Farewell, My Friend - Excerpt
The Cohen Family as told by Jackie Cohen
The Chevra Kadisha, or burial society, is one of the first organizations established in any Jewish community. Its members, esteemed for their understanding and practice of Judaism's basic beliefs, are entrusted with attending and preparing the bodies of the community's deceased and escorting them to their final resting place.
I began researching the subject of Jewish burial and bereavement practices in the early 1990s when my parents' health began to decline. Too often, during my visits at my parents' home in Oklahoma, we attended funerals for their friends. During these memorial services, I steeled myself for the inevitable-the funerals of my mother and father.
In 1996, the events that I had dreaded came to pass. My parents were an ultimate love story, so entwined in life that my mother often made my dad promise to let her die first, so she wouldn't have to live without him. In his last five years, my father's frail health convinced me and my sisters that he would precede our mother in death, but, to our shock, our mother died suddenly one morning in February of a heart attack. Our father followed his beloved wife in death two months later.
As I coped with the cascade of emotions that accompanied each of my parents' deaths, the Chevra Kadisha took over. In keeping with Jewish custom, the group washes and dresses the body of the deceased in an elaborately prescribed manner. The body is not embalmed, as Jewish belief stipulates that it should decompose naturally, with no artificial means of preservation. Refrigeration is permitted, and the casket is opened for viewing for only one hour. The Chevra Kadisha cares for the body from the moment the soul departs until the body is buried. Assisting with the preparation and burial of the dead is one of the greatest mitzvot (good deeds) in Judaism, and many Chevra Kadishas, like this one, receive neither recognition nor thanks, since their duties involve intrinsic honor.
One of the members of the group is the shomer, or watcher. The shomer accompanies the body from the place of death through its ritual preparation and, finally, to the burial ground. The body of the deceased may not be left alone. The responsibility of acting as shomer is given to a member of the Chevra Kadisha who displays exemplary moral behavior.
After my mother's death, I entered the room where her body lay in an open casket. I found an acquaintance, Jonathan Jeffy, sitting beside the casket, murmuring prayers. Jonathan and I had attended religious school and confirmation together, and he had stayed a part of the synagogue when most of our classmates left for college. I had always imagined the shomer as a wizened, bespectacled, hunched-over little man from eastern Europe, but all such elders were dead, leaving Jonathan with the honored role. Jonathan was again the shomer for my father. He greeted me with the ancient words of consolation to all Jewish mourners: "May his life be for a blessing."
"Your life is a blessing to so many," I blurted, feeling awkward about a desire to embrace him. But Jonathan did not reply. In respectful solemnity for the dead, he politely stepped aside and continued his vigil as guardian-guardian of lives and deaths, and of links to ancient, comforting traditions.