funeral – Don't Gel Too Soon

Sunrise, Sunset: an Amazing Day of Jewish Rituals

We all feel gratitude for the beautiful moments in our lives. In the observant Jewish life we live now those moments are often built around life-cycle events, usually moving and sometimes profound. Last week, we had a Sunday that brought the entire thing into broad relief. It's taken me a week to think it through and write about it though. It was just so huge.

We began early, at a bris. That's the moment of circumcision, welcoming a Jewish boy into the covenant with God on the 8th day of his life. This one was held at the parents' home, full of their friends and those of the grandparents. The mother's mom and dad are good friends of ours, kind, generous, no nonsense people, a librarian and a doctor. Like any mom, she was helping her daughter. Like any mom, she was greeting guests with hugs and personal welcomes. Like any mom, she was dashing from counter to table with salads, platters of food, drinks, desserts. Unlike most moms though, she did it all with a "crew cut". In the midst of chemotherapy for breast cancer, she's decided there was no sense in "wearing something silly" to cover her hair loss, so she didn't. Watching her hold her new grandson, both of them reminding us of the value of life at its most basic, was amazing. You can imagine how it felt to be part of this – new life, fighting for life, affirming life – all in one family in one day. It was quite a thing.

Blown away, we set off for our second destination, far less nuanced and very sad. A young friend with a toddler, expecting her second child very soon, had lost her mother to cancer. The funeral, filled with other young parents with infants in their arms, was sad as they always are, laden with the grief felt by both this daughter and her husband. Her parents had long been divorced, her ailing father lives with them, and for her last months, her mother had as well. It's a huge thing to be that responsible for each parent singly and still live with one's responsibilities for spouse and children. This couple took the responsibilities on gracefully and willingly.

It was heartbreaking to hear the impassioned tribute this young woman gave to her mother, to understand the depth of her loss. Jewish funerals are immediate, simple and highly symbolic: the 91st Psalm recited as the procession stops seven times on the way to the grave to symbolize the reluctance to bid farewell, internment in a simple pine box, all attendees contributing to covering the coffin until the grave is full, shovel by shovel, to support the lost and the mourners. I've always said that the way Jews deal with death is one of my favorite of its many beautiful attributes; it seems to add symbolism to the grief and meaning to the death.

Deeply depleted, as if a gray cloud had descended on our day, we returned to the car and moved on. We were late, but able to arrive midway through our next engagement – a wedding. As you can imagine, it was tough to rally but we did our best. The bride and groom are a lovely (and very tall!) young couple, with a combined sweetness and wry sense of humor that endeared them to everyone. So we were honored to be there. It reminds, too, that life is indeed a circle, as corny as that sounds, filled both with sadness and joy.

We ended this amazing Sunday with a kind of interim ritual – between the beginning of life and the rituals of adulthood: a bar mitzvah party. The young man celebrating his Saturday Torah reading and entry into Jewish adulthood is a remarkable kid, and the joys of this celebration were compounded by the special nature of this boy and his family – all hugely active in the community – fun, scholarly and kind. They were the first people we met when we moved to this aging community that has since grown into a thriving, intergenerational congregation. Newly arrived from Boston, they had chosen it because it needed new members to replace those who had moved away or died. When we got here, the "bar mitzvah boy" was a little kid. Now he's a poised young man with legions of friends from age two (really) to 82. We all consider them a gift. It was wonderful to celebrate with them.

So that was our day: a journey through Jewish tradition, commemoration of joy and grief, birth and loss, life and death — and a reminder of what an amazing journey we all – Jewish or otherwise, travel together.

AT TIM RUSSERT’S WAKE: A LITTLE BIT OF HOW IT SEEMED

So many people here and on Twitter have been talking about this; I thought I’d just tell you what it was like.

I got there at around four. The line went from the door to a large room at St. Alban’s School just next to the National Cathedral, where the wake was, up the stairs and a long walk to the driveway, around to the Cathedral front lawn. The last little bit was lined with wreaths – some of them very large – of flowers from friends and colleagues. There were several TV trucks and groups of reporters and camera people on folding chairs under the trees.

This had begun at 2PM and would last until 9 — sad, but not dismal. It was a beautiful day, sunny, breezy, not at all humid – just gorgeous. And we were all grateful to be there. It was a generous thing for the Russerts to do in the midst of their own grief — allowing friends, as well as admirers who’d never met Tim but felt that they knew him anyway — to act on their own sadness.

I talked to some random people in line with me: a woman who’d not known Tim at all but just wanted to be there and, happily, an old friend and pollster with whom I waited most of the way down the hill. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, so we caught up on our lives and our kids and our sadness. I started to tell him about all of Tim’s kindnesses to my boys when they were little; he started to tell me about his son’s internship at Meet the Press. Any one of Tim’s friends would have had a dozen stories just like those.

All along the way, very kind staff and parents from the school, where Tim’s son Luke had gone, were there with name tags that said “volunteer” under their names and offers of help, directions, a place to leave a note for the family, ice water – just gracious and kind. I saw, as we arrived in the room itself, that the casket, covered with white flowers with a note that said “Love, Coco and Luke” was being guarded by what looked like young soldiers out of uniform. I’ve since learned that they are high school classmates of Luke’s who will stand guard throughout the night.

We made our way past the casket in two lines, one on each side. Tim’s wife Maureen Orth was there, thanking people for coming. Then we were out, in a hallway, where another volunteer offered us the opportunity to leave a note on paper that would be bound into a book. The line was long, and each person spent considerable time – the comments were anything but brief.

Just at the end, as we made our way out, stood this photo, the one I used yesterday, up on an easel. I was so glad to see it there – not because I’d used it too but because it was a declaration, which I’d felt and clearly his family felt, that the joy and mischief of this man was what we should take with us back into the world.

Tomorrow there is a small funeral and a memorial service at the Kennedy Center which I’m sure will be amazing. And all of it will help those who loved and admired this larger-than-life presence deal with the reality of his absence.

I want to say that, because of all the posts on Twitter and here on in the blogorama, I felt I was representing many of us and left a note that said as much. It was a privilege to be there.

REBIRTH OF WONDER (REDUX)– DEATH AND LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

One more deadline, one more rerun- the last for a while, I promise.

In A Coney Island of the Mind, San Francisco poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote of a search for a rebirth of wonder.* It’s out there – that wonder — sometimes in the strangest places.

Here is what I know: Some things in life surprise us — not with shock but with wonder. Today we flew to Boston for Rick’s dad’s funeral. It was a beautiful day – sunny and almost as warm as spring. With Rick and me traveled not only our remarkable rabbi, but also two of Rick’s dearest friends. Despite the mid-week madness of Washington, they had chosen to leave their work and fly north to support us. In addition, the sisters of two friends unable to come arrived as their surrogates. That was the first wondrous thing.

An Orthodox funeral is deceptively simple. The coffin is a plain pine box held together with pegs. As it leaves the hearse it is borne by the mourners to its place over the grave. On the way, Psalm 91 is recited and the procession stops seven times. Once the coffin – reverently referred to as the "aron" is in place, the service proceeds.

With our rabbi leading the service, each step along the way was accompanied by warm and loving exposition: Why do we do this? — How should we participate? — What is the blessing of bearing the aron and seeing to its burial? As he led the prayers and answered these questions, it was with such love and individuality that participation became a privilege and a comfort. That is the second wondrous thing.

As the service moved toward conclusion the rabbi explained the final act. We, not the cemetery employees, would bury the coffin – my husband’s father. One by one, we took up the shovels and poured earth into the grave. Not until the grave was full and the coffin covered did we leave… and then, all those in attendance formed a double line so that Rick and his brother could pass through, moving from the funeral to the initial mourning period, or Shiva.

This last, loving duty is perhaps the most remarkable of what an Orthodox Jewish funeral offers mourners. At the funerals of each of my parents, way before we moved into this new life, the cemetery distributed little envelopes of "dirt from Israel" which attendees dropped on the coffin. We all left then, and the cemetery employees finished the job.

I told my sister about the custom that mourners fill the grave, thinking that she, who is not thrilled with our decision to live a more observant life, would be appalled. Instead, she said "That’s so great – leaving them covered and at peace. I felt so badly leaving Daddy there so exposed…." That’s probably the most critical. Imagine the difference, at the close of such a painful day, filled with loss and grief, if you knew you’d bid a farewell that leaves your loved one cared for and at peace. Imagine, too, that those you love – beloved friends and family members – have all left a part of themselves there in the grave; that the final resting place includes their loving labor. That’s the final wondrous thing.

We’re nowhere near the Age of Wonder, that’s for sure. But we are occasionally given a peek. Today the window opened and a bit emerged — not quite a rebirth but present nonetheless — just enough to help us see what’s possible. If that’s not wonder, I don’t know what is.

*I Am Waiting
I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

A REBIRTH OF WONDER — DEATH AND LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

In A Coney Island of the Mind, San Francisco poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote of a search for a rebirth of wonder.* It’s out there – that wonder — sometimes in the strangest places.

This last, loving duty is perhaps the most remarkable of what an Orthodox Jewish funeral offers mourners. At the funerals of each of my parents, way before we moved into this new life, the cemetery distributed little envelopes of “dirt from Israel” which attendees dropped on the coffin. We all left then, and the cemetery employees finished the job.

I told my sister about the custom that mourners fill the grave, thinking that she, who is not thrilled with our decision to live a more observant life, would be appalled. Instead, she said “That’s so great – leaving them covered and at peace. I felt so badly leaving Daddy there so exposed….” That’s probably the most critical. Imagine the difference, at the close of such a painful day, filled with loss and grief, if you knew you’d bid a farewell that leaves your loved one cared for and at peace. Imagine, too, that those you love – beloved friends and family members – have all left a part of themselves there in the grave; that the final resting place includes their loving labor. That’s the final wondrous thing.