I called her and she explained why that poem meant so much to her. Her voice is as strong as a young woman and more articulate than I am. She is writing poetry every day. She wants my book to be cremated with her after she dies.

Don is a man I often said hello to at the gym we both attended before the pandemic. His wife drew me to her because she came to the gym during her chemo treatment and was very comfortable with her appearance after losing all her hair. They never grew back. Don wrote saying his wife had a recurrence of cancer and had died in January. She had kept my Dangerous Woman book at her bedside and while cleaning out their apartment in preparing himself to move into a retirement home, he found a bookmark in my book. It was marked to a particular poem and when he read it, he felt it was the last message from his wife to him and he is comforted. He feels this poem is from his wife to him.

My first visit to Sacramento was in response to an invitation to speak at a Synagogue on giving care to loved ones with dementia. I read a few of my poems to support my message on humanizing the lives of caregivers and their loved ones. An elderly woman followed me out after my lecture.

She: Your poems made me cry for the first time since I was 15.

Me: What happened at age 15?

She rolled up her sleeve and showed me the tattooed numbers on her upper arm.

I gasped and could only say, “Talk to me.”

She told me her story: She was 15, her father and brothers were already taken away by the German guards and she would never see them again. She was alone with her mother when their physician came with a piece of paper. “You’ll be safe,” he told them, “See, I wrote those guards a note that your mother has heart problems and won’t live long so they will leave you alone. And I have signed this as her doctor.” The woman said how happy she was, knowing they would both be safe since the statement was written on the doctor’s stationary. Soon the knock came on their door and she proudly showed the paper to the guard. He laughed, tore the sheet and tossed the pieces into the air and took both of them away to Auswitz.

When they arrived, her mother was taken to the left and she was forced to the right. She cried that she wanted to be with her mother and she was told, “You will see you tomorrow. She’s going to the hospital to get treatment.” The next morning she asked to see her mother and was told she was receiving good medical care. Finally, after days of encountering the same responses, a woman in camp told her, “See that smoke stack there? Your mother is in there, you’re not seeing her again.” And she never did.

“I vowed on that day,” she said, “that I would never ever cry again. My heart was frozen that day and I have not cried until today when I heard your poems.”

I wrapped my arms around her with tears covering my face, “Crying is good, isn’t it?”

She said, “Yes,” followed by “thank you.”

And sometimes, it will come from a young child in your classroom.