Grief is . . . interesting.
I thought I had simply handled Ma's death "well," but then the mack truck tootled along and flattened me. I had believed I was on the lofty madreiga of bypassing the boo-hoo-ness, but haha, haha, hahahaha. Joke's on me, sweet pea.
One Friday, I awoke with the physical symptoms of grief as well as the emotional ones. I could barely move. My face felt numb. But it was Friday. Friday does not allow for barely moving or numb faces.
Ma always said, "Keep on truckin'."
So I kept on truckin'.
At some point amongst the chicken trimming, vegetable slicing, kugel baking, baby feeding, baby napping, baby laundry, kitchen cleaning, plant watering, and various other tasks, movement became easy and feeling was restored to my face. I felt practically cheerful.
My aunt, a mental health professional, once observed that there are no words in Yiddish for the psychological maladies our generation suffers from; her opinion is that no one had time for it way back when.
In Europe, Babi didn't have to just trim the fat off chicken thighs; Babi had to select a chicken, take it to the shoichet, bring home the carcass, pluck the feathers, salt it, rinse it, salt it again (at least, I think two saltings are needed, right? I don't know), rinse it some more, and eventually be allowed to cook the bird.
After all that, who had time for depression?
I am definitely not saying I would prefer to be living a century ago in Hungary. I prefer indoor plumbing, thank you very much. But it reminds me that there is always a trade off. An unoccupied mind can be our own worst enemy.
Well, there's always Netflix.
3 comments:
I'm sorry that you're still struggling with grief.
I think that the absence of psychiatric terms from Yiddish, and from English, 100 years ago has more to do with the lack of understanding of mental illness in general rather than its absence. Minor "unusual" behaviours were probably ignored as individual eccentricity; more serious problems were dismissed as laziness, "nerves," "female hysteria," weakness and so on. If someone was affected severely enough to stop functioning in some way, they were dismissed as "insane" and institutionalised, as apparently happened to my great-grandmother (not in the shtetl, though). Similar to the way 100 years ago soldiers in World War I were shot for cowardice when suffering from what would now be seen as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Occasionally, mental illness could be seen as piety. If you know how to read between the lines, a surprising number of Hasidic rebbes show signs of depression, mania or social anxiety. This unusual behaviour be interpreted as piety or unintelligible holiness for someone already assumed to be great. Religious OCD in particular (excessive hand-washing, repeating davening until done "perfectly" etc.) could be understood as being super-machmir (still a problem today in diagnosing and treating religious OCD).
The reality is that serious mental illness does not go away, even when it's a short Friday in the winter. You do what you can to cope and beyond that, you cease functioning and either rely on those around you to take care of you or simply go without.
Hey DS! Would you believe that I posted a reply (or at least thought I did)? Now I see it didn't take.
True dat! Reb Nachman was depressed, right? And I know that OCD that manifests among yeshiva boys is quite common.
I'm not claiming that grief is the same thing as a serious medical condition. But there are levels of depression, from mild to horrific. I find I can no longer take solo leisurely walks, because then I dwell on my mother. I have to walk quickly which requires concentration.
Reb Nachman and lots more. I think Elie Wiesel writes about it in one of his books on Hasidism, either Somewhere a Master or Souls on Fire.
I'm sorry you can't take leisurely walks. I hope you find healing from grief over time.
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