Today, making shivah calls is a complex experience
S
hivah calls had never been my thing.
My father, on the other hand, was always the one helping the cemetery caretaker until the very end, painstakingly filling the plot with earth after the last person had long washed his hands and left. My father feels that you can never go wrong by attending a funeral or a shivah house. “Just go!” is his motto. “Stay a few minutes. Honor someone’s life and you may learn something about your own.”
I could blame my reticence (or immaturity) on age; in my mid-twenties, death seemed like a far-off occurrence — inevitable, yes, but something that only happens later. My only frame of reference was the passing of my beloved grandmother, who seemed very old. We commemorated her meaningful life on low chairs, while munching mandelbroidt.
Then suddenly, tragedy struck in the form of a terrible terminal diagnosis for my 31-year-old older sister. Dani, my effervescent, joyful, hilarious, and charming only sibling was sent catapulting onto a roller coaster of hope and despair that came to a shattering halt seven months later.
Images are seared onto my brain forever, mostly involving my parents and grandparents holding hands with their angel child, wispy blonde hair framing my sister’s small, delicate face as her eternal neshamah left This World. The funeral was a blur of pain in a crowded room, faces barely registering as I helped my parents put one foot in front of the other.
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