A Year of Grief That Never Ends
It shouldn’t even be my grief but I can’t stop the tears
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A Year of Grief That Never Ends
On October 7th, 2023, my mother, my sister, and I met in the garish British seaside town of Weston-super-Mare for lunch and a long walk on the seafront and in the woods.
We talked for hours and walked for miles that day, blissfully unaware of what was happening in the country where two of the three of us were born — Israel. After bidding farewell to our mother, I drove my sister and our dogs back to Devon, talking along the way of the struggles of daily life that my sister was facing, not having turned the radio on once, nor glanced at the news at all.
It was only once I was home that I saw a message that alarmed me. It mentioned that Israel had been attacked, which wasn’t the biggest surprise. After all, Israel is often in the news with violence as the backdrop.
But this was clearly different. This was big, and it cut close to the bone. My cousin’s daughter, age 20 at the time and born only days after my eldest, had been at one of the sites of the attack — the Nova festival — and had escaped, though many hadn’t. Many were killed there, and it shook me to my core to realise that could have been her too.
That was when I began looking it up online, and what I saw shocked me.
As if that wasn’t enough, the very next day the news showed us attacks on Jewish establishments here in the UK and the tearing down of posters of the hostages that had been taken by the Hamas militants into Gaza. The cruelty at such a fragile moment felt unreal.
October 9th dawned — my younger daughter’s 18th birthday. It was meant to be a happy day.
After a healthy, long break from ever looking at social media, Facebook had managed to lure me in with the hilarious threads that would show up in my local groups. Mundane but humorous comments about people who complained about stupid things — that kind of thing. So, idiot that I was, on that day I opened Facebook only to see the most cutting, cruel posts that delegitimised Jewish and Israeli people and the pain they were inevitably suffering.
I was in shock, but I was also furious and deeply, deeply upset. The only way I knew to get that anger and upset out of me, to be able to relieve myself of the heaviness upon me and be present for my daughter, was to write something and put it out for the world to see. And so began a long battle with my own upset and anger, and what to do with it. Like any normal person, I can’t just bottle it up, though much of the time I did. And like any normal 21st-century individual, I went to social media to try to find some comfort in the shared pain of the Jewish and Israeli people, which I found, but inevitably there would be a gazillion triggers waiting for me on those sites too.
I needed to express myself and so I put words out there, mostly in places other than the main social media sites, but as time went on, my anger spilled over onto those too. I thought it would all be over soon and I would be able to relax again when it was, but the words had to be expressed until then. Things would feel better soon, wouldn’t they?
Yet here we are, just over a year later.
Yesterday my daughter celebrated her 19th birthday. She’s a happy thing, engrossed in her art foundation course 250 miles from home, with her boyfriend and bunch of new college friends. But the same cutting pain that I found on her birthday last year is still there, still gripping me. The aggression in the war zone and throughout the Western world has only grown.
I am weary and broken, like so many others. A year of grief and tears, of watching people I cared about raise their own voices with a dismissiveness of those they may hurt. I’ve lost friendships I didn’t want to lose. I’ve spoken angry words that I’ve regretted. I’ve been dismissive of the pain of others at times and have needed yet others to call me out on my own cruelty.
It’s been a mess of a year but what remains is nothing short of pain and grief, of betrayal and desperation.
I don’t want to feel desperate. I don’t want to feel angry or hurt. I don’t want to feel this endless sadness. But I don’t think it was ever an option not to.
The grief goes on. The tears keep falling. The hurt still stings as much as it ever did. And the betrayal, no matter how I try to excuse it or dress it up differently, still cuts deep.
And in the background to it all, we have to watch endless, needless deaths on a mass scale, and nurse the impact of tragedy that no human was ever designed to bear.
Jews, and most especially Israelis, have done nothing wrong by being born Jewish or Israeli. Last year on October 7th, when three British-Israeli women met for a walk on the beach in the ghastly town of Weston-super-Mare, we did nothing wrong by existing. Neither did my cousin’s daughter for attending a peace festival. Nor did any of the peaceniks living on the many kibbutzim in Southern Israel.
Yet, for the year that has passed since each of us has been told time and again that our mere existence holds us responsible for some of the worst crimes of humanity.
That really hurts.
And the grief goes on.
I want to make clear here that this essay is merely an expression of my own pain. By expressing it, I am not denying the pain of others. In fact, the only way we can all come out of this is by not only acknowledging the very real pain that has been and continues to be caused, but by also giving space to each and every one to express that pain, and not try to undermine it.
I speak as a British woman who is culturally Jewish and Israeli by birth. It matters not what logic or reason anyone tries to use to deviate from this truth, that is where my heart is, and that is the only angle I can authentically come from. More than anything, I want to be available for dialogue with those of Palestinian origin who also want open-hearted dialogue. I believe this kind of dialogue is the only way that we can find a way forward. On both sides, there are horrific, dehumanising voices and worse, but there are also those of us who want to reach beyond those divisions and tap into the power of the humanity we all share.
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I'm sitting here, reading this, after reading the Gazan War Diary by Naomi Ragen, that I receive most days by email. I receive photos of Oct 7 Memorial by Alexei Putsner Sarno which is seemingly endless. At times, sorrow turns to anger. Today word is only 51 of 101 remaining captives are alive. Every single day I think I want them back, but wonder what they are praying for, given the few stories told by those tortured daily that got out a YEAR ago. One lovely young woman survived the massacre, then took her life recently on her Birthday. Add her to the numbers. Worry for Israel is constant, as is for America, esp this week. I see horrible demonstrations against Jews in my country, in England, Ireland, Spain,France, and I CAN'T STAND IT!! LONG LIVE ISRAEL AND IT'S PEOPLE!!!! 🙏FOR ALL, Wherever they are. 💔🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱. 🇺🇸 Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
I feel your pain. Deeply.
And I can relate.