One area of life that Judaism gets a great deal of admiration for is the way it approaches death and beyond, including the seven-day mourning period usually referred to as shivah. Shivah creates a time and space for mourners to grieve, cry and contemplate, then “get up” and resume life.
Alas, the plan does not always pan out. Having been a rabbi for close to 50 years, I can attest to the slow attrition of the intent behind the shivah. Today, more people tend to look at shivah with dread, as something to endure, an unwelcome imposition. On occasion, mourners decide to skip shivah altogether or shorten it to a day or two. Those who choose to go the full seven days often severely curtail visitation times.
Sometimes, there are health-related factors behind the decision to reduce the shivah sitting time. Those sitting may not be well enough to sit the entire time, if at all. For some, the period leading up to the passing of a family member is emotionally draining, and the surviving family feels wiped out and unable to engage in any conversation. When death is imminent, but the dying person holds on for a few days, with the family literally on a death watch, I often hear family members say, “We have already been sitting shivah for more than seven days.”
Much of the shivah problem is related to the changing manner in which people die and the physical, spiritual and emotional impact this has on family caregivers. The net result is that for too many people, shivah is a distortion of what it was intended to be. Visitors to shivahs who experience the noise levels there sometimes make a subconscious decision that if they’re ever in such a circumstance, they’ll forgo the shivah route.
Recapturing the “magic” of shivah is not easy. It will take the collective community asking itself, “Why exactly am I going to this shivah house? What is my goal? What is my obligation?”
My own answer to this is that the goal should be that as a result of the visit, the mourner or mourners feel a bit better. This can be achieved through conveying, when appropriate, praise for the mourners as caregivers or as loyal family members. Another way is through sharing stories about the deceased with the family. Helping with logistics is also important.
But there’s one more shivah-related matter to contemplate, which I call the post-shivah syndrome. This is the empty feeling of the day after, when family returns home and gets back to “normal,” and the house where the deceased lived, which had been full to overflowing for seven days, is now empty and eerily quiet, even scary.
This is a vulnerable time when friends are almost desperately needed. Unfortunately, the mindset that has crept into shivah visitation, almost to a fault, is that once it’s over, it’s over. But it’s not. Mourning goes on even when the shivah is done. The pain doesn’t disappear with the removal of the chairs.
So my modest proposal, one that’s perhaps not very original, is that we introduce, on a more formal basis, the idea of post-shivah visits – one-to-ones, absent the cacophony of sound during shivah and more likely to bring real comfort. It’s certainly great for rabbis to do this regularly. It’s likewise helpful for close and moderately close friends to do this.
It may sound sacrilegious to say that 15 minutes of meaningful conversation post-shivah is usually more comforting than an hour during shivah spent just contributing to the decibel count. But it’s true.
Rabbi Bulka is the rabbi of Congregation Machzikei Hadas in Ottawa and author of Turning Grief into Gratitude: Reflections and Recommendations on Mourning and Condolence, among other volumes.
