Alone together: I am hollowed out by loss

What do they see when they see me? Next to my son’s grave, silently standing beneath the still blue sky, suddenly torn in two by the siren’s piercing blast.

When they see the smooth marble gravestone, littered with piles of rocks and pebbles, marking years of visitors, alongside the freshly placed small blue and white flag, marking just this year’s commemoration?

When they read the inscription, figure the math, and realize that here lies the body of a boy, only 16, already buried a full year longer than he lived?

What they cannot see are the wobbly first steps of my first-born as he inched his way along our worn second-hand couch, smilingly surprised to find himself so capable. Or the way his blue eyes shone with fascination watching a butterfly that he excitedly pointed out to us, an invitation to share in the world’s wonder. His more than easy-going play with his rambunctious younger brother and the way that he cradled his even younger sisters also remains hidden. As does his love of books and learning, his sharp mind and prodigious memory, which made him both a challenge and a pleasure for his teachers.

The brutality of his death, at the hands of a Hamas terrorist, is also concealed. There is no trace of the way that murderer shot the eight boys he killed at point-blank range. How this grown man wielded his Kalashnikov to shoot unarmed students, how he walked between the stacks of the yeshiva library, slowly checking each row, then opening fire on the boys huddling among the holy books. Of course, the truly blood curdling screams of the dying, heard by those who hid and survived, are nowhere to be found.

Is this any more than history repeating itself? Crazed Jew-hatred, the “oldest prejudice,” passed from generation to generation, from Christian to Muslim, from York to Kishinev, from Hebron to Jerusalem, from father to son? Or perhaps, in light of the current war, mere prologue to worse yet to come. This small massacre in which my son was killed merely a warm-up act for the rape and pillage and beheadings of which Hamas at full roar was proudly capable.

Am I, in the eyes of Memorial Day attendees, somehow more expert in warfare than others? Having buried a previous Hamas attack casualty, has the stock of my opinion on our current battles risen? Is my stake in our fight for communal survival greater than my neighbors’, whose husbands are returning to reserve duty for the fifth time and whose sons are still fighting in Gaza?

Rather, I think, my graveside presence attests to what is at stake. The cost of miscalculation in our small, surrounded country is measured not in treasure, but in the more precious blood of our children. There are those who bemoan not giving peace enough of a chance. And those who wonder why we do not take Hamas at its word: they want our death, not our peace. These, though, are generalities. But my love for my son, and my ache over his loss, is searingly specific. Terror’s aim, however, is rarely that. My son was not murdered because of who he was; he was shot dead because of what he was. A Jew. One member of a greater collective, our people.

What do they see when they see me? A father, hollowed out by loss. Longing for a son taken by an evil darker than I thought could exist.

And a Jew, in our homeland. Not just an individual, but part of a people whose dedication to life, to hope and to each other, still burns more brightly than we could have ever imagined.