I couldn’t stand in the way of him doing what he felt he needed to do

“The day of his homecoming was a fairy-tale day. We made him signs, and the next night, Friday night, we made him a big welcome-home oneg, inviting all his friends. It was so exciting,” remembers Eliana Silverman, an Englewood, New Jersey, expat living in Ramat Beit Shemesh.

But that fairy tale came after four long and lonely months. “In all the years we were married, whenever my husband brought up miluim, reserve duty, I’d be terrified that if he went, he wouldn’t come back alive,” Eliana says.

And then came October 7, when it was clear that her husband would be called up to war.

Eliana had a week’s reprieve before her husband’s unit was called up to be stationed in Chevron, but that didn’t make the goodbye any easier. “Saying goodbye was in a sense anticlimactic, because we’d been talking about it all week and worked through all my fears and stresses. And seeing how difficult it was for him not to be there made me realize how important it was for him to go and how vital my support for him was — that I couldn’t stand in the way of him doing what he felt he needed to do.

“When I actually said goodbye, it was almost like saying goodbye to him for the day. He really didn’t think he’d be gone for four months. We were thinking more like a few weeks. But over the course of the day the reality that he’d left gradually sank in, until by the time the kids came home, I literally couldn’t stop crying.

“For the first three days, I was frozen. I just couldn’t believe this reality was coming true. But then it was Shabbos, and I knew I had four little kids, and they needed their mother.”

On the Home Front

Of paramount importance to Eliana was affording her husband the leeway to do his job without worrying: Is my wife falling apart? Is my home falling apart because I’m here? “We had to be strong for him here so he could do what he had to do there.”

Each of her children coped differently with their father’s absence. “My three-year-old was more affected than I ever could have imagined. She basically tantrumed for the four months he was gone. And I saw how, magically, when he came home for good, everything just switched back. She was herself again, because she was getting what she needed from two parents.

“My husband came home on a short leave for Chanukah and stayed for two nights. When he left that was really hard for him. My oldest was hugging him and crying, saying, ‘We don’t want you to leave anymore, please stay, don’t go back.’ ”

Eliana reflects on the Shabbosos alone, when she had to make plans for her family. “I felt like a seminary girl, figuring out every week anew where I’d be eating. I mean, I got married for a reason,” she jokes. “Wasn’t it so I wouldn’t have to make Shabbos plans every week for the rest of my life?! And here I was back to that.”