Paying a Shiva visit - from the other side of loss

Before my father died, I naively thought of a shiva call as a sacred mission - to show up, t engage or distract the mourner and make them stay in their low chair and cater to their needs so they do not have to lift a finger.   I knew the drill: enter without knocking, don't speak until spoken to, follow the mourner's lead or ask about a happy memory, and say the requisite line before leaving: "Hamakom yinachem etchem...." Straightforward, scripted and easy to follow. 

I found it difficult to see someone at such a low point before... but now, on the other side of loss, I find it excruciating.  It brings me back to the brink of my own experience - how helpless I felt, how bereft and shocked by my new reality and my reactions to it.  And the worst part was how easily I could recognize other members of this awful club by the expressions on their faces - before they even said a word.  

You can't imagine it until you've lived it, and please please please don't try.  But I'll make an effort to describe what may be going on for the mourner....

All of a sudden, in the worst moment of your life, you find yourself throwing an open house party for everyone you ever knew.  No chance to clean up or prepare for a full house and no agency in the organization of events.  Your living room is repurposed as a gallery for receiving guests and prayers and whatever toilet paper you have on hand simply won't be enough.  And through all of this, you're not supposed to get up... or do anything for yourself.  Even water is supposed to be served to you by relatives and friends and everyone looks at you with sympathy and pity.  

You are strong, you are capable, yet for this week, you are stripped of your agency and forced to simply exist and face your new reality.  It stinks.  It makes you face your mortality and inherent weakness.  Things happen around you, people taking care of you, visitors arriving to comfort you... while at the same time, looking to you to help them understand how such a terrible thing could happen.  

This thing that can't possibly be real because it is so devastatingly awful that you can't yet comprehend what life looks like on the other side of this upheaval.  

Before... I found it uncomfortable to be quiet.  So much easier to fill the silence with something I convinced myself was distracting or comforting.  

But now... from the other side... I'd rather not speak.  

Because I know now that no words exist that are sufficient for such moments.  That is why visitors are supposed to be quiet until addressed by the mourner.  Because there is nothing to say.  Presence is enough.  

And yet, it is so incredibly hard.  The initiation of one more member to the ranks of loss is painful.  It's a club no one wants to join and one that leaves an indelible mark on your soul.  Knowing loss and not knowing loss are two entirely different worlds; one cannot comprehend the other. 

Paying a shiva call from the other side of loss puts me back in the headspace of my own experience layered beneath the sight of new and visceral pain.  It's also having the knowledge that all the good intentions fall woefully short - like a tiny bandaid on a gushing wound.   But it's all you can do, so you do the best you can.  

Consoling mourners is still a sacred mission - but now it spans far more than I ever understood before.  When someone's life is changed so irrevocably, their need for comfort, support and understanding does not end with the week of shiva or the month of shloshim or even the year of aveilut.  

It involves showing the mourner they still have value, not for who they *lost,* but for who they *are,* and following through with promises and friendship throughout the year and beyond - not just rubber necking to watch the initial carnage.   It's about reaching out periodically to check in and find out "what are you up to?" rather than "how are you?" because the former is a concrete answer while the latter is constantly evolving.  And it's about listening, without speaking, and letting your friend share what they are thinking and processing so they can feel heard.  

The basic human dignity of presence in the face of pain is at the same time the smallest and greatest gift of all.  

I remember the most comforting faces where those of members of the club because they looked at saw beyond the pity to the compassion of fellowship and understanding.  Their eyes reflected knowledge of both the pain of the moment and the potential of a meaningful life after such terrible loss.  I saw these friends braving their own painful memories in order to show me that I just might make it through the week of shock and into the new normal on the other side and I continue to be deeply grateful for their sacrifice. 

All this knowledge makes paying a shiva call from the other side of loss so much more difficult than before... and yet it's so much more important than it ever was.