Yesh Ballon’s moth­er died two days before the 9/11 attacks. With air trav­el halt­ed, the rit­u­als for hon­or­ing and mourn­ing her death were upend­ed, pro­pelling her fam­i­ly into chaos, con­flict, and deep­er grief. Unthink­able Dreams is the chron­i­cle of the dra­ma, dis­cov­er­ies, and occa­sion­al delights that one fam­i­ly expe­ri­enced in the months before and after their matriarch’s death. An impor­tant part of this jour­ney was dis­cov­er­ing how to lis­ten to their dying moth­er when much of her speak­ing made lit­tle ratio­nal sense. Bal­lon describes the sur­pris­ing emer­gence of his mother’s spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, how his rela­tion­ship with her blos­somed even as her body and mind with­ered, and how her dying influ­enced his own spir­i­tu­al jour­ney. As he explores this dif­fi­cult time, he opens his heart and demon­strates how embrac­ing com­pas­sion can move peo­ple from sep­a­ra­tion to con­nec­tion, even though the route is nei­ther straight nor con­tin­u­ous. Above all, Unthink­able Dreams is a book about heal­ing, a mod­el for har­vest­ing from the past in order to plant seeds and leave a lega­cy for the future.