Days of split personalities
Mourning the dead while labeling clothing for camp
Lately it feels like I have a split personality.
There’s the heavy duty mourning, the heartache and the sadness of it all, of the hostages, of the nine more soldiers killed in the last 36 hours. Eight killed in an armored personnel carrier, another one today — all in Gaza. I read about them, think about their families, about the sorrow and how devastating it all is, and continues to be.
I wonder when it’s all going to end, and how.
And then I think about what’s next on the list for sending my boys to camp. Haircuts? Check. Buy new sneakers? That’s on Tuesday. Order shampoo, deodorant, sunscreen and bugspray on Amazon and send to camp.
And I think, wow, we are lucky. My kids get to get out of here for the whole summer, to leave this behind for eight weeks and what’s more, I get to join them for part of it. Guilt, pleasure, sadness and worry, all swirled together, all day, every day.
I began the week with the news we all heard at the end of Shabbat, about the personnel carrier that was hit in a convoy, killing eight, as I was ending three days of a virus, with a low-grade fever.
I got up Sunday morning, determined to function and get work done, and start the packing process for my boys. Wash the items we’d need to pack, figure out what I needed to buy, make sure they get their hair cut.
And throughout the day, as I worked through that list, and wrote my stories — speaking to hostage family members about what they’re thinking about, how the rescue of the four hostages last week affected them — as well as a piece about an annual art fair, and planning some more interviews with hostage family members on Monday, during a day for them at the Knesset — I heard from those who knew some of the soldiers killed, because when it’s that many, you dread who you will know.
My sister
first told me that she knew one of the parents of fallen soldier Eliyahu Moshe Zimbalist, called EliMo by those who knew him, through the Down Syndrome world, as his brother has DS. And that another one of the soldiers, Yair Roitman, was the nephew of a longtime colleague from her local community of theater and dance. Turns out that Eitan Kopelowitz, a 28-year-old law student, lives near us and was a friend of many in my social media feed.That was Sunday morning. I got through much of the afternoon, finishing my stories, setting up interviews for others, heading out for a haircut alongside my son.
And then, at an end-of-school year event for one of my sons, his homeroom teacher, who is also the vice principal, spoke about the up and downs of this year, and mentioned, or tried to, but he choked up, that he grew up with one of the soldiers killed yesterday, the brother of one of his friends. He swallowed, hard, and moved on.
We all made the noise that one makes, that gasp, intake of breath, a slight clucking when you hear something sad or hard and I wondered how many others in the room, there were probably about 60 of us, had heard similar connections to that list of nine soldiers. It’s a small world around here.
Was it possible that Imri, Lev’s teacher, was the only person in the room to know one of the soldiers? How do odds work when there are some nine million people in a country and nine soldiers are killed?
I don’t know the answer. But it sent me back to this strange place that I’m occupying right now, between war and hostages and summer and camp and vacation, along with wedding celebrations and friends visiting and joy and sadness and how they’re all meant to interact with one another.
I’ve felt somewhat guilty to have the good stuff all these last weeks, the family celebrations and the ability to look forward to parts of the summer. But then Lev’s principal, Roni, said something that made me glad I’d offered to be the parent attending this particular school event.
She acknowledged that we’re all going through this, living through sadness and joy, regular life and war life, moments of sorrow and moments of happiness and that it’s pretty normal, and it makes all of feel like we’re being tossed between all kinds of emotions in this crazy world of ours.
It felt good to hear someone else describe what I’m feeling.
Because it is a distinct dichotomy to read about soldiers who are killed and Knesset members debating extending reservists’ service while exempting Haredi yeshiva students and then put in a load of hoodies that I need to label with my kids’ names, and talk to my sister about a pile of basketball shorts that she wants to hand down to the boys from their older cousin Akiva.
It feels odd to speak to a jazz musician who will perform the piece he wrote dedicated to his nephew killed in Gaza at the upcoming Jerusalem Jazz Festival and then read the bunk notes that my boys’ counselors wrote to them ahead of the summer.
It feels strange to walk down the street, over the crushed mulberries staining the sidewalk purple, having fallen from the trees above, seeing all the signs of the encroaching summer. It’s hard to know that in this dreadfully hot stint that we’re experiencing, I’ll sit under a ceiling fan or in the air conditioning to get some relief, but how will the hostages fare? And what about the many Gazan refugees living in tents in this heat? It bears thinking about.
I guess I need to think about all of it, because it all matters, the soldiers and their families, the hostages and their survival, my boys and their camp packing list, the jazz musician and his nephew, and the music he created out of his sorrow.
I’m weeping as I listen to a recording of the jazz musician, Barak Mori, a contra bassist, playing “Remember” at the ceremony marking thirty days from the burial of Omer Ben Shachar, back in January.
But I’m listening and when I’m done, I’ll put that load of hoodies out in the hot sun to dry, and make sure I Sharpie their names on the labels. It’s all part of the same experience, isn’t it?
It is the roller coaster of life thst we are all living through right now. Will it ever slow down or end and when ??
Thinking about you and Beth.