The Blessing of Anger
by Aaron Hamburger
JULY 14, 2009 TAGS:
Shortly before my father’s life ended, the nurse on duty advised us to leave the hospital room where his failing body struggled against the machine keeping him alive. “You don’t need to remember him that way,” she said.
No sooner had he given up his last breath than the reality of hissing oxygen tanks, wailing ambulances and waiting room vigils came to an end, replaced by the task of remembering his life. For my family, that meant following the mourning rituals of Judaism, which imposed a comforting sense of order on the disorienting experience of death. Yet for me, those rites seemed an unwelcome burden, a distraction from the complex mix of emotions I felt about my father’s passing.
I sat crying in the waiting room when one of my brothers invited me to join him in singing psalms of praise to God beside my father’s lifeless body, a custom rooted in the ancient Jewish superstition of warding off evil spirits. I declined, too overwhelmed to sing much of anything, let alone a hymn to God.
Exhausted and emotionally spent, we retreated to the house in the suburbs where I’d grown up. We had work to do. The funeral would be held the next day since Jewish law mandates that the body be buried quickly. I called family and friends, while my brothers arranged for services at our house during shiva, the seven days of mourning that follow a death. There was barely time to answer a call from our father’s rabbi, asking if we needed any help. “We’ve got it all covered,” said my brother, grinning with pride.
That evening, we had to visit the traditional Jewish burial society my father had chosen. The funeral director patiently enumerated the various traditions of mourning, including the tearing of one’s clothes in grief. Did we want to fill the grave with dirt ourselves or cover the coffin with a symbolic sprinkling of earth and have the rest filled in for us? (One of my brothers wanted to try, but the rest of us demurred.) How many chairs did we want for services in our home? How many prayer books, and what kind?
Before and after the funeral, and in the days that followed, we read books on mourning and discussed their contents. Were we allowed to shave and when? Were CEO’s exempt from observing the full period of shiva? Which social gatherings were we allowed to attend within the next 30 days? The next 11 months? How soon might the Torah allow us to go to a Michigan football game to cheer on my father’s beloved Wolverines?
With the endless debate over each newly discovered rule, my anger and indignation grew. Are you crazy? I wanted to scream. Our father has just died and you’re talking about shaving and Talmud?
Though it was technically forbidden for a family member to leave the house of shiva (or maybe because it was forbidden), I looked for any excuse to flee that hothouse of Jewish mourning. I went to the grocery store to buy more soda for our guests. I hit a drugstore and wandered the aisles, taking comfort in the sterile lighting, the bland Muzak, the ampleness and anonymity of modern conveniences.
After the week was finished, our family flew away to our corners of the country, making pledges to study Talmud, curb routine behavior and say Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, every day for the next 11 months.
Coming home to New York was a relief; I felt as if I’d escaped a yeshiva. I shaved. I went back to work. I stopped by my liberal synagogue a few times, then fell out of the habit. The whole process of mourning felt false, disconnected from the loss we’d suffered.
And yet the more I remembered my father, the more I realized that his funeral and shiva had been uncannily true to his spirit. While alive, my father would never have wasted time discussing feelings. A brilliant physician, he often mocked his colleagues in psychiatry, a practice he considered as scientific as alchemy. He was far more concerned with the economic welfare of his family than their emotional well-being, a terrain I believe made him uncomfortable.
Feeling was a language my father didn’t speak, though I demanded that he try. I might as well have expected him to speak fluent Spanish. Our mismatch of communication styles often led only to fights and confusion. I’d hoped that grieving his death would bring a final clarity, not more misunderstanding. The anger I felt at my family and my religion was meant for him, but since he was unavailable, I had sought more convenient targets.
I am glad religious ritual provided my family a necessary and helpful road map through the treacherous landscape of mourning and memory. Yet for me, my anger has been equally necessary and helpful, as were other feelings like sorrow, resentment, alienation, and, yes, remorse. Because that troubling, turbulent mix of emotions is as true a way to remember my father as singing psalms of praise to a silent sky.
Aaron Hamburger is the author of The View from Stalin’s Head and Faith for Beginners: A Novel. He teaches creative writing at Columbia University.
No sooner had he given up his last breath than the reality of hissing oxygen tanks, wailing ambulances and waiting room vigils came to an end, replaced by the task of remembering his life. For my family, that meant following the mourning rituals of Judaism, which imposed a comforting sense of order on the disorienting experience of death. Yet for me, those rites seemed an unwelcome burden, a distraction from the complex mix of emotions I felt about my father’s passing.I sat crying in the waiting room when one of my brothers invited me to join him in singing psalms of praise to God beside my father’s lifeless body, a custom rooted in the ancient Jewish superstition of warding off evil spirits. I declined, too overwhelmed to sing much of anything, let alone a hymn to God.
Exhausted and emotionally spent, we retreated to the house in the suburbs where I’d grown up. We had work to do. The funeral would be held the next day since Jewish law mandates that the body be buried quickly. I called family and friends, while my brothers arranged for services at our house during shiva, the seven days of mourning that follow a death. There was barely time to answer a call from our father’s rabbi, asking if we needed any help. “We’ve got it all covered,” said my brother, grinning with pride.
That evening, we had to visit the traditional Jewish burial society my father had chosen. The funeral director patiently enumerated the various traditions of mourning, including the tearing of one’s clothes in grief. Did we want to fill the grave with dirt ourselves or cover the coffin with a symbolic sprinkling of earth and have the rest filled in for us? (One of my brothers wanted to try, but the rest of us demurred.) How many chairs did we want for services in our home? How many prayer books, and what kind?
Before and after the funeral, and in the days that followed, we read books on mourning and discussed their contents. Were we allowed to shave and when? Were CEO’s exempt from observing the full period of shiva? Which social gatherings were we allowed to attend within the next 30 days? The next 11 months? How soon might the Torah allow us to go to a Michigan football game to cheer on my father’s beloved Wolverines?
With the endless debate over each newly discovered rule, my anger and indignation grew. Are you crazy? I wanted to scream. Our father has just died and you’re talking about shaving and Talmud?
Though it was technically forbidden for a family member to leave the house of shiva (or maybe because it was forbidden), I looked for any excuse to flee that hothouse of Jewish mourning. I went to the grocery store to buy more soda for our guests. I hit a drugstore and wandered the aisles, taking comfort in the sterile lighting, the bland Muzak, the ampleness and anonymity of modern conveniences. After the week was finished, our family flew away to our corners of the country, making pledges to study Talmud, curb routine behavior and say Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, every day for the next 11 months.
Coming home to New York was a relief; I felt as if I’d escaped a yeshiva. I shaved. I went back to work. I stopped by my liberal synagogue a few times, then fell out of the habit. The whole process of mourning felt false, disconnected from the loss we’d suffered.
And yet the more I remembered my father, the more I realized that his funeral and shiva had been uncannily true to his spirit. While alive, my father would never have wasted time discussing feelings. A brilliant physician, he often mocked his colleagues in psychiatry, a practice he considered as scientific as alchemy. He was far more concerned with the economic welfare of his family than their emotional well-being, a terrain I believe made him uncomfortable.
Feeling was a language my father didn’t speak, though I demanded that he try. I might as well have expected him to speak fluent Spanish. Our mismatch of communication styles often led only to fights and confusion. I’d hoped that grieving his death would bring a final clarity, not more misunderstanding. The anger I felt at my family and my religion was meant for him, but since he was unavailable, I had sought more convenient targets.
I am glad religious ritual provided my family a necessary and helpful road map through the treacherous landscape of mourning and memory. Yet for me, my anger has been equally necessary and helpful, as were other feelings like sorrow, resentment, alienation, and, yes, remorse. Because that troubling, turbulent mix of emotions is as true a way to remember my father as singing psalms of praise to a silent sky.
Aaron Hamburger is the author of The View from Stalin’s Head and Faith for Beginners: A Novel. He teaches creative writing at Columbia University.
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