The death of a loved one is always hard to bear. How much more unbearable is the grief when it’s one’s own child.
In this essay, a father talks about the devastating loss of his teenage son, and how the shiva ritual helped him past those first days he could not have navigated on his own:
The aftermath of this horror helped us gain a profound respect for organized religious life, Jewish and otherwise. After the death knocked us numb and we couldn’t reason or plan anything, a synagogue committee devoted to helping those who grieve leaped into action, and the labors of those on the committee impressed us greatly.
People who didn’t know us personally were there to help us navigate through the shock of death: They prepared our house for the shivah, the Jewish mourning period, and prepared food for us and the scores of friends and relatives who showed up at our door.
At the same time, the writer notes, the seven-day period of ritualized behavior eventually ends, and one is expected to return to the living. But a parent can never “return” after such a loss. So many little things trigger memories and tug at the heart. It’s important to recognize the limits of rituals, he writes, even while acknowledging the comfort they can bring:
Remembering our son and honoring him with our daily actions are the most important parts of the coping process….The only advice I can give a parent who loses a child is to soldier on. As years move by, pleasant thoughts of the departed will replace the nightmares and the pain. The torment will always be there, but it will recede.
