I witnessed the visits of parents who didn’t know Susie and Stuart but felt the need to share with them that they too, had lost a child, either in the army or in a terrorist attack. The hardest thing for me was hearing about the couple who told Susie and Stuart that Ari was now their son’s neighbor, for Ari was in the kever next to their son.
I saw the parents of Aish Kodesh Gilmore, a beautiful young man, a newlywed and a new father, who was earning extra money working as a security guard at the Social Security office in East Jerusalem when an Arab monster walked in and shot and killed him in cold blood. Yes, the parents of Aish Kodesh came to comfort the Weiss family, or commiserate with them, or find comfort from them…who knows?
Many of those who came were strangers who had read the Jerusalem Post article about how Susie had collected from many vendors in Raanana food for Ari and his fellow soldiers stationed in Shechem. Now these strangers needed to meet and comfort that sweet, pretty face that was on the cover of the newspaper with her handsome, smiling young chayal son.
People came because they needed to feel attached to this family. I understood them, for we came every day to shiva, sometimes twice a day, and stayed for two and three hours at a time, unable to leave, unable to tear ourselves away or to detach from the pain, or to leave Susie and Stuart.
Every time I arrived I was told by Susie that this is not the way I should be spending my vacation, and that I shouldn’t feel I had to come every day. Even she didn’t understand that I needed to be there for her — as well as for myself.
My soul cried as I sat near Stuart and listened to him ask a rav if he knew who did tahara on Ari. The rav answered that when someone dies al kiddush Hashem there is no tahara necessary. Stuart’s body folded over and he began to cry once more upon hearing that his Ari was so kadosh, so holy, that he didn’t need a tahara.
I listened and cried when another rav explained to Stuart exactly how the sniper/terrorist first shot the chayal next to Ari, and it was only Ari’s leaning over to check his injured comrade that earned him a fatal bullet.
What is sadness within sadness? It’s when I saw our beloved friend David Greenberg on motzei Shabbat at the shiva house. David’s brother J.J. Greenberg had been killed just two weeks earlier while riding his bicycle in Tel Aviv. Once again a friend — a special, dear friend — fell into our arms as we cried silently together. How it pained me to see David, always with the most pleasant smile on his handsome face, broken, totally broken. Koli el Hashem Ez’ak. My pain knew no barriers, yet David’s pain — like Stuart and Susie’s — was infinite.
We took our children and left Raanana for the scary yet magnificent ride to Efrat. What beauty and majesty lay before my eyes. My son Shlomo took us around, proudly showing us his yeshiva which overlooks Gush Etzion and all its history. Here is where Shlomo finally found such peace of mind, such harmony, learning for s’micha, in such a special place.
We stayed in Yerushalayim that night and went to the Kotel at around midnight. What clarity and beauty and quiet is found at the Kotel at that time of night. There were people still there, of course, but after midnight the prayers are more quiet and personal.
