“I have never celebrated this holiday before, tell me again what it means please?” Aelwynn pressed up against her lover as he sat pensively in their bed following a session of truly remarkable lovemaking.

“Its hard to explain because there’s so much bound up in it, culturally, politically… even the history itself has radically differing views and in truth all are valid insofar as they go… It’s a story of colonization and conquest and terrible strife like most of human history I’ve had any dealings with. I don’t know how to explain it to you so maybe I should start at what I think was the beginning… although it may well be the beginning was some long while before when I was bouncing around Asia Minor.” He was beginning to warm to his topic and grasped her waist as he delved into memory.

“What name did you use? Maybe we encountered each other without knowing?” Aelwynn inquired.

“I went by so many names… It is hard to recall them after so long. I think back then I was named as David, or perhaps it was Saul… I was not a nice person. I commanded great slaughters of innocents and I think at one time I had more wives and concubines than any man could possibly satisfy.”

“I remember you now…” she spoke softly. “You were a king of a small nation. I was living in Lebanon at the time and I recall my owner gifted you with many great cedars to build… I know not what but if I recall it was a temple…”

“I no longer care to walk the halls of those particular memories. There is too much pain, too much slaughter borne upon my soul… if I could forget those horrors I would perhaps have some peace, perhaps be able to sleep the night through without waking in terror…” He sighed, a defeated exhalation that spoke of exhaustion aeons old.

“Do you think my burden less? I have lived so many lives, never sure when some cruelty or disease might take my world away and replace it with some strange new place. Sometimes it would be a life where I could manage to find a decent man whether I was male or female. Sometimes it was a life that meant I took refuge in the arms of my sisters… But whatever the life I lived, dying always feels the same… it scatters my soul and I never come to awareness of my true self until my course has been chosen for me… And then I must live that destiny to its end. As painful as I know it must be I sometimes envy you having just the one life…” She shed a single tear upon his chest, followed by multitudes more.

“I envy you the ability to forget… But I am grateful that we found each other after all these millennia apart…” He gently kissed the tears from her eyes, savoring the salty tang.

“Nineveh seems like it is so far in the past I can barely imagine it…” She hiccupped into his chest.

“Perhaps it is time we left the past to its own devices?” His tone was not quite an affirmative statement, seeking her approval.

“How? So much pain wound up in even this simple celebration…?” She took a great sobbing gasp of air. “Hundreds of millions dead and they pretend it is a celebration of unity?”

“I have no idea. I think now the celebration is simply one of family and togetherness. Whatever it was then… Maybe that is one of the things best left to time?” He stroked her shoulder idly with a thumb.

“Maybe it would be easier to accept if I’d grown up with it but I always seem to drop in when my body is in it’s teens… and sometimes it’s a boy and I have to deal with that horror… I hate being a man so much…”

He held her and let her gasp out a neverending sorrow. Some long while later he raised her face to his and he kissed her while she clung to him like a life preserver after a shipwreck(and that brought its own memories…).

“Aelwynn… Your surgery date is in just 6 days… You will be yourself, truly and ever after. No matter what it takes…” He shifted her weight as she clung ever more tightly.

“I’m so afraid!” she sobbed into his gaze. “Last time I died and it hurt so much….”

“I know darling, I was there. Be grateful you missed the horror of the Shoa. I missed you so much…” ‘ I had to load so many bodies into the ovens…’ he wanted to say but could not bear to admit the shame of his survival. “This time you will simply go to sleep and wake up whole. Things have gotten much better since then…”

“When I die will you find me in the next life? I don’t know if I could manage another life without you…”

“Always and forever, my love.”