What It’s Like to Lose Someone in a Terrorist Attack

I look at my phone and it flashes the date. October 1. My cousin Ezra would be turning 22 today.

If he were still alive.

It hits me, then. Four years ago, my cousin, Ezra Schwartz, was celebrating his eighteenth birthday. A month and a half later, he was dead.

It was my first experience with death. I was fourteen and in my first year of high school. Trying to grow into my personality, pursue my passions, be a teenager. Then someone shot my cousin in the face.

It’s weird sometimes. Knowing he won’t get older. That, now, I’m older than he’ll ever be.

I’m currently in Israel, on my gap year before college. The same year off that he took, the same country that he was in. Except he never came back.

I was in Gush Etzion recently—the place where he died. I was staying at this house in the suburbs, in Efrat. Some people would call Efrat a settlement. To the family I was visiting, though, it was just “home,” with six kids running around wreaking havoc on everything and making lots (lots) of noise. I tried to ask their mother questions about the political situation, her experiences with Palestinians, etc., but didn’t glean much from her answers. She didn’t have much experience with Palestinians besides for interactions at the local supermarket, and Efrat’s status as “disputed territory” to whatever extent did not seem to factor into her decision to move there.