Who Will Die Tomorrow?

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Life Hack: Your Story, Experience, etc

6 min readAug 7, 2015

It always seems to begin with a phone call in the middle of the night. Possibly within the scheme of things, the divine scheme, if there is such a notion as a divine scheme, no hour or minute takes preference over the other. Yet vindictive fate is jealous of those peaceful hours during sleep’s forgetfulness, and with calculated spite destroys our stolen tranquility.

The phone began to ring three weeks before Operation Defensive Shield would enter into the scheme of things, and I would be catapulted into yet another war as a battlefield medic. Still those events were in the as of yet unknown future, and fate had other, more immediate plans.

That night, actually early morning of March 8th, 2002, I fell asleep on the couch. On those nights when the body refuses to find sleep’s pleasure in bed and its magic lure fills me with fear, I gravitate to that couch. Some may call it an inner voice, or a message that the soul receives but the brain refuses to recognize. Still, when the couch beckons and the body acquiesces to its call by falling into a deep troubled sleep, an inner ear is always listening for soft, ghostly footfalls during dream’s pandemonium.

A ring of the cell phone at two AM. Instantly and completely awake, Adrenalin surging, blood pumping wildly its echo in my inner ear. With three rings to answer before voice-messaging takes control, the “Hello” comes out at the end of the second.

“Ted?”

It is my ex-wife. You don’t live with a woman for twenty-two years without learning the nuance’s in her voice.

“What happened?” I asked realizing how stupid that sounded. Of course something happened.

“Did you hear about the terrorist attack?”

My ex knows I don’t react well to surprises. Good or bad. Her voice, that tone, tells me she does not have time. Yet she was trying her best not to just come out with it. Giving a chance to acclimate and the brain to react without immobilizing panic.

We have had seven children together. Six are still alive. Sharing that roller coaster to hell and back together and separately, I immediately wonder if six has just become five. Morbid thoughts always ready for that ‘something else’ to happen. Always expecting it.

“What attack?”

“In Atzmona,” she answers and then stops waiting for that to sink in. The brain does a quick check. Six kids but none even near Atzmona. The two little ones are sleeping upstairs. What the hell is this about?

She knows I have not made the connection. So she rushes on, no time left.

“Eli is still alive but hurt. Don’t know how badly. I am going to get Shalhevet and then drive down to Ashkelon where they took him to the hospital. Will call you as soon as I know something.”

I stared at the dead phone. Trying to catch up. Shalhevet whose name means in Hebrew, “flame”, is our eighteen year old daughter whom I call “bubbela”, which loosely means ‘doll’. Eli is Shalhevet’s boyfriend. They are childhood sweethearts and have been in love forever and ever it seems. Says it all as far as I am concerned.

That night my eyes go from a book which I have no memory of reading, to the phone. Fighting the urge to dial my ex’s cell phone every ten minutes, knowing the last thing they need is to be badgered by a tense, overwrought father with questions they cannot answer. As the hours grow closer to dawn, I am given quick progress reports in short phone calls. Eli has shrapnel all over his body. They might operate. They are transferring him to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.

Taking the younger children to school in the morning I say nothing. Not that they cannot handle it. I am simply too cowardly, being horrendous at delivering bad news. Deciding to leave the job to my ex-wife as she will know what, how and when to say what has to be said. It is an instinct she has which works great and one I sorely lack.

An hour later I faced Eli and Shalhevet. Eli lay awake in the emergency room, banged up, wounded, but in good spirits. We all talk, laugh, as I try to gauge his mood and effect this has had on him. Then turning to Shalhevet I become the father searching deep into a daughter’s soul wondering how much of it has been changed and scarred forever.

It is time to go. I hold Shalhevet. I hug my bubbela. There is so much I want to say to her. This is the child that inherited the curse of fate and there is nothing I can do to prevent that. Total helplessness. Why the most innocent one? Why the one that loves life with the passion of the gods?

I hold her, yet I say nothing. Even knowing that the pain she will be forced to endure is beyond terrifying. It will test her heart and sear her soul.

“I love you, Bubbela,” I say kissing her on the cheek. “I love you more than anything that life has ever offered. Go back to Eli now. He needs you.”

Tears in her eyes, I watch her walk away. Outside, in the cold spring air, mourning seizes my heart. Mourning over the loss of innocence. Mourning over a daughter who has been forced to become a woman before her time. No turning back. No thought. No preparation. Either accept the inevitable or curse impotently at the laughing wind.

Someday she will realize how much I wanted to say. To warn her. She will understand that telling her would have served no purpose. Her fate, suddenly, became her own.

One day she will remember that hug. Just as I remember that day over thirty years ago, when my father held me at an airport and said as he always said, “I love you, son.” He said goodbye to the boy in his son the only way he knew how. Shalhevet will earn her wisdom. There will be pain and devastation. Perhaps because and in spite of it she will become a bit more compassionate, more kind, more understanding of life and all its wayward paths. She will learn how to give of herself without ever asking for anything in return.

Shalhevet will heal and will help the man she loves to heal. They will grow together. But my bubbela has forever vanished and the one whom she loves lay in a hospital bed fighting back memories of watching a terrorist open fire in a crowded room. Killing and maiming his best friends.

For awhile, I stood like a man possessed, adrift in a raging ocean in the midst of a hurricane. Bathing the heart in the mean bitterness of hate. Hate for those who would kill children in the name of God. Grabbing every fiber and becoming drunk with its intensity. That plague once unleashed, ravages the mind painting the soul an evil black.

Back home, sitting down and staring at the phone, somehow I knew there will be another two A.M. phone call in my life. As always, it will come with no warning.

Perhaps that is just the scheme of things — accept the inevitable or curse impotently at the laughing wind.