When Tragedy Strikes Too Close to Home

Two weeks ago, my community suffered a horrible tragedy as a seventeen year-old Palestinian terrorist infiltrated our community, stabbing three men, one of whom succumbed to his wounds.

Unfortunately, stories like these are not uncommon in Israel. We are surrounded by those that seek our destruction for no other reason that the Jewish blood that runs through our veins. And as horrific as this may sound, you become numb to it. You hear the stories, you may even cry, but a few days pass, normal life resumes and soon their names and their stories become a distant memory.

Not this time. This time tragedy struck close to home. Yotam Ovadia HYD, the man who was brutally stabbed by this terrorist and died as a result of his wounds, was not only a member of my community, but also the husband of one of my friends, the father of one of my daughter’s friends and until very recently, we had lived across the street from him and his beautiful family.

I never really had the opportunity to speak to him and get to know him. As it happens in small yishuvim, the women get to know each other while their children are playing and our husbands are usually at work. But what I do remember, I will never ever forget. I remember the way he used to stand quietly in the doorway as the kids played in our local gymboree, watching his son and my daughter play together, with a look of love and adoration on his face – the kind only a parent understands. And then I remember when his son noticed his father standing there, the huge smile that broke across his face as he ran into his father’s arms screaming “Abba” with pure excitement and glee. I remember watching them playing with trucks together on the floor, before we all said our goodbyes and headed our separate ways to prepare dinner for our children.

My conversations with his wife usually centered around our children – what milestones they were hitting, what exciting things they had been doing recently – the normal ‘mom talk’. But as I sat last week at the Shiva house with his wife and parents, extended family, colleagues and friends, I came to know Yotam in a way I had never known him before.

He was a good man. He loved his family. When he got married, he insisted that he and his wife build their home and their family just steps from where his parents had built theirs. He always stopped to see his parents every day on his way home from work. On that fateful day, he had left his house to pick up groceries he had hidden at his parents’ to prepare a romantic dinner in honour of Tu B’Av. He wrapped tefillin every morning, and in his zechut those around him took on more mitzvot. (His mother told me that he had convinced her to fast for Tisha B’Av the last four years.) And now there is a void that has been left and will be impossible to fill.

Say what you will about the peace process and whether or not the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria are a obstacle to peace. I’m not interested in entering that debate. Until our cousins in Ramallah and elsewhere around the world learn to value human life, peace will never be a possibility. Until Arab leaders, teachers and parents stop poisoning their youth with lies and propaganda, this is the reality that we will be facing. Golda Meir said it best when she said, “Peace will come when [they] will love their children more than they hate us.”

This time, life well never return to normal. Every time I drive through the gates of our yishuv I see his parents house and am reminded of their son who will never stop by again on his way home from work. Every time I walk past the daycare centre on the way to the park, I am reminded of his young children who are now forced to grow up without their father; who will go through every milestone in their lives reminded of the void left in the wake of this tragedy. I pray every day for his parents, for his wife and his children – that Hashem should send them the comfort they need to get through this and continue to lead lives that honour his memory and his legacy.

And more than ever, I’m reminded to be grateful and appreciative for the life I have been blessed to live.

I’m Not Broken

Nearly three weeks ago, I gave birth to a stillborn. I’m not sharing this because I want sympathy. I’m sharing this because after having gone through this experience myself, I hope that my story can help someone else find strength when going through a similar situation.

I guess I’ll start at the beginning. On November 22, I woke up in the middle of the night with contractions. Never having had Braxton Hicks contractions with my previous pregnancy, I though that that’s all these were. Once I finally realized a few hours later that these were real contractions nearly half-way through my pregnancy, we made arrangements and headed for the hospital. I’ll spare you the details, because it was quite traumatic, but the visit to the emergency room ended in the delivery of a stillborn at eighteen weeks and five days.

From the moment it happened I didn’t feel this sinking feeling of loss or depression. Of course, there were tears and there was sadness, but I didn’t feel like how I thought I should be feeling. Mind you, Avital was with me only moments after it happened and I was trying to keep it together for Ira, but even after they had both left the hospital and I was alone I didn’t have a breaking moment. I felt like something must be wrong with me. Did I not love this baby enough to be broken by the loss of it?

In the moments immediately following the loss, I turned to God. I am a woman who believes in God and in His love for me. Being a parent myself, I have come to better appreciate and understand the parent-child relationship we have. I know that there are going to be times in my life where I am not going to always understand or like His decisions for me, but that He is making the right choices for me and my life. I don’t always have to understand them or like them, but I have to trust Him. That was the ongoing message that I kept bringing up anytime someone had asked me how I was coping. A lot of people told me I was showing incredible strength given what I had gone through. I didn’t feel exceptionally strong. I felt at peace.

I feel at peace with the fact that this is my destiny. For whatever reason, this baby was only meant to be in my life for a few months. I feel blessed that I already have one incredibly perfect (I may be biased) child who is sensitive, strong-willed and hilarious. We hope to expand our family one day soon, but even if we never get that opportunity I am already incredibly blessed beyond measure with this little threesome that I get to call mine. They are more than I could have ever asked for and for that I am grateful every single day. Together we got through this, and together we can get through anything.

Happy Birthday Avital!

To my darling little girl, on her first birthday –

A year ago you entered our lives and changed it in ways we could have never conceived. I had dreamed of being a mother ever since I was a little girl, but our lives with you in them are far greater than any dream I could have ever dreamed.

We spent almost ten months together, just the two of us, and I thanked God everyday for the miracle He was crafting inside of me. I spent those months day-dreaming about you. Would you look like me or like your Abba? Would you have his silly sense of humour or inherit the stick that is forever up my butt? Would you be shy and cautious or outgoing and friendly? I wondered what kind of relationship we would have. Would it resemble the relationship I had with your Safta? Would you pay me back for all those teenage years? What would we call you? Abba and I were forever disagreeing on names and I was worried that we would never find a name we could both agree on.

But from the moment I first saw you, I knew. You were Avital Chana – no doubt about it. In that single moment, you forever changed our lives.

In one short year you have taught me so much about life. Being a mother has taught me that I really knew nothing at all before this. I thought that I knew what love was, but that first look we shared taught me about more love than I had learned in twenty-three years. Not the kind of love you read about in fairy tales, but the kind of unconditional, all-encompassing, stand-in-front-of-a-bus kind of love. You taught me that all those no’s that your Safta so generously shared with me, especially in those teenage years, had meaning and purpose. That no one knows what her daughter needs more than her mother (even when she’s halfway across the world). Suddenly all those years of teenage angst had so much clarity. Suddenly my life had so much more purpose and meaning.

But with all those fluffy, happy feelings, came feelings of anxiety too. Any mother that says she hasn’t had even a glimmer of anxiety is lying. I worried how we would fare, just the two of us, when all the visitors had gone home, Abba had gone back to work and it was just you and me against the world. I was anxious about the first time you would cry inconsolably and how I would handle it. Would I know what you wanted and needed from me? I hoped that years down the line, when I faced the payback for the hell I put my mother through, that I would do right by you; that you would know in those moments how much you were loved.

Watching you grow and develop has brought me so much joy and so much pride. I will never forget that first smile we shared, the first time that I made you laugh or the look on your face when I come into your room every morning. I love the special relationship you have with your Abba and with your puppy dog. Watching from the corner as you interact with them never ceases to fill my heart.

Every moment of discomfort during the pregnancy, the twenty-four hours of labour and sleepless nights were all worth it for those moments every day when you look up at me with those big beautiful eyes and that wide smile with those two little teeth.

Thank you for giving me a gift far greater than I could have imagined – the gift of being your Imma.
Thank you for teaching me about the world in ways I could have never thought of before.
Thank you for teaching me to stress less and love more.
Thank you for teaching me to stop and smell the roses, because those moments are always so fleeting.
Thank you for inspiring me to be my best, because you deserve nothing less than my very best.

Thank you to God for watching over you and our family for this last year, for providing us with all the blessings in our lives.

I pray that in the years to come I will be able to merit the gift I have been given. I pray that you will always know that while I can’t always protect you, I will forever be a safe space to come back to. I pray that you will know that in those moments when you don’t understand, I am always doing what I think is best for you.

Happy Birthday to my sweet little angel. I love you.