Dr. Jonathan Weinkle welcomes longtime friend and community leader Nancy Zionts to discuss grief, Jewish mourning rituals, and the healing power of shiva. From personal losses to building community support, they explore how tradition creates space for love, memory, and recovery after death.
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What does it mean to truly sit with grief, and how can ancient traditions help us do it well?
In Episode 16 of Healing People, Not Patients, Dr. Jonathan Weinkle sits down with Nancy Zionts in a warm, intimate conversation (complete with a schnauzer guest appearance) about Jewish practices of mourning, the superpower of “ruling shiva,” and why structured rituals matter for healing. Nancy shares her journey, from becoming a kaddish for a young widow at age 18 to supporting countless families through loss, while reflecting on her own experiences as a daughter, widow, and mother.
The discussion covers the structure and purpose of shiva (the seven-day mourning period), the importance of community, food, storytelling, and music in mourning, saying Kaddish, the value of “new to me” memories, and why grief is ultimately an expression of love. They also connect these themes to broader work on end-of-life conversations, the Closure project, and how healthcare professionals can better support patients and families facing serious illness and death.
A rich, heartfelt exploration of ritual, resilience, and what it means to honor the dead while continuing to live.
Episode Mentioned:
Episode 1: high-priests-of-medicine-has-healthcare-become-its-own-religion-ep1
Episode 7: healing-and-humanity-ideas-for-the-next-generation-of-medicine-ep7
Blog Post(2020) : https://healerswholisten.com/listen-self/
About the Show
Healing People, Not Patients explores ways to enhance medical practice by infusing it with compassion, humanity, and a deeper sense of purpose, aiming to help healthcare professionals rediscover the "soul" of their work. Framed around the four questions of the Passover Seder, it probes how to transform medicine for the better, promoting an empathetic and supportive approach that empowers patients to create meaningful, sober lives, while drawing on Jewish teachings about community and friendship.
"Our theme song, "Room for the Soul," is available on Bandcamp at https://jonathanweinkle.bandcamp.com/track/room-for-the-soul."
About the Guest
Nancy Zionts is a longtime community leader in Pittsburgh’s Jewish community, known for her deep knowledge and practice of Jewish mourning rituals. A chemist by training and strategic planner by profession, she has been instrumental in initiatives like the Closure project focused on improving end-of-life conversations. Nancy has supported countless families through shiva and mourning and continues to lead services and build community support for mourners. She is also a mother, grandmother, and widow who draws on personal loss to help others.
About the Host:
Dr. Jonathan Weinkle is an internist and pediatrician who practices primary care at a community health center in Pittsburgh. He strives to be a "nice Jewish doctor" focused on patient-centered healthcare, emphasizing effective communication and holistic well-being.
He teaches the courses, “Death and the Healthcare Professions” and “Healing and Humanity” at the University of Pittsburgh, authored the books Healing People, Not Patients and Illness to Exodus, and runs ‘Healers Who Listen’, where he blogs on healing and Jewish tradition. Once an aspiring rabbi, he now integrates faith and medicine to support other physicians and his own patients.
🌐 Website: healerswholisten.com
🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jonathan-weinkle-3440032a
📸 Instagram: @HealersWhoListen
📘 Facebook: @JonathanWeinkle
[00:00:00] There's a strong Jewish imperative called Hakarat HaTov, recognizing the good. It's often done with great humility, acknowledging that we may not have earned the blessings we have in life or feel that we especially deserve them, so we should feel all the more grateful. In Genesis thirty-two:eleven, Jacob takes stock of his family and fortune, and even though he's facing a reckoning with his estranged and possibly enraged older twin, Esau, he pours out his thanks to God, saying, "I'm unworthy of all the kindness and truth that you have shown your servant.
I crossed this river twenty years earlier with only my staff, and now I've become two encampments." It's been a bit more than twenty years since I first met Nancy Ziants, but I also feel humbled by our long friendship and by the mentorship and partnership she's given me over the years. She spent more than three decades as chief program officer of the Jewish Health Care Foundation, during which time our work together included her reviewing the very earliest paper that would morph into the book version of Healing People, Not Patients.
We ultimately worked with [00:01:00] JHF's CEO, Karen Feinstein, to make sure that I had the support to see that book through to publication. It's a good bet that without Nancy's help, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast. In fact, she's already directly impacted one other episode, episode seven, Healing and Humanity: Ideas for the Next Generation.
The students I interviewed there all had in-class mentoring from Nancy as they developed their projects, including coaching on how to make an elevator pitch, narrow the focus of a project that's too broad, and make a vague idea into one that's measurable. And last, but certainly not least, Nancy was a driving force behind the creation of the Squirrel Hill Health Center, where I've been practicing medicine my entire career.
Nancy and I could, and often do, discuss anything under the sun for an hour. This particular conversation is about grief, something we don't spend enough time on in medical training, but definitely should. It's a pleasure to invite you to join us.
[00:00:00] All right. Nancy, welcome. welcome to my home. Right. Welcome to your house. this is a very different experience for me. I'm gonna try to ignore this screen in front of me- Okay ... because usually I'm recording somebody who's hundreds or thousands of miles away, and here we are a couple of miles from my house in your dining room with a little guest in front of us.
Little schnauzer. Hi, Max. We can just see his snout. So for those of you listening on audio know that there is a schnauzer who will keep popping up over the table
every once in a while .
Hi, buddy. Okay. So- I know way more of your bio than you probably want us to go through. But, Nancy Zients is a dear friend from a long time ago, with whose family I am deeply enmeshed, and bits and pieces of that will come up
But we are here this evening to talk about a topic that I know more about than I ever expected to because of work that you made me do. That's right. So let's get started. we're here to talk about grief, actually. Yeah. And, in sort of getting to know this, [00:01:00] one of the things that happened when you and I first became friends and started working together was very early in my med school career.
I'd known your late mother-in-law, a blessed memory, Shirley, since I was five years old. so I've been an honorary Zients that long. Correct. However, you and I started working together right around the time I started med school, and very shortly into that period, both of us went through some pretty serious losses in our families.
And I discovered that you have many superpowers, but one of them is that you rule shiva. You understand that period in people's lives better than almost anybody I know, and I'm really curious to understand, first of all, as we're talking, not everybody in the audience is Jewish, kind of- Right
explaining that process and how it is that you acquired said superpower. So I grew up in Montreal Canada. And, I grew up in a non-religious household. But as many Montreal Jews, we are very familiar with the Jewish [00:02:00] calendar. We're very familiar with Jewish rituals. and we take them very seriously.
Similar to Pittsburgh, we have only one Jewish funeral home in Montreal. So we were all raised with the same sort of rules and regs as to what one does. I had s- some losses in my life when I was in Montreal early on. I became, I had a friend of mine who lost her husband when she was...
Now that I think about the ages, it's ridiculous. He was 31. She was 29. And when I think about that now, that, at the time, we knew it was far too young, but I didn't put it in the context of my life as I grew older. And before he died, and he was a an affirmed atheist, he called and asked me if I would be his kaddish, his mourner, the person who would take on the responsibility of keeping his name and his memory alive within the rules and regs of Jewish tradition.
He called me before he was disconnected from a ventilator [00:03:00] My parents were still alive, and in Jewish tradition, if your parents are still alive, you are not supposed to be somebody else's mourner without asking your parents' permission. So I asked my parents' permission, and I told them I was gonna do it anyways, but I asked their permission.
So it was one of those things. That doesn't surprise me at all. Right. So I became, at an early age, I was 18, I became responsible as somebody's mourner. And I learnt what that was. I learnt that was about saying the mourner's prayer. in those days, because I didn't go to an Orthodox synagogue, we're a Conservative synagogue here, it was once a day, and it was also marking the anniversary of his death, and it was also making sure that as they grew up, his children, who were two and five when he died, knew who he was and were, I would give them-
the date every year once they reached the age of majority and then it was their responsibility as well. And so I still do that. I actually just got the letter the other day. It comes up next week on, the 24th into the 25th. [00:04:00] But that was how I learnt first about setting up a shiva for this young widow.
And the shiva it is about sitting for seven days and giving yourself over to the process of remembering and of taking yourself outside of community and your daily routine to give yourself over to that period of grief. And I remember a rabbi at the time telling me that if you give yourself over to the process, you don't try to say, "I'm gonna still go to work, and then I'm gonna come home."
"And then I'm gonna have people come over to the house, and I'm gonna feed them," and whatever. If you give yourself over to that period of time, removing yourself from obligation of your daily life, but giving yourself over to the obligation of mourning and of grief- It can be very healing, and seven days seems to be a long enough period of time for that initial physical change your body goes through, the [00:05:00] sleeplessness or the lack of appetite-
for those things to at least form themselves in a way that allows you to go on and then reenter back into community. So I learned it at a very early age. And if you think I'm an expert at shiva, you should meet my older sister, Susan- ... who adds to her understanding of the ritual, her understanding of the catering component of it, which is a whole different issue.
And I'm married to somebody who really gets- Right ... that piece too. because food and taking care of people's- ... primary needs is also something that is a part- ... of the process that- ... allows you to come out of the shiva period, the seven-day period feeling better off than you started, not worse off than you started.
And I was always taught that the first three days of shiva, because while it's a seven-day period, we don't conduct or sit on the Sabbath, which- ... if you have a seven-day period, it's gonna be in there somewhere. And so the first three days are considered the heaviest period of mourning, and the last three days are [00:06:00] considered, I won't say lighter, but if there are tunes in the prayers that are said, they're often said in the first three days and sung in the last-
three days. So you learn all of those things over time. And I also became one of those people in the community that is not afraid to go to a shiva house to conduct a service ... in a shiva house, to talk to mourners. To that does not intimidate me at all. Yeah. And you and I have both been called upon- Yes
or volunteered to go to the houses- Volunteered ... where we didn't know the family- and just, stood up because somebody needed to. So- that's a really important piece. And I was, in this community, ... proudly in our synagogue, the first woman to do that, to be added to the list.
And when I was first added to the list after my father died in 2002, uh, in those days, sometimes they would let a woman come and lead a service and sometimes they wouldn't. And then almost quickly thereafter, without my saying anything, which was amazing, they realized that if they were calling on our synagogue, it should follow our synagogue rules.
And that [00:07:00] is, if a woman is able to lead it in the synagogue, she should be able to lead it in the house. I make a distinction. If the family doesn't want a woman leading, I, that's the only time that I would back off. and sometimes we have families where they're, people have different levels of-
observance, and if my job is to be there to bring comfort to the mourners- disturbance in their family or in their force is not bringing comfort, so I back off. There's a time to have those arguments- Correct ... and there's a time not to. Correct. Whether it's politics or egalitarianism or whatever.
Correct. Yeah. But that's not the place to do it. That's not what the family needs. Yeah. And so if you're doing anything for any mourner at any time in the mourning period, it's about them, it's not about you The one thing that I do remember the one argument that I will have is if I'm close enough to the mourner, you talked about giving yourself over, the argument about no, really sit down and let-
the people who are helping help. if I say it once, I say it 10 times, every time I visit a shiva house, you're not allowed to say thank you. Don't thank me for coming to do the service. It is my [00:08:00] obligation in Judaism to comfort a mourner. And I take that fairly seriously.
It is my obligation to go there and at least reduce their burden for a little bit, not add to it by them having to get me food or water, not the deal. For sure. And not having them say, "Take this food with you when you go," right? I was taught you can't take anything out of a shiva house. Me too. You might have taught me that, actually.
Oh, that, that could be. But I was taught that growing up, that you can't take anything out of a shiva house, and so I don't. but I was also taught that it is not necessarily a place for complete sadness. It is a place for discussion about, not your life, but the life of the person who has passed.
And, I used to teach at some of the nursing homes in town, the Jewish nursing home in particular- ... where they asked about the rituals of death and dying and what were the right things or the wrong things to do for a family. And I gave them my two basics. If they were the staff person when somebody died in a nursing home or in a home care situation or whatever, the two things that are different than in Christianity or other religions is the [00:09:00] instinct is to clean up and wash the
body.
Do not touch the body ,
but do not leave it alone. Leave it, Undisturbed ... but not alone. But not alone, so that you know- Yes.
Words matter. Right. Words matter, and those two. Yes, you do not leave a person alone- ... once they pass. And, but you also have to hold back that instinct to clean them up and whatever- ... which in some religions is the first thing you do. In Judaism, that there are people who do that, and it is not- Right.
... cool. And at one point, this was the fight club of Judaism- ... which is the first rule of Chevra Kadisha is you don't talk about Chevra Kadisha. Right. But, there those groups, Chevra Kadisha or the sacred or secret society. Sacred. I get- Words matter.
They do matter. I've been a part of one of those for a number of years. Also something that we'll talk in a minute about how you indirectly are responsible for that piece of my life. Yes. But I remember before getting involved, hearing our colleague Stephanie Small talk about her experiences-
as a member of the Chevra, and how very personal and intimate and moving it was- Right ... and what a responsibility it was. And also about [00:10:00] her, how her husband, who is descended from the class of the high priests in ancient Israel, and therefore forbidden to be in contact-
with an unrelated dead body, fulfills his part of the mourning ritual by building caskets. Oh, very good. Because he's a very handy sort of guy. you brought up the whole idea of not being in complete mourning and sharing. Right. So I certainly remember a shiva that took place just the other side of that window for your beloved husband- Yes
and my dear friend Leon- seven years ago, and that was certainly all about his very large and colorful and musical personality, and there was a lot of warmth and a lot of joy mixed in with all that sadness. When my father-in-law passed six months ago, very similar sort of thing. You couldn't talk about Natan Nemirovsky without telling funny stories- Right
about him needing, three alarm clocks and phone calls from all of his friends to get to his Kaplan review class to pass his medical boards, or any of the other things that he did. And my father was like a stand-up comic. He only spoke in [00:11:00] one-liners, so- Right ... you would expect his shiva was only one-liners and bad jokes- That's good
and dad jokes and whatever, so. Seven days of one-liners- Okay. Better than puns, but even it was one-liners. there are certain things in Judaism that people say are forbidden, and music is one of them, so
We dispensed with that early on. We dispensed with it- at the funeral, and you were part of that because we had- ... singing and we had a guitar at, with the rabbi's participation and your participation- ... because it was just something that was so much a part of his life. And every night after the formal part of shiva where we had the service and where I sat on the low chairs, 'cause as Montrealers we sit on low chairs.
Pittsburghers sit on regular sized chairs apparently. Every night at 9:00, dozens of people showed up through the backyard of my house- ... 'cause that's how they know how to get here. They were actors. They were musicians. my husband was an actor and a singer. And they lit up the fire pit in the back, and they gathered, and they were ready.
And it was- called Singing Him to the Stars, and they sang, and it was amazing. every single night was different. Every single night had, certain [00:12:00] people were here every night, and other people came, once or twice, different theater companies and whatever. And one of the things that was the nicest was there were some young people, including great-nieces and nephews of mine, who had a really hard time accepting his death because he was young and it was pretty fast.
But they could get behind that sort of gathering of community. So the inside the house and the service, which they came and participated in for their uncle, was one thing. But then the outside and watching people laugh and sing- ... and tell stories was a whole different thing. So it took all of it to help people get through.
Yeah. No kidding. So- In between our first encounters- Yep ... with some, with these rough times and Leon's passing, we worked together for several years on an initiative called Closure, which was your idea of something that I should be doing- ... which was not my idea. And I was right, but I was right. You were right.
You were right, and between us it was definitely your idea- ... not someone else's. So I was straight out of residency. I had spent some [00:13:00] time working with some of the leading voices in the movement to talk openly and frankly with patients about death and dying, and, Bob Arnold- Yes ... the most well-known of them.
But, I will remember also Gary Fisher and Susan Hunt- Sure, sure ... and a number of other people who taught me a tremendous amount about these sorts of things. and I had a day a week that was not spoken for, and you said, "Come work with me." We're, at the Jewish Healthcare Foundation at the time, and Closure was something that was new- Right
to take those conversations into the community. What made that project necessary? So my involvement with, professionally, with issues of death and dying, personally I told you, but professionally started on my first day of work in Pittsburgh. September 17th, 1984. I worked at Forbes Health System, which is now a part of Allegheny Health Network, and I was hired, the biggest mistake they ever made, as a financial analyst-
While they were waiting- Because that's what kind of job you get when you're a chemist ... it is, that's the kind of job you get when you need your green [00:14:00] card, and they offer you a job, and that's what you do. Right. A chemist with an MBA, you take a finance job. And two weeks later it turned into the strategic planning job that I wanted, and that was-
fine. But on day one they were trying to keep me busy, and they sent me across the street to Forbes Hospice for a quality improvement meeting- ... and a finance meeting. And so they're sitting there and they're going through charts the last quarter, the statistics of the quarter, like we
do. on at Forest Squirrel Hill Center ,
and they had length of stay in hospice.
And so they're talking about length of stay over the past three months, it was 17, 19 and 21. So first day of work, I raised my hand from the back of the room, shy as I am, and I said, "I'm sorry, 17, 19 or 21 what?" And this was 1984, and the metric for length of stay in hospice was hours. And it stayed with me because hospice is one of those services when you ask people what was helpful to them in, the passing of someone that they loved.
And if you ask people in modern healthcare a number of years ago what was the [00:15:00] biggest advance in 30 years, they said hospice. And yet so many people were getting less than 24 hours in hospice, and what was the reason behind that? And the reason was doctors not being willing to, quote unquote, "give up their patients"-
to hospice. To give up on their patients and give up their patients to hospice. So it was only after almost hospice could not be of much use to them. You couldn't even get the intake done well. You couldn't get the family and the patient familiar with the setting, and then they were gone. So that was always something that stayed with me and through my 10 years at Forbes, I was involved in a lot in aging and work with hospice, and we try-
and that's how I met Bob, and we tried to look at that issue. But it was the more and more we looked at the statistics, more and more we looked at when you interviewed people about what mattered to them at end of life and what they were, they felt was missing, they said they never really had good conversations with their health providers.
And we tried to figure out why that was. Was it that they were bad people? No. Was it that [00:16:00] they didn't see the value in it? No. They hadn't been trained So you wouldn't want somebody driving a car that hadn't been trained. You wouldn't want somebody performing surgery on you that hadn't been trained.
Why was this something that we felt wasn't necessary to include in their training? Where was the human side of what we were doing? Now, most people to get into medical school, and I was a chemist, I was pre-med, I was accepted to medical school, chose not to go. All of my studies were science. They weren't humanities.
And yet we want them to have these skills on the humanity side, and yet we don't give them any opportunity to understand them or to practice them. We have everything else is practiced. we were looking at this opportunity to change how people talk about death and dying, and it was always very important to me that we use the word death.
And that's because as an individual, not a clinician, when a family member or a person knows that they're dying, they [00:17:00] know that they're dying, and skirting around the issue and not saying the word I think distances you from a real honest conversation. At the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, it was one of those areas where we liked to take on issues that other people avoided.
Right. And this was one of those. people really weren't interested in talking about death and dying. it wasn't what health systems wanted to be measured at. Mortality was such- ... a horrible thing. That was a statistic you tried to avoid. high levels of mortality and those sorts of things.
So, but we thought it was so important to the human experience and to being able to go on productively after you lose a loved one. So if you don't have the ability to have that sort of language about it and understanding, then we felt people would be behind the eight ball. Yeah. And I'll say that one of the impacts of working on closure had on me was that I did a lot of the background reading-
and preparation of some of the teaching modules, and I eventually accumulated so much material that I first had enough for an Osher class. Right. Osher, for [00:18:00] those who don't know in the audience, is a sort of mini college for older adults that, lifelong learning. Thank you.
that's the word that we use. And that's like a five to seven and a half hour course, usually taught in about five lessons. And I found that every time I taught it, there was stuff that I had to leave out. Right. And more and more stuff that I had to leave out, and eventually took that to the honors college at Pitt and to the religious studies department and turned it into a full semester class that I've now been teaching coming up on 11 years of teaching that course.
Just developed for those who are listening who are Pitt students who have room in their fall semester schedule and wanna take an asynchronous class, it will be taught as an online asynchronous class for the first time- in fall of 2026. Sign up. Called Death in the Healthcare Professions.
And from where we started with those conversations, it's now all about understanding what it is that we think and feel about death, especially the kinds of beliefs that you talked about- Right ... and the kind of traditions that we come from, how that shapes what we think [00:19:00] about death, and then how that affects the decisions that we make- Right
when we're up against it, whether that's our psychology as we're going through things, starting by looking at what Elisabeth Kubler-Ross- Right ... wrote in the '60s, what the foundation that carries her name teaches about it today, and a bunch of other ways of looking at people's psychology around getting ready for their own passing.
And then also what we actually do when we have to decide about things like dialysis or- Right ... about things like ventilation and and about where we wanna be when we pass. And who we wanna be with. I can do this with your readers. It usually takes 30 seconds, but I always ask any class or group that I speak at, and I'm called to speak at a lot of them, I ask everybody to close their eyes for 30 seconds And a lot of people are frightened to close their eyes for 30 seconds, but I usually get them to do it.
And then I ask them to think about somebody that really matters to them in their lives and to think about what they would want for them as a good death. Where it would be, who would be around, what are the sounds that they would hear, what are [00:20:00] the smells. and you get back a tremendous amount of commonality-
from people. They wanna be at home for the most part. And frankly, if somebody wants to die hooked up to machines, I'll be their biggest advocate, but they should get what they want. But if they wanna be home with their family, with their pets, with music, with the smell of chocolate chip cookies- Right
or the smell of something, then we should have a healthcare system that allows people to get there. And in order to get there, you have to know, and you have to ask, and you have to solicit that sort of information. And then that turns you into an advocate for your patient, to make sure that if you can see the trajectory because you've seen 1,000 patients like that, and you know what the timing is more than the patient who's going through it for the only and first time- Right
then you have some kind of a greater obligation to say, "Maybe it's time to amp up this conversation or to tell them." The greatest gift I was ever given by a friend of ours who's a physician, a hospice physician, he took myself and my two kids [00:21:00] aside. His only visit here, 'cause my husband was in home hospice for just a short period of time, but home for a few months, told us, he's gonna die this weekend."
And We didn't know the signs that he was gonna die that weekend. That was such a gift to us, 'cause it gave us the opportunity to not say, "Oh, you know what? I was gonna talk to him. I'll talk to him about this next week," or, "I'll tell him this." Right. And whether he was right or wrong, everything else after that would've been a gift.
But he told us that on Friday night, and my husband was dead noon on Sunday, 12:17 on Sunday. And so- ... having that 36 hours of the four of us and a dog together was a real gift, and that came from conversation and honesty with a
healthcare provider
Yeah, for sure. And sometimes the strangest things that you remember, right?
Mm-hmm. So the last thing I remember Leon saying to me was, "Nice suit." Right. He was looking at a picture of my son singing- I know this, yeah ... my oldest son Ethan, singing in the Alterd eyes cabaret and it was at a video. And I'm [00:22:00] pretty sure he appreciated the singing, but he said, "Nice suit."
Yeah, nice suit. Yeah. Like, the way he was dressed. it is interesting because- Mm-hmm ... um, we're still not good at prognostication around death. Right. Although apparently I am a pretty accurate prognostic sign in your family. Yes, that's pretty good. And my daughter,
I have one of my daughters, I don't wanna out her- ... for, for this sort of superpower, but she's been present at three deaths in our family, and people won't invite her over anymore. So I was told that I'm also not welcome if somebody else is on hospice. Although they are both comforting individuals, you and she-
that, it's not the worst thing in the world if that's the last faces that, you're among the last faces that you see. Right. So I wouldn't argue about that. But by the same token, if we're talking about grief, that has made a difference. Oh, 100%. Because there are stories of being able to say goodbye, being able to say goodbye in, whether it's in this house- Right
my mother-in-law's apartment- Right ... and like wherever it was. my wife was lucky enough to be able to light the first two nights of Hanukkah candles in her father's bedroom- Mm-hmm ... before he passed on the morning of the second day. So it was really those were the right decisions to make.
It's interesting, I have a second night Hanukkah story too. When my [00:23:00] husband, unrelated to his death 30 some odd years earlier, had a heart attack and was in a hospital, and it happened to be on the second night of Hanukkah. I don't know what possessed me. I brought candles and I was about to light them while he had oxygen.
And I thought, "It could have ended earlier." You were gonna be the urban legend. I was gonna be... And so I looked and I thought to myself, "No, there's something very wrong about this picture here." "Just put down the candles, and you'll do that later." Speaking as a doctor who once took a lit cigarette out of a patient's mouth and extinguished it in her water cup- There you go
because she had problems- Oxygen, yeah ... in her nose while she was smoking. So there you go. So I do wanna ask the question, because you had... It's a very simple question. We have dozens of things we could be having- Right ... this kind of interview about, and we have- Yep ... hundreds of things we could be talking about not on camera.
What made you choose this topic specifically? So I feel a great connection to this topic, and interestingly, long before I was, as my children will say, a, an orphan and then a widow. Yeah. Long before I lost people really close to me, [00:24:00] I have always had, maybe it comes from my teenage years where I accepted that responsibility for somebody else, but I think that grief is such an overlooked topic, and so there's such an attempt to trivialize it-
and to move it along And it's one of those things that I can't stand. So I'm 24 years out and two months from my father having died, and I'm almost seven years out from my husband having died. My husband died. Before I was finished my year of mourning for my husband, my mother died, and before I was finished the year for my mother, my mother-in-law died.
And then before I was finished with that, don't trivialize it, one of my dogs died. Yep. I remember. So ... I was in a period of mourning for quite some period of time. but I wasn't incapacitated by my grief. And I know some people are incapacitated by grief. I was lucky enough to have wonderful children.
I was lucky enough to have ritual, which I appreciated. I think the timetable- ... in Judaism, I wish other religions have it. When I see friends of mine post on [00:25:00] Facebook that it's a really hard day for them, it's 16 years since their mother died- ... or 25 years or whatever, and I always feel so badly that they're struggling with apologizing- for that day meaning something to them, when in fact, in Judaism, we build it in. It's a day every year, and four times a year when we gather for joyous holidays, we build in memorial prayers. If you build in a place for grief, you give it an outlet so that the pressure doesn't build too much and it explodes, but you know-
that there are going to be holidays coming. And holidays are hard. And special events. I just became a grandmother. I have a wonderful granddaughter who is named for my late husband. Which is also one of our traditions ... which is also one of our traditions. Mm-hmm. But it's one of those things that is sadness and joy together and finding a place for your grief in the midst of joy is something really important, and yet we don't talk about it.
We talk about getting over it. We talk about you should grieve for a spouse for this amount of time, for a [00:26:00] parent for this amount of time. You never get over, and I am blessed never to have had this, the loss of a child, but I will say my mother-in-law never recovered from the loss of my husband, her son.
You never get over the loss of a child. It's unnatural. We don't talk about that a lot. We look at people... I'll tell you my least favorite part of people dealing with anybody's grief is the head tilt. It drives me crazy. They look at you and they immediately, oh, they feel so sorry for you.
Don't feel sorry for somebody. You wanna bring joy to someone who's grieving? Ask about the person they lost. learn something about this person. Yeah. Or even better yet and my friends particularly in theater know this, give me a story I don't have. Give me the gift of a memory I don't have.
Give me the gift, and many people do- ... three times a year I ask for it on Facebook, a picture that if you're not sure if I have it or not,
send it to me
And we call those new to me photos. Right. 'Cause there will never be new photos. Right. But there will be new to me photos. and if you think that I will cry [00:27:00] when I see it, maybe I will, but I will most likely laugh and enjoy it.
Mm-hmm. It is a piece of them that I didn't have that now I have. Right. So I think that giving people an understanding that grief isn't about sadness- it's an outlet for love. You don't grieve if you didn't love. You can
fake grieve if you didn't love .
That's okay too, You can follow the rituals and the obligations, but true grief comes from true love. Yeah, and I think that the idea that you talked about of having an outlet on a regular basis- ... you said it would explode if we didn't have that outlet- ... but if it doesn't explode outward, sometimes it burns- Correct
deep inside. So I've taken care of people with chronic pain disorders and various things like that, and they will come in bent double- ... in pain- ... when it's the anniversary of their loved one's death. And if you don't ask them- Especially if there's a feeling- ... so listen to them ... of guilt or something- Right
like that surrounding that death. Right. you might not know. So, in some of the other work we've done in nursing homes, it's looking at the behaviors of people who, sometimes it's someone living with dementia, but sometimes it's not, [00:28:00] and their behavior changes. And trying to figure out why did their behavior change-
and you realize maybe it's the birthday of somebody that they lost. Maybe it's... It doesn't have to be the anniversary of the death. It could be the birthday, could be their anniversary. There are days on everybody's calendar that have- ... meaning for them, and once the person you share that day with is gone, that day is tough for you.
and again, it doesn't have to be crippling. but it is something that you remember Speaking of new to you, and this may not be- Yeah ... new to you, but I'm hoping it is- Yes ... 'cause it's, it would be fun- Okay ... to share. You said, "Don't mock me for the for the grief over the dog." Mm-hmm. I wouldn't think of it.
So your father-in-law- Yes ... of blessed memory dearly loved him. I particularly loved sitting next to him in synagogue when he would fake translate the Russian- Yes ... greeting that the cantor- Yes ... would give. Every week. which always came out as something like, "I'm very glad to see everyone here this morning.
It's raining in Moscow- ... but there's sunshine in our hearts." 100%. That was verbatim. Loved him, but he was never one to call me
on the phone .
Right. [00:29:00] One day our phone rings, and
my wife Vida picks
it up, and she says, "Hello?" He says, "Hi, it's Al Zions." We're like- Okay ... "Hi?" And she knew immediately that something was wrong, and he said, "Leon's dog died."
Oh. And I think it was Fezzik maybe. It was Fezzik. And it was June 6th. Mm-hmm. And I was in Washington, DC, and I got a call from Leon, and he was shrieking so loud I wasn't sure if it hadn't been a home invasion and he hadn't been stabbed. That is the sound I can-
still hear in my ears. And he had come home, and he had gone up the stairs, and he found the dog dead at the top of the stairs. Yes. Just- We think he was poisoned. There was some poison in Frick Park at that time or whatever it is. Mm-hmm. And he was shrieking like I have never heard anything before. And we called his brother and sister-in-law, who came over.
We called a few people who came over, and it was devastating. And I was not here. And so I came home the next day from Washington, and it was horrid. It [00:30:00] was absolutely horrid. Yeah. the love is real, the loss was real, the shock was real. Yeah. But I will tell you something funny apropos of that.
So the next day we take the dog in a laundry basket, as one does- ... to, the vet, because if you take the dog to the vet, they will- ... do the cremation disposal- ... send you back the ashes and whatever. And after we dropped off the dog, he got in the car and he broke down in tears, sobbing, and he said to me through his tears, "I'm really sorry I wasn't there for you as I should've been when your father died."
And I, of course, burst out laughing. Because to him they were equivalent- Yeah ... because loss is loss. Yeah. love and loss is love and loss. Mm-hmm. Fair. That was the lightening of the load for me- ... at that time was the comparison, because it was also another lesson to me-
that loss is loss. And you don't judge other people's losses on a scale- ... of where you think they should fall in terms of extent. I take care of not a few people- ... who would not be alive [00:31:00] today if it weren't for the love of their pets, right? Not only the love that they feel, the obligation they feel- Right
to take care of the pets, but the love that the pets give them. 100%. So there's no mockery there. There was something else that I was gonna bring in, but the story with your father-in-law- ... and the dog just derailed me. Sorry ... but we'll come back to it. Okay. I remember what it was.
Okay. You've been talking a lot, and I totally agree with you the wisdom of how much structured activity Jewish tradition builds into it, and I think having things to do- ... really does help us to get through the things. You once gave me a book when we were working on closure- Yeah ... called Tear Soup.
Yes. And the whole point of Tear Soup is she's stirring the soup, and they keep coming and asking her if the soup is ready, and she says, "It'll be ready when it's ready." Right. Which is a deliberate metaphor for- our grief is mature and something we can, step away from when we're ready, but we don't know when that's gonna be.
but the structured activity of shiva, [00:32:00] having seven days and then 30 days- Yeah, 30 days- ... and then 11 months, and then the annual, and then every year. Yeah. Right. Really helps. I mentioned that Vida has a particular talent for shiva as well, and in particular for the food- Right
and paper goods and all of that aspect of it, and has organized that for many people over the years. And so actually her own template that she created for someone else's shiva turned into- Yes ... the template that she just handed somebody and said- "Here. Here's"- ... "I know I'm not supposed to do anything," when her father-in-law died.
they took over and did it. Her least favorite thing in Judaism is that there is a tradition that if you die right before one of the three major holidays, the shiva is canceled. ... and we just went through this with a friend of mine- Right ... where the shiva was a few hours and then it was over.
And she's been railing about that for years. Yeah. And I had an answer, and then I got another answer. So the most recent answer was from my friend who's been a guest on this podcast as well, Miriam Fenster who said, "Oh, yeah. So in Israel what we do is that there's, after the [00:33:00] holiday's over, people come over and they might bring you food- Right
and they'll sit with you and ask you about the person that died." It's not shiva. No, and if you really are, don't feel like going to synagogue, enough people will come over- ... that they can have a service in your house. But it's not shiva. It's not, right.
And you can say Kaddish, but it's not shi- right? So words matter. Just the rules were meant to be broken, partly. And in this case, it's the word you don't say out loud, but it's a rose by any other name. The other tradition that I love very much that
didn't quite sit well with her ,
but it was a Rosh Hashanah sermon that I heard a few years ago from Rabbi Shira Stutman that, a good Reconstructionist- There you go
like yourself that when you have that happen in temple times, people would have to, w- they'd still have to make the pilgrimage to the temple for the festival. And that was the reason why you didn't keep mourning, because you had to go. But if you went into the temple and you were in the middle of mourning, you would walk around the altar in the opposite direction- Oh, interesting
of everybody else. And so when people saw you coming towards them, they would stop and say, "What happened to you?" And you would tell them, [00:34:00] "My father-in-law passed," or, "My, brother passed," or, "My husband passed." So there are a number of opportunities- ... to let the community know that the person in your midst is a mourner, which I think is also
really important
So one of them is the function of kriya, put, ripping a piece of your clothing, very similar- ... to Book of Job, ripping a piece of your clothing to designate you as a mourner. And I have been in the Pittsburgh airport and, there was somebody who had a black ribbon on. And I, they were sitting down having a drink before, they were getting on an airplane, and I went over to them and I simply said, "I'm sorry for your loss."
And they were a little taken aback, and then they weren't. And I said "Was it someone maybe that I knew?" And it was Carolyn King- Oh, wow ... who had been a teacher of our kids. Who was my teacher. She said, "You look familiar." Yeah. I said, "I was, had been at the shiva the night before."
But that marked this person as a mourner so that if you knew, you could offer them- Mm-hmm ... that little bit of comfort, that- Yeah ... little bit of kindness, ask about a story. So that's one way that we do it. I have all sorts of stories [00:35:00] about her, but Yeah. But the other way is if you're in a service- Mm-hmm
in synagogue, and it's the time for the mourner's prayer, the mourner's prayer usually comes after something where we are
all seated .
And then the mourners rise for the prayer, so you get to look around the room. Mm-hmm. And you get to see who may be a new mourner or who may be somebody who's marking a day.
Mm-hmm. And that way, if you have a little bit of kindness in you that day, you know that's a person who may need it. that's the second way, and the third way that I do it in a shiva house, and I don't know if everybody else does it, but at the end of the service, the evening service where there's Mourner's Kaddish, the prayer is for anybody who is a mourner- or observing an anniversary of a death at that time. But you could be going to a shiva, which I did after my husband died, for the 11 months, I was at someone else's shiva. But when it came time to do the mourner's prayer, I stood for the mourner's prayer. But then when I lead a service, I do a psalm or a reading- Mm-hmm
after that- And then you do a second one ... and give a chance for a second Kaddish for just the immediate mourners. Yeah. So then it's, [00:36:00] again, that special time for them and their grief- ... to be able to come forward and to remind people that those are the people who need you right now. The people marking at a year, two years, 20 years, 50 years- Mm-hmm
they need you, and they need your compassion, but the immediate mourners may need it don't leave without greeting the immediate mourners. Right. they need you. But we have a number of ways in Judaism, and until you asked that question, I wasn't But they all come to mind for me right away.
They do. the reason I give myself so much over to this idea of supporting mourners, I got from Nina Butler. Nina Butler is a mutual friend of ours who runs the organization Bikkur Holim, which helps people who are going through medical conditions-
and need support- even from in town ... or food ... for those who don't speak our lingo, that's for visiting the sick which really means supporting the sick and their families. And I used to joke with her, I said, "You know, there are 613 commandments we are required to do."
And I said, "How do you get them all in?" And she says, "I don't." She said, "I mean, you're supposed to, but I don't." She said, "But I pick a few and I do them well." [00:37:00] and I just told her this story a few weeks ago, it was then that I decided that I was gonna pick a few around death and dying, and grief and mourning-
and supporting mourners, and do my best to do them well. So, Zarky Rudofsky from our synagogue, who's the person who runs the email- to get those of us- who are gonna come and lead services, to volunteer to lead services, he'll tell you that if I get that email, I'm responding within 30 seconds, yes or no, but I'm not leaving him hanging.
If I can do it and I can, you know, they ask, "Anyone available between Monday and Thursday?" And I'll say, "I can do Tuesday and Thursday- ... but I can't do Monday and Wednesday," and boom, let the algorithm take care of it later, and let them figure out who's gonna be- Yeah ... where. But as a community, it's our obligation if somebody wants to gather to pray in their home, it's our obligation to make sure that's possible.
There are enough people on any given day that could get off their butts for half an hour and go over and support somebody. Mm-hmm. And you build that in a culture sort of way. I've taught my children that. So that was a new to me- Mm-hmm ... Nancy Zion's line. I've never heard you explain it that way.
Yeah. That's fantastic. I have one other thing. I wanna [00:38:00] give credit to my older daughter, not the one who pronounces people when they die, but the other one. She lives in London, England and we were all home together when my husband died, and so for the first few weeks, we were all saying Kaddish together.
She then goes back to London, where the traditions in England are far different from here. They don't have synagogues that are non-Orthodox, and they don't recognize women as mourners. So a man would volunteer to say the mourner's prayer for her, but she couldn't do it herself in this... And like, this doesn't sit well with Zion's women, to be sure.
So she started something online called Nine Friends. Mm-hmm. I think it's called Nine Friends. It's a a WhatsApp group, and it became a group for anyone who needed to say Kaddish could say, "Tomorrow's the anniversary of my mother's death.
I'm gonna say Kaddish. It's usually 3:00 in the afternoon our time-" Mm-hmm ... 'cause that's 8:00 England time, and anybody available." And we'll all write, "Yes." It's 15 minutes. We don't have to- ... transport ourselves there. We just have to make ourselves available- Right ... for someone else. And she [00:39:00] designed a service, my daughter did, 'cause COVID by then had started, so it was all gonna be done virtually.
And she designed it with a prayer for carers and a prayer for the sick and two or three poems. and she designed a service, and then we have the chance to be there for the person to tell something about the person who died, whether it's a fresh death or whether it's- Mm-hmm ... a yard site, and we say Kaddish together.
And sometimes it's twice a month that we get the text. Sometimes it's much more frequent. And yet we have never failed to have 10 people there to say Kaddish for someone. That's incredible. And I love that. She's been doing it for seven years. Yeah. I think we discussed that the last time she was here.
And having that support is really critical because I remember watching an episode years ago of Northern Exposure- Yeah ... where he's quizzing the people in his old town in Alaska to figure out if any of them are Jewish. Right. And one of the guys actually recites the Shema perfectly That you would never guess, but and ultimately realizes that it's the nine friends- Right
that he finds that are the community that he needs. Yeah. I [00:40:00] always say I ask four questions. Yes. I've asked you how did you get to be- ... a shiva wizard. Shiva wizard. I asked you why closure started- Yeah ... and I've asked you why grief is- Mm-hmm ... our topic. This is for those who don't know how to ask, which is- the fourth of the four children. You mentioned that there's a lot of clinicians, doctors, nurse practitioners- ... PAs, nurses- Yeah ... et cetera, folks who are interacting with patients who are very ill, dying, might be dying soon, interacting with family members, interacting with people who have a new potentially life-threatening diagnosis who feel fine and think they're gonna get better-
but still need to confront that, and who don't know how to ask the question. get us started. So I think that one of the questions that I was always taught in palliative care and end of life- Mm-hmm ... is asking the person what they know about their condition and their disease. Mm-hmm. And that can take you a lot of the way there, because if they tell you something like, "Oh, I'm gonna be fine, I just have a this, that, and the next thing- Mm-hmm
and 10 days of antibiotics, I'm gonna be fine," and that's [00:41:00] wildly different than what you know- Right ... then you know you have an opening. If they tell you that they've been waiting for this time, they knew that their disease was gonna progress, and those are different ends of the spectrum, right?
For you to know. I think that getting started is about asking any question that matters to them. Mm-hmm. are your family members here for you at this time? Or, ... does anyone have any questions about what they can expect or- Mm-hmm ... I think that most patients are looking for radical honesty without being cruel, right?
But radical honesty, don't gloss over the fact that this is a serious condition. It's certainly fair to say "I can't give you a timetable." It's certainly fair to say things like "I think if you have things you wanna say to other family members or whatever," or, "I've seen 30 patients with the same sort of trajectory that you have, and for the most part, I can tell you with a little bit of certainty, not a lot, that maybe a few weeks from now you're [00:42:00] gonna feel like you don't have the energy to do things."
Give them some sense of where things are going. But it's at a time like that where most of us are not looking for our doctors to pull up what they knew to get into medical school in terms of science- Mm-hmm ... but we're looking for them to be human beings. Yeah. And if you can be a human... And many of them, are very concerned about who they're leaving behind, not so much about themselves.
Mm-hmm. So talking to the patient and making eye contact is really important, but ignoring everybody else in the room doesn't get you there either. So recognizing what their community is matters. I get the impression, certainly from our previous- ... conversations and work together, but also from my own experience with my colleagues, I get the impression that a lot of us seem frightened- Yeah
of having those conversations. I know what I perceive to be the fright, but as somebody who is in healthcare but not a clinician- Mm-hmm ... what do you think they're afraid of? So I think, a lot of people have not [00:43:00] confronted their own sense of loss. a lot of people are walking around with unresolved grief of their own.
And so they bring that into the room with them. So maybe it was an experience that went bad for them, maybe it was poor guessing on their part or poor prognostication, so they don't want that to happen to somebody else. But I think it often relates to sometimes you have a clinician who is young and fortunate and has never faced death in their life and in their circle, so they really don't know from whence they speak.
It, you may as well have a conversation with me about soccer and basketball other than please let the next one. But don't understand the rudimentary facts of the game, they may not. Only 'cause we're so happy for Danny Rosen. we're so happy for New Yorkers writ large. Yes. a lot of New Yorkers.
But they may feel unable to have the conversation because, to your point, they've never studied it, they've never had anybody take the time to teach them. if I use the same cadence as we do in, in- Mm-hmm ... the Haggadah, for those you tell them- ... that this is something you can study, this is something you can [00:44:00] learn.
And then what will help you get better will be experience. Unfortunately, it may be experience of people around you in your personal life dying, I remember you telling me that you had been a doctor long enough that some of your first patients were dying. Yeah. And that fear that you had as a professional of you're going to lose some of your patients- that doesn't happen when you don't have patients. Right. It only happens when you do have patients. So I think that for doctors and nurses and social workers, some of them don't realize, that it is such a natural part of life. Mm-hmm. I mean, I go to the cemetery fairly regularly.
and when I'm out there, I see people who go once a year to the cemetery. That's fine. That's their choice. I choose to go out more often. Mm-hmm. when I'm there, call my children and we gather together and we tell stories- Mm-hmm ... and we sing songs, and we say Kaddish together remotely, London, Portland, Oregon, and Pittsburgh.
Mm-hmm. And they go every time that they're in town. But we've learned that- and Max goes ... as I understand Max goes, and his previous dogs went as well- his [00:45:00] dog brothers. So I think that it is something that can be learned. I think people need to learn conversation openers, and they're not the same.
If they start to all be the same, that's a problem, too. So they need to be what someone is comfortable with. - You need a vocabulary- Yeah ... not a catchphrase. You seem quieter today than I'm used to seeing you. Mm-hmm. Is something going on? It may have nothing to do with clinical things.
It may have to be that they've just gone inside of themselves and realized. Yeah. So if you're comfortable having that conversation, have it. If you go home from, visiting one of your patients- ... and you realize, I didn't get anything out of them today. They just didn't seem there," ask yourself why.
Mm-hmm. You don't have to have a conversation with them. Ask yourself- ... what was different with them this time, and then figure out if there's a way in for you to be helpful. You did mention, you know, don't be cruel about- Mm-hmm ... your radical honesty. We both know that there are people who are.
Yes. That doctor who told me, "You know he's gonna die this weekend"- ... he did it with such kindness- ... and reassurance, and the purpose of him telling us [00:46:00] that was so we could do something about it. Not just so we would know that our Monday was gonna be different. Right. It had nothing to do with that.
It had to do with I'm assessing- ... that no one has really shared with you the true severity of where we are right now, and he shared that with us. And he did it in such a kind and professional way that it was really very helpful. I wasn't thinking of him- That was nice
because... I have only the highest respect for him. Yeah. I was thinking of some other folks who we won't name but whether it's the old tradition of sort of as they call, used to call it hanging crepe, right? the warning shots like, "Oh, things aren't looking good here."
Right. you say you dance around it- ... but say very negative sounding things, or you just like hit them over the head with it. Things like, "Go home and get your affairs in order," which is- That's the one I was thinking of ... that's the one. here are my least favorite catchphrases. "Go home and get your affairs in order," which nobody knows what that means.
and if you're hearing me say the expression, "Get your affairs in order," start now, it'll take you months- Right ... and it'll take you months after someone dies. But think about what that means and make some effort towards it. Mm-hmm. It's not something- Although that is what Isaiah said to Hezekiah in the Bible, "Go and get your affairs in order- Go home and get
because you will [00:47:00] die and not live." But you don't say that in the waiting room of Shady Side Hospital- Exactly ... 'cause that's not what you wanna hear. Maybe when you're talking to the king it's a good idea. Exactly. Okay. And the other one that I really can't stand is, "There's nothing
more we can do for you ."
You know how I hate that expression. Yes, I do. There is always something more we can do for you. It just may not be a cure. But we can carry you to death. Yes. We can envelop you with support, whatever that looks like, and if support means leave me alone, that's support, too. But "There's nothing more we can do for you," is the true giving up of the provider- Right
that makes the patient and family feel abandoned. So it makes them feel like the only success was cure- ... when in fact, for a lot of us, what we look for our family members is what we call a good death, the opportunity to pass, which is natural- ... but to do so in a way where you had maximum control and maximum support for the people that you love around you, yeah. And actually that is In terms of the things that I learned from some of our friends- ... that we were talking about, an article that Gary co-authored- Yep ... about [00:48:00] that what people are looking for and often feel they haven't gotten from their primary care doctors, people like me- is that they feel they've been abandoned, that, the specialists take over- Right ... and they disappear into hospice and they never hear from us again. And they think that was your call, and it wasn't your call. Right. Often not. Right. Yeah. but sometimes it is, and it's coming out of that-
fear, out of that uncertainty about what to do, the discomfort with that kind of situation, and being absent is easier than being uncomfortable and potentially awkward- Right ... clumsy, saying the wrong thing. And we'd rather say nothing at all. Right. And I think that's where there's a big misunderstanding.
and one of the other pieces of grief that I think people, sometimes minimize is, there's anger and there's guilt. So there are people who are angry that the person died or angry- ... with what happened, or angry with how they left them, and the circumstances that they left them, and they didn't get their affairs in order-
that sort of thing. So sometimes there's anger. Sometimes there's residual anger for they were never a good person in my life, and here I am obligated to pretend. So there's anger. But the other part of it is the guilt. If you've [00:49:00] taken care of somebody for a very long time, and I think about this with people who are taking care of persons with dementia- over a long period of time. You lose them more than once. So you lose them when the relationship between you has changed because there's different memory and there's different behavior, et cetera. But then you lose them again when they leave this earth. And sometimes that's the one that provides relief, and then that relief turns into guilt.
So these things are all tied up. And I think that, people really don't understand grief. 7% of grief is complicated grief. 93% of grief is working through what you're dealing with in terms of loss. But 7% of it is complicated grief. Mm-hmm. And if you see somebody crying, I'm not a crier, but if you see somebody crying or you see, as you did, that person with bent over in pain- Yep
couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, that for more than a period of time that would seem to be, as a clinician, normal, then there's maybe some reason to step in and try to figure [00:50:00] out what's at the root of it or what could be some way to help them build their way back. But for most people, letting them go through stages of grief, letting them go-
through anger, letting them go through disappointment, letting them go through all of the emotions in the rainbow, let 'em go through them all, and they will be different for every person you lose. So losing somebody in a generation above you may feel different than losing someone in a generation below you or someone on the same generation, someone you haven't seen in a long time.
Right. They may all be different, but they're workable if we give people the space to work through them and the supports to work through them . And I think that's a good place for us to wrap up. Okay. Yep. You're good at getting the last word. What would you like it to be? Oh, I was enjoying that last word.
the last word I would say to you is, another way that you lose someone a second time is when you stop saying their name. Saying the name of someone who's died and telling stories about someone who's died is very comforting to the living. Yeah. I am blessed in the six and a half [00:51:00] years since my husband has passed away, three babies have been born and given names- that were associated with my husband, so that gives me at least a full other generation- Yeah ... of people who will know, his name. Yeah. So that matters to me a lot. So I do all of this work in the name of my husband, who was Leon Ziance- ... who was the voice of death
He was very involved in this work. Mm-hmm. And he did some of the videos for Pitt, also for the second conversation videos with Bob Arnold. And I will close on a funny story about that. He was in the room, I was outside of the room when he was having these conversations.
It turns out to be six months before he died, three weeks before he was diagnosed. And Bob Arnold's conducting conversations with him as an old man for him to, make decisions- ... around his end of life. And Judy Black comes out and says, "I think you should go in and talk to your husband. He's crying."
I said, "Okay." So I go in and I said, "Leon, they're a little concerned about you because you're crying." He said, "They told me to cry." I said, "Thank you very much. He's an actor. You gave him a... You told him to cry, and he cried, and now [00:52:00] you're complaining. Yeah. Theater. So there you go. The dog's crying too.
And my last word is- Yes ... based on what you said about stories, one of the most moving things that I've seen is a number of couples that we are close to- Mm-hmm ... including Zarky and Marian- Yeah ... that are second marriages, they've both lost spouses, and to hear them each talk about the people from whom they were widowed- Right
while still clearly being very much in love with each other, that keeping the memory of the relationship that was alive and also having essentially given birth to a new relationship- ... and a new chapter in their lives that really fills me with hope. I go for dogs and kids, but that's- Okay.
To each his own. I'm not make- I'm not suggesting anything for you. Thank you. That is
way out of my league. by the way, I did not enjoy the people who tried to fix me up within a month of my husband dying. That's over. It wasn't me, I promise. I understand. I know who they were. All right. Nancy- Thank you very much ... thank you so much for this conversation. I have a feeling this is not the only episode we're gonna do.
You're welcome anytime.
[00:00:00] In the cold open, I spoke about Jacob and his deep expression of gratitude. But he's relevant to this episode not just as a model for thanking my dear friend, but unfortunately as the Torah's greatest example of complicated grief. Jacob spends twenty-two years assuming that his favorite son, Joseph, has died.
Right from the beginning, he refuses comfort. He tells his sons, "No, I will go down mourning to my son in Sheol." According to one tradition, which I learned from Rabbi Ori Taporski, during those twenty-two years, Jacob was even unable to pray, despite having spent his earlier life in free conversation with God.
Years later, after Joseph has turned up alive and well and living in Egypt, Jacob is still broken and bereft. Hearing the news, he stops the report in the middle saying, "This is too much for me. I will go and see him before I die." When he arrives in Egypt, Pharaoh, never having seen someone so old as Jacob, asks him his age.
Despite seeing how young and short-lived the Egyptians are, Jacob answers, "Few and hard have been the years of my life." I [00:01:00] shared a couple of stories with Nancy of people I care for that remind me of Jacob. They're living their lives in deep despair or physically disfigured from losses they suffered many years ago.
It's particularly common and particularly reminiscent of this biblical story among my patients who have fled or been driven from their homelands and lost many loved ones along the way. For many of them, unresolved, complicated grief has not just taken their spouse or their child, but their memory, their confidence, and their health.
I spoke a little about this with Nahmar Rohani and Ashok Gurung last fall. Take a listen to episode five, Because You Were Strangers. It's true that there's no timeline for, quote, "getting over it," other than the one that says that it's never a good time to tell someone to get over it. But there are ways to process grief, to heal from it, and to find what Dr.
Erika Brown calls inspiration to go on in a world where the person who's died is no longer. As healing professionals, we have the opportunity every day to accompany people through the long, sometimes painful process of finding [00:02:00] that inspiration. It doesn't come all at once, and it often comes with painful understandings, confrontations with truths we and they would rather not face.
When Jacob finally does see Joseph for the first time, he breaks his silence and begins to pray Shema Yisrael, listen, Israel, his own new name, as if talking to himself, reminding himself that God is one and the author of all the things that have happened, the wondrous and the heartbreaking. We heard in episode one from my friend Elisha Waldman about how tempting it can be to try to direct someone in a moment like that, to steer them from toward the positive and away from the sadness or the guilt.
But the real challenge is to say nothing, to sit with the grief, to be present for the struggle, to keep coming back while so many things remain unresolved. We never know what will work for a particular person. Fervent prayer, show tunes, dad jokes, starting a charity, writing a novel. We only know what doesn't work.
Burying the grief along with the [00:03:00] deceased, leaving someone alone, and pretending everything's fine when it isn't. If as healing professionals, we can be brave enough just to open a conversation and patient enough to sit through it until the end, healing is at hand. It may be the single greatest act of our careers