Transcription:
The moment of saying it’s your presence that he needs. It’s not words, it’s not anything, just go back to where he is and just touch him, just hold his hand. And the reason that that got me so much is a personal experience I had when I was a teenager. One of my best friend’s grandmothers had passed away. And I knew this woman just really not very well at all. She lived with the family of my best friend. So when I’d go to visit, I would see her. Very polite. How are you? And that would be about it. And even in those days, you know, we weren’t buddy buddies with our friend’s parents. We weren’t on first name basis with our friend’s parents. This wasn’t, it was, you know, definitely a protocol of, of all of that. And when the, you know, the grandmother passed away, I had a break at school. They lived around the school. I walked over, went to the Shiva house. My friend was not there, but I stopped in and I saw her mother, my friend’s mother sitting quietly in the living room. And I went over and I just sat down and I didn’t say anything because I honestly did not know what to say. And my friend’s mother just reached over, took my hand, pulled it back into her lap. And with her other hand, just put on top of my hand and said nothing. And we sat there for 10 minutes. And I walked out and I could feel that her demeanour had changed. And in that moment, I knew this is never going to be about words. This is always going to be about just being able to be present. And that’s how our Shiva traditions, that’s what they tell us is go and just be there because it’s awkward to pay a Shiva call. You never know what to say. And you’re not supposed to greet the people because you’re not supposed to ask them how they are, because you don’t want them to engage in chit chat, because that’s not fair to them. And they’re not hosting you. And so it’s this weird kind of social interaction where all of our social norms aren’t there anymore. And a lot of people don’t like to pay Shiva calls because they say I never know what to say. And the idea of saying yes, but the point is, don’t say. Let somebody else start the conversation. Let them start the conversation. Let them express and engage. You being there is what they will remember. The words you say are out the door. They’re not processing those words anyway. So just that idea of being able to physically be present, feel awkward about it, but understand that these are thousands of years old traditions that are telling us humanity has stood where you’re standing. It was awkward for us too thousands of years ago, but we got it. We understood that we just simply need to be there for each other and the importance of that. If there’s an estrangement, would Shiva still apply? Yes, Shiva would still apply. It would apply because it’s more than that person and more than you in the moment and more than whatever may – all our relationships are strained at some point. It’s part of relationship. All our relationships will experience the highs and the lows and the roller coasters and the I love you, I hate you and the – all of it. But the idea of understanding for someone who’s estranged from someone that these are the greater questions of human bonding, the connections and the disconnects. To even take a few days of the Shiva to process and understand what exactly was that – what happened? What was the estrangement? Where did – where was my peace in that? Or am I just blaming the other person, which everybody knows can’t possibly be true. So it’s a moment of being able to again pull away from everything the world out there wants and says demand it from me in a week. Right now, I’ve got a lot I have to look at that, you know, if it happened in this relationship, are there seeds of this elsewhere? Am I repeating a pattern somewhere I don’t want to repeat? If there’s still significance and importance, even if there’s an estrangement, we all, as I said, go through these highs and lows. And it doesn’t negate the importance of what we’re supposed to be processing and feeling and as we move forward from the moment.