Posted on 04/26/2004 2:25:25 PM PDT by yonif
On the eve of Remembrance Day, Cheryl Mandel's phone has been ringing with people saying, "I'm thinking of you today."
It's been almost a year since her son, Lt. Daniel Mandel, 24, was killed while searching for terrorists in Nablus.
Setting aside a national day to remember fallen heroes is important, said Mandel. But for her family, which includes four other children, mourning happens, 24 hours a day, every day.
"Maybe in 10 or 15 years, it will be that these days are harder for us," said Mandel of Alon Shvut. Now, she said, every day is hard and getting harder.
This Remembrance Day, in particular, the nation will have a chance to meet her son as his friends have put together a documentary of his life which will air Monday at 9:50 a.m. on Channel 1 and at 1:40 p.m. on Channel 10.
A Canadian immigrant who came here with her family 17 years ago, Mandel described herself as a positive and optimistic person. Her son had downplayed his role in the IDF. "You would have thought he was a kindergarten teacher from what the kids tell you," said Mandel. Daniel had just been home for Shabbat. On Sunday they had spoken. She asked him if he was coming home for Pessah.
It had become almost a joke with them, because she was always asking. His response was to laugh and say, "Ima I don't know, I won't know until the day before."
So when three officers came to her home at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday April 15 and said, "are you the parents?" she recalled, she had no idea what they would say.
"It's nothing that you are prepared for," said Mandel. She did not know her son was on a military operation so dangerous that a doctor was sent with them nothing that if they were wounded, minutes could make a difference.
"From the moment they knock on your door, you go into a totally surreal place. It took about 11 months to really hit home."
At the funeral, she recalled that she said, "bad things happen to everyone. What you do when something bad happens determines who you are. We are going to try and make something positive out of it," said Mandel.
For the last year, she and her family had held song evening and lectures in his Daniel's name. They game away Purim baskets. They are refurnishing the Beit Midrash at the School Alon Shvut.
One of the rooms in the Hesed Center was named for him and a sanctuary in the synagogue will also be dedicated to him.
She recalled a story from the funeral about her son Daniel. During training, he had done a 90 kilometer walk. "Daniel was relatively small boned. He wasn't a big person," she said. But when the strong man in the group whose responsibility it was to carry the machine gun collapsed, the officer told him to pick up the gun.
"Daniel he wasn't emotionally or physically prepared, but he picked up the machine gun and he finished walking and he did it without complaining," said Mandel.
"When I say that we, the Mandel's or all the bereaved parents, we have been handed a machine gun. We are not prepared for it. We do not have the strength for it and we do not have the endurance for it. But we are going to do it for Daniel and for Am Yisrael."
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