What are some good last minute offerings to a dying person?
Visiting the Sick (bikkur cholim)
One aspect of this holy work of visiting those who are ill is coming to terms with our own health challenges and mortality. One of the most helpful ways is to start by trying to understand your personal death awareness by taking a moment and recalling the number of times today you’ve thought about your own — not someone else’s — death or limited span of life. Maybe you thought about your age and evaluated your own progress towards certain life goals. Or perhaps you briefly experienced a fear of dying. Some days you may act and think as if you’re going to live forever. The purpose of this exercise is to raise your personal death awareness so that you may begin to perceive an entire range of choices about your life and death that you might not have been aware of.
From this perspective of humble awareness of one’s own limitations and mortality, we enter the world of those who are ill, and try as best we can to be there to support them, where they are, as they are, as who they are, while they navigate the challenges facing them. Sometimes just being there, in silence, is enough. Just having an open heart can provide tremendous support.
Pending Death, Just After Death
When death is imminent, it is appropriate to include the vidui (“confession”) prayer in support of the dying person (goses). Alison Jordan, RN, MS, MFT, writes, “The Vidui provides an opportunity to unburden a heavy heart, return to a sense of hope for wholeness, and to let go of life peacefully. I continue to study the notion of death as atonement. In the meantime death is seen as a natural and G-d given experience to be encountered and met, hopefully in the comforting presence of others. Wholeness of healing is understood not in physical terms, but as redeeming acceptance, reconciliation, and peace.” See her website – Vidui Variations
Rabbi Stuart Kelman writes, “The traditional function of the vidui at the end of life is to provide words for the person who is in the process of dying. Our tradition is remarkably silent concerning those who are standing by the bedside. Alison Jordan has defined vidui as a prayer of confession to God. The deathbed confessional is said by or for the goses (dying person), but another type of vidui may be recited by others when addressing God concerning the relationship to the goses.”
Additional customs:
Jewish law defines a “primary mourner” as a parent, sibling, child, or spouse of the deceased. Traditionally, all primary mourners who are present at the moment of death perform the ritual of kri’ah (tearing of a garment) at this point, and continue to wear the torn clothing as mourners. Others who are present in the room at the moment of death also perform the ritual of kri’ah, even if they will not be mourners. This could include physicians, nurses, caretakers, visiting friends, relatives, or others.
Other customs include:
- Closing the eyes and mouth of the deceased
- Straightening the limbs
- Covering the deceased, often with a sheet
- Placing a candle near the head of the deceased
- Opening the windows in the room (if weather is problematic, windows are opened briefly, then closed again)
- Covering the mirrors (at home – this does not apply in a hospital or other facility)
Between Death and Burial
There are two areas of interest when we discuss what happens between death and burial: care of the body of the deceased and what mourners should do during this period. This period between the time of death and the burial is called aninut.
Mourning Starts
A man who mourns during aninut is called an “onen“, a women an “onenet”. This is when most people feel like they are “in-between”. An individual in this situation has no religious obligations beyond attending to the practical necessities of arranging for the funeral. The Jewish understanding is that an onen/onenet is not able to focus on anything other than the immediate issue of the burial, and is not expected to be capable of any ritual observances (and may even be prohibited from doing them), even those that might otherwise be performed on a daily basis (such as reciting Sh’ma).
The Taharah Ritual
In Jewish tradition, we are all holy beings created in the image of the Divine. This means that when we die, our body is considered a holy thing and should be treated with respect and dignity. Jewish tradition also considers the holy spiritual aspect of a human being, the soul, to be eternal, returning to the Divine upon death. So when a person dies, we have a special ritual to prepare the body for burial and at the same time, midwife the soul from this world to the next. This beautiful ritual is called taharah, from the Hebrew root having to do with purification. The ritual includes physical washing of the body along with a powerful spiritual liturgy, and a pouring of water, all intended to assist the soul on its journey.
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