Shivah

By: Rafael Jacobs-Perez

I think I finally understand Shivah.

As a kid it always seemed like an insane tradition, locking ourselves up in the house, three people to a room, no privacy and no space, everyone moving around with the shortest of fuses. Like tears or screams were always right around the corner but it was just my cousin trying to find a quiet place to breathe. Emotions running high with nowhere to run or hide. Let out once a day to walk around the block, it felt like we were being let out into the yard, our religion mandated fresh air time. People coming over to the house unannounced, suddenly shoving me into the vulnerability that I so desperately wanted a reprieve from.

Now more than a decade since my last Shivah I am sitting across the world mourning my aunt, alone. A woman that raised me, that celebrated me for just being me. The services are happening in New Jersey and I am sitting in my apartment in Germany.

But it’s not just the loneliness of this mourning that is getting to me. Being separate from all those that I know love her the way I do, is hard enough but while I am drowning in grief I am also swimming against the current of routine. The world has not changed after my world was turned upside down with just a phone call from my father. No matter how much I cry, the world outside my windows is continuing to move like clockwork. Emails keep arriving in my inbox, the grocery store is open from eight to eight, scam callers keep making my phone ring and each time my heart catches in my throat. Here from my couch everything keeps moving according to schedule, meetings and due dates.

I can’t stop myself from wishing that it would all be different. The monotony of everyday life would be different now that she’s gone.

Shiva takes the daily routine and chucks it out the window. There is no work, or school during Shivah. No emails or meetings. We don’t cook for ourselves, leave the house when we want to, and we don’t see the people we do regularly. There is nothing normal about Shivah. And I see now, that may be the whole point.

The practice of Shivah rips us from our routine and it changes our world for seven straight days. It allows us to feel that the loss we are experiencing has changed the world. During Shivah we stay inside so that we’re not faced with how the part of the world that is not grieving keeps moving forward, instead we stay in a time warp where nothing moves forward but only in circles. We are given space to go over all those memories again and again. To reminiscence without end. During Shivah we spend more time with people than most of us would in two weeks combined. Not only are there those that are with us in the house but there is the community that comes to support us. We don’t have to ask for help these days, there are already shoulders to cry on. Because it takes a lot to be vulnerable after a loss even if it is exactly what we need. Shiva takes the first step for us. No need to reach out to the friends and family that you don;t speak to regularly they are already knocking at the door. I am reminded of when I was a kid and we were sitting Shivah for my mother and my best friend came into the house. It was like an angel had walked through that door. I was too young to even have known how to ask for help, but there he was ushered into our living room by his parents and I felt a relief that I am still unable to name to this day. I wish he would ring the buzzer downstairs now.

There is a tiredness that comes with sadness. It can feel all wrong that the world continues to spin while all we want to do is lay in the stillness of our grief. I now understand that Shiva is a shield. A shield that protects us from the rest of the world, that allows us to come out from under the blanket of mourning once we have incorporated this new loss into our reality. So that when we walk out of the house on that seventh day the world and our reality are one and the same

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