Today marks the end of the shloshim<\/i> period for my father; he died thirty days ago today. In the various stages of ritual mourning, I have moved down a notch today.\r\n
It\u2019s odd how strongly I feel about this, since I have not been observing the rituals of shloshim<\/i> anyway. It\u2019s not even technically true\u2014one should traditionally count from the funeral service, not the death, and the funeral service for my father was delayed for various reasons, so the shloshim period doesn\u2019t properly end until Thursday. Still, somehow, it is very much in my mind today.\r\n
Some of y\u2019all know the traditions, but just in case and in brief: there is a week after the funeral for sitting shiva<\/i> (meaning seven<\/i>), which is intense mourning and really nothing but intense mourning. Then there is the following 23 days of shloshim<\/i> (meaning thirty<\/i>) during which one still mourns, but not as intensely\u2014a mourner is expected to return to work and to daily life, but is still addressed as a mourner and is expected to avoid most kinds of parties and celebrations, and other aspects of \u2018newness\u2019 such as wearing new clothes or making major purchases. Then, at the end of the shloshim<\/i> period, someone mourning a parent has until the end of the year to be considered a mourner and treated as one, although they can still engage in most aspects of the world. More or less. It\u2019s complicated. There are rules.\r\n
And as I said, I haven\u2019t been following the rules and I don\u2019t expect to start now. I came back to work after less than a week. I celebrated Khanike (and Christmas, too). I have worn new clothes during the last month, and enjoyed wearing them, and in fact I am wearing a rather snazzy new waistcoat as I type this. I don\u2019t think that has slowed down my grieving process. Although, to be sure, I could be wrong about that.\r\n
By the way, among my favorite rules for mourning: the (male) mourner does not cut his hair during the shloshim<\/I> period, and may cut his hair after the end of that period only when someone has said to him \u201cyou look terrible, get a haircut already.\u201d No getting a haircut just because you think you look terrible, or because you generally get a haircut every eight weeks or whatever. I do look terrible, as it happens, but no-one has told me so yet. I may get a haircut this week anyway.\r\n
As with a lot of traditional Jewish ritual, I find a certain comfort in learning and knowing the ritual, without participating in it. I also have passed through several stages of wanting to tell strangers that my father has died, not wanting to have to have that discussion, wanting again to tell people, being surprised that people I haven\u2019t told don\u2019t somehow know, wanting, and then not wanting, and then wanting, and then not wanting to be asked how I and my grieving are doing. I am mentioning it in this Tohu Bohu for the first time, anyway.\r\n
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I>
-Vardibidian.\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger has been bound bound in filial obligation for some term to do obsequious sorrow.","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20870"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20872,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20870\/revisions\/20872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}