There are three ways to mourn: to weep, to be silent, and to
sing.
The first way to mourn is to weep: even if our tears are for
ourselves, for our ache of loneliness, for our pain of loss, they are
still sacred, for they are the tears of love. But we may
weep only if we do not weep too long, only if the spark of our
own spirit is not quenched by a grief too drawn out, only if we do not
indulge ourselves in the luxury of grief until it deprives us of courage
and even the wish for recovery.
The second way to mourn is to be silent: to behold the mystery
of love, to recall a shared moment, to remember a word or a glance, or
simply at some unexpected moment, to miss someone very much and wish that
he or she could be here. The twinge lasts but a moment, and
The third way to mourn is to sing: to sing a hymn to life, a
life that still abounds in sights and sounds and vivid colors; to sing the
song our beloved no longer has the chance to sing. We sing the songs
of our beloved; we aspire to their qualities of spirit; and we trust in our
heart that there is a God who hears the bittersweet melody of our song.
– -Rabbi Abraham Joshua
Heschel
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