Peres: My love for Sonia will stay in my heart till I die

Hundreds joined President Shimon Peres as he arrived at the Ben Shemen Youth Village Friday morning for the funeral of his wife Sonia, who was laid to rest at the place where the couple first met as teenagers.
"My love for her will remain in my heart until I die," the president said as he eulogized his wife.
Peres explained how he met Sonia 73 years ago when they worked together at the youth village. "One night when we had guard duty we arrived late and saw a young girl tending to the garden, wearing short pants with a wonderful face. I knew that it was love at first sight," Peres said.
The president went on to explain that Sonia was a modest woman who invested a lot of her time in volunteering.
"She loved the country. She loved the people. She did most of her work in secret," Peres said. "She went to clean floors at a number of institutions for children with special needs or hospitals."
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Opposition leader Tzipi Livni, former prime minister Ehud Olmert and IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.- Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi all attended the funeral.
The seven-day mourning period will begin on Sunday. The family will receive visitors at the Peres family home in Ramat Aviv.
Sonia Peres – or Sonia Gal, as she preferred to be called in recent years – passed away in her sleep on Thursday at age 87.
According to her son-in-law Prof. Rafi Walden, who is deputy director-general at Sheba Medical Center, she was found by one of her grandchildren.
Walden, his voice breaking with emotion, said Peres had been a wonderful mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, a noble woman who had been devoted to her family, none of whom had yet internalized what it meant to lose her.
The estranged wife of the president, she shunned the limelight and very seldom shared his public life.
Among the rare exceptions was during his first term as prime minister from 1984-1986, when she left their home in Tel Aviv and came to be with her husband in the prime minister’s official residence.