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Caption: My Sleeping Beauty By Limor Ben Ari
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Caption: Dedicated to my mom:
Aviva Ben Ari
1951-2004
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Caption: My mom was born in Israel, 1951, to immigrant holocaust survivors from Russia and Poland.
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Caption: At 16 she visited family in the U.S. and met her first love, and future husband.
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Caption: She went back to Israel to serve in the army...
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Caption: And won 2nd runner up to Miss Israel.
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Caption: After her service, she came back to the U.S. and married her first love. They had a child, and worked in the fashion world.
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Caption: After 3 years of marriage her husband confessed to her that he is gay.
He wanted to stay married claiming that she is the only woman he ever loved.
She couldn't proceed with letting him, and her, live in a lie.
She asked for divorce and went back to Israel with my brother.
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Caption: Not giving up on love, she met my father. They lived in a Kibbutz.
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Caption: What she didn't know was that her second love and husband had PTSD from one of Israel's toughest wars - the Yom Kippur war.
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Caption: After 13 years of outbursts, hurt and pain mixed with love and passion, the marriage dissolved.
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Caption: That same year she lost her mother to breast cancer, sent my brother to his father in the U.S., and the Gulf war broke. Our family, and country, were broken.
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Caption: Whistle sounds of bombs and crying sirens took over our sky. All that was left was just the two of us.
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Caption: After 2 failed marriages she promised to never get married again.
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Caption: Until she met her 3rd husband.
He fell in love.
She fell in hope.
She gave it another try.
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Caption: 3rd time wasn't a charm for my mother. After 10 years together, anger rages, fighting, control, and possessiveness took over.
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Caption: She filed for divorce once again.
Only this time, it didn't go through...
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Caption: After experiencing migraines most of her life, they found a tumor in her brain.
Within 2 weeks she went into surgery that she never recovered from.
She dove into coma
and never woke up.
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Caption: After she passed I went to a psychic. She mentioned a name of a man I knew of, but never really thought of. She said they are together now.
He was a family friend and died in an accident weeks before my mom.
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Caption: Is it possible that my mom found love in her after life?
I will never know.
The story of my mom is of lost love. Of a hopeless romantic who didn't find lasting love, but never stopped trying.
Hopefully she did, in her after life.
My Sleeping Beauty.