Looking Forward Whilst Mourning The Past

Guitars

Me and guitars go back a long way, I had a partially stringed guitar when I was three that I used to play back to front. We had a photo on the wall of me sitting with the guitar outside my parents house. As a child my parents always had great music playing in the house. I was definitely influenced by their tastes in music. 

I got into the electric guitar in the early 1990’s and have played electric ever since. I love to create music and never really wanted to learn other peoples music. Writing music became my goto pastime and a form of meditation for me. 

On October 7th 2023 our house was destroyed by fire at the hands of Hamas terrorists. Everything we had accumulated throughout our lives was reduced to ashes. My sacred music studio, where I used to create and meditate, gone forever. My sacred space became a place within my heart and mind. I will carry this place within me, it cannot be easily taken away.

Sacred Space

Before October 7th 2023 our lives were blessed. We had a beautiful home and garden. The was always the sound of birds singing and our cats were always ever present. I was always grateful to be blessed with the life we had. Our home was our sacred space and our sanctuary.

A few weeks after October 7th 2023 we returned to see what remained of our beautiful home. This event was beyond traumatic and, as I have subsequently understood, created a whole new set of traumas that I would need to work through and process. Once seen, impossible to unsee.

We knew very well that our house was on fire. For thirteen long hours we crouched and almost suffocated in the relative safety of our safe-room with gun battles outside and our house ablaze. We were rescued after nightfall so we had no visual record of the state of ruin our house had suffered. 

Our house and everything in it was destroyed. A few fragments of our previous live were collected but all that we cherished gone forever. I have never felt such a feeling of loss. This was on a scale beyond my imagination. I hold so very dear the memories that I have of this beautiful place we once called home. Life will never be the same again.

Looking forward whilst mourning the past

Living with the dichotomy of the situation I found myself in was something I am still, to this day, struggling with. It is a daily struggle to train myself to look at the road ahead and not be drawn into looking back at the devastation of our past. I regularly think, or am reminded, of our previous life but I make the conscious effort to reframe my memories with gratitude and appreciation of the life I once had. 

I have days where the tears are just a breath away and the smallest thing can cause my tears to fall.

I am a very emotional person, I always have been. Although I put on a strong exterior, I am struggling inside to get through this or rather live with the trauma we were victims of. 

Very rarely does a day pass by without some reminder of our former existence. It might be a post on social media, a song, food or even a smell. There are innumerable things that will trigger memories of our beautiful life that was. Slowly I am learning to ready myself for these triggers but the bottom line is that they upset be beyond description.

How does one continue to live ones life with any sort of normality after such a life changing event? Welcome to the new normal, the new real. I still wish it was all just a nightmare and that I would simply wake up to the golden light streaming in through our bedroom window in Beeri. After 8 months I do realize that this is not going to happen. So how do I get on with living and being? To answer that question I will tell you a little about myself.