Shiva Call

by Lloyd B. Abrams

It is customary in our school for announcements of the deaths of staff member’s or their loved ones to be posted on the bulletin board over the time clock, neatly typed on white index cards. Usually, bad news of this sort travels quickly through the grapevine, and the official notice is just a formality.

To me, as a young teacher first starting out, the notices involved staff members with whom I had little in common. For one, they were usually the older, senior members of the staff. For another, I kept pretty much to myself and thus, I hardly knew them. I realize, with the recent deaths of two staff members, and the unexpected and sudden death at age 46 just a few days ago of the wife of a third, that even though I still keep my distance, I have much more in common now with them than ever before.

What scares me the most is that I see laid out before me a steady progression of such notices—of calls for bereavement for members of my extended school family. I have joked in the past that when I go, I would prefer that this notice be posted: “Please do not honor Mr. Abrams’s wooden pass.” This would be very much in keeping with my cynicism at age 38. But knowing that expectations and points of view change with age makes me wonder how I will feel about all of this tomorrow, next year, or in the next decade.

To pay our respects, the members of my car pool and I decide to stop today to make the Shiva call at the home of the bereaved; this will be my first one for anyone at from the school. Driving by myself, I probably would not have detoured, since I try hard to avoid such involvements. I tell myself that I will be doing a good thing—that I’d be a mensch. Naturally, our fellow colleague is there with close members of his family, including his father who also works in the school. His mother dutifully serves us coffee and pastries. Does grief show? There seem to be no outward tears, no moaning, no sobbing.

Defensively, I turn inward to watch and absorb. Strangely, I feel simultaneously comfortable and calm, and then realize that the ritual of the Shiva call serves its purpose quite admirably…

I observe: On the wall, the blown-up Bar Mitzvah photograph/paintings of his sons who are now 22 and 26. A detailed rehashing of the last hours of her life with the implication of possible medical malpractice. The small black swatches of cloth pinned to the chests of close family members. The women busying themselves in the kitchen, staying busy, making sure everyone stays well-fed. Lame jokes about getting supplies from the father, who is in charge of the supply room. They furniture, wall decorations, drapes and bric-a-brac, slightly out of date. The reactions of my colleague—do they share some of the same inner feelings with equal intensity? The interplay between the family members, where nuances of the interactions about one of their sons in this raw emotional setting seem embarrassingly revealing. Mounds of cookies and pastries. Other colleagues arriving and introductions being made. How horrible the children must feel. Life must go on. “Thank you for coming.” “Take care of yourself.”

Riding home in the backseat of the car, on this beautiful spring day, with is promise of nature’s rebirth, I envision myself on an inescapable pathway—call it a treadmill?—towards my own inevitable end. Will I be sitting in the same school cafeteria 15, 20 or 25 years down the line hearing underpaid teachers bitching about conditions of is it the same all over? Will I be walking upstairs to room 104, carrying my mandatory mathematics lesson plans, teaching algebra and trigonometry to students who seem to be increasingly non-caring, unmotivated, dull or whatever? Am I not somehow different—unique—unlike my fellow tired and burnt-out civil servant workers with whom I can’t—or just won’t—identify?

My own children, who are now 6 (soon to be 7) and 13, seem to be automatically—almost magically—passing through the stages of development toward their own destinies. Am I just going along for the ride? They attend school, they’ll go on to higher education, they’ll most like form some sort of lasting harmonious monogamous relationship—though who really knows what will be?—and then the nest will be empty, the homo sapiens’s biological need to be fruitful and multiply will be fulfilled. And then what?

I wonder and yearn. And I shudder and shriek from within.

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May 2, 1985, with minor revisions, May 7, 1998…Copyright © 1998, Lloyd B. Abrams