HERE I AM AGAIN, ALONE BY SHARON AMOV

My dear husband died a few years ago. I was desolate. The loneliness was overwhelming. I missed him terribly. For many years I struggled to regain my balance, and then I decided to move to Israel, to live near my daughter and family, who made aliyah fifteen years ago.

I peer out of the aeroplane window. I see the outline of Israel's shoreline. Many people in the plane are clapping as we approach the land.

What will it be like to actually LIVE in Israel?. I have visited my daughter and my family so often, but always with my husband. To reside alone in Israel, although I had made the decision by myself, seems absolutely unreal...

I was born and raised in Southern California. I am eighty-four years of age and I am scared.

My daughter and son-in-law will be waiting for me in the public area. I pick up my luggage and off I go.

There she is, my one and only daughter....waving at me, all smiles. Perhaps she is expecting me to be exactly as she had last seen me, a year or so ago. And I expect her to be as I had last seen her. Oh, our expectations, how very difficult, if not impossible, to meet.

How unprepared I am for the depth of pain, separation from relatives in the United States, and lifetime friends, along with familiar voices and places.

We manage to arrive at the car in the airport parking lot, numb with our own overwhelming feelings. We drive to the nice little house that my daughter and son-in-law

have prepared for me. The physical work is ahead of me. The mental and emotional work will be a daily project.

I have plopped right down in the middle of relationships and lives that have been going on without me for fifteen years. I know that my main priority is to somehow keep myself separate and still stay close. How very difficult that is.

We go for a drive, to once again see the lovely Israeli countryside. I lose my way in its twisting roads, unfamiliar buildings and lush green fields. The people seem helpful but not overly friendly.

We return 'HOME'. I sit alone and the enormity of my move to Israel engulfs me. How will I find a comfortable place within my family again? How will I make new friends, develop interests and start anew at my age?

Well, we shall see. However, in the meantime, here I am alone again.