Three years on, fare well

That Saturday, three years ago, I woke early. My children were asleep around me. The headline on my phone did not fit the room.

I read it again. Around me, the small breaths continued. One of the children stirred, then grew still again. I wanted to put the phone down, close my eyes, stay a little longer in the morning that was already gone.

When I got up, I tried not to wake them.

A few hours later, we met at the base. Each of us had left a world behind. Children still asleep, parents already calling, partners still standing in the doorway. We did not know what lay ahead. We knew we would stand between it and the people we had left at home.

To get back to them, we would need one another.

In the kibbutz courtyard, we trained to enter Gaza. In the evenings, we called home. I heard my own voice trying to sound normal. I asked about little things. What they had eaten. How the day had gone. I wanted to hear them talk a little longer.

People we had never met washed our uniforms, brought food, made sure we had somewhere to lay our heads. Someone asked who needed cigarettes. Others unloaded boxes sent by people overseas. On Friday, ultra-Orthodox men arrived with large pots of cholent. We watched it all, sometimes not knowing what to say.

A whole people held us, and it had hands.

We were different even then. Right and left, religious and secular, Jewish and non-Jewish. There were people I was certain were wrong about almost everything. I remember one of them explaining something to me, insisting, then noticing my empty plate in the middle of his argument and passing me the pot.

We did not have to finish the argument before I could eat.

Later, we watched over one another. We took turns shouldering the stretcher. We learned to recognize who was approaching even in the dark. On sleepless nights, we talked about home. Sometimes it was enough to know the man beside me was awake too.

Even in the fear, there was elation. I could be weak for a moment. Someone else took the weight. When he grew tired, it was my turn.

We said we would take this home with us.

We believed it. We organized conferences. Movements of reservists formed. We spoke to anyone willing to listen. We wanted people to know what we had known there, so we would not have to return to that hell to feel it again.

But the months became years. Another tour, then another. Lives were waiting at home that had never stopped needing us. We also brought back exhaustion, silences, impatience. Sometimes it was easier to speak about unity to a full hall than to hear out the person sitting across from us at home.

And between tours, we returned to the old arguments.

I do not know when I went back to believing that to stay together, the other person would have to see things as I did. When faces became factions again. When I could read a message from a man I had trusted with my life and see only what I could not bear about him.

We spent last weekend with friends in Sde Nehemia. We floated down the Jordan on inner tubes, past nutria and freshwater turtles. The children laughed. The water carried us slowly between Galilee and the Golan. For a few hours, it was easy to be there.

That night, as Friday passed into Saturday, I opened my eyes again. My daughter’s head rested on my chest. I felt its weight, the warmth of her body. Far off, explosions echoed.

She slept. I listened.

For a moment I was back in that morning. The breathing in the room. The phone in my hand. The short distance from the bed to the door. Three years had passed, and in my body they could vanish in a single sound.

I laid a hand on her back.

I thought of the people who had made it possible for me to lie there. Of those who had returned to their children, and those whose children were growing up without them. Of how easy it is to remember the love we shared, and how hard it can be to make room for it when a friend writes something I cannot bear.

Even now, I would go and carry a friend who needed me. In conversation, I sometimes only wait for him to finish so I can answer.

Three years.

Then, we were united. Now, the distance is easier to feel. We returned to different homes, to lives that did not look the same from every window.

I think of a handshake. Two hands, one touch. Each hand remains distinct, and neither holds the touch alone.

Perhaps this is how we can learn to be three.

One, the other, and what happens between them.

A way of being together that asks neither me nor the person before me to disappear. A place where we can disagree without making the disagreement all there is between us.

We have known this togetherness already. Now we have to sustain it even when we are not afraid of the same things. When the man I trusted sees danger where I see hope. When he listens to my explanation, understands it, and is still not convinced.

He has a whole life from which things look different. That is hardest to remember when I am certain I understand him.

I imagine beginning our next conversation differently.

“I should not have spoken to you that way.”

Then I hear the sentence I would want to add.

“But you have to understand—”

Perhaps I can stop before saying it.

And wait.

I know the wish for something back at once: a smile, forgiveness, an admission that he was wrong too. Something to make it easier for me.

He does not owe me that relief.

The peace I bring cannot be another way of making him into the person I want him to be.

He may be angry. He may not answer. If I hurt him, I will have to listen and make amends. Good intentions are not enough. And still, I cannot decide alone what will come of the meeting.

Sometimes doing the right thing brings no change we can see at once. It only leaves room for it.

I will need to remember this when I fail, too. Not turn every outburst into proof that there is no peace in me, or use exhaustion as an excuse. Go back, apologize, try again. I, too, arrive with things I still find hard to bear in myself.

There are people with whom I will never get to try again.

Since we lost them, I have carried the thought that their deaths must not have been in vain. Sometimes it is so large I do not know where to put it. What could we do that would be enough in the face of a child who will never see his father again? Of someone who will never grow old?

No peace I bring will ever make their deaths worthwhile.

I want to remember their lives, too. The laughter, even when the joke has been forgotten. The small things they did, never knowing I would return to them years later, in the middle of the night.

How they would move over a little on the bench when I approached.

“Come, sit.”

Even when I was silent. Even when I had nothing good to say. There was a place for me beside them before I had anything to offer.

That I can carry forward.

When I make room for someone else, they will not take the place of those we lost. The absence will remain. But something of that movement will continue through me and reach someone who never knew them.

Hiyu shalom — farewell, I say to those we have lost.

In those same Hebrew words, I hear a call to the living: be peace.

To one another. In their memory.

I have to begin with the way I answer my children when I am tired. With the person I want to interrupt. With whoever comes near when I do not feel like making room.

My daughter was still asleep on my chest. Morning would come soon. The home I had returned to would need me again, in the small things.

What you gave me, I will try to bring home.