In Israel today, no sound carries more weight than a knock at the door. Not the wail of sirens, not the boom of Iron Dome - just a simple knock that freezes time and shatters worlds.
Every Israeli knows what that knock means. When IDF officers appear at your door, standing straight in pressed uniforms, their faces already telling the story before they speak, you know. Parents across Israel now sleep in their living rooms, closer to the door, hoping that extra second might somehow change what's coming.
Yesterday it was the Eisenkot family again - another nephew lost after already losing a son and the Pazy family, the Keinan family, the Nisanovich family. Each knock echoes through neighborhoods, through WhatsApp groups, through the national consciousness. Each one reminds us of the unbearable price our sons pay while defending our home.
The knock comes at all hours. Sometimes at dawn, as mothers are preparing breakfast for children who will never come home. Sometimes late at night, when fathers are checking their phones one last time for that message that won't arrive.
Many parents won't open the door, hoping they can delay the inevitable.
The officers practice what they'll say, but no words can soften this blow.
We've learned to fear the sound of footsteps approaching doors, of cars pulling up too slowly outside homes. In apartment buildings, neighbors hold their breath as they hear boots on stairs, praying they'll pass their floor. The whole country lives with this dread, knowing that somewhere in Israel, right now, another family's world is about to change forever.
Some call it the price of sovereignty. Others, the cost of survival. But for those who've heard that knock, it's simply the sound that divides life into before and after - the moment when a child becomes a memory, and a family joins the too-large community of Israel's bereaved.
Tonight, somewhere in Israel, officers are straightening their uniforms, checking addresses, gathering courage.
And tomorrow, we'll add more names to our national book of tears, more families to our circle of grief, more doors that will never sound the same again.
