"I'll mourn you for 100 days"
"I'll mourn you for 100 days"
or how the Romani process grief
How long does grief last? How long “should” you mourn a loved one who has passed away? And how, exactly, should you mourn them? What should you do? When is it appropriate to “move on”?
These questions have no answer. Or to be more specific, the answer is always personal to the individual dealing with a loss, and it is revealed to them over time. Nobody knows in advance how long they’ll grieve. Nobody knows what grief will feel like. Even if they have already lost someone before.
“Grief is such a lonely thing. There is no-one in it with you - others may grieve for the same soul, but they do not grieve exactly for what you also grieve. No-one has lost precisely what you have lost. Not exactly, never exactly.”
Susan Fletcher
Modern-day societies have abandoned the ancient ways to process grief and make sense of death. We refuse to look at death and do our very best to suppress the tidal waves of grief because they tend to put is in paralysis when the culture around us demands that we keep moving.
We don’t know what to do about grief.
But the Romani do.
The only vow
In our piece about Roma marriages, we explained how the Romani don’t exchange vows when they get married. The promise between the bride and groom remains unspoken but very clear. Roma culture, in general, values action more than words. So even in marking the holliest union of all, they don’t allot space or time for words. The devotion to each other is declared by the wedding itself and, after that, by showing up for each other every single day.
There is one moment, however, when the Romani can choose to make a vow.
“You can say that you’ll mourn the person for 7 days, or for 10 days, or for 40 days,” Pepi explains, “it is up to you.”
When someone dies, the entire Romani tribe pulls together to follow the customs and rituals leading up to the funeral, the funeral itself, and the final departure of the soul on the 40th day. Apart from this collective processing of grief, individuals can decide to “vow” to mourn their loved one for a certain number of days.
This is usually done by people who lost a very beloved relative. A parent, a sibling, someone that was especially dear to their heart.
When they say “I’ll mourn you for 7 days,” this means that for 7 days they will not shave, nor shower with soap, nor listen to music, nor switch on the television. In their own home, they will follow the same customs that are followed in the home of the deceased, like lighting a candle every day and covering mirrors and the television with blankets.
The number of days is up to the grieving person.
“How do they decide how many days this lasts?” Martina asked.
“They just do,” Pepi said, “they choose a number of days that feels right to them, personally.”
Most commonly in our tribe, the number is anywhere between 3 days and 40 days.
For Martina, this custom felt very intuitive and natural. When a loved one dies, there is a sense of the entire world grinding to a halt. It can be jarring to see how life keeps going around you after you’ve lost a loved one. How can the world continue to spin when this special soul is no longer here?
Expressing this internal feeling by not shaving, not showering, not listening to music or watching television, is a very natural way to bring to the surface the sorrow that rages in the depths of your heart.
“This person died. And my life stopped.”
But there is more to it than this. When Martina asked what happens if you break the promise and play music before the mourning period ends, she expected to hear that this might offend the deceased. But Pepi’s answer surprised her.
“No, this is like bringing a curse on yourself. It means that someone else will die soon; most likely a child. It’s worse than a curse from God, because, as the saying goes, God delays but does not forget. But this does not get delayed. It’s imminent.”
It is a strongly held belief in our tribe that if you vow to follow the mourning customs for a certain amount of days and break your vow, then death will soon claim another soul.
Because, in its essence, this vow is an agreement to not close the gate between life and death just yet.
When the grief is so big, you can choose to stay in this passageway, together with the soul of your loved one. In a way, this is a “You died, but I will not be alive either, for a little bit.” Before you can finally say goodbye.
The widow’s oath
In Romani culture, a specific vow is reserved for widows.
When a woman says “I’ll mourn you for 1 year” to her deceased husband, this means that for this one year she will follow all mourning customs, like the memorials for 6 months and 9 months after the death. But most importantly, it means that she promises to not re-marry during this year.
Of course, she can choose any time period. She can say "5 years.” She can say “6 months,” as was the case with Pepi’s sister Nana when her first husband passed away. She can say “forever.” Or she can not vow to “mourn” at all, which is a declaration that she wants to re-marry as soon as she can. This was the case with Todorka, another one of Pepi’s sisters. She and her husband, Naiden, were very unhappy together. She made no vows to “mourn” after his very untimely death.
The tribe will not judge anyone who remarries after their spouse passes away, as long as they have followed the mourning timeframe they had chosen for themselves.
“What about when a wife dies?” Martina asked. “Does the husband vow to mourn her for a period of time?”
“No,” Pepi said.
“Why?” Martina asked.
“Women tend to re-marry faster,” Pepi said. “Men are more likely to stay alone after their wife dies, so they don’t do vows.”
Most women in our tribe work, but generally, men are the ones who provide for the family and support it financially. The reality is that, even when a woman works, she is barely able to support herself and her children without the help of a man. Men in Roma culture hustle constantly and do a lot of hard, manual labor to make a living.
The understanding in our tribe is that a woman might have many reasons to want to re-marry.
“She might not want to be alone,” Pepi says. “She might want a father for her children. She might need a partner to be able to pay the bills.”
So the tribe doesn’t meddle in her choices. She decides how long she’ll be officially in mourning. And she decides when and if she’ll remarry. What happens in her heart is another thing.
How long does grief last?
Nana and her first husband (and father of her 3 children,) were having a rough patch just before he died in his sleep, over 15 years ago. They had, in fact, just had a fight and she left in a huff to stay with her parents the night during which he passed away. When her son, Little Pepi, came to look for her in the morning to tell her his father had died, she at first did not believe him and thought he was lying to get her to come back home.
She vowed to mourn him for 6 months. She re-married (which means, she moved in with a man as partners in life) immediately after the 6 months were over.
Todorka also lost her husband suddenly, over 10 years ago. She made no vows to officially mourn him. She is also yet to re-marry.
What happens in the hearts of these women? Only they know; and their tribe respects that.
When a Romani declares “I’ll mourn for 100 days,” they refer to how they will engage - or not - with the outer world. But they don’t refer to the extent of their grief. On this, they don’t put a date.
Because it doesn’t end.
In our piece The Romani cry at parties, we told you this story:
At a celebration last year, we were gathered around a table, and a song started playing - about a mother who struggles to raise her children alone after the death of her husband.
Pepi’s niece, Tzetza, started crying to this song. She’s not a widow. She’s happily married with four children. But her father died when she was little, and she was one of those children from the song. In this moment, the song brought up grief from her childhood.
Grief surfaces all the time, unexpectedly, at random moments. Anyone who’s lost a loved one knows this. The Romani know this and embrace it. In Roma culture, it is normal to start crying about someone you lost, even they died 20 years ago. The children of Nana and Todorka, now adults, also cry during celebrations when a song about the death of a father or the love of a father starts playing. Nana and Todorka talk about their deceased husbands all the time. They are not forgotten, even though they passed away two decades ago. They are very much here, in the hearts of the families they left behind. If you listen to people in our tribe talk about them, you’d think they were here just yesterday.
“How do you know how long you will mourn for?” Martina asked.
“You decide how long you will follow the customs,” Pepi said. “But in your heart, you mourn forever.”
