alas, a burial
Mar. 20th, 2014 08:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacWe buried my mother yesterday.
It was a long day. After B. and I dressed in our formal duds and drove to the temple, I hurriedly assembled in the foyer a photo montage of my mother's life, the ingredients of which I'd made the previous evening by rifling through her photos and grabbing her favorite cork bulletin board and the ubiquitous pushpins, then staying up late at the copy store color-copying (often enlarging) and trimming the photos. "Family photos?" the guy working next to me at the paper cutter asked. "Yep," I replied. "This one is my parents' engagement photo." I didn't tell him why I was working through such a massive pile of them at 10:30 at night.
Then came the actual funeral, conducted by our rabbis with all the quiet dignity and respect I knew them to be capable of; my part was a memorial talk I'd also hastily written the previous day. Maybe I'll post it here later, as I probably won't write anything else on her for LJ; usually, when someone dear to me dies, my instinct is to write and publish a personal obituary. This one is different, not because of the magnitude of the loss, but because of the work and effort that both sides of the death (before and after) are requiring of me. In the meantime, though, there's at least her public newspaper obituary from Tuesday, which I drafted and my brother helped edit.
Then the drive to the cemetery for the burial next to my deceased brother. That had all been arranged for by my mother herself, and the specific arrangements for the occasion were all taken care of by the morticians, kindly and competent men with the non-smarmy demeanor I'd always hoped for in their profession. We'd met with them on Sunday.
Afterwards a reception with snacks at the home of one of my mother's closest friends and colleagues, which she'd kindly volunteered on asking, as we certainly couldn't have had it in our tiny home: no space, and no available visitor parking. In the evening, we re-gathered there to sit shiva, a term which can cover a variety of practices. In this case, we said some of the evening and mourning prayers (that's a pun, if you like) and then traded reminiscences.
Four thoughts or emotions dominate my experience of the day.
One concerns the nature of my grief. I'd been braced for this loss since we received the medical diagnosis two months ago, and in the larger sense it'll seep in over time. Already I'm noticing things I see or read that I'll never be able to discuss with her. Or that I write: she read my LJ regularly, and would call me up and ask what on earth I was talking about.
Another concerns differences in personal perspectives. My mother and I had a largely intellectual relationship, and its emotional content largely concerned our own personal history. (Visiting my brother's grave, for instance: that was something I could share with her in a way her friends could not.) But we rarely discussed spiritual or theological issues the way she did in her Talmud class, many of whose members were ardent attendees of the day's events.
More important is how the death frames the life, especially the ending of the life. During the illness I often felt frustrated or at sea. I could and did do practical things, but I could not help or comfort her, and wasn't even always sure what she wanted right then, especially after she began having trouble talking. I have no vocation as a caregiver or comforter. But seeing the entire trajectory as in the past, the uncertainties fade, and I do not in retrospect feel the anger or frustration at not having been able to do the right thing that I've felt at other deaths, above and beyond the grief. This time, given the circumstances, I think we - the family and the caregivers - did the right things.
Lastly, my own sense of responsibility as a survivor. The legal and practical aspects of closing the estate do not frighten me. But the funeral gave me pause. At every previous religious event in my life, even my own wedding, I had my mother by my side for counsel and support. Not any more. I had to kickstart all the day's events, though others took on the work. Where it says in the obituary that the family requests donations to a charity? (The charity is the American Cancer Society, which it said until a JavaScript glitch made it disappear.) "The family" was my brother and me: we discussed it and picked the ACS as best representing our mother's wishes, with nobody's help. We picked the plain poplar coffin, settling an unresolved irritation in my mind from my other brother's funeral over 20 years ago. At Jewish burials, the ritual of each mourner shoveling a spadeful of earth onto the coffin has been most meaningful to me. This time, I was the senior principal mourner: I went first.
Everyone else followed, and I'm grateful for their company and their support. But that doesn't change the rest. As was once said on a similar occasion: I'm not alone. But I'm very alone.
It was a long day. After B. and I dressed in our formal duds and drove to the temple, I hurriedly assembled in the foyer a photo montage of my mother's life, the ingredients of which I'd made the previous evening by rifling through her photos and grabbing her favorite cork bulletin board and the ubiquitous pushpins, then staying up late at the copy store color-copying (often enlarging) and trimming the photos. "Family photos?" the guy working next to me at the paper cutter asked. "Yep," I replied. "This one is my parents' engagement photo." I didn't tell him why I was working through such a massive pile of them at 10:30 at night.
Then came the actual funeral, conducted by our rabbis with all the quiet dignity and respect I knew them to be capable of; my part was a memorial talk I'd also hastily written the previous day. Maybe I'll post it here later, as I probably won't write anything else on her for LJ; usually, when someone dear to me dies, my instinct is to write and publish a personal obituary. This one is different, not because of the magnitude of the loss, but because of the work and effort that both sides of the death (before and after) are requiring of me. In the meantime, though, there's at least her public newspaper obituary from Tuesday, which I drafted and my brother helped edit.
Then the drive to the cemetery for the burial next to my deceased brother. That had all been arranged for by my mother herself, and the specific arrangements for the occasion were all taken care of by the morticians, kindly and competent men with the non-smarmy demeanor I'd always hoped for in their profession. We'd met with them on Sunday.
Afterwards a reception with snacks at the home of one of my mother's closest friends and colleagues, which she'd kindly volunteered on asking, as we certainly couldn't have had it in our tiny home: no space, and no available visitor parking. In the evening, we re-gathered there to sit shiva, a term which can cover a variety of practices. In this case, we said some of the evening and mourning prayers (that's a pun, if you like) and then traded reminiscences.
Four thoughts or emotions dominate my experience of the day.
One concerns the nature of my grief. I'd been braced for this loss since we received the medical diagnosis two months ago, and in the larger sense it'll seep in over time. Already I'm noticing things I see or read that I'll never be able to discuss with her. Or that I write: she read my LJ regularly, and would call me up and ask what on earth I was talking about.
Another concerns differences in personal perspectives. My mother and I had a largely intellectual relationship, and its emotional content largely concerned our own personal history. (Visiting my brother's grave, for instance: that was something I could share with her in a way her friends could not.) But we rarely discussed spiritual or theological issues the way she did in her Talmud class, many of whose members were ardent attendees of the day's events.
More important is how the death frames the life, especially the ending of the life. During the illness I often felt frustrated or at sea. I could and did do practical things, but I could not help or comfort her, and wasn't even always sure what she wanted right then, especially after she began having trouble talking. I have no vocation as a caregiver or comforter. But seeing the entire trajectory as in the past, the uncertainties fade, and I do not in retrospect feel the anger or frustration at not having been able to do the right thing that I've felt at other deaths, above and beyond the grief. This time, given the circumstances, I think we - the family and the caregivers - did the right things.
Lastly, my own sense of responsibility as a survivor. The legal and practical aspects of closing the estate do not frighten me. But the funeral gave me pause. At every previous religious event in my life, even my own wedding, I had my mother by my side for counsel and support. Not any more. I had to kickstart all the day's events, though others took on the work. Where it says in the obituary that the family requests donations to a charity? (The charity is the American Cancer Society, which it said until a JavaScript glitch made it disappear.) "The family" was my brother and me: we discussed it and picked the ACS as best representing our mother's wishes, with nobody's help. We picked the plain poplar coffin, settling an unresolved irritation in my mind from my other brother's funeral over 20 years ago. At Jewish burials, the ritual of each mourner shoveling a spadeful of earth onto the coffin has been most meaningful to me. This time, I was the senior principal mourner: I went first.
Everyone else followed, and I'm grateful for their company and their support. But that doesn't change the rest. As was once said on a similar occasion: I'm not alone. But I'm very alone.
