Soon our family will mark nine years since Gil-ad disappeared from our lives. Nine years of daily pain, struggle, and loss. I observe this endless journey and the challenges that stand before us as parents of five daughters and two amazing grandchildren that brought light to the darkness.
I look at my grandson, who was born exactly on Gil-ad's birthday, and in some ways, we come full circle, but in others, we are reminded that Gil-ad was our only son.
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When we lost Gil-ad, we instantly became a household of girls – five amazing daughters. I remember many asked me whether the fact that Gil-ad was the only boy added or took away from the grief. I innocently replied that it does not matter whether your right or left hand is cut off, if you lose a child, that is a tragedy. Full stop.
What I said was true, but there is more to it. Suddenly, when we had to deal with the loss on a daily basis, I met Gil-ad in unexpected places. Who will sit next to my husband at the synagogue during prayers? Who will he build a sukkah with at the end of Yom Kippur? Or who will help me carry the heavy bags from the supermarket or reach the festive Passover glasses on the highest shelf? Or perhaps the most painful one to me, as a mother, who will I be able to speak to and who will understand me as a young man?
At the Shabbat table, my husband found himself surrounded by girls for a long time and I walked around in pajamas and without covering my hair because there were no boys at the table. Then the son-in-laws arrived, for now, two.
Slowly, the pajamas were replaced by festive clothes, and the hair was covered. My husband is no longer the only man at the table and the family is expanding, and the present is changing.
Gil-ad's photo stands on the windowsill behind my husband's chair at the head of the Shabbat table, and that pain in the heart does not let up, and the feeling of longing is constant.
And perhaps it is that constant feeling of loss or the meaning of those days of searching for the boys when we felt unity, that led us to create opportunities for human connection through the SonShine association that we established in Gil-ad's memory.
When the ground is on fire and social tensions reach new heights, I work to create meetings that will connect us, meetings that will open the heart and the home, and make us look into each other's eyes and see each other.
This is our society – threads of pain interwoven with threads of hope.
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