THE BEREAVEMENT OFFICER

This story is one hundred percent true. It actually happened, in Israel during the
first month of the Lebanon war, in '82, One morning, a bereavement officer pulls
up in a white van outside the apartment building at 62 Hillel Street in Givatayim,
a small community just east of Tel Aviv. He walks up to apartment 3. Rings the
bell. A woman answers the door. The officer says, Are you you the mother of
Corporal Tal Lavis? She says yes. He tells her he's very sorry, but her son Tal was
killed the night before in Lebanon.

The woman screams. She starts beating her chest and wailing. The neighbours
come over. The news spreads and within fifteen minutes, half the neigbourhood's
in her living room. Everyone's crying. The family's crushed. They hang posters all
over town announcing the death and the funeral and the address for the shiva.
Total mayhem.

So a few hours later, the bereavement officer shows up again. It turns out the
army made a mistake. There is another Tal Lavis who lives at 26 Hillel Street, two
blocks away. He's the one who died. Not this woman's son, who is very much
alive.
For the mother it was the happiest moment of her life! It's like her son came back
from the dead. Meanwhile, the bereavement officer drives down the street to tell
the other family that their son was killed in Lebanon. So they start screaming and
wailing, and their neighbours go over, and the whole neighbourhood moves from
the first apartment to the one down the street. They hang up new signs,
announcing a new time and location for the new funeral and a new address for
the shiva.
Its unbeleavable, but it's not the and of the story, So that night, the first family
walks down the street to pay their condolences to the second family. About an
hour later, they walk back to the apartment . And who is waiting for them at
their front door?

No, not their their son Tal Lavis. The bereavement officer. Turns out it was not a
mix-up after all. Both Tal Lavis were killed on the same day, one at 62 Hillel
Street, the other at 26 Hillel Street.

Excerpt- The 188th Cry Baby Brigade -Joel Chasnoff

For those who hope and think that war will solve all the world's ills and particularly in the middle east.