Mothers and Sons

The sun had been up for hours, but it still burned like it was just getting started. August in Israel. The kind of heat that makes anything melt in your palms. The kind of heat that dares you to leave the house and then punishes you for it.

Chaya sat at the bus stop already sweating through her long navy skirt. A rag, once white, now gray, was clutched in her hand, damp at the edges. She dabbed at her forehead, then her upper lip, then went back to holding her Tehillim closed in her lap. She hadn’t opened it. Not once. The words felt too hot, too heavy today.

A shimmer of air and sandals signaled someone approaching. Chaya glanced up.

A woman in cutoff jeans and a faded Bring Them Home shirt strode toward the bus stop. Sunglasses, curls piled in a careless bun, a canvas messenger bag slung across her chest. She didn’t say “shalom,” didn’t nod, didn’t even glance at the bench.

Instead, she walked straight up to the glass panel of the shelter and stood there staring. Not at the schedule. Not at the bus times. Just. . . the wall.

Chaya squinted.

The woman’s fingers touched a corner of something on the glass. A sticker. It had started to peel in the heat, curling like paper left too close to the stove. The type of sticker you see everywhere these days. White border, army emblem, a boy’s name in blue letters and gold stars around it. לזכר רועי בן נורית, נפל בעזה, חורף 2023. In memory of Roee, son of Nurit, who fell in Gaza, winter 2023.

Memorial sticker.

The woman peeled it off slowly, like it was holy. Pulled a new one from her bag, smoother, glossier. Pressed it into the same spot with methodical care. Top left corner first. Then the right. Then across the bottom like she was sealing in memory before it escaped.

Chaya shifted slightly on the bench to let air under her knees.

The woman turned, caught her eye. “He used to get on at this stop every day,” she said.

No smile. No ceremony. Just that.

Chaya opened her mouth. Closed it. Her thumb slid over the cover of her Tehillim. But she didn’t open it. Not yet.

Chaya blinked. What do I say to that? Does she want me to respond? I need to say something.

Her eyes flicked back to the sticker. This time, she read it with her full attention.

לזכר רועי בן נורית, נפל בעזה, חורף 2023. In memory of Roee, son of Nurit, who fell in Gaza, winter 2023.

Oh. Oh my. . . it’s her son.

She froze. Her stomach tightened like she’d been caught trespassing. This wasn’t her space. This bench, this glass, this quiet patch of sidewalk it belonged to someone else now. Someone who had paid for it in blood.

This isn’t my place. I should just get up and leave. Her fingers gripped the edge of the Tehillim. Her thumb dug into the spine.

I am a religious woman. My son. . . my son is alive.

Before she could shift, before she could rise and pretend she had forgotten something Nurit sat beside her. Not closely. But enough to make Chaya’s heart jolt. She wiped her hands on her skirt, the motion slow.

“He was twenty-one,” Nurit said. “Laughed at funerals, loved shakshuka. Died in Gaza. They said it was quick.”

There was no sobbing. No breaking down. But the simplicity of it, the flat, simple truth hit harder than any wail could have.

Nurit pushed her sunglasses up onto her forehead and wiped the sweat from her upper lip with the back of her hand. The gesture was ordinary, almost careless, but Chaya caught a glimpse of her eyes.

And they were not ordinary. They were the eyes of a mother who had lost her son. Not weeping. Not wild with grief. Just hollow. Like something had been punched out of her, clean, sharp, permanent. Eyes that used to hold a soul, and now only held the memory of one. The skin beneath them was dark and swollen, as if sleep had long since stopped visiting. Tired eyes. Sad eyes. Eyes that didn’t search for comfort anymore.

It felt like staring at something sacred and broken at the same time. Chaya looked away.

Chaya felt something move inside her. A tug. A tremble. Like her heart wasn’t sure if it should break or hide.

She fought to find her voice and the right sentence. The ones she had said at shiva houses. The rehearsed phrases of comfort. But none of them fit here. Not in this heat. Not in the presence of this quiet, haunted woman.

So she said the only thing that made it through her lips. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

Nurit gave a small nod. She didn’t say thank you. She didn’t have to.

Then it happened.

Everything around Chaya slowed like the bus stop had been dipped in honey. The hum of traffic receded, the blur of summer dust turned to fog, and for a moment, she felt like she wasn’t sitting on a bench beside a grieving mother.

She was sitting across from herself. A mirror, cracked and unforgiving.

Chaya #1 (The Doubter): You should leave. This is her moment. Her sidewalk. Her boy. Her grief. You’re sitting here like nothing happened. As if your son served in the army. Don’t act like the Torah saves people and isn’t a hiding place. 

Chaya #2 (The Defender): He studies. That protects us. You’ve heard the rabbis. The prayers of the righteous sustain the world. You’re not a coward. He’s not a coward. He chose holiness over bloodshed. 

Chaya #1 ( The Doubter): Her son bled, died in fact. Yours didn’t. Is that holiness? Or is it convenience?

Chaya #2 (The Defender): Nurit wouldn’t understand. She’d think I sent him to study to run away from the war. She doesn’t know what it means to believe in Hashem.

Chaya #1 (The Doubter): Or maybe she does. Maybe she believed her son would come home.

Chaya stared ahead, but nothing was solid anymore.

The sticker on the glass. The Tehillim in her lap. The sweat soaking through her blouse. Even Nurit, so still, so matter-of-fact felt like a ghost pressed into the heat. And for the first time in a very long time, Chaya wondered: Maybe it wasn’t faith that kept her son alive.

Maybe it was someone else’s courage. Someone else’s blood. Someone else’s boy who stood in front.

Nurit’s son. Roee.

Nurit spoke again. Not looking at Chaya. Just at the glass, at the sticker.

“People prepare you to become a mother. No one prepares you to be a grieving one. Before Roee was born, I had lists. Crib, bottles, stroller, breastfeeding tips. I printed articles. My husband made spreadsheets. There was a plan for everything. But there’s no plan for this. No checklist. Not even in the support groups.”

She pauses. Gets up and presses her thumb hard against the sticker’s edge.

“The only thing I’ve found that works is memory. Using it like armor, so I can get out of bed in the morning.”

She finally turns to Chaya. Her voice is still flat. Still strangely calm.

“He hated his commander. Loved his friends. Called me every Friday. They gave me his phone. The screen was cracked, but his last selfie was still there. He was smiling. Sunburned. Eating Bamba. Said he’d be home in two days. He wasn’t.”

Chaya swallows. Her mouth is dry. Her fingers twitch against the closed Tehillim.

She imagines a phone returned to her, not bloodied, not shattered. Just full of Torah notes and voice recordings of her son chanting Gemara. Pages of text. No face. No final smile.

And then the question creeps in like a fog: If my son died, would I still believe it was holy? Would I still say it was God’s will? Or would I also press his memory against glass, just to keep breathing?

The world around her softened again, blurred at the edges, like wax melting under flame. The bench, the bus stop, even Nurit’s voice all faded. What was left was the sticker. Blue letters. Gold stars. Her son’s name could be there instead. It could.

She blinked, and it was.

Just for a second. Her son’s name, in the same font. On the same glass. She flinched. 

Chaya #1 (The Doubter): What if that had been my boy? What if it still could be? Would I say Baruch dayan ha’emet? Would I say it was holy? Or would I beg God to give him back and take my faith instead?

Chaya #2 (The Defender): Don’t think like this. You’re only tired. You’re only scared.
Hashem protects those who learn. That is what you’ve always believed. What you must believe.

But the thoughts kept coming, like cracks through glass.

She remembered the protests in Jerusalem. The screaming. The dragging. The peyot in the dust. Her husband yelling, “Torah is our Iron Dome!” And her son, holding a cardboard sign that read, To forget Hashem is the real death.

“I’m not afraid of jail, Ima,” he had said. “I’m afraid of becoming one of them.”

One of them. Meaning soldiers. Meaning Roee. Meaning stickers on glass.

Chaya #1 (The Doubter): Was he afraid of forgetting Hashem? Or was he afraid of the draft notice? Of pain? Of the weight of a gun instead of a siddur?

She swallowed. Her chest felt too tight. She had never dared think these things before. Not in shul. Not in bed. Not even quietly. Not where someone might see.

And now, beside this woman and her calm grief, the thoughts spilled out like oil catching fire.

Chaya #2 (The Defender, now speaking in a slightly weaker tone): It’s not fear. It’s holiness. We’ve been chosen to protect differently. The Torah and Hashem are what keeps soldiers alive.

Chaya #1 (The Doubter, now speaking in a more assertive tone): Then why is her son dead? Why is mine alive? Is this belief, or is it just the shield we hold onto so we don’t have to look at the price of sacrificing other people’s sons?

She looked down at the Tehillim. Still closed. The sticker caught the light. And for the first time, she didn’t feel protected. She felt exposed.

A sound broke through the fog. A voice. Nurit’s. Not loud. Not sharp. Just enough to pull Chaya back into her sweating skin.

“Yours in the army?”

The question was simple. Almost casual. Like asking what bus she was waiting for. But Chaya felt it like a slap. Her heart jolted. Her mouth dried. Her first instinct was to lie.

Chaya #1 (The Doubter): Say yes. Say he’s in Sherut Leumi. Say he’s abroad. Say anything else.

But she didn’t. The words came out too quickly, too flat.

“No. He’s. . . learning.”

A pause.

Nurit turned her face slightly, gave a small nod. Not angry. Not cold. Just. . . tired.

Like she’d already guessed.

She didn’t ask more. She didn’t say anything.

But Chaya felt every version of the conversation that might have followed and didn’t. Maybe she thinks he’s still in high school. Too young to serve. Too young to wear green. Maybe she doesn’t know he’s nineteen. That he protests against mobilization with signs and Bible verses. Maybe she’s giving me a pass.

She prayed for the silence to last. Prayed not to be asked again. Prayed not to have to explain what “protection” meant in her world, and why her son still had all his blood inside him.

Nurit didn’t turn to look at her. She just spoke, like she was finishing a thought she’d been carrying alone all day.

“They told me he died for our safety. For our people. So we could live our lives here in Israel like normal. But I don’t feel safe. I feel grief. I feel exposed. All the time.”

She said it plainly. Like weather. Like traffic. Not to accuse. Just to name it. And in that moment, Chaya froze.

Because those were her words. The ones she hadn’t said. The ones that had been crawling under her skin for the past fifteen minutes. I feel exposed. Not protected. Not chosen. Not shielded by holiness. Just. . . bare. Like if I breathed too deeply, something inside me would crack.

And now this woman, this mother with the sticker and the dead son had spoken the fear Chaya thought was hers alone. The fear that maybe no one was being protected at all.

The bus rounded the corner, a low mechanical groan breaking the heavy silence.

Nurit stood, wiping the sweat from her thighs.

She reached out and tapped the sticker once, just once as if to remind the glass, or the universe, that he was real.

Then she turned to Chaya. Her eyes didn’t accuse. They didn’t ask anything. She just said, plainly, “May yours stay safe.”

Then she climbed the steps, the doors hissed shut, and she was gone. The bus pulled away, leaving behind a burst of heat, dust, and silence.

Chaya remained on the bench. She didn’t move for a long moment. Just sat there, Tehillim still closed in her lap, her chest tight with something she didn’t have the language for yet.

Maybe faith didn’t protect anyone. Maybe it just gave you something to hold onto while the world came undone. Maybe that was enough.

She stood slowly. Reached out. Pressed her palm to the edge of the sticker where it had started to curl in the heat and smoothed it down. Firm. Careful. Like it mattered.

Then, without thinking, without needing to understand, she whispered the words she had known since childhood: “אֵל מָלֵא רַחֲמִים שׁוֹכֵן בַּמְּרוֹמִים” God, full of mercy, who dwells on high. . . 

A prayer for the dead. For someone else’s son.