How different cultures cope with grief

Many cultures cope with grief differently than we do.

I've been interested this topic ever since I met my beloved husband Baheej. Both his parents died in Nazareth, the Holy Land, where he was raised, and died after he was already here in the U.S.

So he was worried and was fascinated about how we handle grief here. It was a time when scholars were just starting to study death and dying and the whole issue of grief and how we handle grief here in the U.S.

So Baheej wrote his doctoral dissertation on "The Sociology of the Mortuary," which turned out to be about how funeral directors here must take over many of the roles that are performed by family and community in most traditional cultures. He joined the Rotary Club in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where he was already teaching in the university, so he could meet funeral directors who were part of the local business community. And he interviewed them and surveyed their network of other funeral directors.

He learned that families turn to the funeral directors when there is a death, and the funeral directors take over most of the arrangements and logistics. They are the ones who know what to do - not just the casket and cremation or burial but most everything: death certificates, transportation, after-funeral dinner logistics, what to do, where and when to go, coordination with the clergy as needed, and giving consolation and emotional support to the family. They take over many traditional family roles because there is no one else to do it, or has the experience and knowledge.

It's true, we often don't know what to do, and are sometimes far away from family, and we partially rely on clergy if religious. But we rely heavily on those professional funeral directors who are essential parts of that first week. In my case they not only arranged many things here, but also arranged the whole transfer for burial in the family plot out of state, which involved coordination with a second funeral director there.

Here we just don't have much social support or social protection. This was extreme in Baheej's case because no one around him (except me) even knew his parents had died.

We basically dress in black or muted colors for the funeral but usually not the next day. Friends or neighbors may bring a hot dish or a cake. As we know, we are expected to get a grip and "get better" after a few weeks or a couple months. We do the best we can, mostly on our own. We don't have many "after funeral" traditions or other social protections. We are expected to go back to work and act normal.

We do have some music about death and grief, but that's only if you listen to a lot of music. One nice old song I like goes this way: "There are holes in the floor of every room, and she's watching over you and me." The raindrops "are her tears falling down.' It's a father consoling his son over the death of his wife and mother of his little boy.

There are many songs about loss and death. Some are about a lost love because of a breakup or divorce, many are about grief over death of a loved spouse, parent, child, friend.

But if we look abroad, there are many cultural tradition of consolation - such as mourning poetry, mourning jewelry, mourning dress, and ways of discussing and acknowledging the death.

One famous mourning poem in Nazareth is "Oh God, how could you take the center jewel from the necklace," written by a father on the death of his daughter. My beloved Baheej read it to me because he sent it to a friend years ago who had lost his young daughter in a car accident.

The mourning jewelry idea was widespread in Victorian England after Prince Albert died and Queen Victoria went into mourning for the rest of her life.

Black clothing for a long mourning period happens in many cultures. Also men wearing black arm bands signals grieving. Not just the day of the funeral but for a period of time. Baheej's beloved grandmother, Leah, wore only black the rest of her life after her eldest son drowned in Brazil after he emigrated there in the early 1900s.

In some cultures there are lots of other rituals and vocabulary to support grieving people, such as photos by grave stones, which I've seen in Mexico and Italy.

The point is: Many cultures have a range of social protections after a death, so all the community knows what happened and can extend themselves and be supportive.

By social protections I mean some outward signs, but also neighborhood and community awareness, and the ability and motivation to get personally involved and talk about the death with the bereaved. Of course, we don't live in Nazareth or some other traditional culture with centuries of such customs, so we will have to do the best we can. But awareness may help.

• Susan Anderson-Khleif of Sleepy Hollow has a doctorate in family sociology from Harvard, taught at Wellesley College and is a retired Motorola executive. Contact her at sakhleif@comcast.net or see her blog longtermgrief.tumblr.com. See previous columns at www.dailyherald.com/topics/Anderson-Kleif-Susan.