"A very strange reaction..."
Feb. 23rd, 2005 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelleIn tonight's West Wing, it's revealed that Toby's brother has died. Toby, perhaps for the first time ever, becomes a wreck onscreen. It was hard to watch-- I have years invested in this character and these stories.
But then, while explaining to CJ what, exactly, happened to his brother, he says, "In the Jewish tradition, someone always has to sit with the body until the funeral."
And I remembered the very nice Eastern European man, small book of prayers in his hands, who sat at the back of the room when we said goodbye to my mother's mother. In that second, I didn't remember the haunting image of my grandmother, slack-jawed, frail, and coldly still, almost completely hidden by a shroud, with a fragment of broken pottery on each eye. I didn't remember the Rabbi handing each family member a rose from the arrangements to put into the grave before they began to fill it. I just remembered this man. I remembered that we asked him why he had chosen to be a shomer: one who watches over the dead, continuously reciting the prayers. I don't remember exactly what he said, but I remember he said he did it because it was the right thing to do.
And right there in my living room, I burst into sobs.
But then, while explaining to CJ what, exactly, happened to his brother, he says, "In the Jewish tradition, someone always has to sit with the body until the funeral."
And I remembered the very nice Eastern European man, small book of prayers in his hands, who sat at the back of the room when we said goodbye to my mother's mother. In that second, I didn't remember the haunting image of my grandmother, slack-jawed, frail, and coldly still, almost completely hidden by a shroud, with a fragment of broken pottery on each eye. I didn't remember the Rabbi handing each family member a rose from the arrangements to put into the grave before they began to fill it. I just remembered this man. I remembered that we asked him why he had chosen to be a shomer: one who watches over the dead, continuously reciting the prayers. I don't remember exactly what he said, but I remember he said he did it because it was the right thing to do.
And right there in my living room, I burst into sobs.
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