The Miracle of Love: A Mother's Story of Grief, Hope and Acceptance PDF
Preview The Miracle of Love: A Mother's Story of Grief, Hope and Acceptance
The miracle of LOVE ONDINE SHERMAN First published in 2013 Copyright © Ondine Sherman 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Email: [email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia www.trove.nla.gov.au ISBN 978 1 74331 620 7 eISBN 978 1 74343 461 1 Set in 12.5/16.5 pt Bembo by Post Pre-press Group, Australia Note: Some names have been changed and some characters merged or divided to protect people’s privacy. For Dror The point is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us. Viktor E. Frankl Contents FOREWORD AUTHOR’S NOTE PROLOGUE ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN ELEVEN TWELVE THIRTEEN FOURTEEN FIFTEEN SIXTEEN SEVENTEEN EIGHTEEN NINETEEN TWENTY TWENTY-ONE TWENTY-TWO TWENTY-THREE TWENTY-FOUR TWENTY-FIVE TWENTY-SIX TWENTY-SEVEN TWENTY-EIGHT TWENTY-NINE THIRTY THIRTY-ONE EPILOGUE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS BIBLIOGRAPHY Foreword W hen your life swerves off its expected course without warning, you can be left highly disoriented. Reeling. All perspective and sense of certainty can vanish. But when you have children there’s no time to stop and recalibrate. No time to stop the world so you can pat yourself down after the explosion and check that everything’s intact. The daily demands of a young family wait for nobody. When Ondine Sherman and her husband Dror Ben-Ami were faced with the news that their twin sons, Dov and Lev, had a rare genetic condition that would drastically impair their future development, nothing stopped. They still had the minute-by-minute chaos of life with small children, made even more complicated for Ondine by living in a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language. And yet in other ways, everything stopped. Their life as they knew it was snuffed out in a series of medical appointments. And as they were drip-fed information about their sons’ diagnosis and prognosis, they had to navigate a strange kind of ongoing tragedy, dealing with everyone else’s reactions on top of their own. We’re terrible at dealing with such things in Western culture. We have few rituals for grief or loss or reflection. We prefer to celebrate happy occasions, like births and engagements, job promotions, anniversaries and birthdays. The language of good news is embedded into our small talk and peppered through our conversations. But when bad things happen, we freeze. We stumble. We slink away. We stay silent when we should say something, anything. We lean back when we should lean forward; when we should reach out and allow lean back when we should lean forward; when we should reach out and allow unspoken fear and grief and uncertainty to bubble to the surface. We should ask and we should listen, even if it’s sometimes uncomfortable. More than meals, more than flowers, that is our gift to give. I’ve known Ondine all my life. As cousins we grew up together, and when our fathers partnered up in business our families became further entwined. But I never knew her, and it turns out I wasn’t the only one. I sat down to read this book and I didn’t get up again for hours. I couldn’t. I feel like I know Ondine now. I also feel like I know Dov and Lev, who are my cousins too. Instead of seeing what they can’t do, Ondine has painted a detailed picture of what they can. And even more importantly, who they are. In writing about what it’s like to have your world implode around you and to have to pick up the pieces and reassemble them into a new kind of normal, Ondine has given a gift to anyone who has had their life change unexpectedly. She’s also given a gift to everyone who has watched from the sidelines, wondering how on earth to help. I am in awe. Mia Freedman
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