Heartbreak

I can’t stop seeing their faces and their  post-it tags that told the number of days he was gone.

( 320, I believe, when they spoke  so passionately and heartbreakingly at the DNC just a few weeks ago)

I saw the anguish in their faces but heard a tiny glimmer of hope in their voices. 

I still shiver when recalling this distraught mother’s description of the brutal slaying of his best friend, right before his very eyes.

He went to enjoy music. 

Something I do daily.

He went to travel in his beloved Homeland.

Something I’ve never done but Jim has.

His parents’ desperate pleas made us all know him. 

See him. 

Feel him.

I see the features on his handsome face and I cry. 

He lost his arm.. the dominant arm.. and lost months of a life he so richly deserved to live.

And now he lost his life… under tragic and horrifying circumstances.

I need to believe in Heaven so I can get an image of  Hersh enjoying sports and music there.

I need to believe in Hell, so I can get an image of the Hamas murderers getting what they deserve.

I need to thank his parents, who won’t ever see this and who I’ve never met, for sharing what his life was all about. 

It was heinously and unforgivably shortened, but it was a life of love, purity, and goodness.