Mourning Under Glass: Reflections on a Son’s Murder

Nothing can prepare one for the loss of a child. Nothing can prepare a parent to hear the news of a terror attack and slowly discover that his son is among the eight shot down in cold blood. Nothing can prepare a father for the heartrending pain that burying his firstborn son brings. On March 6, 2008, my sixteen-year-old son, Avraham David, was killed while studying in the Mercaz HaRav library in Jerusalem. On that day my life changed forever. In the first year of mourning my son, I often felt torn between the intimacy of loss and its public expression. In one tragic moment, my son had become a martyr, and I, a bereaved parent. Having already buried his body, I worried how I could ever preserve his memory under the frequently too-bright lights of public attention. Mourning Under Glass explores the tensions between memory and memorial, between private pain and public mourning. Can any of our attempts at memorial adequately recall an extinguished life? Can any give voice to the nearly ineffable pain of loss?