Jane Eisner: Mourning months leave room for grief

Closure once again defines these waning days of summer. Usually, it’s the end of hot days and sandy vacations, of summer hours and easier commutes. But this year, I am marking a different passage.

As the sun sets today, my 11 months of mourning for my father comes to a close. His death last October, so close to my mother’s death a year earlier, has meant that for nearly two years, I have been living in what has often felt like an alternative universe.

Jewish mourning rituals are ancient and wise. They also stand in stark contrast to much of modern life, where a three-second delay on the computer can seem like an eternity, where moments for contemplation are few, and occasions for public emotion even fewer.

Countering all that, for much of the last two years, I have tried to say the mourner’s kaddish, or prayer, every day. In the beginning, when I felt weighed down by sadness, the thought of plodding through this ritual for 11 months sometimes weighed me down even more.

It seemed as if I would be doing this forever — rushing to attend the morning or evening service at my synagogue, or making arrangements when I was elsewhere. Once, before giving an evening speech in New Jersey, I even led a makeshift service in a community center’s utility closet.

In the age of Tivo and On Demand, the requirement to be at a specific time and place seems horribly old-fashioned. So does the self-denial that traditionally accompanies the months of prayer. No going out dancing, or to concerts, theater, films. Honestly, there were times when I felt like Scarlett O’Hara, dressed in widow’s black and forced to sit on the sidelines while other Southern belles partied with abandon.

But Scarlett was compelled by her society to play the part. My choices are my own. And even though I longed to twirl and shimmy at that wedding in June, and missed a summer’s worth of outdoor concerts, and all the first-run movies, I have no regrets. Even though my interest and energy tended to wane around month five or six, and at times I came perilously close to going through the motions, I am glad I persevered.

Stepping off the whirligig of life within a familiar routine granted me the rare gifts of time and space to think about my parents, to share the day’s news and rehearse the hurts and, yes, bring forth the longing and sometimes even the tears.

It’s OK to sniffle and wipe your eyes at daily minyan — the gathering of 10 people required for communal prayer. Chances are at least someone else in the room is feeling the same. Regular attendance at these services brings you into an alternative community, where mourners enter and leave according to their own calendars, no one else’s, and where other members of the community show up to pray and support and be counted.

This is real personal contact, unplanned and unpredictable. No e-vites necessary. I’ve stood up with friends of many years, and total strangers, and the connection with both is powerful. This is the club you don’t want to join, but once a member, you learn that the benefits are lasting.

I was raised in a less-observant Jewish community, where we were instructed to all stand for the mourner’s prayer, to show our solidarity lest the mourner feel singled out or different. A sweet idea that misses the point entirely.

I do feel different. My parents’ deaths were not tragic. Old and sick, they did not die before their time, or mine.

Still, their passing has left me altered and bereft, and I have welcomed the mark of the mourner as an outward acknowledgment of an inner change. This, too, is in contrast with the prevailing culture — for 11 months, I wasn’t forced to “move on,” but instead allowed to let grief take its own journey through my soul.

Now, even that journey will come to an end. I say my final goodbyes to the dead, and rejoin the living.