Maayan Marom, whose younger brother was killed several years ago in a car accident and her older brother died a week later from heart failure, shared a heartbreaking post on Facebook telling how she found out the terrible news that her father had died while on an El Al flight from Bangkok to Tel Aviv.
“The phone rang in the middle of the night from an undisclosed number. I don’t know why, but I flicked it from ‘sleep mode’ and answered the call,” wrote Marom on her Facebook account and continued to describe her conversation with the policeman.
“I’m calling from the Israel Police, are you Maayan Marom?” he asked and she said “yes.”
“Are you at home, because I’m on the way to your address?” said the policeman and she answered, “No, I’m not in the country. What happened?”
“Who is at home? I can’t say on the phone,” replied the policeman. She tried to understand what he wanted to notify them, “Mr. policeman, you are talking to a bereaved family, with a very high level of sensitivity. Please don’t mess around. Has someone in my family died?”
Marom said that she took a deep breath and thought, “before going to sleep here in the US, I video called everyone who is close to me and spoke to everyone except my father, who was supposed to be on a flight from Bangkok to Israel.”
So, she asked the policeman who from her family died and he replied, “I can’t say on the phone. Is your mother at home? I’m already at the house.”
She demanded that he stop. "Wait! Wait! You can’t go up like that in a policeman's uniform to a bereaved mother who lost two children. You are going to cause her to have a heart attack. What don't you understand, this is a bereaved family! Stop for a moment and answer me, who died?"
The policeman was silent for a moment and she painfully asked if it was her father. "Yes, I’m sorry. Baruch Dayan Ha’emet," responded the policeman, leaving her stunned.
Earlier it was posted that a 66-year-old man passed away during an El Al flight that departed from Bangkok to Tel Aviv after the end of Shabbat.
Passengers on the flight reported that the man complained of stomach pain to the crew but stated he did not need medical assistance. A few hours later, a passenger noticed he was lifeless and alerted the crew.
"The passenger got up at one in the morning, asked the stewardess for a drink, and she checked that everything was fine with him. He told the stewardess that his stomach hurt but everything else was okay and he was not experiencing chest pain. When breakfast started about two hours later, the crew noticed that the man was unresponsive. A doctor was called to him and after several resuscitation attempts, he was pronounced dead." passengers told Channel 12 News.
Yosef Dorfman, a ZAKA volunteer who was on the flight, added, "During the flight, a girl sitting in the same row alerted the medical team to one of the passengers who was unconscious in his seat. A doctor on the plane pronounced the passenger dead. We immediately moved the deceased to the rear seats of the plane, covered him, and ensured that he was treated with dignity until the plane landed at Ben-Gurion Airport."