mapping the heart-breaks 2

When I was around the age of 11, my brother, whose Jewish name was Simcha (meaning celebration) was diagnosed for the first time with cancer. He was just 13 months younger than I was, and we were very close.

Our life with our father was not easy. Dad had escaped to England from the holocaust, having lost all his family, and he took out a lot of his anger and despair on his family. We, the next generation, had another burden, being named after dead ancestors. Somehow, we were expected to replace them and more, but we were always being found wanting. It is an impossible burden to place on children.

I have taken a mirror on this quest. I always thought that in the mirror stood the real me, who had seen the horrors of the war, whose spirit had perished in a gas chamber. Most of my life has been a search for meaning and identity....

So my brother and I were close, guardians of cruel family secrets. When he fell ill, the effect on the family was profound. I remember the sessions of radiotherapy and chemotherapy as he battled with his primary cancer, and then the long battle with secondary cancer which killed him when I was just 13. Nobody thought to tell me that my beloved brother had passed away - I found out by sitting on the stairs and listening to a conversation through an open door....I still miss him, still mourn his loss.

Later that year my mother had a baby boy. He lived for 24 hours and had an inexplicable cot death.

I became an old woman at the age of 14. I had started to learn to play the piano and buried myself in music making. This was to be my salvation eventually.