Reflection By Hasmig

I have this photograph from the night after Kyle died of all of his friends hovered on my couch eagerly looking through pictures of him. Gone only 24 hours, they were searching for some signs of his life, desperately grasping memories that they worried would slip away as quickly as he did. Similarly, I started ransacking my own brain for memories that, like a vivid dream, disappear as I try to describe them. But my last interaction with Kyle is fortunately fully in tact for the re-telling.

It was the Friday before Spring Break and students were in the computer lab getting help with next year’s schedule on line while I was writing passes to the counselor so they could set up their initial “college talk” appointment. I wrote one out for Kyle and he rejected it. “I’m not going to college,” he stated bluntly. And then proceeded to orate his well-rehearsed spiel about his calling toward the Israeli army. I retorted with my now-broken record lecture about politics, options, and his safety, both physical and emotional. I knew he’d be forced to make decisions that were counter intuitive to his sensitivity and deep loyalties to fairness. Born in the sign of Cancer, Kyle is a water baby: emotional, committed, and loyal to his cause. “I’d be safer there than I am here,” he said to me. Born in the sign of the Taurus, I am stubborn. “Take the pass,” I said to him with stern eyes, as I shoved it towards his chest. He grinned and shook his head sideways at me, stuffed it in his pocket, and walked away.

We watched headlines for weeks leading up to March 31, 2011, looking for signs that a surge of violence in Israel/Palestine would postpone our trip. Several times, we were on very close watch, emailing several times a day with our partners in Colorado as news from the region was tenuous. My last conversation with Kyle was never far from my mind as I balanced my concerns for our kids’ emotional safety with my fear that we might accidentally find ourselves in a physical situation I couldn’t get them out of. My adult responsibility suddenly weighed heavily and there were moments when I doubted. “Were we being impulsive?” Once on the ground in the country, there wasn’t this constant dread of attack or anxiety that some of the kids had predicted might exist. We felt safe and protected, not only because we were Americans after all, but also because our hosts had gone to great lengths to plan every moment of the trip with our students’ security in mind.

However on four occasions, mostly in the second half of the trip, we had piercing jolts of adrenaline course through our bodies that reminded us that we weren’t in Kansas anymore, nor Berkeley for that matter. The photograph on page of Leib holding hands with the Bedouin school children is arguably one of the sweetest in the collection. It captures an innocent playfulness that we brought with us in our 14 participants and met all over the country.

Illustrative of the harsh contrasts in this region, not 5 minutes after that photograph was snapped, we witnessed a forcefully loud explosion, close enough to marvel at the mushroom cloud it left in its wake, close enough to have the innocence and playfulness from moments before rapidly replaced by fear, curiosity, and shock. But that was Israel and Palestine. In exactly the same moment, you were looking at both the photograph and its negative.

The entries and photos that follow, chronicle the conclusion of our vivid dream realized on this soil of intrepid beauty married to cruel injustice.

Dreams of Kyle

Leib and I were very clear that we needed to leave one of Jacquey's 16 silver hearts for Kyle at the Western Wall. The first time we came to the Wall was on Saturday, the first full day of our trip, but since it was Shabbat, we couldn't take any photos, and we were committed to documenting each of the locations that we left a heart. So, Leib, Hasmig and I returned today (April 7), cameras in hand. It turns out that each year prior to Passover, all the notes that have been left at the Wall over the course of the year are carefully removed with a special stick dipped in a ceremonial michvah and buried. Many of the notes we had left on our previous visit were now gone. I was disappointed at first that their residence had been so brief, but then felt somehow comforted knowing that our messages couldn’t simply fall out of their crevices and blow through the streets of Jerusalem as litter. They were safely and ceremonially buried away. We left some additional notes from BHS CAS students deep in the recesses of now cleared crevices. I'm certain they will now remain for a year or more.

Leib scoped out a ledge quite a ways up on the Wall, too high, we guess, to ever be removed by those cleaning the wall. Leib tossed the heart up onto the ledge, about 10 feet above our heads. I think it will be there, out of reach, for a very long time. I said Kaddish at the Wall directly underneath the ledge that holds Heart #8. While I stood there, eyes closed and touching the Wall with my hands and head, I had a flash of understanding.

On August 21, 2010, nearly five months after the accident, I had my first dream of Kyle. We were in the desert and he was a toddler but we were talking as if he was sixteen. Gary, my brother, and Niko were there, too. Kyle was in a form that was practically transparent. Sometimes he was more solid than others and then he’d fade a bit. Sometimes when he was further away from me—a few feet—he was more solid and then when I’d try to pull him close to me or when he’d come closer, he would fade. He gave me a hug at first and he was in his 16 year old body and neither of us had on shirts and I could almost feel his skin on mine when our chests met.

Two months later, I had another dream of Kyle on October 31, 2010. I was sitting on a stone bench, a large rectangular slab of stone with legs but no back, facing an old stone wall. It seemed to me to be an old school or some old institutional building, but I didn’t recognize it and I didn't know where I was. Kyle came up behind me, wrapped his arms around me, his left arm around my waste and his right arm around my shoulders and chest and put his right cheek against my left cheek and said, "Can you feel me this time? It's me. It is me. I'm OK." I reached back with my right hand and grabbed the back of his neck. I could feel his course, curly hair, and his neck neatly shaved above the collar the way he liked it. And then he turned into Niko and I could feel Niko's thick, softer black hair and smaller neck. Every night since October 31, 2010, before I go to bed, I close my eyes and visualize, replay, re-live that dream of Kyle hugging me from behind and me being able to feel his embrace and his face against mine. On this day, at the Western Wall, I had a sudden flash of understanding that that dream was here in the Old City of Jerusalem. It might have been right here at the Wall or somewhere else in the Old City, but I'm certain that the ancient stone wall I faced was somewhere here in Jerusalem.