In mourning, we mark a significant loss

My Aunt Margie died a few weeks ago. And now that she's gone, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do.

I hadn't seen Aunt Margie very often for the past several years, but we were very close when I was a boy. She had a kind smile, she took genuine interest in our lives, and it was rumored that nations had gone to war just to get a piece of her famous chocolate roll. My brothers and I did, too.

Aunt Margie lived near San Francisco, and as her death approached, I began making plans to go to her funeral. I was attending a conference in Southern California. Maybe I could reroute my return trip through the Bay Area.

The call finally came when I was in Santa Monica, just before lunch. I was enjoying the warmth and the sunshine, but then my mother's name flashed onto my cellphone screen. Yes, Aunt Margie had died. The end was peaceful. In accordance with her wishes, there would be no burial rites. Her body would be cremated without ceremony.

No funeral? Not even a memorial service? But ... but ... she had just died! What was I supposed to do? I felt like I needed to do something about her death — to honor her, to memorialize her somehow. Was I supposed to just go on as if nothing had happened?

I remembered how different it was when my grandfather died. Unlike Aunt Margie, he received a traditional Jewish burial — there was a plain wooden casket, a graveside service with a eulogy, and, for his immediate family, a seven-day period of mourning called shiva.

During Grandpa's funeral, the rabbi invited us to participate by placing some earth into the grave. As each shovelful fell onto the lid of my grandfather's casket, it made a prolonged, hollow sound that I will never forget — thud ... thud ... thud — each a thunderous reminder that a human life — my grandfather's life — had come to an end.

These days, many people don't want funerals like that. In fact, many people — such as my Aunt Margie — don't want funerals at all. "I don't want you to be sad," some say, "I want you to celebrate my life." Others dismiss the tradition more humbly. "A weepy ceremony? A plot of land and a big stone with my name carved into it? Don't bother — you've got more important things to do with your time and money."

Common to both of these perspectives is a desire to de-emphasize or avoid focusing on death. And frankly, I don't like it. My Aunt Margie died. She had a good life; it ended; and somehow the world seems a little different now that she is gone. That's a big deal, and those of us whose lives were touched by hers should have had an opportunity to acknowledge her death — for her sake, for our sake, and for the sake of the world in which she lived.

Judaism teaches that a spark of God burns within every human soul, and that, therefore, when a person dies, a part of God dies, too. The divine presence shrinks with the death of every human being.

In response, after a person dies, Jews recite the Kaddish, our prayer of mourning, in an attempt to restore God's presence to the world. "Yitgadal v'yitkadash shmei rabbah," it begins, "May God's great name be magnified and sanctified."

I won't presume to tell you how you should mourn your loved ones' deaths, or what preparations you should make for your own. I will, however, encourage you to remember that human life is awesome and mysterious; that a person's death is often sad and always significant; and that we mourn best when our actions reflect these great truths.

My dear Aunt Margie has died. The sun no longer shines quite as brightly as it used to. May God's great name be magnified and sanctified.

Rabbi Mark S. Glickman leads Congregation Kol Shalom on Bainbridge Island and Congregation Kol Ami in Woodinville. Readers may

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