Not All Loss Comes with Sirens

I don’t know if this belongs here.
I don’t even know if I should be submitting this.
Not now. Not in this moment.

Not when families are erased before they can run.
Not when soldiers are burying friends faster than they can mourn them.

So maybe you’ll read the first few lines and close the page. I get it.
I’ve done the same. Grief has a gravity—it pulls you under.
And what I’m about to tell you isn’t about war. Or October 7. Or sirens.

It’s about a man who died of cancer. Thirty years ago.

And right now, even saying that feels like a kind of betrayal.
Like I’m speaking out of turn. Like I should wait until the dust settles.
But I can’t. Because this story—his story—isn’t a distraction.
It’s part of the same grief. The same Jewish ache. The same stubborn refusal to let the dead be forgotten.

His name was Stanley.
I met him once, briefly, when we were kids. I was nine. He was a few years older—twelve, maybe thirteen. I went to school with his brother. We grew up in the same circles. I knew the family. I still do. I’m in touch with his parents, his siblings. And when they asked me to help carry Stanley’s memory forward, I said yes.

Not because he was famous.
Because he was good.

He was what we call a good Jewish boy. A real mensch. A devoted son. A loving husband. An extraordinary father. A brother you could lean on. The kind of person who made people laugh—not for attention, but because he liked people to feel at ease. He showed up. He loved hard. And when he got sick, he fought hard, too. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just with the quiet determination of someone who wasn’t ready to stop living.

He died young. But not before showing everyone around him what strength really looks like.

And I know what that looks like.

I’ve had type 1 diabetes since 1967. I was eleven.

There were no blood monitors back then. No digital anything. Every piece of food had to be weighed. Every dose of insulin was a best guess. I had to pee into a glass test tube, drop in tablets that fizzed like something out of a chemistry set, and match the color to a chart to estimate my sugar. I boiled my syringe on the stove each night. There was no safety net. It was math, instinct, and the grace of God.

And it still is.

So yes. I know what a warrior looks like.
Stanley was one.

And I’m not telling you this to pull your heartstrings. I’m telling you because while we mourn the dead of war, we can’t forget the others. The quiet losses. The battles fought behind closed doors. The people who suffered, who struggled, who were held by family and then buried without flags or songs.

This is who we are.
We’re a people of memory.

We light candles not just for the fallen in uniform—but for the fallen in hospital gowns. We say Kaddish for every soul. We build our identity not just on land, but on names. On stories. On the insistence that no one is forgotten if we keep them close.

Stanley’s family has done that. For thirty years, they’ve carried him. Not with spectacle. With love. With memory. With the same quiet strength he showed when he was alive.

That, to me, is Jewish.

And maybe, if we still believe in the holiness of every life—especially the ones lost without spectacle—then Stanley’s name still matters.

And maybe, just maybe, in remembering him now,
we make a little more room for the rest.

He was loved like that.
And still is.

And now, maybe, he’ll be remembered not just by his family—but by ours.