Waiting for my murdered aunt and uncle to come visit

On October 8th I wrote in my diary: “I think I’m finally processing and internalizing it.” It was after a day and a half of hell, during which my aunt and uncle were murdered, my cousin was shot in the abdomen, and my other cousins didn’t have cell service so I didn’t know whether they were alive, dead, or kidnapped. At the point of writing that passage, I had certainty: my cousins were alive and safe. I could breathe for the first time. I thought this meant that I understood what had happened. Boy was I wrong.

A few weeks after I wrote that passage, around the end of October, I wrote again:
“This is all some bad dream. A nightmare no one is living through. They are still alive. I think to myself again. I can’t keep on lying to myself. They are dead. I still don’t believe it. I repeat to myself. They are dead. They’re dead. At this point, my brain is yelling at me. They’re dead. They’re dead. They’re dead. They are dead. Shachar and Shlomi are… I can’t even get myself to write it on paper. They were murdered. They aren’t alive anymore. My Aunt Shachar and Uncle Shlomi are dead.”
And so a new routine was created: before bed, I would replay their funeral in my head, how we lowered their bodies into the ground and covered them. I’d even try to imagine what had happened to them: the grenade and bullets piercing their skin, the blood gushing, their limp bodies on the floor. Yet no matter how much I tried to force myself to internalize it, I just couldn’t.

At some point, I got fed up with myself and my surroundings. My life was filled with constant reminders of an event I couldn’t believe happened. I tried to think about it and make sense of my emotions, but I wasn’t getting anywhere. Meanwhile, life was continuing without me – school was back in session and I needed to graduate. So I put aside my mission to process what had happened, and decided to focus on the here and now. I think this was a kind of coping mechanism. In December, I wrote:
“To be honest, I don’t spend much time missing my aunt and uncle. Don’t get me wrong, I feel the absence of many things. But they aren’t always the subjects of my missing. I miss holiday meals without awkward silence and depressing speeches. Dark humor and rap songs with explosions or gunshot sounds in them. I miss the days when the house didn’t shake from booms. I miss using the bomb shelter as storage space, letting it gather dust and a musty scent. I miss the times when the seventh of October was just another date, wherein I must have been busy studying for exams. I even miss when my biggest concern was whether or not I would manage to complete my homework on time or succeed in my upcoming high school final. Gone are the days when the alerts from news sites were just celebrity gossip. I miss my family, when I didn’t have to worry about how everyone felt or how I was supposed to react or whether they wanted a hug or just to be left alone.”
The new normal was something I could grasp – so I dedicated my days to understanding it. I missed my past life, which I knew for certain was not going to come back. I didn’t know how to miss my aunt and uncle, so I just didn’t. It was denial without straight up calling it denial.

Every once in a while, I’d allow myself to think about them in a concentrated manner. But I wasn’t actually thinking about them. I would think about the seventh of October generally or philosophize with myself about why it didn’t make sense. In mid February, I wrote to myself:

“Death is only supposed to happen to old people. It takes years for your body to decay enough to completely stop functioning. Death is supposed to happen because of things like heart attacks, cancer, or strokes. These are things you can usually predict. Most people have some time to prepare – to process what death even means and decide what the final actions they want to take in life are. If death happens at a younger age, it is usually from accidents. In mere seconds – a driver makes a mistake – someone’s life has ended. It’s horrible, hard to process, but rare. It’s the randomness and unexpectedness of life. Things don’t always happen for a reason. This type of death forces you to deal with that. But death is never supposed to happen because of evil. One person should not have the power to decide when someone else’s life ends. Death should not happen by murder. So I understand that my grandparents are dead. But not my 50 year old aunt and uncle. They should  be alive. In my mind, they are alive. But they were murdered. So I guess they are dead.”

The year went on and then Memorial Day came around. For the first time in my life, I had to make plans. I was asked to speak at my former middle school’s ceremony and so I scribbled down some thoughts. As I wrote, guilt over my prior coping crept in:

Who am I and Memorial Day? I don’t need a day to remember. I always remember. I’ve exhausted the story. I can repeat it in my sleep. I ran to the bomb shelter in my underwear. We all felt the booms and saw the alerts on our phones. But that’s not actually remembering them – it’s remembering their murder. I don’t want a day dedicated to thinking about their death. If I’m going to remember, I want to remember their life. Because, wow, what a life they lived. What people they were. And to be honest, I almost don’t want to remember. I think they’d want us to live our lives, and not just obsess over the past.

I was faced with a dilemma – should I remember and grieve or should I focus on the future? And when I remember, how do I do it – think of their lives or death? In some ways, these questions meant that I was processing. I wouldn’t feel the need to remember them if they weren’t gone. Hence, a part of me realized I would not see them again. But even then, seven months after October, I return to my initial problem:

“Wait, what? ‘Lived’? ‘Were’? Why am I speaking in the past tense? I’m supposed to see them on independence day.”

I’m not going to pretend I have a solution to these complex situations – of processing loss and remembering what’s gone. With time, I ultimately let the grief come to me rather than forcing it on myself. Every once in a while, thoughts of my aunt and uncle would fill my head. It was often random, like in math class or while driving on the highway. It always felt like a breath-stopping gut punch. My aunt and uncle were in a paradoxical limbo in my head – both dead and alive. My mom described it like waves on the sand, the grief and clarity wash over you, but then recede back to the sea, leaving you dry. I was slowly processing whether I wanted to or not. I could not force it.

Before my graduation I wrote:

“I was driving, and I started crying in the middle and I don’t know why. I was on Route 1 on my way to Jerusalem. I’m graduating today, so I shouldn’t be sad. But it’s just so unfair. Shlomi and Shachar are dead. I’m never gonna see them again. I’m finishing high school and they’re not gonna tell me they love me and that they’re proud of me. It’s not fair. They’re not gonna be at my wedding. Or anywhere else. Because they’re dead. They’re dead. It’s not fair.”

Later that day I graduated. I was happy. And time continued. I made plans for after high school, I traveled abroad, and had lots of fun. I also visited Holit, their kibbutz and went to their graves again. There were moments I spent remembering and some wherein I forgot. I lived my life. And somehow almost a year has passed. Rosh Hashanah was the last time I saw them. Today marks twelve jewish months since their funeral, and I still can’t believe they’re dead. My family told me that with time I would understand that they’re gone, but I haven’t. And I don’t know if I ever will. I don’t even think I know what it means to never see my Aunt and Uncle again. Time hasn’t and won’t force me to believe it.

But time does help. Looking back on the past year, reading the hundreds of pages I wrote to myself since October 7th, I see how much my perspective changed. I accepted that grief isn’t linear. Even if on October 8th, I thought I had made sense of what happened, a year later it can still feel like a fever dream. And maybe this time next year, I’ll have a new perspective. When I’ll return to read this essay, it will seem like rubbish to me.