Reflections on the 13th Anniversary

It has been thirteen years since the unfathomable became real, when my beloved – our beloved – Marla Bennett was murdered along with eight others in Café Sinatra at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Thirteen years.  Has it really been thirteen years, enough time for a baby born that terrible day to become a Bar/Bat Mitzvah?

A few weeks before the bombing, Marla and I were on what turned out to be our one and only road trip, up in the Galil and Golan.  I got a call from my sister-in-law, sharing the news that my nephew and niece would have, God willing, a new sister or brother sometime around the start of 2003.

Six months later, Netanya Miriam Berland Simon was born.  She was given the name “Miriam” after Marla’s Hebrew name.

Four months from now, God willing, my beloved Claire Sufrin and Jacob and Ethan will travel with me to Boston to celebrate the Bat Mitzvah of Netanya Miriam, and we will sing and dance with joy for, and with, Netanya.

The name Netanya means “God gave”. 

Thirteen years ago, it was, quite literally, almost unbearable to live in a world where one of the greatest gifts I had known was ripped away.

Thirteen years later, Marla’s death is still a painful, devastating loss – a tear in the fabric of the universe that will forever be broken.

And yet, and yet:  We who loved Marla remember that she so loved life, she so embraced and embodied the sense that we are surrounded by gifts, that life itself is a gift, and that we must take responsibility for making it meaningful.

Thirteen years ago, the unfathomable became real.  Thirteen years later, the pain remains, yet the light that Marla shared with the world continues to shine and reminds us that the gifts we have are also unfathomable.  And also real.