I had a profound, important conversation with my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Sunday evening.
We were visiting the home of a congregant from our synagogue for shiva minyan, the service held in a house of mourning. The friend (T), himself well past middle age, had just lost his mother (she was in her 90s). Since we had made plans to go to the service, we were able to tell H about it earlier in the day. We covered a few salient points, including the fact that we were going to T’s house because his mother had just passed away (Jenn’s choice of words)/died (mine) and he was sad, and one of the things you can say is, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Once we were there, H was terrific. She has attended Shabbat services with us essentially since she was born, so she’s very familiar with the basic liturgy, and she also had some friends there (the Rabbi’s kids) so she wasn’t bored.
The really interesting conversation began when she noticed a mirror completely covered with paper towels and asked me about it. I answered that it was a Jewish tradition to cover the mirrors in a house of mourning for a week after a person dies. When prompted, I repeated the explanation a couple of times, then she explained it to me with the brilliant circular logic pre-schoolers are so good at (something to the effect of “The mirrors are covered because they’re covered”).
She then asked, “Why do we say, ‘I’m sorry’?” Picking up on her confusion, I explained that we are not saying “sorry” as an apology (her frame of reference for that word) but as a way to show the person that we understand they’re sad because someone they love has died – that they’ve “lost” this person. She made a couple of comments about how our friend’s mother wasn’t sick any more (true enough), and then pulled out the crowning glory of the evening’s conversation, “Everybody dies, but some people are alive.”
I was a bit ferklempt at the end there.
Oh, by the way: this entire dialogue happened while she was sitting on the throne, going potty.