Sunday, April 30, 2017

Before and After the Knock on the Door

This is exactly right. 

For our family, it was before and after seeing the headline on my computer in the Jerusalem Post: 29 year old resident of Beitar Ilit seriously injured in terrorist attack.

I called home and told my husband to check, someone had been injured from his brother's neighbourhood. My stomach was already turning over and over.

The phone rang in my office. My husband screamed my name in anguish and said it's him, over and over again, it's David, it's him. I started screaming in my office.

Someone drove me home. We called the airlines to get a flight. A Rabbi came over and said to pray, he could recover, but I remember my husband saying to him very calmly that he was going to Israel because his little brother was going to die.

We had just barely, barely, barely begun to recover from the traumas of my special needs son's birth, our near deaths, and life as the parents of a significantly disabled child.

I can't write too much about those first few days and hours. My heart starts racing as if it happened yesterday.

I can tell you that when he died, the Arabs in the hallway of the ICU ululated.

I can also tell you that when one of his murderers was finally killed by Israeli security forces, my mother in law was not happy.

She said to me, at least they wouldn't be able to kill anyone else.