Un-Shiva-ing

My brother phoned me on June 13th, 2025. I was driving my oldest son to his weekly PT. I probably wore leggings and a soft tee. Maybe a loose sundress. I should tell you, my brother rarely calls. When I say “rarely,” I mean, like once or twice a year. I should also tell you that my brother and I love each other. We just don’t talk often. I should also tell you, I rarely talk on the phone.

I answer his call.

I’ve bad news, he says.

OK, I say.

Mom died.

I didn’t expect that, I say. I might’ve exhaled first. I don’t remember.

I do remember, pulling over into a gas station, worried that I would begin to cry. I didn’t. Cry, that is.

Her funeral’s next week, he says, and, I’m going.

I don’t know that I’ll attend, I say, and, Can you send me the details, just in case?

Sure. I’ll send you what I found on line.

Thanks.

I’ll call Ava (my mother’s sister), he says, and, I already told Julian (my mother’s brother).

Thank you, I say, and, I don’t know how I feel.

Understood, he says, and, I love you, Sister.

I love you, Brother.

I pull back into our drive, turn to my son, and say, Give me a minute, because he was in the middle of unpacking a new scene he’s writing when the call came.

I wait a day and send a text to some of my friends:

I’ve not shared this news with anyone. I’m still processing. My brother phoned to let me know our mother passed. As you know, I’ve had no relationship with her since I left home at 14. Still, the matters of our hearts are so complex. I will be sitting shiva for a week in hopes of healing, her and me. This means I will be home in reflective space. If you’d like to come with food or love or hugs, that is tradition. If I’ve not expressed my gratitude for you enough, my apologies. Much, much love. R

What I didn’t know, because I’d yet to talk to my Rabbi, is that I wasn’t going to sit shiva. Not traditionally.

What I noticed, were the friends who responded. Some with kind thoughts. Some with calls. Some came with comfort food of noodles and bread and wine. Some did not respond, which is a response. Maybe they didn’t know how.

If you’ve read Tangled by Blood, my first collection, a memoir in verse, you know the harmful impact of my mother’s non-protection of me as a child. It’s complicated to respond to me, I’m sure, regarding my mother, my childhood, my assaults.

It’s also very likely that it’s just complicated to respond to me.

When I talked to my Rabbi, he asked, When did she die?

I’m not sure.

We need to know. We need to know how long she’s been gone. We need to know if her body has been cremated or not. If it has, you cannot sit shiva.

I should mention, I don’t know how to sit shiva. I’ve never sat shiva. My mother did not raise me Jewish. I usually say, She raised me quite confused.

While serving in the military (forty years ago), I studied a variety of spiritual paths, including Taoism, Buddhism, and Christianity. Judaism, or more specifically the esoteric underbelly of Kabbalah, stuck. I’ve woven in other practices over time, like moon bathing and crystal energy. I’ve woven in methods to heal, ways to balm my heart.

It takes three more calls between my brother to learn that she died on May 23rd. To learn that no one knows if her body has been cremated.

I’ve probably sat shiva long enough, I tell my Rabbi.

He’s quiet. He holds space.

I continue, I mean, I think I mourned the loss of my mother before I entered the school system. When she witnessed her husband, my stepfather, sexually assaulting me. I was not even five.

Quiet.

Or maybe when I fled home at 14 or 15. And she told me that any man is better than no man, when I told her after ten years of rape, I could not stay anymore. I told her this at the diner she waitressed. I can’t remember if I had my lawn bag with me. The bag I filled with Levi’s and 8-tracks and my track spikes.

Quiet.

Or maybe later, at her mother’s funeral. I was 32 or 33 and hadn’t seen her since I left. And here, she waltzed around pretending she knew me, pretending she had some bond or something. I pulled her aside, told her that I’d love to have a mother but we would need to acknowledge the damage…

She held her hand up, Stop, it said. Then she said, If that’s what you need then I need to wash my hand of you.

That was it. The official, End.

Quiet.

Somewhere before the age of five and my grandmother’s funeral, I sat shiva over the loss of my mother. Shiva looked like eating disorders and dating and marrying inappropriate partners and drinking shots of tequila chased by Bloody Mary’s. I didn’t know I was sitting shiva. Didn’t know I was mourning. I thought I was living and nearly dying through starving and suicide attempts. I thought watching destruction during the war catapulted me into a deeper death.

Quiet.

How many times can you die? Or sit shiva for another? I ask my Rabbi.

Here, 29 years after my grandmother’s funeral, and now, she, my mother, has left her body.

You can be thankful she is no longer suffering, my Rabbi offers.

Now I’m quiet. Oh! How much she probably suffered. How much those who bring suffering are also in pain. I don’t know what to do with this thought. I set it aside. For now.

What do I do while sitting shiva? I ask.

IF you can sit shiva, he reminds, and, the goal is to find good memories. To allow her memory to be a blessing.

I have none. I have nothing, I say.

You’ll think of something, he says.

We never find out if my mother was cremated or not, so I sit un-shiva and pen in my journal.

I call my brother.

Do you have good memories of Mom? I ask.

We always had food. She worked hard as a waitress, he says.

At more than one place, I say.

Quiet.

Thanks, I say.

I love you, Sister.

I love you, Brother.

Someone, I still don’t know who, sent flowers.

When the flowers begin to wilt, but still hold color, I clip the stems and leaves and “stencil” watercolor onto pages.

I’ve not worked with foliage and watercolor. I’ve not turned foliage into art, unless you count my backyard, my fruit trees, my gardens. I’m not sure why I’m making art with flowers for my mother’s death from an unknown, yet caring, person.

I’m not sure why I don’t ask my list of friends, Did you send the beautiful flowers for my mother?

I save the flowers. I press them between wax paper and place in collected cookbooks: Moosewood, 52 Shabbats, and Fire + Wine. I don’t know why I’m saving them. I’m not sure what I’ll do with them. My plan was to cut the watercolor stem stencil pages into bookmarks and gift them.

I don’t.

I’ve tried to journal about un-shiva-ing each day since the call from my brother. This practice has churned into an interrogation of mothering. I wonder if I’m a good mom. I wonder how my mom felt (if she felt) about her mothering/non-mothering ways. I sort through this in my journal, in my garden, in my dreams.

By now, I’ve purchased modge podge and cheap brushes and art tweezers. I purchased these, not for the flowers, but remembering a friend’s dresser, circa 1999. She’d completely coated the furniture in cuttings and images and paint. I loved the whimsy. Loved the idea. I’ve thought about this type of curation a lot since then and have wished to apply this to my lessons with my high schoolers in the Juvenile system.

Last night, a friend visits. Our plan was to “work.” When I say work, I mean the business side of art. But I’m tired and I tell her, I want to create something beautiful. She smiles. She nods. She’s like that.

She works until her laptop battery runs dry.

I interrupt her.

I’m making some sort of modge podge collage from the bouquet of flowers for my mother when she died, I say.

I think I’ll make two. Use both sheets of watercolor prints, I say.

I’ll give one to my brother, I say.

I podge. I modge. I need the tweezers to put flowers back together. I leave petals to fall where they will, like in my garden. Like in my heart.

I don’t know if my brother will like the art. Here, my way of creating a soft memory where none exists. I don’t know if he’ll understand what I’ve tried to do. I do know that it doesn’t matter.

After my friend leaves, after the pups fall to sleep, I stand beneath the Full Blood Moon and empty my hurt and some anger I that I thought I’d already released. I understand that my mother never did wash her hands of me. I understand the way her non-protection and her abandonment has curated much of my narrative arc. I understand that there is no “end” in relationships. Only movement. Forward or backward. We decide.

My un-shiva-ing is most likely also not over.

This, too, I understand.

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