Mike, a friend of almost 25 years, passed away several days ago. When we lived in the same town, we were coworkers and occasional bike buddies, he and his wife were friends, we attended the same church, and his daughter babysat for mine. We had not kept in touch – he moved two hours south of our old town to follow his wife in her second career as an Episcopal priest and I moved an hour northwest, so I hadn’t seen him in a couple of years. I didn’t know he had pancreatic cancer; I was shocked when a friend emailed that he had died.
That same friend and I went to Mike’s memorial service. The church was packed and people were standing in the back. Mike was a good one, and had been part of many communities – environmental, church, music, kids. The service was led by a priest who seemed to know him well; she spoke of him in the same way I experienced Mike: modest, grateful, smart, funny, and most of all, loving.
I was disappointed though that she led with platitudes about how we were all “there” for his family (a use of that word I dislike for its vagueness), then she talked about Mike which, she acknowledged, he had specifically asked her not to do. I felt she missed an opportunity to talk about how we support those who are more deeply grieving than we are, while still grieving ourselves.
I would describe myself as Christian-ish. I attend an Episcopal church – in fact, Mike is responsible for that. Churches are great at celebrations. But I think Christian churches fail their followers with a lack of support for people who are grieving. I felt that failure very deeply when I was getting divorced. I felt it again on Saturday at Mike’s service. I’ve heard from disappointed friends who felt abandoned by their churches during the pandemic. Most of us have grieved for beloved people we have lost, whether by death or broken relationships. I think this is relevant as we enter another round of COVID loss and weariness. We are all hurting. What does it mean to support each other when we ourselves are barely standing?
The Jewish faith, as I understand it, does a much better job at grief. The rituals around a death are timed according to Biblical traditions but closely correspond to our emotional processing. The family is left alone for several days to make burial arrangements, with no visits while they attend to the details of a loss. After the burial, a supportive community falls into place. Shiva begins, a week of intense and quiet mourning by close family members. The mourners are not expected to do anything but grieve. During shiva, the mourners don’t leave home, so the congregation comes to them for Kaddish, a short prayer that is said twice a day with a minimum of ten other people. Friends can visit and bring food. Then a thirty-day shloshim when the grieving begin their return to work and life, but not to celebratory events or entertainment. There are protocols for attending worship services during those thirty days. The first week, the whole congregation prays for consolation for the grieving family. The second week, the mourners do not sit in their usual places to signify that they remain unsettled. For a full year after the death, the mourners say Kaddish twice a day, still with at least ten others. Other private and communal rituals mark the one year anniversary of the death.
I think these traditions do two things. First, they recognize the real and long duration of grief, while the Christian church’s official relationship with the mourner ends after the memorial service and burial. The community that sends cards and casseroles moves on, and the congregation may or may not notice whether the grieving person is there. Second, they give structure to a grieving person who can barely put one foot in front of the other and tells a community of people who don’t know how to help, how to help. The Jewish traditions make sure the mourning one knows you are there for them by actually showing up, grieving with them. That is a faith community.
So how will I – three hours away from his wife, more from his kids – be “there” for them, and how will I mark my own sadness that Mike no longer exists in the world? How do I better attend to my relationships with beloved people in my community? That’s what I continue to think through during this first week of my own grief and my private shloshim in the next month.
Extras
Sorry for the radio silence for this entire year! It’s been a tough one for many, me included. I hope to be a more frequent correspondent in the coming months.
If you are interested in a short overview of some differences between Christian and Jewish practices, I recommend a short book called Mudhouse Sabbath, by Lauren Winner. She converted from Judaism to Christianity and describes some of the Jewish rituals missing from Christian churches. That’s where I got the information I condensed above about Jewish rituals after a death.
“Discovering more joy does not, I’m sorry to say, save us from the inevitability of hardships and heartbreaks. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily, too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreak without being broken.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu
What’s on your mind? How are you weathering the ongoing storms? As always, thanks for reading.
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