Death is a subject none of us wants to spend too long on. When we attend funerals, it’s challenging to find the right words of comfort, and when we experience deep, personal bereavements, we are flung into an abyss that forces us to confront our own mortality — something most of us would prefer to avoid. In Living with Our Dead, a book written in French and beautifully translated into English, Delphine Horvilleur confronts these subjects head-on. As a rabbi frequently called on to officiate at Jewish funerals, Horvilleur’s experience with graveside suffering is extensive, and her insights, profound.
On parents who have lost a child, Horvilleur writes: “The death of a child condemns you to exile in a land where no one can visit, apart from those to whom the same thing has happened. Like all immigrants, you’ll have to discover a new language. None of the words you know can begin to describe what you will have to live.” The Parisian rabbi also notes how our conversations change when someone we know is suffering from a life-threatening illness. “Your loved ones continue to talk to you, but, without your knowledge, they generally start another conversation in your absence with your husband, your wife, your closest circle. Your health becomes a subject of conversation that escapes you. [This] is simply the main side effect of the most shared emotion in the world: fear.”
Horvilleur gives us case studies from the individuals she’s encountered and the funerals she’s officiated. There’s Elsa Cayat, a psychoanalyst who was murdered in the Charlie Hebdo shooting, and her close friend, Ariane, a young mother whose illness Horvilleur witnessed from its start to its devastating end. She recounts the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, which took place when she herself lived in Israel. And she gives us a humorous glimpse of Miriam, a New York senior she knew who was so obsessed with the planning of her own funeral that her family members arranged a staged event for her in advance of her death, so she could enjoy it well before she died. Horvilleur also goes back in time to discuss the death of Abraham, our forefather, and the demise of the Jews of Alsace – Lorraine, some of whom were her own ancestors.
Readers will find Living with Our Dead full of pragmatic insights and moments they will recognize well from their experiences as mourners and comforters alike.