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Waking Up
From Dorothy Naor (New Profile)
dor_naor@netvision.net.il

While this evening watching on TV the central ceremony in celebration of
Israel’s 66th birthday, I was reminded of Manuela Dviri and how powerfully she
expressed her feelings about wars and especially about her son who was killed in
the first Israeli attack on Lebanon. Manuela opposed that war and other
violence that Israel initiated. Below is one of her pieces, published in Hebrew
in 2003. Anyone who romanticizes war should read this carefully. It is not
about war, but about losing a child in one of these horrid things. I originally
sent this out in 2003. But since this is the kind of piece that can be read
over and over again, I forward it again.

Dorothy Naor

++++++++++++


Waking Up

By Manuela Dviri, originally published in Zman Hasharon on Friday, January 31,
2003
[translated from Hebrew by Monique Neumark]


I woke up crying. He asked me why and I said I did not know, that maybe it was
because of Yoni, because five years ago he died and were he alive now, he would
have been 25 years old. And each day that passes--I said to him--he dies a
little more for me: more finally, more totally, more eternally and he remains
more and more a twenty year old boy, handsome like my father, kind and charming
like his father, intelligent like his brother and sister and absent –minded just
like me, above all just at a twenty year old boy who does silly things: paints
his room hair-raising blue and whose socks have the disgusting smell of
soldier’s boots. A boy at times a little foolish, who is crazy about Miri and
ran off from his sister Michal’s engagement party to meet her at Beersheva
without enough gas in his tank, who always loses his way on the roads, even the
day he drove Eyal and Michal to Michal’s wedding: the three of them got lost and
to her shame, the bride arrived late at her own wedding, late and laughing,
laughing and late... and the three of them were so perfect, so loving, so
close….my children.

When the man who goes with me to the synagogue for the Shabbat morning prayer
left, and I stayed at home, alone, I cried some more and I screamed and even
went a little wild; I knocked my head against the wall to make the physical pain
stronger than the ache in my heart.

Yes, when the heart hurts, it really hurts… It always takes you by surprise. An
electric shock, quick and strong or a terrifying cramp, just in the center of
your body- exactly at the heart- and you are left (without breath) breathless,
without strength, hopeless…

After I cried at home, alone, I thought that maybe it was he who screamed and
(that) only the throat and voice were mine… I had not had such a strong attack
of grief for a long time. Slowly, slowly I calmed down and Rivka, my friend felt
I needed her and as if by miracle, came to my home. We sat in the kitchen, drank
the Shabbat coffee from a thermos bottle, laughed, hugged, and I became ‘normal’
again. No. So five years, a lifetime ago, I had no idea how hard it would be for
me to go on living. People talked to me, told me of eternal grief, which is
something quite abstract. But pain is very different, tangible, palpable, it is
not wanting to get up in the morning. Yet waking up feeling nauseous and alone
in the world. Alone. You see, in pain you are always alone, alone under
compassionate looks and alone even after the compassion has already gone. Only
Batsheva told me the truth. Had I known, at any stage, I would have forgone the
pleasure of living… Much too costly a pleasure. No, I didn’t know that I would
survive and did not know how to survive. But I did and great and remarkable
miracles happened to me on the way.

‘What ? it can not be! Is it already five years that he died?’ friends kept
asking incredulously all this week. Yes, and to me it seems much longer. And six
years since the helicopters disaster, and eight since Bet Lid. And two and a
half months ago since Dror Weinberg and a year and a half since Aviv Isaac…

I asked my friend Tamara Rabinovitz whose bereavement and experience are older
than mine, how can one explain to someone who has no idea how hard it is for us
sometimes and about what are the dead children so angry and scream out through
our throats. She said that perhaps one should explain that it is especially hard
now because of the country. That they - the children - invested themselves,
their lives, their youth for the country, and all that for nothing. That they
gave their lives for a country that is finished and corrupt, sad and despairing.
And that it is not fair, and that all the Ministers, Generals, and Prime
Ministers should walk around with photographs of Idor, and Yoni and Avi and
Dror in their pockets and then, maybe the Country would look a little
different.

I told her that she was really naïve and that by now nothing will make them
change, even this would not make them think, let alone feel… Nothing can help.

Last night I had a dream that the war with Iraq had started and I was running
to get gas masks for the children and that I had no mask for Yoni. And then I
remembered that I did not need a mask for him, that anyhow he was already
dead.

Manuela Dviri

Translated by Monique Neumark
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