Amongst the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem

Though the intensity of grief surrounding Jake’s death has ebbed and flowed over the years, it has never ceased.  Some years are easier, and I find myself near the shore, in calm, shallow waters. Some are harder, with rough seas, jagged rocks, and stormy skies that block the view of any safe harbor.  This past year has fallen into the latter category because of the October 7th attack on Israel, which provided one of the starkest and most visceral reminders of the events that occurred the night he was murdered.

On October 6th I was at a speaking engagement—my first in several years. I had taken a long break but was ready to try it again and worked on getting the speech as close as possible to perfection for several weeks.  It was the first time I had ever spoken publicly about the day I escaped and the first I had given more than superficial details about Jake’s life and death to anyone but a very select few.  

Though I think that the event itself went well, both the preparation for and the actual delivery of the talk brought a level of vulnerability I had not felt in a relatively long time, so the next morning when I woke to the news of the attack, it hit me while some pretty tender parts were already exposed, and things became progressively more painful from there. Over the next few weeks when news trickled out about the details of the violence, the noise in the world intensified as people argued about exactly how many babies had been murdered, how they had died, and how many pieces their bodies were in upon being found. 

At the same time, my world became increasingly quiet and isolated.  The unspeakable and unresolved pain of the fifteen-year-old girl who had watched her baby die in a way similar to what was being described in the news resurfaced and I was caught in an unexpected current of grief that brought with it all of the experiences typical for me during these times.

Despite the reemergence of nightmares, the tear-stained pillowcases, and the constant nausea, shakiness, and feelings of hollowness in both my heart and my stomach, I carried on, like I always do, and have always done.  I smiled and laughed in meetings, I welcomed newcomers, I drove people from the airport to the hospital and back the next day, I put together training sessions, led support sessions for people who were, relatively speaking, only tangentially affected by the events but were nevertheless struggling, and taught workshops to people who didn’t want to learn, even though the weight of grief made it difficult just to breathe.  

As the initial stages of the conflict waned and the world started to focus on other events, most people returned to their typical activities and resolved the emotions they had felt about the events initially.  This was not necessarily true for Jews however, and many, if not most, of us are still struggling even if we aren’t telling those outside our community anything about it.  The continued struggle is certainly true for me, and though I thought I was doing a decent job handling it, recently someone who I think cares a lot about me very kindly and very gently pointed out that I haven’t really seemed the same since October. 

This was an interesting observation for me to consider because grief is something that I am accustomed to navigating and although this particular current came from an unexpected source and from an unexpected direction, my perception was that, though it was difficult, I was swimming well enough that my struggle was not necessarily noticeable.

As I reflected on this, I realized that while grief is ever-present for me and I am used to making my way through the changing seas, most people who interact with me, whether they know it or not, are familiar with seeing the grief of a forty-four-year-old who has spent thousands of dollars on, and hundreds of hours in, therapy and has almost thirty years between her and the horrors of the night she watched as her baby was murdered.  It is the grief of an adult who has largely come to terms with the loss, has found a way to live with it, and does what she can to create light from the darkness, joy from the pain, and life from the death.  It is the grief of a woman who can say with all honesty, “I wish the outcome had been different, but I would not trade his existence for anything because no matter how great the pain, the magnitude of love is far greater and it is the love I will cling to, will draw close to, and will live in.”   

They are used to seeing me in the grief of the shallow waters near the shore. That is not, however, the grief they are seeing me in now. 

The grief they are seeing me in now is that of the rugged, raw, unresolved suffering of a fifteen-year-old child frozen in time on the worst night of her life.  

A child left alone in the darkness with an evil few will experience.  

A child haunted by the sound of the axe on his body and the sight of his blood seeping into the soil. 

This is the grief of rough seas, jagged rocks, and stormy skies and most of the people in my life presently had not yet seen what it takes for me to swim in these waters until now. 

The last seven months have been very much like fighting against a rip current—no matter how much effort I expended, no matter how hard I tried, I got nowhere and exhausted myself in the process.  My struggle has been more obvious than I thought it was, and though there is a certain amount of shame that surrounds that, perhaps it is ultimately a positive outcome. I have navigated these waters alone so many times before that maybe this time, because people see me, I won’t have to again.

And even if I do have to do it alone again, being the quintessential California girl that I am, I know a lot about rip currents and how to deal with them.  A rip current is an unpredictable pattern of water movement that results from the interactions of waves with the sea floor.  They are long, they are deep, and they will pull you far from shore in a very short amount of time, often without you even realizing it is happening.  They are also narrow, and the trick to surviving one and making it back to shore alive is to swim sideways for a bit, parallel to the shore until you feel the change in the water. Once you feel that the pull has subsided, you can start making your way back. 

Having been caught in many rip currents, both physical and metaphorical, now that I recognize I am in one and have been pulled unexpectedly far from the shore and the calm, shallow waters of grief in which I typically swim, I know that the way forward starts with a step sideways.  It means that instead of forcing the girl I was then to grieve in the same way the woman I am now does, and requiring her to keep swimming against the current, it’s time for me to step aside and let the child grieve her baby the way she needs to and the way she never had the chance to. 

It’s time to let the girl covered in dirt, leaves matted into her hair, wearing a blood-soaked T-shirt who gave birth on a cold December morning only to see her baby cut into pieces moments later cry if she wants to cry, scream if she wants to scream, sleep if she wants to sleep, speak if she wants to speak, and to feel whatever she feels without reservation, without judgment, and without a timeline.  

As she makes her way through the rough seas, around the jagged rocks, and toward the shallow waters near the shore, may God comfort her amongst the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.