Bad Connection

Last year, on this day, I shared this story with you. Just wanted to let you know that the marriage didn’t last. Perhaps it has something to do with them celebrating the engagement on Memorial Day.

In any case, I didn’t feel very connected to the holiday this year. Not really sure why. I didn’t watch the ceremony on television last night, during the siren my thoughts wandered a bit and I didn’t take the time today to watch any of the gut wrenching home movies playing simultaneously on nearly every channel. Oddly enough, this is the one holiday that I always feel thoroughly connected with. I don’t know, I just feel a bit distant. I just don’t know.

I was lucky enough to serve in the IDF during a relatively quiet time. It was before Israel pulled out of Lebanon and a few years before the second intifada started. I knew some guys who were seriously wounded in Lebanon, one guy in my unit killed himself during basic training (at home on a weekend off) but other than those instances, I didn’t personally know any soldiers who died.

So what do I usually think about during the sirens?

I think about my friend who lost five of his former soldiers in a horrible brush fire in Lebanon during a firefight with Hezbollah, just a week after he was discharged (I’d met one of the guys the week before at my friend’s army release party). I went with him to two of the funerals.

I think about the father of an old roommate who was killed by a sniper as he got out of his tank during the Yom Kippur War just hours after the ceasefire was declared. My roommate was 11 months old at the time.

And I think about the history of my unit, the Seventh Brigade, and the sacrifices they made as they fought to protect our borders from our enemies in every single one of Israel’s wars.

Victims of terror is another story all together. Some good friends have narrowly escaped with their lives (but with both physical and psychological scars), others I’ve known did not.

So why can’t I connect today?

Tags: IDF, israel