"Oh God, there is no God."

"Are you religious?"

Simple and direct, the question caught me off-guard.

At age 87, Naomi's keen mind and big spirit compensated her ultra-petite body. She spoke four or five languages, although her German heritage often leaked from her accent: "Vat vas that vonderful muzic?" She had lived a long life, or several lives as she claimed and I believed, in which she experienced everything life had to offer, joy or sorrow.

"Are you religious?" She looked straight at me through her over-sized glasses. Those lenses immensely enlarged her eyes, at the same time magnified me in her vision.

I felt naked and transparent. I had to tell the truth.

"Yes." My voice was small and I felt the need to defend myself. "Well, somewhat, I guess." Then I was ashamed.

"Well, you see, I believe in the existence of God. But my ignorance to Christianity... um... There are too many things about this religion that just don't make sense to me. Yet." I went on and on about my experience with the religion, what I liked and disliked, about miracles and lies. I tried hard to make sense of things that came out of my mouth while Naomi just sat there silently, watching and listening.

The truth is, I didn't know where I stood in terms of religious believes, and I wanted to hide the fact that I still could not make up my mind after many years of questioning and searching. A strong force had been resisting me to believe, while the opposite seemed to be omnipresent in my subconscious, surfacing now and then when I thought that I had forgotten.

I fell in silence. It might have been an abrupt stop, but I didn't want to make a bigger fool out of myself by continuing to talk nonsense.

Naomi spoke:

"My father was a very nice man. He was a great father and a great husband. He always gave money to the poor and always went out of his ways to help others. And he believed in God and the goodness in God. He had done a large amount of charity work locally. We all loved him so dearly."

She took a deep breath and went on:

"I never understood how such a wonderful human being, a faithful, loyal child of God, would die in such a cruel way - he was murdered in the concentration camp. He was still quite young. Young and handsome. A loyal husband and a dear father of two. They took him and they murdered him."

Naomi failed to continue, as I found myself in a similar position. We just sat there across from each other. The clock was ticking and the tears were streaming.

"So I say, Oh God, there is no God."