Forty-eight hours after my wedding, my mother was killed in a Jerusalem bus
bombing. Betin Tita's agenda of unconditional love was cut short by
blind hatred. The seven days of feasting turned into seven days of
mourning.
As we were sitting in Abbu Kabir all night, I kept hoping against all hope
that it was a mere nightmare. But DNA doesn't lie. We were advised
to remember my mother as she lived and not how she died.
And how did Bertin Tita live? She lived for others. Whenever my parents would visit us in Greater Washington, there was a waiting list for her Shabbat dinners. She practiced outreach through taste buds. A lucky guest once described her challah as the closest thing to a taste of heaven on earth. Another wrote: "Your Mom had always just pulled something out of the oven. I think she wore cinnamon as perfume."
At long last we had a challah-baking session scheduled for the Friday following her death. Alas, that secret went to the grave with her.
Throughout the seven days of mourning I learned so much I did not know but had always suspected about my mother's life of chesed -- kindness. She gave freely of her time, money and knowledge. Strangers approached me with stories of how she changed their lives for the better. She died on her way to do chesed. Numerous rabbis came to comfort us, assuring us that her place is secure in heaven as she died on Kiddush Hashem, sanctifying G-d's name.
Emotionally, I feel like those terror victims who sustain substantial injuries but outwardly appear normal. My heart refuses to move on.
Violent death did not allow me enough time to part from my best friend and m anchor in life. Every morning my mother called me; she did not think there was such a thing as "long distance." We were very close. Not surprisingly, I was the first person to get the tragic news, conveyed by the words, "Your mother's belongings were found at the terror site."
The Torah portion Vayeshev describes Jacob about to settle down peacefully. However, the loss of his son Joseph reminds him that there is no such thing as peaceful rest in this world. Only after losing my precious mother in such a dreadful terror attack did I fully understand that there was no such thing as marrying and then living "happily ever after."
Now my family's calendar is filled with new tasks to begin. My father, after being inseparably united with my mother for 56 years, can only persevere thanks to his profound faith in Hashem and his work in the charitable foundation in Bertin Tita's memory.
I shall observe my wedding anniversary at the same time as my mother's yahrzeit.
It seems like a twist of fate that my mother's family was driven out of her native Iraq by the Arabs. Now Bertin Tita has been forcibly driven from Eretz Yisrael and this life by another Arab.
Often Joseph, Bertin's grandson, tells me how he longs to give his sweet grandmother just one more hug. My answer invariably is that he'll have to learn to hold with open arms.
Shoshana Tita is a Judaic lecturer and the director of Torah Life Center of Potomac, She now resides in Barcelona, Spain. Her mother was murdered in a June 11 terror attack in Jerusalem.
Potomac, Maryland
20854