Tamar was so young. Yet she experienced a horrendous nightmare that no human being should experience. Let’s hear about it as she saw it.
There were so many ways I could have lost my own life that day. But Someone up there decided I still have to remain alive. There I was on October 7th in Gaza, in the midst of it all. At any moment I could expect a monstrous animal to appear from behind a bush and then it would be all over. I tried to help. There were the wounded, some severely. There the shell-shocked. There were the children unable to understand why their mommy didn’t wake up. I tried but it was never enough. I wanted to do more. By the end of the day, we were only collecting bodies. If only I had made that turn, used that idea, tried this, maybe I could have done more. Perhaps if I had gotten there a little earlier, maybe some would be alive today.
After a long time of not allowing myself to smile, I received a call from Hadaar at Ezer Mizion. ‘Remember when you registered for the bone marrow registry? Well, you have been found to be a match. You can save someone’s life.’
Save someone’s life? Those were such healing words. I was being given another chance. Another chance to save a life.
As I lay there with tubes attached to me, my stem cells accumulating in a tiny bag of life, I tried to picture her. The person who will receive my stem cells. Who was this person?
Unbeknown to me at the time, I was on her mind also. Later she told me that not a day went by that she didn’t think of me with such gratitude. ‘If it weren’t for her,’ she’d think to herself, ‘I wouldn’t be alive today. A young girl who didn’t even know who I was, donated stem cells to save my life. She gave me an unbelievable gift. Because of her, I became a grandmother. I’ll be there to watch my grandchild grow. ’
Suddenly I was able to smile again. In a sense, she saved my life. After October 7th, it’s hard to believe that this truly happened. Because of what I did, someone is alive! I can smile again. I made a difference. I need to see her, to hug her to feel that it is really, really real.
At a recent Ezer Mizion dinner held at The Rainbow Room in NYC, Tamar experienced that hug. Slowly, slowly, as if in a dream, they approached each other. And then, like two magnets, they embraced, they cried happy tears, they laughed in joy, then hugged again. Two sisters. The blood of one flowing in the other.
