By Esti DeAngelis, Managing Editor
“Find me, okay?”
This was the final request of Eden Yerushalmi, then 23 years old, on a phone call with emergency services as she hid from Hamas terrorists at the Nova music festival.
It took 11 months for that request to be fulfilled, and it didn’t happen in the way anyone had hoped. Just a few weeks ago, we marked the one-year anniversary of the day Eden was found in a tunnel below Rafah in southern Gaza, two days after being murdered by terrorists. Now known as the “Beautiful Six,” Eden and five other hostages survived in captivity for close to a year before being executed as the Israel Defense Forces closed in on their location.
“So many people wanted to meet you, but not like this,” Eden’s mother Shirit wailed at her funeral.
I was one of those people.
One day last June, two months before she would be murdered, I devoted time to learning Eden’s story. Eden is the middle child of three sisters. She was a waitress at a restaurant in Tel Aviv, the city where she lived, and she had just gotten her certification to be a pilates instructor. She was curious, passionate, outgoing and nonjudgemental. She loved the sea, traveling and sewing, and she loved life. In every video circulating online she was smiling, laughing or dancing.
I fixated on her that day. She was so full of life, and picturing her as anything other than that was impossible. I felt so strongly that she was still alive. I envisioned the day she would come home and told myself that as long as that day came to pass, everything would be okay.
I now know that as I thought of her, she was alive, and would remain so for another two months. I didn’t know her, but I feel so lucky to have learned her story before she was killed, to have prayed for her and pictured her. At the same time, I should have done more. I should have invested more, I should have prayed more, I should have pictured her more. Because for those two months she was still on Earth surviving, fighting to go home. I didn’t realize just how fortunate I was, in a way, to indirectly know her.
But two months later, she was gone, and a year after that, I’m still figuring out how to live without a person I never met.
After she was killed, Eden’s family changed their rallying cry from “Find me, okay?” to “Remember me, okay?” I grieved her murder; that was natural. I had forged this feeling of connection to her and her family, and her death crushed me like few things ever have. A year later, I feel and remember this pain. I remember Eden’s funeral, I remember the videos of her, and I keep in mind her beautiful family.
But since I first learned her name, I’ve learned of Eden through these access points only. And so I haven’t really been able to remember Eden. How do you remember someone once they’re gone if you never met them while they were here?
I so badly want to. I’ve printed out the memorial stickers her family made, and the words “Remember me, okay?” give me these instructions. Her Instagram memorial page gives me these instructions. I feel that she gives me, and all of us, these instructions. Remembering is the least I can do, but I’ve spent a year figuring out how to do it.
This summer, I visited southern Israel for the first time and went to the Nova festival site for the first time. The place Eden was kidnapped from almost two years ago. I came searching for her face among the placards staked in the ground, but, more than that, I came searching for answers. I came hoping that when I left, I would have some concrete way of moving forward without leaving Eden behind.
As I read the memorial underneath her picture, I again encountered Eden’s request from Heaven, written just above her life story: “Remember me, okay?” I stared at that placard, and I stared at Eden’s picture, never wanting to leave. I thought that when I did, I would be abandoning her and abandoning my mission to remember her. Her murder and all that transpired would become more and more distant, and my memories of her, already secondhand, would fade.
But I did leave, and a month later we marked her first yahrzeit. I read the messages her family wrote that day, and I watched videos from the azkara (memorial service) they held. I watched clips from her funeral one year later. And today I still come back to her. You can find her memorial sticker in my siddur and on my wall and as my phone wallpaper. I hope to visit her grave one day.
All of this has made me realize that, a year later, I can finally answer my question. There is a way to remember someone you never met, and that is by wishing you had. I remember Eden not just as an idea, not just as a hostage who was murdered. I remember her as someone I so badly wanted to reach. I remember her as someone I dreamed of meeting one day, or even just of getting to hear share her story once this nightmare was over. That longing transformed into missing, and that missing has become remembering as I have consistently recommitted to that connection I felt to Eden.
On Eden’s first yahrzeit last month, her sister May said she wanted everyone to meet “the beautiful girl from the poster in real life.” She added, “The responsibility of explaining who you were is beyond our ability.”
It’s impossible for me to know what Eden was really like. But honoring her memory, remembering her, means I try.
Her family has asked on her behalf, “Remember me, okay?” Eden, I promise to remember.
Photo Caption: Eden Yerushalmi’s placard at the Nova festival grounds
Photo Credit: Esti DeAngelis