We had just finished passover dinner and my dad tells me that he has something for me and returns with a manila envelope, I open it up and know immediately what is inside of it when I see type written pages about 50 of them along with a stack of type written words on yellow legal paper. He then walks away and go into the kitchen and by the time that he comes back in the living room I have tears streaming down my face. I took the pages home with me that night and stared at them for about 30 mins before I decided that I couldn't read it yet even though I wanted to. I told some friends about it and they all wanted to see it and read it when I was done but me getting through that part is going to be the hard part.
Well I did it tonight, I sat down with no TV, sound or any distractions and got through about half of the book with minimal tears. It is so amazing to be able to have something like this to read, something that she wrote when she was not much younger than I am now. To learn about the experiences that she went through when she was just 24 and the pain, good times and bad that she endured was incredible to see written down on paper. I had always heard her talk about her experiences when she found out she was sick but never in the depth and description that I am now for the first time reading about. I am finding out things that I never knew she went through and in such great depth and detail that I am overcome with emotions both with sorrow and laughter. I realize now through this book how much we we alike in many ways that I never knew. I am so blessed that my mom wrote this since she is not here to tell me all of these things and answer questions that I want to ask her about her experience. There are so many questions about her past, my past ,my families past that I will never know the answers to and this at least brings some kind of answers to a few of the questions that I have always had. It saddens me deeply that she is not here today for me to go to if I want to know about something but at least I have this and the journal that she wrote to me when she was pregnant with me to the time I was a year old to reflect on and hopefully that will give me at least some of the answers that I will never be able to ask. This is something that I will be able to pass on to my children some day and tell them this is what your grandma went through and although she is not here with you today and you never met her she can live on and her experiences both good and bad can live on through her writing.
