Every Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism, I arrive at the military cemetery in Kiryat Shaul early, before the flower sellers, the crowds of people and the ceremony itself. On a fixed route I move between the gravestones. In their silence, they each tell their own story of the blood and tears that went into the struggle for independence and freedom. From time to time I stand next to one of the gravestones, read the name of the fallen soldier and where he died, and imagine what he looked like. I am especially moved when I read a gravestone which tells me that the fallen was a Holocaust survivor who managed to escape the European inferno, came to Israel and enjoyed a short reprieve of life in the homeland. I linger the longest at the Yom Kippur War section of the cemetery, among my comrades who fought the enemy with me in the tank battles and did not survive the horror of the war's first days on the Golan Heights and along the Suez Canal. Their familiar faces and shy smiles hit me with full force. It's hard to believe that 40 years have passed since the war, which left us traumatized from the battles, taken by surprise and tormented. The crowds begin to shuffle in. Thousands of family members, friends and acquaintances walk along the pathways to their loved ones' final resting places, the eternal springs of their sorrow and pain. Young soldiers from the units in which the fallen served stand at attention next to their graves. For them the Yom Kippur War is a historical story about a war that happened many years before they were born. I often linger next to the soldiers and tell them about the fallen comrade to whose grave they have been sent to pay their respects. A special atmosphere among the family and friends of those killed in the line of duty has been created throughout the years, the result of meeting one another annually. They recall the war stories, the missiles and shells that formed a cacophony of death around every corner, and the last words uttered by those who were killed. Next to the grave of my friend Meir Stein, who was in the turret of the tank next to me when we took a lethal mortar hit, I meet his family and nephews. His nephews never knew him, aside from his memory kept alive in his parents' home, and which has refused to fade or disappear. Every year, next to Meir's grave, I meet the mother of another fallen soldier. His grave was always the best kept. She would visit every week, plant green and red flowers around it, and water and trim them so they wouldn't grow wild. The grave became a type of temple for this mother, whose only son was buried and took a part of her with him. I would always ask her how she was doing, but throughout the years I noticed she was hunching further and that her sad eyes were growing dimmer. All her hopes and dreams had ended in one moment. Who can know the pain of a Jewish mother who has lost her son, standing above his grave dutifully watering the flowers- About a month ago I saw a small obituary in the paper. At this year's Memorial Day ceremony I will no longer see her tending to her son's grave. She joined him in that special place in heaven, the place reserved for the fallen soldiers of Israel's wars and their parents. This year on Memorial Day I will take a large bottle of water with me. After all, someone needs to continue watering the flowers that gave this soldier's mother the strength to carry her suffering and sadness for the last 40 years of her life, a life that had become a barren desert.
Notes from a cemetery
מערכת היום
מערכת "היום“ מפיקה ומעדכנת תכנים חדשותיים, מבזקים ופרשנויות לאורך כל שעות היממה. התוכן נערך בקפדנות, נבדק עובדתית ומוגש לציבור מתוך האמונה שהקוראים ראויים לעיתונות טובה יותר - אמינה, אובייקטיבית ועניינית.
