Jewish Chronicle, 13 August 2004

We journalists spend much of our lives highlighting the iniquities and other intolerable acts visited by our fellow human beings upon each other. So much is, sadly, all too necessary. What we are much less good at, however, is showing the good that people do.

Sure, we commemorate deeds of heroism, extraordinary feats of valour or derring-do. But we tend to overlook the small, daily things which are actually the largest of all because they so greatly expand our humanity – the innumerable acts of kindness or love with which people bring consolation to the afflicted and make a better world.

There is surely no more lonely a place than bereavement. The sense of abandonment can be devastating, both for the dying and for those who are left behind. Yet even this state can be transfigured by the kindness of strangers.

On the day before my widowed mother died, five weeks ago today, I was inexpressibly moved by an act of love towards her that went way beyond the call of duty in the Jewish Care nursing home where she lived. My mother had suffered much, and for long, although her passing was gentle. On that day, as her life ebbed away, she was in a partial coma, unresponsive to any stimulus.

To my surprise, the home’s aromatherapist suddenly arrived. Without further ado, she carefully uncovered my mother’s wasted limbs and with extreme tenderness applied her oils and unguents, all the while expressing endearments and loving encouragement. She sprinkled fragrant essences on her pillows, and put on the soft, soothing background music that my mother had come to love in the years in which she had drawn comfort from this treatment.

Nor was this all. The aromatherapist took a quick lunch and then came back and did it all over again. When eventually she tore herself away, she wept as she bade my mother goodbye. She understood, from her care of that body, that what was ending here was a monumental struggle. And what was so moving was that even though my mother could not respond, and for all we knew was quite unaware of what was going on, she was treated right to the end as a person with particular likes and desperate needs; and even more touchingly, as if she was still as alert and responsive as she had always been. It was a reaffirmation of humanity, both her own and that of the person who was giving so much of herself.

I was more moved and consoled by this, and by the many other gestures by the home’s staff which upheld my mother’s dignity and reaffirmed her personhood, than I can express. The caring instinct towards both the dying and the living is the one thing which helps counter the extreme loneliness which threatens to swamp you at such a time.

The Jewish mourning rituals are particularly helpful in this respect. For they help connect the mourner with both the living and the dead in a way which brings both consolation and healing. The shiva enables you to float through that first strange week in a kind of protected bubble. The whole set-up makes you feel cared for: the visitors who battle through heavy traffic to attend evening prayers, or who bring home-made cakes or a ready-roasted chicken, or who just sit and listen. All this kindness, by definition, repeatedly connects the mourner with other people. It prevents you from retreating into your own solitary pain.

Above all, what it does is to enable you to focus upon the departed soul with more intensity than you have ever done in the past or will probably ever do again. This forges the first link in a new and very different chain of connection. There is comfort in this, as there is — perhaps surprisingly —in the various restrictions on behaviour that tradition enjoins for the prescribed eleven months of mourning, and which are relaxed to some extent after the first thirty day period has passed.

For these restrictions, and the period of time that they mark, provide a structure to hang onto: a scaffolding that furnishes a sense of order and of continuity that are in themselves both a crutch and a set of benchmarks that help you come to terms with your loss. And both the restrictions and the ritual of saying Kaddish provide the impression of a continuing connection with the one who is mourned. It is like a long, slow, metaphorical letting-go — or maybe, a gradual induction into a new normality.

The strength of one’s family and the affection of friends are of course the best antidote to grief. But it is the unexpected kindness of strangers that perhaps most powerfully reaffirms the optimistic sense that it really is love that makes the world go round.