A friend of ours has suddenly died.
It hasn't sunk in, and writing about it is probably my way of trying to get it into my head that he's gone. What is hard to get into my head is that he's never going to ring us again and leave his crazy jokey messages. The most weird thought I keep having is: we can't just ring him and ask what happened. From past experience of people dying, this is the thing that keeps coming up now and again, over the years - my sister died in 1996 and there are still moments when I have to stop myself thinking: I could tell her about that...
And being Jewish, I feel weird not being able to just go visit the family. Back home it would be quite obvious what you do, the customs and traditions kick in automatically and everyone knows where they are. If you're part of the immediate family, you stay in for a week, normal life completely stops, and people come to visit you. If you know the family, you go and visit. If you're a neighbour, then there's no way you could not know about it, as there would be a huge black notice outside the house, so anyone passing by knows that this home is going through bereavement. It's like having a notice outside saying: handle with care, or: please don't expect us to behave normally just now.
Here they do things very differently. The funeral doesn't take place the next day, it's arranged and planned and it takes place at a time that is chosen by the bereaved. The family have a huge amount of choice as to how, when, where - which could be a blessing but from my experience of bereavement, I think it could also be an extra burden at a time when all you want to do is just stop and let other people take over.
I remember years ago when someone I worked with lost his wife, whom he had loved dearly. He was back at work the next day! I was stunned. But apparently his English upbringing had conditioned him to ignore what had happened and keep soldiering on, to get back to normal as soon as possible, and even at the funeral it was really important to him to keep his feelings under control, to "keep strong", which to me seemed extremely unhealthy. And to my mind it looks like an insult to the person who died - my Israeli mind says: if you love someone then you will care enough to shed some tears when they die. But I think the thing is that the English do shed tears, they just do it in private and not in front of a whole load of strangers.
The closest I came in England to experiencing our own customs was, to my surprise, when my Ghanaian friend lost her husband and I found that the Ghanaians have similar mourning customs to ours, that the family does sit at home with people visiting - only in their case it's not specifically a week, it's from the death until the funeral, and in that particular case that meant several weeks because there was the need to allow for time for relatives from Ghana to get visas to come here for the funeral. I found it so much easier to relate to that, it seemed natural to me that my friend would be at home and people would be coming to visit. Whereas when a neighbour of ours died recently I felt thrown, confused - my instinct was to go and visit his wife, but I wasn't sure how she would see that, whether she would regard it as prying, sticking my nose into what to her is a private matter. After nearly two decades in this country I still don't feel I really know where I am with these things, though having an English husband does help in some ways and in that case I discussed it with him and we went round together one afternoon to visit our neighbour.
Living in England, for me as an Israeli, sometimes feels like treading in a minefield. If I act according to Israeli norms - as I did when I first came here - I'd come across as extremely rude. But there isn't a written rulebook, no user manual handed out at the airport when you arrive, so I'm still trying to work it all out, and no doubt still offending people now and again by what seems to me very normal behaviour!
It hasn't sunk in, and writing about it is probably my way of trying to get it into my head that he's gone. What is hard to get into my head is that he's never going to ring us again and leave his crazy jokey messages. The most weird thought I keep having is: we can't just ring him and ask what happened. From past experience of people dying, this is the thing that keeps coming up now and again, over the years - my sister died in 1996 and there are still moments when I have to stop myself thinking: I could tell her about that...
And being Jewish, I feel weird not being able to just go visit the family. Back home it would be quite obvious what you do, the customs and traditions kick in automatically and everyone knows where they are. If you're part of the immediate family, you stay in for a week, normal life completely stops, and people come to visit you. If you know the family, you go and visit. If you're a neighbour, then there's no way you could not know about it, as there would be a huge black notice outside the house, so anyone passing by knows that this home is going through bereavement. It's like having a notice outside saying: handle with care, or: please don't expect us to behave normally just now.
Here they do things very differently. The funeral doesn't take place the next day, it's arranged and planned and it takes place at a time that is chosen by the bereaved. The family have a huge amount of choice as to how, when, where - which could be a blessing but from my experience of bereavement, I think it could also be an extra burden at a time when all you want to do is just stop and let other people take over.
I remember years ago when someone I worked with lost his wife, whom he had loved dearly. He was back at work the next day! I was stunned. But apparently his English upbringing had conditioned him to ignore what had happened and keep soldiering on, to get back to normal as soon as possible, and even at the funeral it was really important to him to keep his feelings under control, to "keep strong", which to me seemed extremely unhealthy. And to my mind it looks like an insult to the person who died - my Israeli mind says: if you love someone then you will care enough to shed some tears when they die. But I think the thing is that the English do shed tears, they just do it in private and not in front of a whole load of strangers.
The closest I came in England to experiencing our own customs was, to my surprise, when my Ghanaian friend lost her husband and I found that the Ghanaians have similar mourning customs to ours, that the family does sit at home with people visiting - only in their case it's not specifically a week, it's from the death until the funeral, and in that particular case that meant several weeks because there was the need to allow for time for relatives from Ghana to get visas to come here for the funeral. I found it so much easier to relate to that, it seemed natural to me that my friend would be at home and people would be coming to visit. Whereas when a neighbour of ours died recently I felt thrown, confused - my instinct was to go and visit his wife, but I wasn't sure how she would see that, whether she would regard it as prying, sticking my nose into what to her is a private matter. After nearly two decades in this country I still don't feel I really know where I am with these things, though having an English husband does help in some ways and in that case I discussed it with him and we went round together one afternoon to visit our neighbour.
Living in England, for me as an Israeli, sometimes feels like treading in a minefield. If I act according to Israeli norms - as I did when I first came here - I'd come across as extremely rude. But there isn't a written rulebook, no user manual handed out at the airport when you arrive, so I'm still trying to work it all out, and no doubt still offending people now and again by what seems to me very normal behaviour!
6 comments:
In Israel the funeral is the next day? That seems soon. Then again, a friend of mine's uncle's funeral was scheduled for 2 weeks after his death, which seems a bit too long. I would think 4 or 5 days gives everyone enough time to alter their schedules, book flights, etc. Then again, when I die, I don't want my body to be shot full of chemicals. Which might mean my funeral will have to be much sooner rather than later.
I don't really know what the custom is around here in terms of going over to the person's house. I think you pretty much attend the funeral and that's all that's expected. If they're a young parent and a spouse or child died, then you might bring food over to their house for them. But I doubt they'd have guests in in general.
yes, Jewish funerals are pretty immediate - that's the custom, probably dating back to times when there wasn't a way of keeping the body cold, so like many bits of tradition it probably started from very practical reasons but now it's enshrined in religious law...
from my own experience, I think it was actually helpful to have that very visual ending straight away, and then go sit at home for a week and be allowed to concentrate on grieving. then at the end of the week the family goes to visit the grave, and it's a kind of official way of ending that initial phase of mourning. you then go again a month after the death, to put up the tombstone, and that's an opportunity for people to come who couldn't make it to the funeral.
part of what makes this way of doing funerals doable is that there is no question of the bereaved making choices as to what happens - there is a standard funeral service, there's a religious organisation that's in charge of handling these things, so all you do is ring them up and say someone died and they take over.
How involved is the ceremony if it happens the next day? Around here I know that people spend hours coming up with the music and the passages to be read and where the funeral will be held and who will officiate and will there be food provided and where will the person be buried.... I don't know how people do it. It's all too much to have to think about when you're grieving, in my opinion. Having a place you can call up and they'll take care of everything sounds great. (If you can trust that they'll do a decent job, I suppose.)
I think something short the day after, then having more of a memorial service a month later, would make a lot of sense. Maybe I'll suggest something like that for when I go. I need to write all that up. I've scattered my wishes here and there but now that we're back in the house and I have space for stuff, I should make a spot for our wills, etc.
yes, that's the thing, that we don't have choice of music and who'll officiate and all of that stuff. in fact, we don't have music at all. just said prayers. the prayers are standard out of the "siddur" (Jewish prayer book). it all kind of washes over you in a bit of a blur, you're still shell-shocked anyway, it's really easy to just go along with whatever is dictated by tradition - it's one time in your life when you actually don't really want to be making choices.
"it's one time in your life when you actually don't really want to be making choices."
exactly!
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