Dear Avivah,
When I first met you, your accent gave away the disguise you were in. I knew like fitting a puzzle together what your voices origin and your tired face mean't and where you must have come from. I would visit your home just down the road from the railway when I returned home from university. Walking to your house I would think of all the things I was going to talk to you about. For hours I would sit on your chair under your window and listen as you helped me to understand the experience you knew so intimately one that only history books could detail.
Sometimes I would look in awe at you. Could I have...no no, I know I could not have.
Time moved on and I moved away but I thought of you often, I thought of your story and what it mean't to me, I thought of the lessons you quietly threaded through the stories of your life.
I wish I could tell you how you left your mark, I wish I could tell you how thankful I am to have known you but it will have to wait. Because this letter cannot be posted to where you are, you have moved on now to a place that is safe and beautiful.
God disguised you as a simple, old woman but for those of us who knew you, we knew you were so much more than that. You, were a spring, of all that is triumphant and good in us creations.
T
