Might as well start blogging again with a bang, rather than a dribble. I’ve just had a couple of really interesting, deep experiences that need to be processed for posterity; they’re too important to just let float away down the river of memory.

What happened? Well, twice over the last couple weeks, I stood guard over a dead body.

Wha...?

Ok, let me back up.

A few months ago, during the high holidays, I was really struck by a testimonial that a congregant stood up and gave (and the accompanying sermon by the Rabbi) about a congregant who had recently died, and how those close to her had gathered to wash her body and prepare her for burial (in Jewish tradition, this is called “tahara”). The experience sounded like it had been full of grief but yet also full of meaning and holiness, and transformative through its raw closeness to death, which is one of those core experiences in which we get an opportunity to glimpse what truly matters.

I was really struck by that story, and by the Rabbi’s insitence that raw experiences like that could be incredible teachers and guides on our own spiritual pathways. He invited anyone who was interested to come to a class that he was putting together on Jewish traditions of the mitzvot (commandments) of Bikur Cholim (visiting the sick) and Nichum Avelim (comforting mourners). I signed up.

When I went to the class I found that in addition to talking about visiting the sick and comforting mourners, what we were also talking about was putting together a Chevra Kadisha (burial society), which was a new thing for our synagogue. A Chevra Kadisha helps to ritually prepare bodies for burial, both by washing and dressing the deceased before the burial (a process called tahara), and by “standing guard” over the body between tahara and the funeral (a process called shemira or sh’mira). We had an amazing teacher come and teach us about tahara, and even had a field trip where we visited a Jewish mortuary in Lafayette in order to “practice” tahara on a dummy. I was really drawn to the idea of being a witness as well as a participant in this transitory time.

Now on with the story. Last week I got a call from the Rabbi, who told me that the day before, there had been an unexpected death of Stuart, a young father in our congregation. He needed someone that day to come act as a shomeret (guard) for Stuart’s body at the mortuary in San Francisco--was I able and willing to come? Yes, I said, and a couple hours later, after rearranging my schedule and changing my clothes, there I was at Mt. Sinai (a Jewish mortuary), showing up for my first official shemira with no idea what I was supposed to be doing but ready to do it anyway. I had looked up Stuart’s obituary, and the directions to the mortuary, but that’s all I knew. You’re supposed to read psalms, the Rabbi’s assistant had told me. Ask for Helen.

So I arrived at the mortuary with my copy of our reform prayerbook (hoping there were some psalms in there--I’d never checked), and walked in what I hoped was the front door and asked the first person I saw for Helen. They fetched her promptly and then Helen, who was a lovely, gracious middle-aged woman in a dark grey suit, welcomed me kindly and showed me into the chapel room. The chapel room was a smallish room right inside the main entrance full of dark wood and black leather furnishings, where presumably family gathered before or after funerals. The room was empty--I had expected Stuart to be there, but Helen told me he was upstairs in the refrigerator, right above us. She told me there were drinks and chocolate there if I needed them, made sure I knew the deceased’s name (I got the sense from here that saying the deceased’s name was important as a part of the process), and gave me a bunch of different prayerbooks and books about the mourning process from their library. Some people like to read out loud, she said, and some people just sit quietly. There aren’t any specific prayers, but you might like some of these. Then she left me sitting on one of the black leather couches, surrounded by books.

I felt very small and shy, uncertain and off-balance in the way that I get whenever I’m in a brand-new situation. And this situation was brand-new in so many ways: I’d never been a shomeret before, I’d never been to Mt. Sinai before (I’d hardly ever been to a mortuary of any kind), I’d never really looked at psalms as a group before, I’d never known this person who now was no more. I really wanted to do the right thing, but I had to feel my way into it, because there was no one there to guide me except a variety of books.

It was quiet there, and somber, and easy to slip into a state of reflective calm. I paged through the books Helen had given me, and I thought about the transition from life to death and to the traditions we humans (and specifically we Jews) had put together to give the transition meaning. I thought about what I assumed I should be doing in my role as shomeret--guarding, accompanying, witnessing, providing a friendly, comforting presence to a confused and sorrowing spirit. I read bits out loud from some of the books, both in English and in Hebrew whenever the book had transliterations (I don’t read or speak Hebrew, which I have to say also contributed to my overall sense of “what if I’m not doing this right?). I sang a little when I found something I recognized or remembered (Oseh Shalom, Shema). I made sure to say Stuart’s name from time to time--I guess out of a desire both to personalize the process, and to ground it in some sort of reality. Mostly I tried to stay open, and present, and focused on the transitional moment I was in, without getting distracted by my own anxieties around mourning or “doing it right”.

I spent about 4 hours sitting in the chapel room, thinking about Stuart and about dying and mourning. Helen checked in on me a couple of times, and at the end of my shift, Rachel (another member of our new Chevra Kadisha) arrived, looking very somber in all black (it hadn’t occurred to me to wear all black, although I had changed my casual clothes before I’d left for Mt. Sinai into something dressier, out of a desire to show respect). As soon as Rachel and I saw each other we hugged, which in hindsight was a great way for me to begin the transition out of my solitary and somber headspace back into “ordinary” life. She sat on the couch with me and I showed her all the books I’d been reading, and pointed out to her what I thought had been helpful or interesting. After that we hugged again and I left, walking out of the mortuary right onto the bustling city street to my car.

Everything seemed very big and alive and full of movement. Partly this was the fact that I was in the city (I’m used to being a country mouse on the other side of the bay), but definitely it was also having spent the previous 4 hours in a completely different way of being. I kept the radio off, and looked around me while I drove. As I left the city and crossed back into more familiar territory, the experience receded and I felt relatively back to normal.

Afterwards, that day and over the next few days, I told a few people about what I’d done (mostly because I like me a good shock headline like “hey guess what I did today? I spent the day in a mortuary”), but overall I had a hard time talking about the whole experience. I didn’t want to say anything about it on social media (it just felt too weird), and I didn’t really run into too many other people I could tell about it without seriously disrupting whatever else I was supposed to be doing at the time. So I didn’t really get a chance to process the experience much.

Then, just as that died down, there was another request (over email this time): a congregant’s mother (Kay) had died, and the family had requested both tahara and shemira. I wasn’t feeling quite brave enough to try the tahara this time, but volunteered to take a shomeret shift at Mt. Tam Cemetery late in the afternoon after the tahara had been done.

I arrived at Mt. Tam Cemetery a little before 4pm. I’d never been there before, but had relatively clear directions from the woman who’d been coordinating us as to where to go--which turned out to be a small room in the mausoleum. The room had a couple of couches, some somber decorations, and right in the middle of the room, a coffin covered with a blue and silver drape that had a Star of David on top. There was also a lit yartzheit candle on one end of the coffin. Inside, presumably, was Kay.

I was met by Gail, the shomeret who’d been there before me. She had a copy of the Tanakh that one of the other shomrim had left (good thing, since this time I hadn’t brought anything with me), and told me that she’d been going through various psalms and reading them to Kay, but that she’d “skipped over a lot of them that seemed overly violent or bloody.” She said she’d just been talking to Kay, and reassuring her that someone was there watching over her. That really resonated with me, especially since Kay was so obviously right there in the room with us, not like before when the actual body we were guarding was somewhere inaccessible.

Gail didn’t stay long, and then it was just me and Kay in the cold, cold room. (I had not thought ahead to the fact that since I was in a mausoleum, and they were keeping an unpreserved body there overnight, it would be close to refrigerated in there. Next time, I will definitely bring layers.)

I read psalms to Kay, sang a little (one thing I will say for a mausoleum is that there are great acoustics), and talked to her a little (but not too much--I wanted to stay as quiet and attentive as possible). I straightened the drape over her coffin. I still felt shy and uncertain, but again determined to just sink into the moment. I tried, like Gail, to project a sense of reassurance and caring. There’s a theory that right after death, the soul is confused and upset (because they are reliving their entire life, the good, bad and inbetween), so it lingers around the familiar body for a while until it gets the strength to make the final transition. Whether or not this is actually true, I don’t know--but it felt meaningful to me, so I wanted to make sure that if Kay was still hanging around, she felt protected and cared for. It felt good to me to bring a sort of “mama” energy to the room.

Like Gail, I found a lot of psalms that didn’t feel quite right or appropriate, so I skipped around a lot, and only read the ones out loud that felt right. I also spent some time just reading the Tanakh (I found myself caught up in the story of Samuel and Saul, but never finished). I was interrupted a couple of times by Jon, the manager at Mt. Tam, who was closing up for the evening and wanted to make sure I had the key and knew where everything was. It felt a little strange to keep having to bring myself out of the quiet, attentive space to social interaction with a stranger around logistics, but it was over quickly.

Julia came to relieve me at around 6pm, and I passed on what I could to her about the logistics and what I’d been doing. We chatted for a few minutes about other things, but that started to feel weird to me with Kay right there in the room, so I took my leave. It was dark when I left, which felt sort of appropriate, and eased the transition back into the “real world”.

I didn’t think too much about the experience over the next few days, probably because it needed a chance to sink in. There was a Chevra Kadisha meeting a couple of days later though, and we all got a chance to talk about what our experiences with both Stuart and Kay had been. I found myself feeling really passionate about wanting to be better educated as to the “what” of the rituals--what *were* we actually supposed to be doing while we were sitting with someone? I would have liked to have more of a plan or a toolbox or to have known what the traditional and/or our own group expectations were. But I also wanted to know the “why” of the rituals (for example, why psalms? What was the meaning there, and how could I/we relate to it?) I really wanted to be able to collaborate with other people and find my individual as well as our collective meaning around shemira.

How does it feel now, about a week or so later? I feel really honored and humble and incredibly grateful for being given the chance to witness and accompany this important, universal transition. I feel like I am truly being of service and giving love in a way that I haven’t felt in other situations. I feel like it’s given me an opportunity to stretch and grow my own spirituality and connection with what is real and what is beyond what we can know with our senses. I feel, well, okay, transformed in some way I don’t even quite understand yet. I feel like I sort of relate to the word “holy” a little better now.

I feel like I want to do it again.