Miriam Weinstein - All Set for Black, Thanks.: A New Look at Mourning

All Set for Black, Thanks.

ALSO BY MIRIAM WEINSTEIN

Yiddish: A Nation of Words

Prophets and Dreamers: A Selection of Great Yiddish Literature

The Surprising Power of Family Meals: How Eating Together

Makes Us Smarter, Stronger, Healthier and Happier

Copyright 2016 by Miriam Weinstein

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2016
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-63152-109-6
e-ISBN: 978-1-631521-10-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016932854

Book design by Stacey Aaronson

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She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

Permissions:

Excerpt from Mahzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, 1978, p. 241 with the permission of The Rabbinical Assembly.

Excerpt from Breaths, Lyrics adapted from the poem by Birago

Diop, music by Ysaye M. Barnwell 1980. Recorded by Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Who By Fire, Words and Music by Leonard Cohen

Copyright (c) 1974 Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Copyright Renewed

All Rights Administered by Sony/ATV Music Pubishing LLC, 424

Church Street, Suite 1200, Nashnille, TN 37219

International Copyright Secured All Rights Reserved

Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation

For Liza, Ruthie, Sadie, and Rosie

What we have loved,

Others will love, and we

Will teach them how.

WORDSWORTH

I think that Joy has a great idea of keeping an outfit all together in a garment bag in the closet. The last funeral that we went to there were young girls in spaghetti strap tanks and shorts, which I was surprised at because it was in a Mormon temple. I think that I and a friend of mine were the only ones in any black at all. I had a hard time figuring out what to wear, and I had already started thinking that when I get to my goal weight I want to put together an outfit for occasions. Oh wait we went to one after that and everyone was in black (except me).

youlookfab.com

S HOULDNT IT BE HEATING UP BY NOW? I STOOD IN my friend Mitchs kitchen one brisk autumn evening denying, against all evidence, that my coffee pot was dying. It takes a long time, I stalled. But at a certain point I had to admit that the signs were not good.

It may seem extravagant to own a thirtycup urn, but it is only expensive in terms of storage space, not cash. Over the years, its steady burble has provided a comforting background through dinners, committee meetings, holidays, happy events and, of course, the occasional shiva, the period of mourning that Jews observe after a death. Thats what was happening at Mitchs that night. The house was filled to bursting with people worn through with grief. And, while the wine seemed to be serving many of them just fine, there were an awful lot who would have died for a cup of hot coffee.

We were all more or less in shock, needing to be together, incapable of letting this go. Mitch, the center of so much of the life of our small city, had died a couple of days earlier, two and a half weeks after checking into the hospital with stomach pains and yellow eyes. He had been feeling poorly all summer, but not even poorly enough to go see the doctor. The diagnosis was pancreatic cancer.

Evidently, the complications from this kind of disease can be the thing that gets you. Theyre killing me in here, Mitch had said to his wife, who has been my friend for decades. Of course the medical team was trying its darndest to do just the opposite, but even one of the worlds leading hospitalswith all its named pavilions, labs, operating theaters, a helicopter pad on the roofcould not prevent his death.

The funeral the day of the coffee pot failure had filled City Hall, to the point where those of us on the ornate balcony of the postCivil War auditorium were beginning to feel anxious about the weight, listening to the creaking of the floorboards, eyeing the wrought-iron supports. That night, everyone felt the need to come to the house that had been a gathering place for so many great times, with the large windows that Mitch had cut so they could have a view over Good Harbor Beach.

My friend Kim, who had met the family at my kids weddings, caught up with me in the kitchen. She just wanted to offer a hug to the new widow. I understood her impulse, but here was the problem: If everyone just wanted to give a hug, that made for a thousand hugs, a thousand people in a living room that could comfortably hold maybe half a dozen. (Okay, if you added the eating area, the kitchen, and the foyer, you could get up to twenty or thirty.) People were squashed, nibbling on desserts, happy to see folks they hadnt seen in years, feeling weirded out by feeling happy. Every once in a while I would take the cover off the coffee urn, stick my finger in the water in the hope that we were making progress. We werent.

The rabbi showed up with the box of books for the prayer service, often a strange focus of a strange evening. If there is any kind of crowd, there are nowhere near enough books, so there is a lot of huddling and sharing. And, while some people run through the mostly Hebrew prayers at a good pace, others try to look concerned or at least not confused, while some just give the whole thing a pass and resume their whispered conversations, their eating and drinking, their greeting of long-lost friends.

Mitch was a central figure in the Jewish community, although his actual beliefs were somewhat less than orthodox. He was also a densely-connected therapist, former carpenter, actor, and the heartthrob of his year at Gloucester High School. If he had been present, he might have been busy praying, or he might just as likely have been busy schmoozing in the rear, vastly enjoying either mode, rocking back and forth on his heels. After the prayers, he would have placed his hand on your shoulder, commiserating and half-laughing, but dead serious, saying, Yeah yeah, this really sucks.

People were reluctant to leave the house and, as they spilled out onto the street, they didnt want to get into their cars. We huddled together, as if we could protect ourselves from a future that all of a sudden looked bleak. The night got dark and the autumn breeze got cold, coming in off the beach. We talked about how we would keep tabs on the family, go see our doctors, kiss our loved ones; how we would manage our own futures without Mitch.

It is tough enough to be a mourner, someone whose world has just been ripped open. And sometimes our friends, despite the best of intentions, dont really help. Nobody in their right mind wants to go around thinking about dying all the time, and we live in a world that certainly doesnt encourage it. For many of us, the old ways, whatever they were, were jettisoned long ago. We want to do something, but we have no idea what is right or appropriate.