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Getting Through What You Can't Get Over
By Anita Agers-Brooks Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Copyright © 2015 Anita Agers-Brooks
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-63409-290-6
CHAPTER 1
VALLEY WALKER
When I met her, I was in the blackest hole I'd ever experienced. I cowered in a deep pit of depression and anxiety spawned by betrayal. The pain was raw and unquenchable. Each day I tried to scale the walls and scramble into some light, but with every attempt I slid back down the slimy slopes of the well and crumpled into the darkness of my despair.
My attendance at the conference was a miracle, considering most days I barely had the strength to pull myself from bed. Taking a shower required a great deal of effort. But a friend had urged me to go with her, to see the former Auschwitz prisoner of war and motivational speaker, Dr. Edith Eger. Yet at the last minute, my friend couldn't go. To this day, I can't explain how I ended up there. Alone.
It was immediately evident that Edie was a force of nature not to be denied. I first noticed her easy manner as she made her way among the group dignitaries, each marked by little square badges neatly pinned to dresses and suits. Her movements spoke of someone with courage, plunging into unknown arenas, finding confidence because she dared.
When Edie took the stage, my heart fluttered. Maybe it was her energy, a reminder of the absence of my own. Maybe it was knowing she understood hellish pain, and in my desperation, hoping she would tell me how to smile again. Maybe it was God, giving me a glimpse of what was coming.
Her silver hair was groomed in a stylish yet practical mass of short curls. It accented the ever-changing emotions so strongly expressed on her wizened face. Edie's petite frame was supported by a mere five-foot stature, yet she filled the room with a voice of passion for her message. Every vocal exclamation was paired with talking hands. Rarely did they stop moving as she easily held her listeners' attention. Her thick Hungarian accent enhanced the validity of the story she told. And her hearty laugh occasionally broke free, amid tales of sorrow and unimaginable torture in Auschwitz.
Every step she took was a stride, larger than her short legs should be capable of taking. Sometimes she danced, brief minuets of grace. It gave me a glimpse into her past as an aspiring ballerina. Though she was seventy-three at the time, Edie resonated with the ability to do more than possibility implied, and I was riveted by her presence.
I lost track of time in her stories, feeling a kindred spirit, even while I understood my betrayal and confusion didn't compare with what she had endured. When the lunch break was announced, a line formed to greet Edie and shake hands with the dated woman in the tiny, powerhouse body. She sat queen-like in her chair and cordially shook hands with all who wanted to meet her.
I joined the line, landing somewhere in the middle. I've thought about this: I wasn't first, to explain her early interest. I wasn't last, causing her to linger. What happened next was the second miracle in my day.
We came face-to-face. Her voice, so vibrant on stage, became soft and warm. It spread over me like a healing balm. She dove into my pain-filled eyes with blue discerning pools of her own. When I offered my hand for a shake, she cupped it in a firm grip, covering the bottom of my hand with her right and the top with her left. The urgency in her voice was a shock. In an adamant Hungarian accent, she left no room for questioning her message or intent. "Ve must meet. You must have breakfast with me in the morning."
I could feel my eyes widen and my mouth gape. When the fullness of her demand registered in my brain, I responded, "But I don't live close. I'm almost two hours away."
"You must. God has spoken."
I'm sure I looked around to see if God was standing next to me and somehow I'd missed His regal presence. But He was not there in bodily form. It was only Edie in the chair, me standing in front of her, and the line of people behind me, stuck until we finished our exchange.
She gently pushed. "Child, ve must talk; you must meet me in the morning."
"I'll have to call my husband."
"Call, but it is ordained."
I wasn't sure how she could know such a thing—God certainly wasn't speaking to me— but I didn't question her authority. I nodded my head dumbly and hurried off to call my husband.
In the afternoon, when Edie had finished her session, I approached her nervously. By then I wondered if I had imagined our earlier interchange. Was I losing my mind?
But her welcoming smile assured me my memory was reality. Her movements had slowed from a long day of sharing emotional and inspiring words, but her passion still sparkled in her eyes. "So you vill come?" "Yes. I will come."
I wrote down the directions to her hotel, and I agreed to meet her at eight in the morning. Somehow she had penetrated my ravaged heart with her unspoken understanding.
On the drive home, I marveled. More than three hundred people were in attendance that day, and yet she chose me. The miracles kept on coming.
Breakfast lasted more than three hours. Edie told me details I'd never read or heard about of atrocities in the Nazi prison camps—starvation, humiliation, cannibalism, emotional torture, mental games, physical maiming, and soul stripping. There was no part of the human existence left untouched by the cruel men and women who meted out the twisted desires of the SS.
Edie was only sixteen when she, her sister, mother, and father were ushered onto the stench-infused cattle car. Human beings were piled on top of each other, stacked high, in order to fit more bodies into each slatted square. Packed tightly so even the very attempt to breathe was not guaranteed. There was no regard for those on the bottom or stuffed into the far corners, those who most often died, some before the train ever pulled away from the station.
For days they traveled in claustrophobic quarters, their limbs cramped, tongues parched, lips cracked. Their bellies growled. Their bladders stretched. Their bowels gurgled. When human bodies finally released the intense pressures that built inside, there was no choice but to endure the shame of letting go within sight and hearing of their fellow passengers. Dignity was a thing of their past.
When the train steamed to a stop and their stiff arms, legs, necks, and torsos unfolded, relief was short-lived. Prodded by gunpoint, the prisoners formed a single line that seemed to stretch for miles. Over long hours, they inched their way forward, eyes to the ground.
Exhausted and numb, when Edie and her clan finally neared the head of the line, she could see a man seated in a stuffed chair. From his comfortable position, he would point at each new arrival who stood directly in front of him, branching the single line into two at its head. Right or left, the line broke into a human Y. Those who formed the Y couldn't question why. They had no choice—choice belonged solely to the man in the chair.
When Edie and her family took the final step into their fate, the well-dressed man pointed her and her sister into one line and her parents to the other. At the tender age of sixteen, Edie rushed to her mother, crying and clutching the older woman's arm.
The man eased from his chair and slowly made his way to the desperate girl. "Do not fret, little one. I am only sending you to the showers. Soon enough, you and your family will be together again." He gently pulled Edie from her mother and guided her back to the place he had originally directed.
Sniffling, Edie and her sister clung to each other, even as they looked tearfully over their shoulders, not wasting a single second that allowed them a glimpse of their father's shoulder or a wisp of their mother's hair. The comfort of a temporary separation, melded with a sisterly connection, was enough to get Edie through the rigorous cleaning and rough handling of her Nazi processing.
But hours later, as she and her sister wandered the foreign soil of the strange encampment, the fear and frustration of not finding their parents in a sea of humans took its toll. Clinging to each other as fresh hot tears tore down their faces, Edie looked up and through her hazy blur saw an old man in a prison uniform approaching.
"Little girls, why do you cry?"
Edie, being the eldest, spoke for them both. "Our ma-ma, our pa-pa. Ve cannot find them anywhere. The man in the chair. He told us ve vould be reunited after our showers. But ve have looked for the longest time, and ve have searched from one fence to the other."
"Ah. Mengele. Ve call him the angel of death. He is a great liar, that one." The old man pointed with a gnarled finger at a pair of tall, brick-red smokestacks. "There is your mama. There is your pa-pa. The Nazis. They have killed them both."
Riveted by Edie's personal account, not knowing how long I had cried, I noticed the puddle on the table below my face. I thought of my own painful history, so recent, so raw, but knowing it was nothing compared to what this woman across from me had endured. And yet she smiled, while I could not.
Edie switched subjects on me. Deftly she asked me soft questions about my own story. "Why is the pain etched so deeply around your eyes? What hurts directed God to tell me to meet with you?"
I told her about the fear I had harbored for years because of past wounds. The thing that terrified me more than cancer, more than hunger, and more than death. I was scared that my husband would commit adultery. Gasping for air, I told her my worst fears had come true. I confessed how much I wanted to die.
Edie let me sob until there were no more tears to rip from my tattered soul. She rubbed my hands, and with salty pools at the edges of her own blue eyes, she clucked comforting words over me. "There, there, my child. There, there."
The waitress approached our table cautiously. "Would you ladies like something more to drink? It's nearing lunchtime." She glanced toward the wall clock. "Would you care to order another meal?"
I looked at my half-eaten omelet but pushed it farther away. The thought of food repulsed me. Refusing to show our server my puffy face, I looked at the buttons on her blouse and said, "I'd like some more iced tea, please."
"Sure, sweetie." I hated the pity dripping off her words.
Edie waved her away with a hand of dismissal. "Just more water."
The waitress must have read the message that food or drink was not our main objective. She dipped her head in a show of respect and said, "Sure." Then she scurried away.
Edie wasted no time in moving the conversation away from my meltdown. "Let me tell you of another event in Auschwitz."
I sniffled and nodded my head for her to continue.
"Somehow, Mengele learned of my aspiration to become a great ballerina. He summoned me before him. He forced me to dance for him and his top officials. It pained me greatly to entertain the monster who had stolen the lives of my mother and father. The beast who had destroyed many innocent people. But if I did not, I knew I would die. A part of me welcomed death, but something stronger fought its arrival."
My head bobbed up and down. I understood her love-hate description at the thought of death and dying.
"When I finished the last pirouette, he surprised me with a precious reward. A full loaf of bread. Not the moldy, hardened crusts of our daily rations, but a soft, warm, plump loaf that I could have all to myself.
"After he released me back to my dormitory, I hugged the bread to my breast. My heart pounded with my footsteps—I felt as if I were seated at a king's feast and had been treated as the guest of honor.
"When I entered the bleak shack that was the housing area for me and half a dozen other women, my thoughts battled within me. Should I keep the bread to myself, cherishing its nourishment for several days, making it last as long as possible? I could secret it away, where they would not see me in the dark of night, gnawing like a mouse who stumbles on a brick of rich cheese.
"But what of the other women who shared my misery? Vas it fair that I should receive a priceless gift while their bellies suffered and clenched in agony? It vas not their fault that my dancing should offer so great a reward. I could not explain my good fortune, but neither could I keep it to myself.
"I called my imprisoned sisters to huddle around me and then unveiled what I had to offer. The oohs and aahs comforted my mind and assured me the choice I'd made had been right. We feasted in awe that evening, celebrating together. I did not know that this single decision would later save my life."
While Edie took a break to sip some water, I realized I was so enraptured by her story that while she spoke, my mind was distracted from my own problems. The relief, mixed with intrigue and compassion, made me antsy for her to pick up where she'd left off.
Edie cleared her throat and took another draw from her water glass. When she placed it back on the table, I noticed the precision with which she aligned it exactly where it had been on the coaster. "Several months later, near starvation, my little loaf of bread vas no more. The crumbs in my memory were all that remained."
I scooted closer to the table.
"At first we didn't know the Allies were getting close. But something had changed. There vas an urgency in the way the Nazis ushered us out of the camp. We were used to the frigid air the thin boards and vide cracks in our housing units let in. But the blasts that pummeled our bodies as we began the death march felt like hot pokers against our exposed skin."
I don't think Edie noticed the way she rubbed both of her arms, as if the biting cold from her past had invaded our present. But I saw.
"We stumbled for hours through the night and the day. But we dared not fall. The echo of a rifle shot exploding in our ears and the sharp smell of gunpowder that singed our nostrils alerted us to each poor soul whose body could take no more.
"I eventually became numb to the sense of cold, but my own limbs were warning me with each new step. I struggled to lift my feet, and my ankles were not cooperating as I needed. I knew the end was near and prayed it would happen swiftly. I vas so very tired.
"But then, a miracle.
"I do not know who took the courage to ask. I do not know why the guards allowed it. But the women with whom I'd shared my loaf of bread were given permission to make a chair with their arms. I do not know how long they carried me, but it was enough to allow me to regain a parcel of strength. Enough for me to make it to the edge of the city.
"It was there I collapsed.
"Overcome with starvation and exhaustion, I could push my body no more. They thought I had expired, and so I vas thrown onto a pile of dead bodies at the edge of the street. I could not protest. Weakness overpowered me so I could not shift away from the putrid odor of rotted flesh."
I swiped my cheek with a paper napkin, and Edie cleared the gravel from her voice box. Her voice had softened to just above a whisper when she spoke again. "Whatever eternity waited for me, I could no longer question."
I swallowed hard at the instant dryness filling my mouth.
"Soon after, when the Allies arrived, an American soldier patrolling in his Jeep spotted the slightest movement of my finger in the pile. He stopped immediately, got out, and pulled me to safety. This is why I came to America. He is why I now call it my home. He is why I became a doctor of psychology." She pierced me with a lasered look, and her voice strengthened. "He is the one God sent so I could live. There vas purpose yet to be fulfilled, and my ultimate destiny could come only through my darkness."
I marveled at the confidence and peace echoing beneath her words. I couldn't imagine surviving such loss and yet gaining such deep hope.
She cocked her head at me, as if she could read my thoughts. When she spoke, I was almost sure she had. "You might wonder how my experience could possibly speak to yours."
I'm sure I nodded the affirmative.
"You know the Twenty-Third Psalm. Yes?" I nodded again.
"So you are aware of the wording, 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.' Are you not?"
"Yes, of course."
"You must pay attention to the intent of His words. Notice it does not say, 'Slow down.' It does not say, 'Stop.' It does not say, 'Pitch a tent.' It does not say, 'Build a house.' It says, 'Walk.'"
She leaned as far as her slight body would allow over the table toward me. "In the darkness, you may feel you cannot walk. When you are very tired, you will believe you cannot go on. But these are lies. You can. And you must. You must place one foot forward each day, taking one tiny step at a time. Do not worry that you cannot see far ahead of you. Simply step."
I could feel the passion in her words releasing adrenaline into my muscles.
"When you think you will collapse from exhaustion, you remember me. See my face in your mind, as you see me now. Think of my story. And then walk. When you are sure you have no strength left, place one foot on the ground in front of you. Just one in that moment. And as you remember what my friends did for me, remember that God offers His strength to carry you farther than you can go on your own."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Getting Through What You Can't Get Over by Anita Agers-Brooks. Copyright © 2015 Anita Agers-Brooks. Excerpted by permission of Barbour Publishing, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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