A cell phone is an intensely intimate device. It’s not just that it can be used for conducting personal conversations in discrete locations. What you have stored on your phone’s memory card tells a lot about a person.
I’ve had several phones over the years, all with the little SIM memory cards that can go from unit to unit. As a result, I haven’t had to reprogram old numbers. My address book is like a walk through the last 6-7 years of my life.
I have the numbers of people who I used to call all the time: work colleagues, friends with whom I was close but who have since become more acquaintance than buddy.
There are temporary phone numbers still on there that I never bothered to delete, like the one for a taxi service in Amsterdam or the international switchboard at my last job.
Usually the numbers just sit there, waiting for some practical use. Occasionally, though, when I have some down time and I’ve neglected to bring a book or my IPod, I’ll pull out the phone and start browsing with the intent to remove a number or two. I’ve pretty much maxed out my card’s capacity. Better to be prepared than be caught by the dreaded “memory full” error message. Usually I don’t get much past the letter G or H before it’s time to move on to some other activity.
So that's what I was doing last week while on a train ride through a glacier during our family's vacation in Switzerland. The kids were either reading or playing with their GameBoys; Jody had closed her eyes, and I had seen so much breathtaking scenery I needed break in order to keep from becoming blasé.
I scrolled by several names I considered removing, then thought better of it.
The home phone of the surgeon who operated on my hernia five and a half years ago. No, the hernia could still come back. Better save that one for an emergency.
A friend who has since moved from Israel to Toronto. I’ll get his new number and update the existing entry.
My old accountant. Maybe later. The tax authorities have a nasty habit of showing up when you least expect them.
It was a long ride and I found myself getting further into the address book than usual. I skimmed past Howard…Jenny…Lynne….
And then, as I was half way though the alphabet, there was a name I didn’t expect. In all caps, the phone practically screamed at me.
The display read: “MARLA BENNETT.”
The irony of the timing was not lost on me.
This Saturday night will be the three year yahrtzeit of our cousin’s death. Marla Bennett was murdered by terrorists while eating lunch in the cafeteria at Hebrew University on July 31, 2002. Saturday, the 22nd of the month of Av, marks the Hebrew date.
Marla was in Israel studying to be a teacher at the Pardes Institute. She quickly became a “regular” at our Shabbat table and developed a particularly strong connection with our children. I will never forget how Marla went out of her way to come to our daughter Merav’s violin concert at school just a month before her death; she was so proud of her little Israeli cousin. A photograph of Marla taken with our then four-year-old son Aviv, snapped in our sukka, stands near the front door, silently bidding us goodbye each day as we head off to school or work. Three years is not too long to vividly remember her infectious laugh, her enduring smile
And yet, despite my desire to keep her memory alive, I can’t help asking: what purpose does holding onto her old number in my phone memory serve?
This was not the first time I’d stumbled across it during a search for numbers to delete, of course. Each time, though, I decided to let it stay there. The physical action of clicking the “Erase” button while Marla’s name was displayed has been something, symbolically at least, I’ve just not been ready for.
But maybe it’s finally time.
When I started writing this blog three years ago it was as an emotional response to Marla’s death. I wanted readers know what it was like to live daily with terror. I felt it important to show why we chose to come here and how we had been able to continue living a so called “normal” life in Israel.
Moreover, I hoped that the action of writing about “normal” Israel would place Marla’s decision to live, study - and ultimately die - here in some sort of context. That she was not simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, as some might claim. But rather her presence in Israel was a conscious and deliberate expression of a young woman’s commitment to her people.
I felt a responsibility to live up to the words from her often-quoted opinion piece in a local Jewish newspaper. “There’s no place I’d rather be,” she wrote in not-so-subtle defiance of family and friends who urged her, in that the horrible Spring of 2002, to return to San Diego. But how could she? “I have a front row seat for the history of the Jewish people,” she said with conviction.
As her third yahrtzeit approaches, then, I wonder: is it time to make way in my cellular address book for newer, working numbers?
I resolved to delete the number…but not until we got home from our vacation. I wanted to call it one last time. I can’t say why exactly. Another symbolic act. I fully expected to receive an out of order signal.
Instead, the number rang.
How could that be, I thought? How could they have given Marla’s phone number to somebody else? How could they be so insensitive? Don’t they have a record of such things in the social security office or something?
After five, maybe six rings, the new owner’s voicemail picked up. There was no personal outgoing greeting and I didn’t leave a message.
An hour later over dinner my phone rang. Jody picked it up. The words MARLA BENNETT CALLING flashed across the screen. Jody held the phone out to me. She looked like she’d seen a ghost.
I quickly explained what I’d done earlier and how whoever I’d called must have punched in redial to see who had called earlier but failed to leave a message.
I let it ring.
Later that night, I deleted the number once and for all.
Three years after her death, Marla remains in my heart and in my soul. She will forever be a part of my memory, even if she's no longer on my phone card.
