Standing in Spaces and Feeling Alright: The Experience of Bereaved Fathers of Fallen Soldiers in Israel

The unique voice of bereaved fathers of fallen soldiers has largely been ignored in Israeli discourse. Using 10 semistructured in-depth interviews, we examined the bereavement experience of Israeli fathers after the loss of a child during their army service. The interviews were analyzed using the hermeneutical phenomenology method. The fathers’ bereavement experiences were characterized by swings between closeness and distance in two main contexts: (a) the father and his social environment and (b) his internal mental experiences. Three themes were identified: (a) the fathers create both distance and closeness to others; (b) closeness and distance within the fathers’ internal world; and (c) the dialectic of the bereavement experience, namely the coexistence of distance and closeness.