Charlotte

The thing about living in the Holy Land is that your home—your actual, physical home—is His home.

The last time Sisay and I visited the Shrine of Bahá’u’lláh before our departure, I was newly pregnant with Samaya. She was too small to be seen on the outside and too small to be felt on the inside: that period of pregnancy characterized by nausea and faith. It was twilight when we arrived. The path leading to the Shrine is lined with pebbles—white and smooth and flat—collected from the shores of the Sea of Galilee. When you step on them, they sing. The path is perfectly straight, the edges lined with what can only be described as an impeccably manicured jungle.

Every other time that I had come, I had gone straight inside the Shrine to pray, but that time I kept walking. Down a side path, to the outermost perimeter, behind the Shrine where the carefully tended gardens faded back into the arid scrubland of northern Israel. I needed to be alone. I needed to etch every detail into my heart so that I could tell her later. What home is like. In the months after we left and while she grew, I would close my eyes each night and imagine myself back in His rooms. His gardens. Trying to recall the smell of orange blossoms and rose petals and jasmine. The way the single lamp in the room where He died acknowledged the darkness but cast its light anyway. The sound of crushed tile, smooth pebbles, cold, damp marble underneath gold leaf.

The memories faded anyway.

And then Charlotte came into my life. Over the last five years, she has grown two perfect daughters, one perfect son, and dozens of tumors. They riddled her lungs, her liver, her colon. But they could not touch her heart. It is already occupied. I had the privilege of living in the Holy Land for two years, but Charlotte’s heart is a holy land. Perpetually occupied by her Beloved. Thy heart is My home,” Bahá’u’lláh says. “Sanctify it for my descent.” Today, she returned to Him.

To her children and husband, her mother and father, her sisters and brothers and everyone privileged to have known her: she is where she has always been: with her Beloved. You can find her there. In prayer. In service. Nothing would make her happier.