I have always liked rituals and traditions. Some are tiny traditions that simply bring me joy, like having coffee outside on the front porch most mornings. Some help me stay connected, like my annual Christmas cards and letters to extended family. And now I'm developing rituals related to sadness as well. It doesn't feel like our current culture has many widely-accepted rituals for grief, beyond a funeral, so I'm having to make them up, or look back through history, to figure out what I can do.
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On a more prosaic note, I am making good progress in keeping up with some of the day-to-day aspects of life. The dog has been a challenge for me, because Ada was always Andrew's responsibility. He walked her for up to an hour a day, and did all the training with her. With the help of my mother, who's been staying with me for the past month, I'm doing most of the walks, and I've started looking around for dog groups where the dog can socialize. Dog groups are also for me, because I need to balance my responsibility to keep my dog happy with my need to start making additional friends.
7 comments:
Purple is also a colour of mourning - not an imperial purple but a subdued shade.
When we were children, a period of mourning would be marked by the house curtains remaining closed during the daytime over a period of weeks - it doesn't seem to happen now.
Thank you for taking such good care of Ada.
When my grandfather died, my grandmother pulled out all the black clothes she'd saved up over the years. She thought it was a bit of silliness, but it's what one does, one engages in the ritual. For a solid years, in keeping with the traditions of her valley in Austria, she wore black every single day, no matter how hot it was. He died in the summer. By the next summer, her clothes were more relaxed and her grief less. And then, on the day after the first anniversary of his death, she packed it up ("den ganzen Kram bin ich endlich los!") and symbolically laid aside her grief.
I've always loved her way of engaging in ritual while kind of mocking it - she knew she needed to join in, and the ending of the ritual period was just as important to her as the beginning of it. She kept mocking the ritual, but never stopped. That was her way, and it really helped her.
I agree. As a society we tend to be very awkward around all the issues associated with loss, grief, pain. We are so focused on being a youth oriented, everything should be beautiful culture, that anything that reminds us of the other very real and balancing part of life just throws everyone off balance.
Ah, yes. Our society is a bit uncomfortable when it comes to death... I never knew this until I went through it myself. The implied behavior is that after the funeral you're supposed to wash your hands of it and move on. But I found that the days during the funeral were the easiest... the hardest were the days after... And those are the ones in which it's hardest to find friends. Good luck to you. I'm glad you've found a way to deal with things on your own terms.
--Heidi E
I think you are doing beautifully!
Keep looking to the future it will brightin
So, I am not very religious, but orthodox Judaism provides what seem like useful rituals to me. It comes with a lot of god related stuff, which does not do much for me, but most of the rituals and customs seem good to me.
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