For anyone with any sense, we’re all stuck in our homes for what seems like the last 6 months.
I received a call on Monday from a cousin that his father had just passed on Saturday. For a Jew this presents some major complications in a time like this: The funeral is supposed to take place within a day or two but since his father was living in NJ and he in Boston this made it almost impossible for him to actually be there as his father was laid to rest.
Fortunately, he was able to contact a funeral director to pick up the his father’s remains – even though the cause of death was suspected to be CORVID-19 and the nursing home was riven with it. Several in the home had it as the confirmed cause of death. In fact, his father was to be tested on Friday but they ran out of test kits and by the time they received more, he was gone.
Amazingly, he was able to verify the location of a grave site and be reassured that when his father was buried, it was in the proper location.
There is a tradition in the Jewish faith that after a death there is a “Shiva” – a ceremony not unlike a Wake but taking place AFTER the burial. How to do this with friends and family scattered all across the nation and the inability to travel?
Welcome to the world of Zoom.
Many of us have been using it for meetings in this time of restricted travel and limited group size but the son told me that the Shiva was to be a “virtual” gathering via Zoom. He promised he would send a link to the gathering and, when I checked my email, there it was with all the particulars of passwords and time.
I decided I’d use this solemn occasion to experiment by using our large-screen TV in our family room rather than forcing Shirley to join me sitting around my laptop or retreating into our office and using her enormous iMac.
I did a quick experiment and disconnected the HDMI cable from the cable box and plugged it into the laptop and there was a 50” reproduction of the 17” laptop screen. There was one hitch, though; since the camera was in my laptop lid, it had to be within cable’s reach of the TV which created a rather wide angle view of the two of us.
At the appointed hour, we joined the Shiva, and, as the son mentioned, Zoom produced the standard “Brady Bunch” opening. The Zoom screen will permit (as far as I know) only 25 “boxes” for participants but the limits are much greater as the others are visible if you scroll forward.
The service that is part of the Shiva was led by a rabbi – playing a guitar – and an officiant who led the service. She used the Zoom feature of “sharing” the prayer booklet so everyone could see the prayers and take part. Ironically, a traditional Shiva requires the mourner family to remain at home and friends visit. The Self Quarantine we’re all experiencing takes this up to an exponential level.
With the service over, the Shiva became something that I’d never experienced before with “real” gatherings of this type: there was time for each person at the “gathering” to share remembrances of the departed. It was heartwarming, as the exchange went around to see the reactions in each face to the stories whether sad, happy, funny or just memorable.
As I look back on this amazing event I noticed that the one, similar feeling that I often feel at funerals of people who I hadn’t seen for many years; that I’ve missed a major opportunity to at least talk, if not visit, with those who have passed and how easy it would have been to just pick up that phone that is in our pockets every day of our lives and just use it.
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