Jews have a very structured way of mourning. It happens in three stages, Aninut, which is the period from the death to burial, and then Shivah, which lasts seven days and is when the family receives mourners and condolences and then Sehloshim which is thirty days when those mourning can begin to resume normal activity.
I think the Jews are on to something.
Sarah’s first memorial was August 7th. I couldn’t make it. I tried. I looked at flights and my class schedule, and spent over a week trying to contort those two things together so they fit in some way that made sense and I couldn’t. Instead, I sat in my bathroom on Saturday, August 7th and cried for two hours. I doubt that will be the last time I will cry, but it was an important cry. I cried until there were no more tears. I cried until my eyes burned and tissues covered the floor. I cried until I was dehydrated and had a headache. I wasn’t physically at the memorial, but I was.
Today (August 20th) is Sarah’s 50th birthday and her second memorial in Crested Butte. Sarah and I are birthday buddies. My birthday is the 17th of August, a mere three days apart. Today, almost two months since Sarah’s passing, marks the end of my grieving — my version of Sehloshim.That doesn’t mean the tears will magically stop. No, it is just that now I switch from grieving, to mourning, from mourning to celebrating a life.
Some have mentioned that I should ask Sarah for a sign that she’s near but that has felt selfish to me. She has children and parents that need her spirit close to them far more than me. But yesterday I picked up my phone to mindlessly scroll through videos and the first one that came up was a music video of the band Yaz dubbed in Spanish. Sarah and I listened endlessly to Yaz’s “Upstairs at Eric’s” album throughout our senior year in high school. I’ve actually never seen a video of the band performing and I laughed out loud when I saw it in Spanish. A birthday present.
Memorials and funderals provide us with a moment to celebrate the person’s life, to acknowledge what they have meant to us, and the impact they made on the world. Funerals give us a chance to mark the end of something so we can begin a new something. It gives us an opportunity to say, “this person lived and it mattered”. Memorials are an epilogue to the story of a person’s life. The kind of book with a story that is so good you didn’t want it to end and the author gives you just a tiny bit extra to say, “these characters are going to be okay”.
We are all going to be okay.
