My wife and her family taught me how to encounter death. Before I met them, I had experienced predictable loss, like grandparents who died after living full lives. No one close to me, however, had passed away early, or unexpectedly.
When she was 40, my sister-in-law died from complications related to her battle with leukemia. Since then, I have watched as my wife and my in-laws confront and embrace all the anniversaries and reminders that should have been celebrated with her now, and not in her memory.
Every year there are two yahrzeits with two letters in the mail or two emails from two different synagogues for two different dates, Hebrew and Gregorian. Her last birthday is frozen in time, a day on which my sister-in-law remains forever who she was at 40. My in-laws ask questions: What did she do for her last birthday? Was she still in remission then, or had the cancer come back? What might she have been? How old would she be now?
Routine activities, like driving down France Avenue past Fairview Southdale Hospital become punches in the gut, triggers for memories of hospitalization, treatments, and the end.
Then there are the regrets for the places and times she never got to experience: sitting in our house (built after she was gone) for erev Rosh Hashanah, or a Seder, or a birthday, or… And the fact that she never got to meet our daughter, or watch our nieces and nephews grow from children to young adults. It’s unimaginable.
The grief doesn’t go away, it changes, depending on the time or place or day. I used to always run away from grief, but I have learned from my wife, her sister, and parents, that grief is central to being willing to honor and remember.
Rafi Arvas lost his son, Shay, on Oct. 31, 2023, in Gaza. Shay was a medic with the Givati Brigade. Now, every morning Rafi goes to the cemetery in Holon to visit his grave, to speak to him, and to the soldiers buried alongside him. Their graves are covered with plain rocks, painted rocks, flowers, gifts, and mementos representing their hobbies, even their favorite foods.
At cemeteries all over Israel, friends and family celebrate their loved one’s birthdays with cake and candles, kevers serving as tables. Sitting beside the grave, they sing, play music, and celebrate lives and life.
Memorial stickers dedicated to the fallen cover signs and lampposts, creating collages of memory all over the land. Stickers placed around the world share their lives with strangers who otherwise never would have met them.
The whole country mourns someone. Every day is a yahrzeit, a birthday, or an anniversary that will be missed, but celebrated in any and every way possible.
After he was killed, Shay Arvas’ family found a letter that he wrote to them, “just in case.”
“Just in case…To my beloved Adar, my dear mother, the best father in the world and all my…family. I want you to know how much I miss you and I love you, and the truth is that I was happy to do what I do to save people and protect the country because it’s something I always wanted. Something that has always been a part of me since I was little and now, I had the opportunity to do it and give of myself to the country as well. So you know that all this was not for nothing and was worth it. All the people of Israel will continue this tradition and love the country because people didn’t just die here for nothing, and there are people who have to protect it.
I know it will be difficult, but I want you to continue as you are. Go on in life, give as much as you can, be a united family. Adar, my love, keep going. It will be hard, but I really want you to be as happy as you are now and keep moving forward. And all my close friends, I love you and appreciate you for all the life we lived together and the experiences we’ve had together. It was fun, I enjoyed it a lot, and I had a happy life. Grandpa, I know you always believed in me and were very proud of me for becoming a combat fighter, so be proud, even now, because I didn’t die for nothing.”
How do you honor a loved one when shiva, shloshim, and yahrzeit don’t feel like enough? How do you “continue as you are, keep moving forward, and give as much as you can?” For Rafi Arvas, that means emptying his wallet to buy food for soldiers at a grocery store and starting each day visiting his son at the cemetery in Holon. On their sister’s birthday, my wife and sister-in-law walk around Lake Harriet and tell stories about who did what, and when. “Do you remember that time?”
It might feel impossible, but we must find our own ways to be proud, because they didn’t die for nothing.
