Shiva

Today is the second to last day of shiva, the Jewish mourning practice in which the bereaved sit on low stools in the house of the deceased for seven days following the death.  So the death must have been six days ago, I suppose.  Working backwards:

Today, I was feeling a little sorry for myself because I tossed and turned for hours last night.  When I finally got up, I discovered that my sister had the Migraine of Misery.  This after yesterday's Migraine of Morbidity.  So I quit feeling sorry for myself and made her some oatmeal.  I am glad to report that her situation has improved.  She now has the Headache of Horribleness.

Yesterday our godmother came to the house and brought good cheer and thoughtful reminiscences.  She really knew the good and the bad, and I can tell her a complex thing about my mother and she will both understand it and talk it slap to death with me.

Sunday was the day most people chose to pay their shiva visit.  We had a number of people from the temple whom we had not seen in years.  I can really see how my roots still go back around here, even though I have been gone for 13 years.  Simple things like memories about Christa McAuliffe that people don't have when they are not from the area of Concord, N.H.  The rabbi was wonderful to talk with as well.  She is wry and caring at the same time.  Our conversation with her covered such topics as, how could Anne Heche claim that lesbianism was a phase for her?  Might the heterosexuality not be the phase?  Also the rabbi's rubber duck collection.  Another congregant shared with us the history of fried gefilte fish, which my mother made for him once.

Saturday I went to services, and the rabbi (a different rabbi) talked about how I'd drawn my mother closer to the Jewish tradition in the last part of her life.  I also got to recite the Mourner's Kaddish and Kaddish d'Rabbanan  "for real" for the first time.  I thank Morty Berkowitz and Scott Korbin for enunciating so clearly over the years that this was no problem for me.  I was waiting for the other guy saying them to catch up.

Saturday I also confronted that feller I had the crush on, as he had not contacted me at all for the last two weeks of my mother's life.  I wanted to tell him that this really hurt.  He said that he had just gotten wrapped up in the daily grind.  And then he said, "Still friends?"  I cannot decide yet whether accepting a "friendship" in which he might be too busy to drop me a note while my mom is dying (for about a month he sent several messages each week, plus hours of online chats) would just degrade the concept of friendship. And of me.

Friday, my sister, her partner, and I sat around the house.  We had a couple of visitors and a few calls.  We blinked a lot and ate chips and french onion dip.

Thursday was the funeral.  We brought Mom's coffin to the cemetery in the back of a cargo van.  We told her we wouldn't let her be left alone at the funeral home, so we didn't send her there.  She stayed with us overnight.  The rabbi led my sister and I in "kriah," the tearing of the garments.  My sister took a ribbon to attach to her clothing, and tore it.  I had selected the shirt I was wearing for sacrifice, and tore that.

It was a graveside service, and the weather was bright and sunny with flowers and trees blooming.  It was the first day of blackfly season.  I really thought to myself, "I am trying to focus on the importance of this occasion, but it's all I can do to keep myself from making a spectacle by slapping blackflies constantly while I'm standing here next to the rabbi!"

The rabbi, being possessed of superior blackfly-ignoring skills, gave a very nice eulogy which acknowledged Mom's strengths and gifts as well as her difficulties.  She led a service which was long on respect and short on stuffiness and grandeur for its own sake.  A couple of poems, the refrain of a song Mom requested, the Kaddish, El Malei Rachamim.  The cemetery guys lowered the coffin into the ground, and everyone put a shovelful of dirt into the grave.  Then everyone formed two lines.  My sister and I walked between them, and everyone gave condolences.  Some spoke spontaneously, others gave the traditional condolence: "May Hashem comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem."  This marked our official passage into mourner status and the beginning of shiva.  The rebbetzin gave me a bagel and two hardboiled eggs to be our first "meal" when we returned to the house.

Many people went to the reception which my godmother had arranged at the temple at that point.  I stayed, because it is a custom for Jewish people to fill a Jewish grave all the way to ground level.  Having gotten Mom this far, I wasn't quitting now.  Besides, I have a good relationship with dirt.  It is real.  It helps.  So I pulled out my hiking boots and put them on over my stockings, as the nice shoes my sister loaned me for the service had not been selected for sacrifice.

I had to be a little patient with people who thought I should "take a break" from shoveling.  I suspect that they were getting tired from watching me.  I was not tired.  But it was good to have a couple of people helping, as it went faster.

And then I had to leave.  The very first friend I ever made was there with his wife, and they volunteered to drive me over to the temple.  They gave me a moment alone to do whatever I had to do, but there was just nothing left to do.  I came to do this thing, and I had done it.  Mom was at rest.  So I had to leave her there and walk away.

Wednesday was Death Day.  Mom had been both withdrawn and agitated on Tuesday night.  we had Hospice over to evaluate what we could do for her, and she seemed to calm down a bit.  By 1 a.m., we all felt weird about going to sleep with Mom so close, but I said, "It won't be in the next few hours.  We should try to get a little sleep."  But we were restless.  I woke up with Mom at 4 a.m. for no particular reason.  My sister woke up with Mom at 5 a.m. and gave her meds.  Then around dawn we all actually got a little bit of restful sleep.  We woke when the nurse called at 8:30.  She said, "How's Linda?" and my sister looked into Mom's bed and said, "I think it's happened."

The nurse and the social worker came over right away.  By the time they had gotten here I had recited some verses that the rabbi has advised me to recite, opened a window, poured out any standing water, lit a candle, and covered the mirrors.  These Jewish customs serve to give the freshly bereaved some clue of what to do with themselves at that moment.  The nurse pronounced the death.  The hospice doctor arrived soon afterward, and we actually had a lovely "death party," talking about the things we had all gone through in the last months.

We called the rabbi and the leader of the chevra kedisha (the society that prepares the dead for burial).  We called the cemetery and asked them to start digging.  I typed the obituary into the online form, all except the time of burial.  Our godmother started calling everyone to let them know.

In the afternoon I took the death certificate to the town clerk and requested a permit for transportation and burial.  Since most people waiting for assistance at the town clerk's office all needed the same thing, I was not offended when she asked me if I was there for a dog license.  I went home to meet the chevra kedisha and make sure that they had what they needed.  Then my sister and I met with the rabbi (because the chevra kedisha was with Mom, she wasn't alone), who talked with us about the service and got material from us for the eulogy.

Our last act for the day was to rent the cargo van.  The helpful lady chatted with us about oh, were we moving?  Um, yeah.  We just have to move a couple of big items.

I cannot fail to mention that in the background this whole time were my sister's unflappable partner and my sister-of-non-biological-kinship.  They stayed with us the whole time and quietly did whatever needed doing, adapted to whatever moods we were in, and never required the least bit of attention or maintenance from us.  They should receive gold stars and also be put in charge of a worldwide training organization for friends and family members of those undergoing loss.

There is still so much to say about all of this, but I am going to post this entry now before it turns into a manuscript.  The last thing to mention is how much I appreciate all of you who have gotten in touch.  It makes all the difference.