04/21/2026
Grief is Like Glitter: A Reflection on Yom Hazikaron
Cleveland's community shlicha (Israeli emissary), Ella, shared the following reflection at our Yom Hazikaron commemoration on April 20, 2026:
Grief is like glitter. At first, it’s everywhere. It’s on your pants, in your hair, under your nails, impossible to get off your skin. It doesn’t go away completely. It settles, becomes quieter, less overwhelming. You learn to live with it, to carry it gently. And then at one point, you think it’s all gone, and when you’re doing really well or in a moment of forgetting, you’ll find some glitter in your pocket or in your car and it brings back all the memories.
I used to think that was a bad thing, that seeing the bits of glitter you thought you’d forgotten meant the grief was starting all over again and taking you back to day one, the worst day of it all. But it’s not what happened, this time it’s actually sparkly, instead of messy. Because it reminds you of the good.
I didn’t understand grief until I found myself speaking to someone who wasn’t there. Whispering into absence, into spaces they used to fill. Laughing at memories mid-tear. Holding joy and devastation in the same breath. No one tells you how disorienting that is, to feel everything all at once.
Linoy, a friend of mine, quoted this, talking about her brother Gal Bason, who fell on July 25, 2014, during Operation Protective Edge.
The Hebrew word for fallen soldier is חלל. This word has another meaning – it describes space or void: a vast expanse, or an empty, hollow place. That overlap does not truly exist in English, where different words separate these ideas, and translation depends heavily on context.
In Hebrew, however, the connection remains. The word suggests not only the person who was lost, but the absence that follows. When a soldier falls, something is torn open. A presence that once filled a מקום , a space, is no longer there. What remains is a חלל, a space marked by loss. The word holds both realities at once: the life that was, and the emptiness left behind.
Even in these very different uses, the same underlying image repeats: an opening that changes the nature of what was once whole.
When we come back to chalal as a fallen soldier, that idea becomes much heavier. It’s not only describing death, but it also hints at a kind of rupture. Something in the fabric of life, of family, of friendship, of community, has been broken open. And what remains is not just grief in an abstract sense, but a very real absence of something you can almost feel the shape of.
For people living with loss, that distinction matters. The absence has a presence of its own. A chair at the table, a name that is still spoken, a life that continues around a space that no longer fills the same way. The language gives that feeling a form. But maybe that overlap is the point. Because when someone falls, they don’t just die — they leave behind a חלל. A space that was once full is suddenly empty.
And maybe that’s part of why the term chalal is used so carefully in Israeli society. It’s not just a technical term for someone who died. It carries memory, weight, and a kind of quiet acknowledgment: that every loss creates a space that remains, and that space becomes part of the world the living continues to inhabit.
Most people carry at least one chalal with them. I, personally, carry many names of people I’ve never met. I’ve only met their remains, the circles that work so hard to make sure their name is still being said. But some of the names I hold, I got to meet.
Ori Arad and I met in middle school, in English class. He was tall, energetic, smart but making sure you can’t really know this about him. Then, in high school, we sat together in math class. He always asked to copy my answers during tests, and I let him, because I didn’t really mind. We lost touch after graduating, but every time we saw each other in the neighborhood, Ori smiled with his usual big smile.
More than I think about he’s brutal death, I think about where and when he will be missed.
Ori won’t come to our high school reunion, he will not stand proud under the chuppa, when all his classmates, friends from the army, and people he collected in life, will celebrate his love. Ori will not have his first real job and won’t get to buy a motorcycle in his midlife crisis.
All I have left are pieces of him in memory, some glitter in my pocket. Funny little moments, smiles, and the quiet knowing, that life is unfair in the sharpest, smallest ways.
I think about the birthdays he won’t have, the late nights he won’t spend with our friends, the stories he won’t tell, the arguments he won’t have. I think about the parents who will never stop missing him, the siblings who will always notice the empty seat in the table, the silence in the middle of a conversation where his voice should be.
And sometimes, when I’m walking down the street and someone looks like him, I almost believe he’s still here. But it’s always a momentary trick, a cruel reminder that he’s gone.
I hold onto him in the small ways I can. I say his name, here, today, with you all. I remember his laugh, I let the memory ache. Because even if life took him too early, in a brutal way, the least I can do is make sure he doesn’t disappear entirely.
