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EmailRemembrance Day / Indepencence Day
Martin Herskovitz
On March 28, my son, Netanel (Tani), age 16, was injured in a terrorist suicide bombing in Israel near Kfar Saba in a gas station adjacent to the Kalkilya border crossing as he waited for a bus to take him to his High School, Bnei Chayil in Kedumim. His right eye was badly injured and the prognosis for restoring sight in it is not good.
As a child of a survivor in a family that didn't discuss the Holocaust, I learned to cope with problems by denying them and putting them behind you as quickly as possible. I was raised in the shadow on one war and now am living in the heart of another. This year, on Israel's Remembrance Day (April 25), commemorated on the eve of our Independence Day, I, together with the entire country, mourned our fallen soldiers. In this setting I was also able to connect with my emotions regarding my son's injury and this poem is the result.
Remembrance Day/Independence Day
Lately I've had a jumble of emotions
On the one hand I know it could have been worse
A different angle, a change in position
And the shrapnel…(certain things are better left unsaid)
In any case I am thankful that we gained a life.
On the other hand I mourn for the child that was,
Smiling and serene,
Whose biggest worry was the upcoming Bagrut,
To whose load fate has now added a few more parcels.
And along comes Remembrance Day and my private mourning
Is confronted by the enormous bereavement of thousands,
And my mourning is dwarfed and as I hear the pain of the parents
I cry for them and ignore my own ache.
And I feel that my own mixture of gratitude and mourning
Is not unlike the prevailing feeling on this day,
A day of remembrance on Independence eve -
Mourning and expectation,
Sadness and thanksgiving,
One eye cries while the other tries to heal itself,
Determined to continue
Martin Herskovitz