Already during the shiva, people would sit beside me and explain how complicated my situation was and how difficult it must surely be for me. They approached me with concern and with the understanding that I was in a position with an added layer of complexity. And while they spoke, I sat there listening, nodding, feeling how somewhere among all those words I was disappearing a little. As if they were explaining me from the outside, defining me, while I still did not understand where I stood in all of this.
With the perspective that comes with bereavement, I will try to explain. I am not the mother, I am not the father, I am not the aunt and not the grandmother either. I am the father’s partner. So what is my connection to the soldier who was killed in battle? There is not even a word for it in Hebrew. And when there is no word, there is no clear place either. There is no definition to hold onto, no framework that contains this relationship and no simple, short way to explain to others — or even to myself — what I was to him and what he was to me.
1 View gallery
'I, too, expect the front door to open and for him to be standing there'
(Photo: Elias Rafa/IL GettyImages)
His father and I are in a second-chapter relationship. He came into it with his children and I with mine. We love together, live together and run a shared household. Like any relationship, it has its complexities, only in a second chapter there are even more, especially when children are involved, and since our son was killed there is an additional layer of coping.
Society can accept my children as siblings who lost him, but not understand my part. Bereavement upends once again the family structure built in the second chapter, because it has no place in the definitions of the establishment. And when the existing structure has no place within the definitions of bereavement, only one family exists — the one based on blood ties, the one that is easy to identify and grasp. A family that no longer existed, a family that when he was killed came back to life for the first time since the divorce.
His death in the war suddenly forces me to define the relationship and give it a name, because otherwise the insensitivity, the numbness, the audacity and the lack of sensitivity hit me in the stomach again and again.
Not long ago, in a conversation with a distant colleague, he asked me, “So, how are you? What about you? Some relative of yours was killed, right?” Anyone reading these words is probably appalled — “How dare he?” and “How tactless.” But that is how it is. And I was left there for a moment without words, trying to understand how you reduce a whole life, a relationship, love, to some vague and undefined “relative.”
In another conversation with some bereavement nonprofit, the representative, who did not remember the connection because 12 hours had already passed since our previous conversation, turned to me and asked, “Remind me, what is your relationship?” And in that moment, once again, I had to explain and prove that I have a place in this story.
And no, I am not the mother. I never pretended to be. I never defined myself as a stepmother, not even as a “parent,” and I never thought I needed to, and the truth is, there was never any need.
When he was alive, it was simple. I loved him, I worried about him. I did not pretend to be his mother, but I was family — a connection built from the small moments of everyday life, from conversations, from concern, from laughter, from the ongoing presence of one in the life of the other. There was no need for definitions. We were family. My partner’s children knew I was there, that I was here for them. They have a mother, they have a father and they also had me.
For most of his life — a life that was especially short, because he was killed at 21 — he lived with us half the time. He had his own room, like each of the children. He had a place in the family, like each of us. And there was a significant relationship between us, similar to a relationship one has with a parent. But in the Israeli lexicon of bereavement, surprisingly, they still have not given this kind of relationship a name.
Elsewhere in the world, it does have a name. Researchers call it disenfranchised grief — grief that is not socially recognized, that has no legitimacy, that has no clear place within the norms of who is allowed to grieve and for whom. It happens precisely in situations where the relationship does not fit familiar patterns, when it is not biological, not formal or not “close enough” according to society’s definitions. Studies show it is especially common in blended families, in second marriages and in relationships like nonbiological parenting, where the love and daily life exist, but the social recognition does not. It is not only that there is no support, but that sometimes there is even a feeling that someone else is deciding for you whether you are allowed to hurt, and how much. And yet, although this concept has existed in the world for years, in Israel, it hardly has a name and is barely discussed.
The establishment that manages bereavement and mourning in this country does not recognize complex circles of grief. Here too, as in other crises, where the state — in this case the Defense Ministry — disappears into bureaucracies and procedures that the spirit of the times has rendered irrelevant, there are social organizations, nonprofits and individuals. You can find a wide range of support groups: for parents, for divorced fathers, for grandparents and even aunts, for bereaved siblings, bereaved twins and bereaved partners. There is room for all these groups and nonprofits, because the circles of grief, coping and sorrow only continue to grow. And that is amazing, moving and heartwarming. But there is no support group for the partners of a bereaved father or mother.
There is no name that defines us, and this should be the next group to receive recognition.
I, too, carry bereavement, and sorrow, and a broken heart.
I lost a child who was the brother of my children.
I lost a child I loved and worried about.
I lost a child, and with his death, the family we built was shaken.
I, too, expect the front door to open and for him to be standing there.
I, too, get into bed with tearful eyes and spend entire nights without sleep, thinking of him.
I, too, get confused in the middle of the night and think for a moment that he has come home from an evening out and will soon enter our bedroom and whisper, “I’m back.”
I am writing because this is not only my story. It is the story of other people who are in deep relationships that have no definition. Israel knows how to speak about bereavement, but the conversation still clings to old definitions of blood ties and formality, as if only they determine the depth of love and the intensity of loss. But reality has long since changed. There are blended families, there are second chapters, there are lives built from human, daily, genuine connections. And within all that, there are also entire circles of people collapsing into grief, yet remaining invisible.
It is almost a paradox that in a country where bereavement is so present, certainly since October 7, there is still an unrecognized and undefined family of grief that has no name, and therefore no recognition. The state needs to take this up — and no, not for financial support. It is time for new definitions, so that we will know that we, too, have a place in bereavement, just as we had a place in their lives, and so that I, too, can simply miss the child who will not come back.
- Why did I write this anonymously? Because this is a complex family situation, and it represents a group, not only my personal story.