So perfect. Thank for finding the words. Hoping within your mourning you have found writing as your personal shiva. It is felt across the ocean and continents (I am in Oakland CA, thinking about my mom and our unusual shiva in Florida two and a half years ago.) Sending sympathy on the loss of your dear aunt.
I lived SHIVA for one week 69 years ago as a 10 year-old child. My father's death - such a horrifying and unthinkable experience. Pretty much everyone ignored me in my state of disbelief despair and disorientation, except for the day when my best friend, Wendy, came by and brought me a book to read - The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. I will never forget how grateful I was for her visit and for the time she sat and talked with me. I felt seen and understood. But the entire spectacle of the week amazed me too. So many people came by, so many huge fruit baskets and cards about trees planted in Israel in my father's name - I imagined a whole forest growing for my father! And the minion each night for saying Kaddish - this all made me feel that my father was more beloved than I ever knew. We spent the week at a relative's home, my mother was off in a world of her own misery, but life did go on somehow and we emerged knowing that we had been spared the realities of the outside world at least for a little while so we could dwell in our grief and know we all shared in the love my father gave us....
This is strange: I just came across a copy of The Five Little Peppers tonight on a shelf in my grandparents ' old farmhouse. I had never noticed it before, but was looking for things to read this summer. The title intrigued me.
This is very beautiful. Thank you. May her memory be a blessing.
So perfect. Thank for finding the words. Hoping within your mourning you have found writing as your personal shiva. It is felt across the ocean and continents (I am in Oakland CA, thinking about my mom and our unusual shiva in Florida two and a half years ago.) Sending sympathy on the loss of your dear aunt.
Thank you for this lovely essay, Rafael. I hope writing it was a comfort for you.
I lived SHIVA for one week 69 years ago as a 10 year-old child. My father's death - such a horrifying and unthinkable experience. Pretty much everyone ignored me in my state of disbelief despair and disorientation, except for the day when my best friend, Wendy, came by and brought me a book to read - The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. I will never forget how grateful I was for her visit and for the time she sat and talked with me. I felt seen and understood. But the entire spectacle of the week amazed me too. So many people came by, so many huge fruit baskets and cards about trees planted in Israel in my father's name - I imagined a whole forest growing for my father! And the minion each night for saying Kaddish - this all made me feel that my father was more beloved than I ever knew. We spent the week at a relative's home, my mother was off in a world of her own misery, but life did go on somehow and we emerged knowing that we had been spared the realities of the outside world at least for a little while so we could dwell in our grief and know we all shared in the love my father gave us....
This is strange: I just came across a copy of The Five Little Peppers tonight on a shelf in my grandparents ' old farmhouse. I had never noticed it before, but was looking for things to read this summer. The title intrigued me.
That feeling of the chasm between your immediate reality and the rest of the world going on like nothing happened is my most vivid memory of loss.
Thank you for this. So beautiful and helpful. In sympathy for the loss of the woman who raised you.
Thank you. This beautiful.
So beautiful, gives me understanding and longing for a better tradition.