Two Books to Help Start the Journey

My friend, Karen gave me a book to read. Well, actually just one chapter of a book. The chapter on mourning. The book is Mudhouse Sabbath by Lauren Winner. It's a book in which the author talks about integrating her Christian faith with the Jewish traditions and religious practices she grew up with. In the chapter on mourning she shares that, "Judaism understands mourning as a discipline, one in which the mourner is not only allowed, but expected, to be engaged." She explains that the Jewish bereavement is marked by the days and months and yes, even the years after a death.

The first stage is called aninut which is the burial. It is followed by shiva. Shiva is the seven days after burial when the mourners come to literally "sit shiva". This is what Job's friends did for him when they came and sat with him for seven days and seven nights. The point is we are not meant to grieve alone but in community.

Last Friday night Karen came to "sit shiva." She brought a meal for my family, "because," she said, "I didn't know you 20 years ago to do this." But, she knows the journey I am on now. We sat on the couch in my living room. It was mostly quiet in the house with five kids. We sat. We cried. No words were spoken except for me to say thank you. After a while she read the Mourners Kaddish. She hugged me tight and left.

Twenty years ago I never felt permission to grieve. I only felt pressure to move on with my life. Like a splinter in my finger I only wanted the pain removed and to forget it was ever there.

Henri Nouwen in his book, Can You Drink the Cup? says, "We want to drink our cup together and thus celebrate the truth that the wounds of our individual lives, which seem intolerable when lived alone, become sources of healing when we live them as a part of a fellowship of mutual care."

The cup of sorrow is best drunk at a table of loved ones, who allow you to lift your glass, hold it before them, and empty it's contents. To drink it down to the dregs. They drink with you, loving and accepting you as you choke down the bitter liquid. "Then," Nouwen says, "the cup of sorrow becomes the cup of joy."

I'm very thankful that this time around I have people helping me to hold my cup. Like Karen, others have come around me to say they want to enter into the pain, to understand what it means to grieve over loss. On my couch last Friday night I believe I heard the Holy Spirit whisper, "one year." I finally understand now, that in this twenty-first year, I will travel the road of sorrow but will not have to do it alone.