‘All the laughter is gone, I’m left with only memories’: Shira Gvili eulogizes her older brother

Shira Gvili, the sister of fallen police officer Ran Gvili, speaks through tears as she eulogizes her older brother at his funeral.

‘When Mom entered my room and said it would take time for you to come home, I couldn’t imagine it would take 843 days.”

“The forest isn’t the same forest, nice clothes don’t feel the same and schnitzel will never taste the same,” says Gvili.

“All the laughter is gone and I’m left with only memories, and every motorcycle I see takes me back” to those her brother used to ride. “Sometimes I smile when I see one and sometimes it feels like an arrow to my heart.”

Gvili promises her brother that she chooses to live and that he will always be by her side, and says he has come to her in dreams and in symbols and signals.

“Last month, I went to America, we went to places that I never imagined I’d ever get to,” she tells her brother. “I really did everything; I spoke at the UN and Congress and the White House, all of it in English, are you proud of me?”

“I did it so that you would come back,” she sobs.

“Now, allow me take off this uniform and the title of ‘sister of a hostage,’ and just be Rani’s sister.”

She plays an audio recording she once received from her brother: “Don’t worry my sister, everything is ok,” the slain police officer can be heard saying.

“I love you, and everything is ok, I’m not worried,” she replies now.

After, she walks over to embrace Ran’s coffin, laying her head on it momentarily.