This time of the year instills in me a desire to understand grief. Old grief is like a scar which never really heals from time to time it festers and invades your being. It could be triggered by a song, a place, a joke, a friend of the loved one who now is grown up and has his own children and you think to yourself what a waste of a life and what would my child be like today. Would he have married and how many grandchildren would I have. Would he have gone to Oxford to finish his degree. Would he, being the ultimate question that is never answered. In time you learn to live with it next to you but it is always there that scar. It may be a long while ago, but you still love them. New grief is an open wound screaming out with the pain of loss. Nothing can stop the bleeding. When the pain is too much you curl up in a fetal position and try to escape the excruciating feeling of helplessness and anguish.   Nobody should ever tell a grieving person what they should feel and when. This description is purely personal.

For me I chose to take the torment and turn it into a tool to prevent others from joining this less than desirable club of loss. I immediately went into action which was also a tool to escape facing the pain. The choice was to turn off my old life and to join the Parents Circle -Families Forum which became and took over my new life.  I needed to understand the motivation that the sniper who killed David my son experienced that pushed him to take the lives of 10 people. What can bring a person to commit such a bestial devastating crime. When I learned that he had seen his uncle violently killed by the Israeli army when he was a small child and that he lost further family in the second intifada it was an insight into the reason and perhaps a path to understanding. That does not mean I condone any violence at all. For me the understanding why is the basis for the beginning of a conversation, which could lead to some sort of completion.

This is the time of the year when together with Combatants for Peace, we take the opportunity to show that the pain of loss is the same no matter where you come from. This is illustrated by people who have lost loved ones some as recently as October 7th, and yet they choose to join the Parents Circle and to do all they possibly can to end the violence.

There are those that have lost loved ones who do not agree that Palestinian and Israeli pain and grief is the same. I say to them you are entitled to commemorate your loss in any way you see fit and it would be appreciated if you would allow us to do the same. We can only hope that those who have not experienced loss will not find it necessary to become violent and attack the people attending venues for watching the ceremony all over the world and especially in Israel.

It is somewhat of a miracle to see Palestinians and Israelis still working together to create an unforgettable evening like the one you can experience on the 20th April at 8.30

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)