Anyhow, I feel really disconnected all the time, not only now, and I wonder

how much of it has to do with living in Rafah. Everyday there is tragedy and

you come frighteningly close to death and if you want to be productive you

have to dissociate, to swallow your grief in teaspoonfuls and not watch Al

Jazeera too closely. And now Tom is wavering on the line between life and

death and it all kind of accumulates, his hospital bed underlines the

experience of his many weeks in Palestine, affirms the question in all of our

heads... this can’t be happening? This happened. It was. This happens. It

is.

Today we are staying here on the kibbutz almost all day after sitting straight

through midnight yesterday in the hospital corridors. It is our last day, we

will say goodbye to Tom and then leave tomorrow morning for Jerusalem for

Pesach (Passover). Do you ever understand the meaning? Once we were slaves,

now we are free? What does it mean for someone who has never wanted for

choices or freedom, but a glimpse into some foreign meaning in history of my

own roots... I don’t know, maybe it’s something you understand better as you

age and acquire the scars of past pains.

"Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned."

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,

Nor the furious winter’s rages

--Virginia Woolf