How the traditions mourn

The teaching

As the mourning law and custom of each faith teaches it.

Judaism: from death to burial

In Jewish law the time between a death and the burial is aninut, when the mourner is freed from other duties to see to the dead. On hearing of the death the mourner says, blessed is the true Judge, and tears a garment, over the heart for a parent. The body is not left alone: watchers sit with it and recite psalms. The burial society washes it with care, dresses it in plain white shrouds and lays it in a simple coffin, the same for rich and poor, and the burial is held as soon as it can be. At the grave the mourners themselves shovel earth onto the coffin, and the first meal afterwards, brought by neighbours, includes eggs and lentils, round foods for the round of life.

Judaism: seven days, thirty days, a year

Shiva, the seven, begins on the return from the grave. The mourners stay at home, sit on low stools, do not work, and in many homes cover the mirrors and keep a candle burning. Neighbours bring food, and a quorum of ten gathers each day to pray in the house so that the mourner can say Kaddish. Visitors come without invitation, sit quietly and wait for the mourner to speak first, and on leaving say the old words of comfort: may the Place, that is God, comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. The Sabbath pauses the outward signs of mourning.

Shloshim, the thirty days from the burial, keeps a lighter mourning, without celebrations. For a parent the mourning lasts a year. Each year on the Hebrew date of the death comes the yahrzeit, with a candle that burns a full day and Kaddish in the synagogue, and four times a year the community says Yizkor, the prayer of remembrance. A stone is set on the grave, and visitors leave a small pebble on it to show that someone came.

The churches of the West

Christians keep watch with the dead in a vigil or wake, then hold a funeral, in Catholic churches a Mass for the dead, which commends the person to God and speaks the hope of the resurrection. At the grave the Book of Common Prayer commits the body “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.” Catholics have Masses said at the month and on the anniversary, and on All Souls' Day, the second of November, the whole Church prays for the dead and families visit and tend the graves. Most Protestant churches, which do not pray for the dead, give thanks for the life and comfort the living.

The Orthodox: three, nine and forty

The Orthodox mark the third, ninth and fortieth days after a death with memorial prayers: the third for Christ's rising on the third day, the ninth for the nine ranks of angels, and the fortieth for his ascension on the fortieth. Popular teaching holds that the soul is on its way during these forty days. A dish of boiled wheat sweetened with honey, called kolyva, is blessed and shared, after the Gospel's words: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” The service ends with the hymn Memory Eternal, and the dead are remembered again at a year and on the Saturdays of the Souls through the church's year.

Islam: washing, prayer and the grave

On hearing of a death a Muslim says the Qur'an's words: we belong to God, and to Him we return. The body is washed by family of the same sex, an odd number of times, with water and lote leaves and a little camphor in the last washing, then wrapped in plain white cloth, three sheets for a man and five for a woman. The funeral prayer is said standing, with four cries of God is greatest and no bowing or prostration. Burial follows quickly, the body laid on its right side facing Mecca, and those at the graveside throw in handfuls of earth, recalling the verse: from the earth We created you, to it We return you, and from it We will bring you out once more.

Islam: the days that follow

Condolences are received for three days, and neighbours cook for the bereaved, as the Prophet asked when news came of the death of his cousin Ja'far. A widow keeps a longer waiting time of four months and ten days. Weeping is not forbidden: when his infant son Ibrahim died, the Prophet wept and said that the eye sheds tears and the heart grieves, but we say only what pleases our Lord. Loud wailing and the tearing of clothes are forbidden. Muslims visit graves to pray for the dead and to remember their own end, and the dead go on being helped, the Prophet taught, by three things: a charity that keeps giving, knowledge that keeps benefiting, and a child who prays for them.

Hinduism: the last offering and the thirteen days

The Hindu funeral is antyeshti, the last sacrifice: the body itself is the final offering to the fire. It is washed, dressed and garlanded at home and carried to the cremation ground, and the chief mourner, by custom the eldest son, walks around the pyre and lights it. On a later day the ashes and bones are gathered and given to a holy river, the Ganges if it can be reached.

For about ten to thirteen days the family is held to be in ritual impurity and keeps away from festivals and temples. Each day rice balls called pindas are offered, which the texts say build a new body for the departed spirit, the preta, limb by limb. On about the twelfth day comes the rite of sapindikarana, in which the preta's rice ball is cut and joined to those of its father, grandfather and great-grandfather: the dead person is no longer a wandering spirit but one of the ancestors. A meal on the thirteenth day closes the mourning, and from then on the ancestors are fed each year at shraddha, and all of them together in the fortnight of the ancestors in autumn.

Buddhism: the seven sevens

Buddhists in Tibet, China, Korea and Japan mark the forty-nine days with rites on each seventh day, when the family gathers, monks or priests chant, and merit is made and dedicated to the dead to help them toward a good rebirth. In Japan many families inter the ashes on the forty-ninth day, hold a rite on the hundredth, and keep memorial services in the first, third, seventh and thirteenth years and later ones, often until the thirty-third, while every summer at Obon the ancestors are welcomed home with lanterns and seen off again.

In the Theravada lands of Sri Lanka and South-East Asia the family gives food and robes to the monks in the dead person's name, and pours water slowly from one vessel into another as the merit is shared, while the monks chant that as rivers full of water fill the ocean, so what is given here reaches the dead.

Sikhism: the hymn of the night

Sikhs are taught to accept death as the will of God, hukam, and to keep mourning restrained. The body is washed and dressed with the articles of faith left in place, and cremated while the congregation sings hymns and recites Kirtan Sohila, the prayer said each night before sleep. The ashes are given to running water, and no monument is raised. At home or in the gurdwara a complete reading of the Guru Granth Sahib is begun, and it is concluded about ten days later with prayer and the sharing of food, which ends the formal mourning.

The art of dying well

The late medieval Church taught Christians to prepare for death all their lives, and gave them the Ars moriendi, the art of dying, to read and to have read beside them. Its woodcuts show the dying in bed, beset by five temptations, each answered by an angel. The first is doubt of the faith, answered by faith. The second is despair over one's sins, answered by trust in mercy. The third is impatience in suffering, answered by patience. The fourth is pride in one's own goodness, answered by humility. The fifth is clinging to possessions, family and the world, answered by giving them into God's keeping.

The book gives questions for a friend to ask the dying, prayers to say with them, and last words to commend the spirit, after Christ's: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” Its counsel to the living is the motto memento mori, remember that you die, which the Rule of Saint Benedict puts as keeping death daily before one's eyes: not to fear life, but to live it rightly.

What the customs share

Every one of these customs gives grief a shape and company: set days, set words, food brought by others, a place to go, and an end to the first and hardest time that is not an end to love. None asks the mourner to stop grieving on a date. If grief comes with thoughts of ending your own life, please call a crisis line or your local emergency number now.