War Day #95. There are no words.
Every day we check the news to see. Some of us drink coffee first. Some of us wait for a quiet moment. Others of us look quickly, first thing: Ripping the bandaid off.Some can't bear to look at all...
Tuesday, January 9
Every day, we check the news to see. Some of us drink coffee first. Some of us wait until we are able to have a quiet moment. Others of us look quickly, first thing: Ripping the bandaid off. Some can’t bear to look at all.
On the days when we don’t know any of the names on the list, we let out a quick sigh of relief and thanks, a hidden response we share with no one, though we know most of us do it. Then we immediately feel guilty: Somewhere, someone else’s heart has just been ripped out.
On the days we recognize the names, we are shattered, devastated, broken.
Today’s hit particularly hard. Nine killed, and so many of them are connected to friends. There are no good words to write to console; what words could possibly console?
The photos are the worst. The fallen soldiers all look like kids, smiling kids, kids who should be out tossing a ball to their own small kids. They could be the kids of any of your friends.
Sometimes they are.
It is a small country, and everyone knows everyone else. Usually it is an advantage, that we are all one community, one family.
Now it feels like you’re constantly reaching out to people, cooking meals for people, attending funerals and shivas. Constantly having your heart plucked out.
There are already far too many funerals, too many shivas, too many burial sites for too many soldiers on Har Herzl.
And then there is the very worst category. What we don’t want to verbalize. What we never want to contemplate.
***
When they need to let you know, they always send an advance person first. The advance person approaches in civilian clothes, to make sure they have the correct home: The worst would be to inform the wrong family, needlessly give the wrong person a heart attack.
Once the advance person, dressed as a civilian, on some pretext or other, has verified the correct address, they change quickly into army uniform.
They usually send three. One of the three is a social worker or therapist of some ilk. As if sending a therapist can somehow shield the blow from crushing you. But it is the best they can do.
The three, in army uniform, knock at the door.
That’s how you know, even before you know. You always know.
They notify you.
They will stay there until everyone in the family has been notified - parents, yes, but also grandparents, and siblings. They stay there until the news has seeped in, and been acknowledged, and they know the family is ok.
As if the family can ever be ok.
The team has the responsibility to be there for you, usually for the entire week.
(As if after a week you will be cured.)
Around the corner, or a few streets over, from where the army is delivering the news, sits an ambulance, fully staffed. It will wait there, to make sure the family doesn’t need emergency attention. Sometimes people have heart attacks. Often they faint. The EMTs don’t come to the door, and they don’t park too close to the house, because then people would know.
If you see a parked ambulance waiting, you know it is one of the neighbors.
Sometimes the ambulance has to wait there for eight, nine, ten hours. Sometimes the family runs shrieking from the room and won’t listen. Sometimes they turn and hide, or run from the house entirely. They know. Of course they know. But it is too painful to know.
The three soldiers, and the ambulance, will wait there as long as necessary.
We are all one family, you see.
It is the knock on your door that you would do anything in the world to avoid.
Thank you for this powerful post — a reality that can hardly be absorbed.
— Lee
One removed
from us who are one,
“I feel your loss”
some dare to say,
one less a sum, how sad
an arithmetic decline.
Unseen the cosmic fission,
the sundered shrine,
unfelt the fissile blast,
time and space unstrung
and all but love
undone.