A Jewish Funeral Experience

It's been around 13 years since I attended a funeral. At least, that's the last one I remember. It was my Uncle David, who wasn't really my Uncle David. I wrote a poem about it in college, recollecting the man who was more of a grandfather figure to me than anything else. Uncle David was my father's step-mother's family, distant, but oh-so-close to my father and to us kids. From the poem, "Uncle David Stole My Nose" ...

When I think about the funeral,
I remember looking into the casket
and seeing Uncle David’s face.
I remember, at that awkward age between
childhood and becoming a young woman,
wondering why he wasn’t smiling.
I remember telling my father, as we
left the burial site after crying and hugging
and holding relatives close, that Uncle
David’s lips should have been curved up.
Smiling as he always was.
Because that’s how everyone knew him,
that’s how I knew him,
when he was alive. ... 

I’ve try to forget the funeral and the burial,
while trying to keep Uncle David as
he was the last time I saw him before
he looked so sad in that big black box.
But I continue to recall driving past the Big Boy
where we’d eat with Uncle David every
now and then when we visited.
I remember crying and thinking about how
empty my dad was, because he’d
lost a father figure. But I know I cried
mostly because I’d lost a
Grandfather, and my nose would stay put
and I realized I was no longer
a child.

That funeral took place during a bizarre weekend where there was a wedding and a funeral. Emotional ups and downs were extreme. But this is my memory of funerals -- Christian funerals. 

Until this past week, I had not been to a Jewish funeral. I've written about paying shiva calls and the difficulty of really coming to terms with that tradition, but nothing could have prepared me for this week. I was, in plain words, an emotional wreck graveside. 

At my Uncle's funeral, it began with service at the funeral chapel, there were Bible verses read, the mood was depressing and morose, and seeing my dead uncle in the box put a forever-image in my head. We all took off to the graveside service afterward, where, everyone, dressed in black, huddled around the plot that had been carved out. The beautiful casket was held on props while words were said, words from the Bible were read, and then we departed. Only after that was the casket lowered -- we didn't watch the casket go down. We left knowing that he was still floating somewhere above the service. 

At Roszi's funeral (I blogged about her passing here) -- as I assume is true at all Jewish funerals -- the casket was lowered simply in its wooden-box form into the space in the ground. A rabbi related Roszi's life to those of us huddled under umbrellas in the cold rain, and then, then the men took a shovel and heaved dirt onto the wooden casket. 

Thump. Thump. Thump. 

And I lost it. I don't know why, but my tears just streamed -- and as I write this, my eyes are welling ... and I just don't know why. The sound of dirt -- dirt to dirt -- hitting a simple wooden casket was something I hadn't expected. Something that, to be honest, would never have happened at a funeral back home, back in my old life. The sounds ruptured something deep within me, emotions for a woman who I had barely known and who had not known me at all. 

"How many times did you even meet Roszi?" my husband asked after the funeral. 

I suppose that this is the purpose of such a visceral display of Jewish burial. It is participatory, permanent, and real. In a way, I suppose it seals the truth and the reality of what has happened. As people started to walk away, people were chattering and smiling and everyone except for the immediate family and I seemed to be unshaken by the events. 

I started to wonder: Have I become a softy? Overemotional? Or was it simply my neshama crying out for the loss of a soul so tortured for absolutely no reason.

Learning How to Grieve.

I woke up yesterday morning to a series of emails telling me that a Holocaust survivor from shul had passed away, that a student from UConn who was beaten badly during Spring Weekend had died, and most harrowing, that the mother of a very good friend at synagogue had passed away after a year-and-a-half-long illness. I immediately decided that going back to bed would have been more productive than walking into a world of death and its resultant grief and sadness. I then got news: "Guess where Person X is?!" Yes, probably my best friend in the synagogue community had gone into labor and by the early afternoon the world welcomed new life -- new, beautiful, living life. The circle of life, then, was complete.

I've never been good at dealing with or expressing emotions related to grieving. I'm rock solid; tears don't penetrate the surface -- I choke them, suffocate them, stuff them back into their unnecessarily emotional box. I just don't cry.

Tuvia found out on Friday that his boss had died the night before. For those keeping score at home, that's the announcement of four deaths in my orbit over four days. Throw in Melissa Redgrave, who happens to not be in my orbit, and we've got five in four days. Throw in the thousands more than died over the past four days, and the orbit has lost its center. Tuvia thus went to a service yesterday and today, leaving his bereavement meeting today to go to a funeral.

I'd never been to a Jewish funeral before. I've been to a few non-Jewish funerals in my time, the most vivid in my mind that of my Uncle David Pittman. He died in 1998 after 64 years of life, although I remember him being much older, more like a grandfather to me. He wasn't a blood relative, but a relative by the second marriage of my father's father, my grandfather. After that marriage, my grandfather had a short life and died of a heart attack in the 1960s. Uncle David Pittman, related to my father's step-mother, became a father to him. Growing up, I used to sit on Uncle David's knee and he'd steal my nose; it was his favorite trick with kids. He owned a locksmith store, and for a long time after he died I held onto the last yearly calendar with his store's information on it remained somewhere in my bedroom. The funny, or rather morbid, thing about his funeral was that it took place the same weekend as his son's wedding. Wedding and a funeral, a classic.

I think then, at age 14 or 15, I wasn't completely cognizant of death or what it meant for me. I don't remember crying, I don't remember needing to grieve. He was just gone.

The funeral today left me teary eyed. I choked the tears, else I would have lost it. I've been doing that a lot lately; my emotions are becoming real, and I have never learned how to deal with them. Writing this even has me teared up in a big green couch in Starbucks.

The woman who we honored today died at the age of 57. Fifty. Seven. My father turns 57 in August; it was sobering. I can't imagine having to bury my own parents, despite our distance and the space that creeps between us as the years roll on. They say that it's unimaginable when a parent has to bury his or her child, but the road cuts both ways as they say. When the parent is young, when grandchildren have yet to be born and simchas have yet to be experienced, it's inconceivable.

How do we grieve? For me, life is meant to be celebrated, even at death, and tears should be held, choked, crushed. But that's the me that understands emotion as weakness talking. The tide is changing and my emotions are reversed -- they're crushing me. Coping is what I need to learn. Figuring out how to grieve the loss of those alive and distant, as well as those gone in body but not spirit. I've always been strong, and tears shouldn't mean anything but that.

Here's to the spirits of those lost in my orbit as of late. Baruch dayen emet.