Filling My
Mothers Grave

C41

A mitzvah
helps
confront
denial.

ARLENE EHRLICH
SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

t's the sound of it," they told
me. "It's that hollow thud-
thud-thud that tears your
heart."
"It's the sight of it," they told
me. `The image will haunt you
for the rest of your life."
"It's the thought of it," they
told me. "So barbaric. It will
drive you crazy."
"It" was k'vura. Filling my
mother's grave. Covering her
coffin with earth until it disap-
peared. Shoveling dirt over her
until she lay beneath a mound.
I knew they were right. I want-
ed to leave my mother's grave be-
fore it happened, before I heard
those heart-rending sounds and
saw those haunting sights. At
most, I wanted to sprinkle a sym-
bolic handful of earth over her cof-
fin. Just as strangers had dug her
grave, I wanted strangers to fill
it, after I had left the cemetery I
wanted to go on believing her
alive.
But the cantor insisted: "It's
a great mitzvah, you see. A sign
of respect for your mother. It's
chesed shel ernet, a selfless act of
kindness.
"The gravediggers will leave
the earth heaped beside the
grave. After we lower your moth-
er's coffin, those mourners who
are able will take turns with the
shovels and fill her grave. We will
continue until the coffin is com-
pletely covered with earth and no
sign of it remains. We'll build a
mound over and around the cof-
fin.
"If you want a halachic [Jew-
ish law] burial for your mother,
and if you want me to officiate,
then it must be done this way."
A halachic burial was precise-
ly what I wanted. I had begged
my brother: "Please, David, let
me have this for her. Shomrim to
keep a vigil until the moment of
burial. The women's cheurah kacl-
dish [burial society] to perform
tahara , the ritual washing and
purification of her body. A linen
shroud and a plain wooden cof-
fin. And in that coffin, a little
earth from Israel, that she might

Arlene Ehrlich writes from

Baltimore.

be buried in the land she loved
but never saw. She would have
wanted this."
Still, I hesitated at the cantor's
words. I was prepared for k'ria. I
would rend my clothing, for the
cantor would not cut ribbon. I
would respect his refusal to count
women in the minyan during the
shiva period at home.
But this? To hear the earth hit-
ting my mother's coffin again and
again ... to watch my brother and
our uncles and cousins shoveling
dirt atop my mother ... to prolong
the agony of saying goodbye? I
doubted I could bear it.
I doubted my brother could
bear it. At least outwardly, he
seemed to take her death harder
than I did. Again and again, he
broke down and sobbed, and no
one could console him. Now we
glanced at each other apprehen-
sively. "Yes," he final-
ly said with a sigh and
a nod. "Yes. It's right."
I saw my mother
die. I held her hand as
it turned cold as mar-
ble. In the slight hiss
of her respirator, I
heard the rustling
wings of the Angel of
Death. And still, when
the nurse said, "It's
over; she's gone," I
went numb with de-
nial. At that moment I
began to seal myself off
from myself.
I clung to that de-
nial. I wrote her eulo-
gy with dry eyes and a
steady hand, for her
death was mere illu-
sion. Again and again
during her funeral,
I promised myself to
call her later and tell
her all about it. I joined
her little grandson's
laughter, for it echoed
with her own. I felt her
presence with every
breath I drew, for tiny
fragments of her hung
like ice crystals in the
January air.
Yet Jewish tradi-
tion, whose mourning
rituals I had so eager-

ly chosen, conspired against my
comforting denial. At every turn,
it asked me — now gently, now
insistently — to face the truth.
The swiftness of her funeral and
burial. The starkness of her cof-
fin and her shroud. The chanti-
ng of Eil Malei Rachamim.
Jewish tradition tested the
wall I had built around myself.
The wall held.
Then, when we reached the
cemetery — disaster. "A one-hour
delay at least," the cantor told us,
for the gravediggers had not fin-
ished their work. "They're only
about three feet down," he ex-
plained. "They're complaining
about stones and rocks and frozen
clay. They say they've never had
a harder time with any plot in
this cemetery."
An hour's delay stretched into
two and then more. A dozen

times we climbed a little hill to
check the diggers' progress. A
dozen times we returned, de-
feated by the cold. We formed a
miserable huddle.
I began a cynical calculation.
The old people were growing
tired. The young people had com-
mitments. I could plead extenu-
ating circumstances. I dreaded
the k'vura, and now I had an ex-
cuse to call it off and insist on an
immediate, if non-halachic, cer-
emony.
Then I glimpsed my mother's
coffin, and the shomer beside it,
waiting in the hearse. And I knew
that I could not leave her lying on
the ground, beside an open grave.
In the end, I could not leave her
burial to strangers.
Finally, the grave was ready.
Her nephews carried her up the
MOTIER'S GRAVE page 144