Understanding Grief: Belmont's Grollman on Living with Death

A conversation with Beth El's Rabbi Emeritus whose work on understanding death was recognized nationally last week.

The subject is often presented with humor because, some say, laughter releases the stress and fear it evokes: Death.   There is the story of the actor near death, asked how he was doing, who said: “Dying is easy; it’s comedy that is difficult.” Henry Thoreau was on his death bed when a friend wanted to know if he could see the next world yet; Thoreau answered, “Oh, one world at a time.”  Even Founding Father Benjamin Franklin has commented wryly on realities of civic life and life’s final phase, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." Rabbi Earl Grollman, Rabbi Emeritus of Belmont's Beth El Temple Center is a nationally recognized expert in the field of thanatology, the study of death, dying and grief. On…

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Slices of Life

Grappling with Grief

Another friend of the town is taken all too early.

The news of Dan Scharfman’s death has this community, once again, grappling with grief. Like many Belmontians who knew and respected Dan, I feel sucker-punched by this latest of life’s assaults. Hasn’t this town buried enough of its young? Haven’t we tasted the agony of untimely death too many times in the past decade or so? In 2001, it was Brendan Grant. An 19-year-old met up with his buddies to play a game of baseball. In an attempt to field the ball, Brendan collided with a teammate, collapsing his windpipe – and a life was cut short, decades early. The town was collectively devastated by this tragedy. In 2006, METCO student Herman Taylor, a senior at the high school, was shot dead outside his home in Roxbury. His death was both violent…

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