It is one of the great wisdoms of Jewish tradition that once the funeral is over, we do not leave mourners to their own devices.
Personally, in the initial stages of grief, I can’t sleep at all, I can’t eat, and I go back and forth between exhaustion and a wild desire to “get things done.” It’s awful. My web of relationships is torn, and I flail about, trying to get my bearings. Left to my own devices, I eventually go numb, a state that is interrupted for months by flashes of anger. Grief takes different forms in people, but at the bottom it’s all the same: we lose someone close to us, and we’re a mess.
Grief will not be denied. Fail to attend to it, and it will come get us later, at an even less convenient time.
This is why Jewish tradition gives us the practice of shiva. Shiva involves sitting down for a week to let the work of grief take place. It involves a certain lack of privacy, a lack that no one likes but that will ultimately speed along the work of grief. It involves letting people into my house to help, and allowing my Jewish community to organize on my behalf. It requires that I turn off my usual distractors (work, radio, TV) and feel the unbearable things I am feeling. If no feelings come, then I must sit with that absence of feeling: it’s all grief.
Shiva is something we do for one another. I take food to the home of a grieving person, knowing that she or someone like her will bring food to my home when the inevitable day comes that I must sit shiva. When I visit a shiva house, and see the mourner rushing around, trying to entertain, I say gently, “Let me take care of that” and begin greeting people at the door. A mourner is not a host, no matter how badly he wants to be anything but a mourner.
When I visit a shiva house, I arrive quietly, stay a while, speak gently to the mourner, perhaps leave some food, then move along quietly. It is not a party. I may check to see if there’s anything they need (groceries? errands? care for a pet?) but mostly I let them know that they are not abandoned by the rest of us and then I let them grieve. It is hard to let people grieve; we can’t fix it, and we mustn’t try.
Later they will need invitations to lunch, to Shabbat dinner, or to a movie. They will need distraction, after the first work of grief is done.
Eventually, we all take turns at all the roles: today’s mourner is tomorrow’s gentle helper. The person who brings food to this shiva house will be fed at some point in the future.
It is one of the great wisdoms of Jewish tradition that once the funeral is over, we do not leave mourners to their own devices.
Excellent post. I know people complain about having to “sit shiva” as the last thing they want to do after a loved one dies is “entertain people for a week.” Your description of what shiva means and what it stands for is very helpful, and it is always how I’ve felt about it. And you are so right………grief will catch up with you at some point if you don’t allow yourself to experience it when a loss occurs.
Thank you for the kind words. I hope that this will help people avail themselves of this tradition!
Thank you, that explains a lot about sitting shiva that I didn’t understand.
Thank YOU for letting me know the post did exactly what I intended it to do!