One breath at a time
December 16, 2008
Every time we do taharah I have to look up how to tie the special knots.
On the whole, our procedures are simple. We gather upstairs in the funeral parlor, thank one another for coming, hug. We troop into the little downstairs room where a candle is burning and the person who has died is covered by a sheet, waiting for us. We say a prayer and ask her to forgive us any accidental offense we might cause her neshama during the process. We glove up and wash her, then de-glove and wash hands, then re-glove and enact our symbolic mikvah immersion using three buckets of water in a steady stream. Tehorah hee: she is pure, she is pure, she is pure.
And then we dress her in the simplest of white linen shrouds. Trousers, two shirts, a bonnet and a little veil, until by the end she becomes a tiny still white figurine made out of cloth. The hard part is tying the cords: around her ankles, around her waist, at the base of the bonnet to hold it on her head. Most of the cords (actually they're little strips of linen) can be tied in a pair of slip knots, but the one around the waist is supposed to be knotted in a way that represents the Hebrew letter ש (shin). Three little loops, pointing upwards. This is the first letter of Shaddai, one of God's names.
We are a small community, and a relatively fortunate one; we aren't called to perform this mitzvah often enough to become facile with the tying. (Besides, latex gloves make everything more difficult.) But with some concentration, we manage.
There's an arc to the proceedings. The energy level builds as we enter the room, begin our work, say the prayer, continue our work -- all in sacred silence, or as close to it as we can manage. It always feels to me like we need a ramp-down, too. Once she is dressed, there's nothing to do but lift her into the aron and close the lid and depart. This time one of my friends asked, "is there a prayer we say at the end?" There isn't, but we gathered and took a moment to breathe, to be aware of what we had done, to be thankful that we live in a community where we can do this work with people we care about.
And then we all went home. I wonder sometimes how the other members of our group deal with the aftermath. Whether they come away tired, or charged-up, or just taking the rest of the day one breath at a time.