"To my dearest Hedva and Polly. Hello, it is 8am. Time somehow moves along and everything is fine. I feel great and don't need anything, all that I ask is for you to not worry. I hope once this all ends, I'll be back home. With love and many kisses to you and our daughter, Shimon."
My father, Sergeant Shimon Kobdale, wrote those words on the morning of October 12, 1973, just hours before he was killed in the Yom Kippur War.
He managed to write and send four letters from the fighting in the Golan Heights and his handwriting is the only physical souvenir I have of him.
The letters were placed in my childhood picture album and I safeguard them as my dearest treasure.
I was a six-month-old baby when he died and throughout my childhood, a black and white picture of him hung in my room. A young man in a turtleneck - a still image depicting a story of longing and great pain.
"What was it like to grow up without a father?" I was asked so many times.
As an IDF reservist, my father never missed a war - the Six-Day War, the Suez Canal during the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War, his last.
A few months earlier, my parents moved to a new house in Ra'anana. It was there, during the Yom Kippur fast on a Saturday evening, my father noticed the suddenly heavy traffic on the street below.
"Something is happening in the north," he said and drove my mom to her family.
On the way there, tank convoys were already filling the highways, and when he returned, he found three orders for him to report to his unit.
My mother tells me she asked him to wait a few more minutes so she could say goodbye properly, but he was in a hurry.
He packed up his boots, put on his uniform and went out. He drove north on a half-track vehicle belonging to the Engineering Corps and met up with his armored unit.
It is difficult to talk about bereavement in terms of longing. On the one hand, there is no doubt he is an integral part of me, and I hold within me parts of him I'm not aware of.
On the other hand, I have no memory of him to fall back on.
I am constructing a figure out of other people's memories, like a patchwork quilt still full of gaps.
Many times I ask myself, what kind of a man was he? Was he funny? Optimistic? What scared him? What were his dreams?
Seven years ago, during the 40th anniversary memorial for the Yom Kippur War, the Engineering Corps held a meeting of veterans.
It was my opportunity to track down people who served with my father and try to get to know him better. My mother and I arrived with a picture of him and moved from person to person, trying to find scraps of memory within the wreckage.
Many old wounds were reopened. Some admitted that they were afraid to talk about the past. Others found solace in the meeting.
And then he arrived, the man who was with my father minutes before he died. It's difficult to not lapse into cliché in describing the meeting, but it was one of the most powerful events in my life.
My father's unit made camp in a quarry in the north, near the Syrian village of Beit Jinn. On the night before he died, the singer Miri Aloni visited to raise the troops' morale. During breakfast, they were already talking about the "heavy blow" the IDF was supposed to deliver to its enemies.
And then, the Syrian Air Force began bombing and everyone ran for cover. My dad did too, but it was too late. A shrapnel piece hit him in the neck and he died instantly.
Growing up without a father is an emotional disability. I had a great childhood with my mother, who gave me everything I needed, but every time I saw my friend's father throw her up into the air, I winced.
There were so many events I want to tell him about: My enlistment, my graduation, my wedding.
He was supposed to be 75 years old today. I always tell my three children they were blessed to grow up with a mother and a father and to have each other.
My grief is mingled with pride. Pride in him for never flinching and for going out to fight for his family and for what he believed in.
I always remind my children that thanks to him, we are here.
We all owe him an incalculable debt for that - my father and the thousands like him.