, she saw the book and took it home. I asked my Aunt if I could have the book and she said ‘NO!’ ….. I want to keep it.’ So, I just thought I’d jump on Amazon when I got back home, but I just haven’t had a chance yet.”

This was getting juicier by the second.

“Why did you want the book?” I asked.

“Because from the words on the back cover, it sounded like a book that might help me. I’m going through some really hard stuff.”

“Well, Darlin’, consider this a gift from our LORD, because I carry a carton of books around in the trunk of my car. I can get you your very own copy right this second!”

She jumped up and down like she’d won the three-state-lottery and all the people in the store wanted to hear the story. She cried and laughed as she told them. She hugged me approximately two dozen times.

I went to the car, retrieved a book, wrote a long note to her on the inside cover sheet and handed it to her.

She held the book as though it were a treasured newborn. She clung to it like something of great value and fragility.

And here’s the really snazzy part: she called her Aunt in South Carolina and said, “Aunt Rose, you will not believe this. Remember that book on your coffee table you didn’t want to part with? Well, the author walked into our store and is sitting right next to me holding my hand and she just gave me my own signed copy!!! Do you believe this? Sure, you can talk to her. Hold on ……”

That was the kind of day that made writing, for almost all my life, worth the sky, moon, stars, firmament, air, beauty, and Spring’s blossoms.

It made the eight years it took to get that first book in print worth every agonizing rejection from editors, agents, and publishers. It eased the remembered anguish of setbacks, publishing hassles and tedious labor.

It made every frustrating, isolating, and pain-laden aspect of being a writer worth as much as …. no wars forever and ever, as much as poverty, thirst and hunger erased from the human condition.

It has vindicated and validated my life-long effort …. and I am so blessed.

I love writing to you. It settles me. It calms me, to just sit still and let my mind and fingers move. And there’s so much to tell.

Today I want to begin to tell you about one theme encompassed in GABRIEL AND ESTHER. Long before I knew much of anything about anything, certainly before I came to embrace Jesus as my LORD and SAVIOR, I had two abortions. One was illegal, in 1966, and one was legal, in 1977.

The experiences were quite different, but the aftermaths were not. And I didn’t even know I was in the midst of an “aftermath” until twenty-three years after my second abortion. Denial is a lion-strong, self-protective human device. Its effectiveness is unerringly decisive. If I could have stayed in denial for the rest of my life, I might have chosen that. But I wasn’t the one who rattled me out of denial. That was the LORD’s work. All His.

One budding Spring Day in 1990, the LORD nudged me and said in that still small voice that you know isn’t yours, because you would never in thirteen zillion lifetimes say this to yourself: “Toni Lisa, it’s now time for you to deal with your two abortions that were, in fact, not equal to tooth extractions.”

“OH NO!!!!!!!, was all I managed to silently scream. “NOT THAT. NOT THOSE.” He was not impressed. He did not back down. He did not stop nudging me until I had found a Crisis Pregnancy Center that offered group and individual counseling programs for post-abortive women and the men who were willing to admit it was their child too.

I signed up as reluctantly as I would for camping in the Everglades in mid-August (which I have done) or scaling Everest (which I would never do). I felt totally ill-prepared to look squarely in the face of this aspect of my long-ago past. But by that point in my faith-walk, I knew how to recognize G-D’s voice and to shun His counsel seemed foolish beyond reasoning.

 * * * * * *

Decades before post-abortion counseling, there were these two “tooth extractions” that were slowly eating away at the very fabric of my life. And I honestly had NO idea. I was, after all, in the rock-hard protective shell of denial.

Lean back with me now to 1966. I was a sophomore in college. I had plans. I had dreams. I was a nineteen-year-old who didn’t know much of nuttin’, but unequivocally thought I knew a lot about a lot. I was a teen-ager, for Pete’s sake. How much could I really know? (And who is Pete, anyway?) This was the most inconvenient and altogether horrendous occurrence possible for me as a nineteen-year-old college sophomore.

Here is an embarrassing fact: The one and ONLY outcome I considered was an illegal abortion. It never, not for a finger snap of time, occurred to me that I had other options. I knew from jump I would not be telling my parents. I knew they would demand that I abort, so why bother them with the details?

Twenty-five years later, when I did tell them about the two abortions because I was writing GABRIEL AND ESTHER, they assured me I had done the right thing and they would see to it that what I did, was what they would have insisted I do.

I was just a kid, and I had a plan, damn it, and a baby was just soooo not part of the plan. I would have a baby after I had at least a couple of degrees, a husband with a bright and lucrative future, a lovely home, and a nursery, painted butter-yellow with a drawer full of onesies. PERIOD.

I didn’t allow myself to identify with the baby or “fetus”, as we euphemistically call these soon-to-be-people. I didn’t bond. I didn’t love. All I wanted was for that growing thing to be 

!!!OUT OF MY BODY!!

I did, after all, have work to do, exams to study for and papers to write.

* * * * * * *

Ah, the folly of youth, particularly a youth who never placed G-D in the scenario. A youth who never considered that G-D might have a plan for that “thing.” A youth who was really only interested in her own agenda and had the value system of liberal, leftist, North-East sector of America Jewish parents.

So, there wasn’t much guilt, in fact none, for about twenty-three years. But when I grew to be a committed Believer of the Bible and was tapped by G-D to acknowledge and “deal with the abortions,” my whole life shifted on its axis.

I do not doubt that G-D knew I would ultimately write a book about the loss of these two kids, and I would have to deal with the child-less life that is now mine. After all, He knows our thoughts before we think them and our needs before we need them. I don’t believe that any of this, every miserable scrap of it, came as a big dark surprise to Him.

The following may be hard or impossible for some of you to believe, but not being an ignorant, ill-informed, overly naïve nineteen-year-old, I used two forms of both control both times I conceived. Both times. Two forms of birth control.

What I can say now, after all the post-abortive counseling, and time’s passage, is that I know G-D and my kids have forgiven me, and though it took far longer, I ultimately forgave myself. That’s why I’m able to write and speak publicly about this subject and not fall off a wall into shattered pieces of dirty crystal.

I am healed.

But I am not able to easily live with the knowledge that I made choices that lead to a life of such deep loneliness. “Regret” cannot possibly describe how I long for the children I chose not to have, or children I might have had later, but never did.

My life circumstances and the many choices I made during seventy-three years of living, have brought me to exactly where I am. There is no one to blame. I made the choices. I got a divorce. I never re-married. I didn’t consider adoption because I wasn’t mentally stable or financially capable of raising children until I was just far too old for it to be feasible.

Paul (Biblical, historical Paul) had a life-long “thorn in his side” that he wrote about but was never released from. Not to seem melodramatic or attempt to out-suffer Paul, but I feel as though I have an entire row of steak knives in my side. Forget the thorn; that would have seemingly been a summer breeze.

So, yes, I am healed enough to go public. But I suffer daily from my decisions because my life is desolate in a way that only intimate relationships within the context of family could provide. I say this because this is how a child-less life has affected me. I’m not implying that everyone who is child-less suffers. For some it’s a voluntary choice not to parent and there’s nothing aberrant about that.

But I believe I was born to parent; I would have been good at it. Kids really are drawn to me and I to them. I have a Pied-Piper sort of personality that draws kids like magnets to steel.

So sure, in order to be around children, I volunteered to work with them in various venues. When I was fourteen, I worked with Downs Syndrome kids at a local residential facility near where I grew up. I’ve volunteered in a Children’s Hospital. I worked as a Speech Pathologist in two Children’s Hospitals in Philadelphia. I’ve also been deeply close to the children of a few families since the 1980’s.

But for sure, it’s not the same. Not even close.

There are volumes more inside of me to share with you, and so I shall. But for today, I am spent. I need to take a walk and read something mindless. More later.

Around 2003 I knew something was dreadfully wrong with Mom. I didn’t speak of it. I just knew it. Although the changes in her were subtle, to me they were as glaringly apparent as a matador’s cape, because we knew each other that well. It took months for me to be able to take her to a neurologist. And months more before I could take her for a second opinion. They called it dementia and suspected it was Alzheimer’s.

These are among the reasons I did not have a continuous flow of uninterrupted time to write this most recent book: Dad’s death. Mom’s diagnosis. And then the death of my very best friend since diapers. We were cousins and only seven months apart in age. My sister also became dreadfully ill.

I knew that G-D would “never leave me or forsake me.” I knew He would be next to me through all of it.

But I couldn’t cry on His literal shoulder. He couldn’t hold me. He couldn’t help with the myriad details. He couldn’t drive me when I was too tired or undone to think clearly or see through my storm of tears.

I was entering a living nightmare and was too savvy and experienced to not know what I was facing. I tumbled head-first into a life of searing darkness. It was so much more than “depression.” It was unmitigated terror.

Mom made her transition out of this realm in late 2009 and …….. well, I’m not sure what to say about that.

I chronicled every day of Dad’s march toward the end of his Earth life, from the day of his diagnosis to his passing six months and ten days later. But I have never written one word about Mom’s and my final journey and I’m not sure I ever will after today.

I don’t know that I can. I don’t know that I want to dig that deep, bring every agonizing moment of those six and a half years into consciousness and then re-live the emotion, the sizzling-fiery pain, the centimeter-by-centimeter diminishment of the woman whom I loved more than anyone I’ve ever loved. I don’t want to commit it all to print. I don’t want to find the words. I don’t want to look at the words. I don’t want anyone else to read the words that could never in ten zillion “forever’s” capture the agony of that journey and the grief that will not go away.

It is now eleven years since we laughed together or held hands or laid in her bed and watched a movie. My life is so different with her gone that some days it barely feels like a life. It feels more like an existence. There really is an ongoing sensation that parts of me are missing. That I am somehow less; but I know that’s not so. She left so much of herself inside of me that in some sense, she’s not gone. She just lives somewhere else, and I know without doubt or suspicion that we will be re-united someday. I can hardly wait.

And that’s the problem; I can hardly wait. I work on this every day because I know this is not the mind-set G-D wants me to have. I know He is not delighted that I wish to be gone from this Earth.

He knows that I know this is the natural order of things and that I had Mom for sixty-two years, a blessing I thank Him for with tears, praise, and thanksgiving.

I am not unaware that some children lose their mothers during childbirth or when they are five years old. I do so wish I could say these facts help me to heal. I can feel sorrow for these kids. I can offer myself to them if they are children I know. I can pray for their little broken hearts. But their broken hearts don’t heal my broken heart.

So here I am, writing about “IT.” But I will not write about the year after relentless year of her descent into insanity. Nor of the bizarre behaviors that humiliated her because during the first few stages, she knew something was VERY wrong. I will not write of the demure and sassy, delicate and completely lovely lady who slowly spiraled into someone freakishly strange, a potential danger to herself, a woman whose hallucinations took her on a ride into hysteria and terror that no coaxing, drugs or hugs could ease.

In the first stage of the disease, I was told by several people I must tell her the diagnosis, because it was not fair to her not to tell her. It took weeks for me to find the courage. And then, I told her, with her sitting on the sofa in her living room and me kneeling in front of her, clasping her hands in mine. She looked astonished. Dazed. It took a minute or so for her to grasp what the word Alzheimer’s even meant. Then she rose, walked into her private bath and returned a few minutes later. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying.

She sat back down, took my hands into hers and said, “We will get through this together, Toni, somehow.”

That’s when I had to leave the room. I had worked myself into a frenzy from the dread of having to tell her. It had taken me a whole year to even be able to say the word “Alzheimer’s” out loud. Telling her was the hardest thing I’ve ever been required to do.

I drove back to my home in VA knowing it was now inescapably time to leave VA and move back home. Will it come as a huge surprise that all of this threw me over the bridge of sanity into my own circling-the-drain panic?

Before packing and moving, I had a legitimate, die-hard, no kidding break-down. I was paralyzed. I was hysterical for hours a day. I lost thirty pounds. The thought of leaving my small coterie of friends I’d had for twenty years and moving back home to Alzheimer’s and my sister’s severe illness, rendered me breathless.

Never in all my time, not even when I myself was mentally ill, had I been so terrified or alone, holding firm to the belief that I would not be able to handle all of this. I would have no help from Dad; he was gone. No husband. No children. A sibling who was far too sick to help herself, much less help Mom or me.

* * * * * * *

The book? What book? I found just breathing and eating more than half-a-piece-of-toast a day to be my greatest challenges.

The saving grace and gift from G-D in all the pain, was that she NEVER once forgot who I was, nor did she ever forget my name. She often forgot her own, but never mine. That was G-D at His sweetie-pie best, showering me with His grace and mercy so that I could persevere and never falter in my unbridled devotion.

My heart joins with every one of us who must suffer the loss of those we love. It is as unfathomable as it is inevitable. It is also endurable because of G-D’s unfailing love for us and the people around us who love us through our grief.

And that’s all I’m going to write about my Mom’s and my journey through the complexity of dementia. You now know what is salient, and I have exhausted my stream of words and thought.