Warning: This article contains references to death by suicide that some readers may find disturbing. As October 7's third anniversary approaches, Ronen Shalev's body tells him something's coming. "You start shivering," he tells DW.
"It's not just one day and you move on. We have many graves to visit, many families to meet. It's a difficult time and you feel it in your body." Both of his children attended the Nova Party in Israel's south, where almost 400 people were killed in a terrorist attack carried out by Palestinian militant group Hamas and its affiliates in Gaza.
In total, roughly 1,200 people were killed in the attack and around 250 were taken hostage. The attack triggered the war in Gaza, during which Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and displaced much of the territory's population. Shalev's son, Roee, was shot and hospitalized, but he survived.
Roee's partner, Mapal Adam, was killed in front of his eyes. Shalev's daughter, Lior, also made it out. Shortly after that day, Shalev's wife Gavriela went missing, before her body was found in a burned car with a goodbye letter.
"She couldn't handle the sorrow from that day," Shalev says. At the same time, his son Roee's post-traumatic symptoms started emerging, mostly in the form of extreme mood swings. "He went to treatment to please me, but he didn't really believe in it.
He thought he was OK, that he was strong," Shalev remembers. Two years after Gavriela's death, Roee couldn't take it anymore, either. "I'm alive, but I'm dead within," Roee wrote in his goodbye message, which he posted on his Instagram account.
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