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FACTS & ARGUMENTS

A death in the family brought on excruciating cavalcades of mourners, Julie Goldenson writes, but it gave me a sense of community

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Behind closed doors, I am often a witness to my clients' deep sense of loneliness. Sometimes, this loneliness is the result of dissolution of relationships due to death or breakup. Sometimes, it's more general feelings of isolation and non-belonging as they struggle to forge meaningful connections in an increasingly digital and impersonal world. As a psychologist and, more importantly, as a human being, I sit with them in their loneliness. And I understand it intimately.

I grew up in a tiny and rapidly dwindling family of introverts. Multiple, successive deaths were minimally commemorated. My father, who died suddenly, had not wanted a funeral.

My remaining family, who did not wish to burden anyone with their grief, mourned unobtrusively, independently and largely without ritual.

Consistent among these losses was my lack of opportunity to say goodbye. People who once occupied a large space in my life simply vanished, leaving me with a growing sense of interpersonal and intrapersonal fracture.

The recent death of my mother's long-time partner was an entirely different experience. I saw what grief looks like when rooted in community. Through this ritualization of grief, a seed of appreciation sprouted for a culture I had long since disavowed, admittedly, without much exploration.

At my elementary school in the 1980s, we said the Lord's Prayer in unison every morning. Sitting cross-legged on the crumb-laced carpet of my classroom in Markham, Ont., we read passages from the New Testament. I was self-conscious about my background and I longed for a last name without a precious metal prefix.

As I got older, there were opportunities for increased exposure to Judaism. I rigorously avoided them.

After my father died, my mother met a man more culturally and religiously Jewish than we were. I offered up a parade of uncompelling reasons for declining invitations to his family's religious celebrations.

I could not, however, avoid his recent shiva, having stayed with my mother in the time immediately following his death. For several days, people came by to express condolences and offer support. They noshed on a seemingly self-replenishing supply of crust-less tuna finger sandwiches and sometimes the talk felt a bit too close. Few things are more excruciating for introverts than facing cavalcades of mourners, many of whom you have never met and with whom you have little in common, save for some connection to the deceased. Shiva was exquisitely painful, yes, but it was also deeply moving.

People came from afar, some from another continent. The volume of people wishing to pay respects was both a testament to the quality, decency and reach of my mother's partner and his family, and also seemed to reflect people's own need to join others who were bereft.

In true form, my mother and I were telling people, "Don't worry about dropping by, we'll catch up after."

They came anyway and she was touched, despite her protests. Her generally quiet house was full of chatter, clatter and some laughter and tears and exhausted mourners seemed temporarily buoyed by the company and conversation.

There were times that my mother and I would retreat. As I listened from upstairs, part of me felt as if the quiet refuge of her house was under siege, but I also started to find myself comforted by the noise. When people finally left, my mother was tired and talked-out, but had offers of plans and support for the tough days and months ahead.

We "got up" from shiva; we were free to return to our day-to-day lives. Despite quite literally hiding for much of the process, I felt an odd sense of sadness about the end of this overwhelming ritual and the departure of the community of those I came to see as benevolent invaders.

There were a number of other rituals I found poignant. There was beauty and comfort in knowing that someone sat with his body from the time of death until his funeral. I briefly sat with him, too, and this was my first experience in physically confronting death and saying goodbye.

It was a sad but very tangible end to a relationship that had become increasingly positive and important to me. The shovelling of dirt and filling the grave, first by the immediate family then by the rest of the mourners, was the final act of respect. We shovelled the heavy semi-frozen soil until the plot was entirely full, making his death hard to deny and easier to integrate.

While I won't be a captive to these practices (as I was for shiva) there will be other mourning rituals during the days, months and years to come (kaddish, yahrzeits, the unveiling of the gravestone). I am still struggling to digest the over-abundance of edible and emotional sustenance that was delivered to our doorstep.

With this loss, I gained an appreciation for having an opportunity to say goodbye, an understanding of the value of clearly prescribed rituals around a death and, perhaps most important, the benefit of experiencing a sense of community amongst the living.

Julie Goldenson lives in Toronto.