As my mother was dying in America, growing weaker month by month, the flowers out on our porch were dying, too. It couldn’t be helped. It was Israel’s sabbatical year. By Jewish law, the earth lay fallow. I couldn’t weed them, couldn’t drown them with water to make up for my frequent absences. No one else in the family loved them as much as I; and while my mother was dying, they kept slipping my mind. I didn’t love them myself.

They weren’t getting fed at their appointed times: the tiny white blossoms with orange at the center were supposed to be watered every morning, before the day got hot; the pink geraniums, twice a week; the purple nasturtiums, every other day. The leaves turned yellow, then brown. I’d return from a trip to Los Angeles (where I’d run up my mother’s long-distance bill: “Don’t any of you dare take buses! Don’t go anywhere!”) and after a day or two would notice that the plants were starving. Who cared? The intifada was in full swing. Mothers were shot as they drove to work, men had been lynched; father after father after father, gone; children were being torn out by their roots. I was losing Mommy. The land was filling with orphans. They were crying everywhere. Hands and legs were blown off. Our souls turned dry to the touch. Mothers were screaming. Blood soaked the soil.

The flowers withered, shriveled, and said goodbye.

The ambulances were shrieking and my electrified heart kept jumping out of its socket. When it was an act of heroism to let the children go to school, and an act of insanity to go downtown for a........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)