I step into the viewing room of my great aunt’s funeral, tissue in hand, arm linked with my mother’s.  We roam the room, looking at old family photos, celebrating her life, before we file into the third row and take our seats.  Soon the rabbi walks to the podium.  I don’t know any of the faces around me besides my mother, father, and grandfather.  The rabbi is speaking in Hebrew.  I look to my dad to see if he’s okay.  My cousin Rick, my great aunt’s son, gives family members black ribbons, and the rabbi slits them.  Children of the deceased put it on their left side, any other family member puts it on their right.  At a certain point in his homily, those with a ribbon must tear them the rest of the way.  My grandfather, my great aunt’s brother, appears calm and relaxed.  I’m on the verge of losing it.

According to Elisabeth Kübler Ross, a psychiatrist who wrote the groundbreaking book “On Death and Dying,” I am experiencing the first stage of grief: shock.  My palms are sweaty, heart is racing, stomach in knots.  The room loses oxygen by the second. 

Kübler Ross wrote in her book, “Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.”  I’ve attended a few funerals at a young age for distant relatives that I don’t remember so this is the first time I am aware of grief.  Then guilt hit.  Three weeks before she died, I thought, My brother and I should visit Aunt Hanna to prepare for her passing, to be able to say goodbye.  We never got there.

My father knocks on my door late afternoon on Monday, December 1st, and breaks the news to me.  “Oh, wow.  Okay.  Are you okay?” I ask him, barely affected.

I can’t help but question myself and wonder why I don’t feel anything when I hear she passed.  Why am I not breaking down?  Why am I not angry?  I mourned more immediately after the loss of my dog in 2008.
“Do you want to go to the funeral on Friday?” my father asks.  No, nobody wants to go to funerals, especially not a teenager.  I tell him I will go, I need to say goodbye to her.

Funerals are sad and uncomfortable for a simple reason fear.  Having to stare at the reality that death can take anyone at any time is daunting.  However, funerals help a person to grieve and be sad and let go so they can move on and be happy once again.

As I sit in the third row of my great aunt’s funeral listening to my cousin Rick read the eulogy, tears stream down my face.  Every uttered word triggers a memory that I did not cherish as I should have.  Ah, there’s that first stage again.

The pallbearers move the casket from the building to the hearse.  I still find it hard to believe my great aunt is in there, or that she’s gone, and I’ll never be able to see her again.  According to Kübler Ross, many of the stages of grief overlap; I am in shock and denial.

Denial is a time when life doesn’t seem to make any sense.  It allows people to heal when they are hurting; they become stronger as they begin to move forward.  Denial, in a sense, helps people to process their loss.
Christian, a freshman in the creative writing program at CASA, had another take on death.  Being only eight years old when first experiencing grief, he said, “I was a kid…Death didn’t strike me.”  For a long time he was in denial thinking he could still visit his grandfather and uncle and be back in time for dinner.  It was not until his mother dragged him to a cemetery and explained it, that he could grasp the concept of death.  Anger moved him more than anything.  He reluctantly attended the funeral, finding comfort in being surrounded by family.   The viewing lasted two to three hours, and with the mind of an eight year old, Witmer believed he had finished the grieving process.

Cemeteries usually bring me peace and serenity; now as the casket is carried from the hearse to the grave, an eerie silence blankets the mourners.  As the casket lowers, we shovel dirt onto it, half-filling Great Aunt Hanna’s grave.  A few people mutter that it is too much and step back.  Anger, depression, guilt overwhelm me.  Why didn’t I say goodbye when I knew I should have?  

“She always used to kiss us on the mouth, which I thought was really gross,” I cry to my mother, with a chuckle, “but I would do anything to have one more kiss from her.”  She says, “There’s a million things people would change if they could, but you have to find a way to stop blaming yourself.

Guilt can be healthy if it allows us to open up and learn from our mistakes.  David Kessler, a world-renowned expert of healing and loss coauthored two books with Elisabeth Kübler Ross.  In “On Grief and Grieving,” he stated, “You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it.  You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered.  You will be whole again but you will never be the same.  Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to.”

Patrick Schmitt, another freshman in the creative writing program at CASA, had a completely different reaction from both Witmer and me.  He said he was surprised at his uncle’s suicide, but rather than let it affect him, he just accepted it.  “I can’t do anything about it,” he told me. 

The last stage of grief, acceptance, acknowledges that someone is gone physically; this new reality is permanent.  Kübler Ross wrote, “When we have passed the tests we are sent to Earth to learn, we are allowed to graduate. We are allowed to shed our body, which imprisons our souls.”  It is impossible to replace who’s been lost, but it helps to make new connections, new inter-dependencies, and new meaningful relationships.  Part of acceptance is to rekindle broken relationships and become involved in the world again. 

Love never dies, and I will see my Great Aunt Hanna again some day.