Living With War — time to cancel pool night?

Thursday night is pool night.

Photo by Alan Abrams

Our little family goes to the pool in the afternoon. The kids, who have gotten a little too big to jump on Abba and have him pick them up in regular gravity, get to jump on my back and get carried around, and do other kinds of fun roughhousing. They get lots of physical contact with their Imma, which they always crave. There’s a little actual swimming, too. Then we get pizza. It’s fun.

But can we do it this coming Thursday?

Four bodies are expected then to come back from captivity in Gaza. Four bodies that are going to break the hearts of their families as they get definite confirmation that they will never see their loved ones alive again.

It’s going to be a day of mourning for so many of us here in Israel. So, are we allowed to have fun then? To celebrate the fact that we’re still alive and can still be together?

It’s been a struggle throughout this terrible war to figure out how much to mourn, how much to cry, and how much to resist the efforts of Hamas and its allies to break our spirits by stealing our joy. Mostly, I’ve tried at least to lean towards resistance, to lean towards trying to live a life of joy. I have two children, ages five and eight. They very much are aware there’s a war going on — how could they not be when we’ve had to run down the stairs to the basement miklat so many times because of rocket attacks, when there are posters up of the hostages everywhere they go. But, I’ve tried so hard to make this precious time of their childhood as normal and love-filled as possible.

There’s something different about this time, however. Maybe it’s because I’m feeling anticipatory grief. Because I have warning that the shock is coming. Unlike most of the blows, this one is scheduled. And that brings up the question of whether I need to schedule something for it too, even though I’m not very much of the scheduling sort in general.

This time of war has been full of so many questions like this. This is just the latest one. But that doesn’t make it any less real.

In Judaism, mourning does not officially begin until after the deceased is buried. In the time before that, known as aninut, the bereaved person is supposed to focus on the process of getting their loved one buried, and should not be distracted by the demands of mourning.

Hamas has robbed us of so much. But one of those things has been their robbing these families of the opportunity to bury their loved ones quickly, and to move on to mourning. And hopefully the healing process that can only happen by going through a process of mourning.

I pray for healing for the bereaved. And that all of the hostages come home soon