I've never written about him. The words could never contain the loss. When the phone rang at my house exactly fifty years ago, and I was told that little Yossi was killed in the ditch, it didn't connect to me. For the first few seconds my mind went through trying to get past the news. They may not have identified correctly. Maybe it's someone else. It couldn't have happened.

I had one uncle and one cousin, and Yossi was born to my cousin when he was 20. We were named after the same grandfather. His name was Little Yossi to distinguish him and me, and I was Yossi the Great until the day he was killed, because after that we no longer needed to be distinguished. 

Only three years separated us, but I felt a kind of his mentor, because for all the stages I got a little ahead of him, and I could tell him about the city garden and the school and the army before coming to these places. He was a smart, fun kid, and he had asthma. Everyone took care of the child who sometimes needed the inhaler. But he never made any of it, and insisted on going inside.

They were our closest relatives, and even after leaving the "residential" housing in Tel Aviv, and moving to the far colony of Ra'anana, we got together. Oded's cousin, with his wife and four children, was young and always funny. Oded was a friend, a man with a mustache, and a Jeep, and loved to play the accordion at every opportunity. With a very fine sense of humor, when he retired he bought an apartment for his wife and an apartment near his son's house.

That bitter and hurried morning, the road from Tel Aviv to Ra'anana continued endlessly. Oded was quiet, looked 30 years old. We hugged, and he asked me not to stay with him, and I rushed to his parents' apartment. I was afraid to meet Baruch. I knew that as far as he was concerned, Yossi was not only a beloved grandson, but the most important man in the world.

The door was open. You couldn't recognize Baruch. The man who always knew what to do, sat in his chair, helpless, and sobbed, and all his understated and cynical facial features disappeared into his cry of cries. I sat down next to him and my aunt, who was frozen and stunned. I couldn't utter a word. Certainly not a word of comfort. Then, at that moment, I realized that comfort was only possible for foreign people.

Each year, before the IDF Memorial Day, the ministers and Knesset members receive the list of military cemeteries. I have never, over the decades, chosen the military cemetery in Raanana. 

I knew that comfort was only possible for strangers.