The Managed Heart. Arlie Russell Hochschild

linked to an understanding of the rite itself and of the bond it commemorates.

      A funeral is ideally suited to inducing spontaneous sadness and grief. This is because the ritual usually reminds the bereaved of the finality of death while at the same time offering a sense of safety and comfort in this realization.¹⁰ In response, the bereaved generally senses that this is the right time and right place to feel grief and not much else. Yet in a wondrous variety of ways it is possible for a griever to misgrieve.

      One way is not to feel sad, as at the funeral recalled by this woman, now thirty-one:

      When I was around nine or ten, my fourteen-month-old sister died. I had one other sibling—a sister who was three years older. I remember feeling important telling people my baby sister had died; I enjoyed the attention. At the funeral our immediate family was sitting in a special side room separated from the other guests by a transparent curtain. At the point when the rabbi drew the curtain open, the whole family simultaneously blew their noses. I thought that was quite funny and started laughing, which I masked into crying. When my piano teacher [who came to our house to give me lessons] asked why the mirror was covered (a Jewish custom), I nonchalantly told her that my little sister had died, at which point she became hysterical and ran to express her grief to my mother. Of course I was aware that I was supposed to be sad and grieving … but my parents were so aggrieved and preoccupied that I was just brought along [to the funeral] and not dealt with individually. My status of youngest child was back, along with more attention from my parents, and my little sister hadn’t developed a great personality yet, so there wasn’t much to miss. Though I understand the dynamics of the situation in retrospect, I still feel a little guilty, like there’s something wrong with me and I’m exposing myself for not having felt bad. Actually at this point I honestly feel it would be lovely to have a younger sister.

      This child felt happy at being more important both because she was close to an event that affected many people and because she had one less rival for her parents’ attention. In this case, her shame about feeling happy at her baby sister’s death attached itself to these childhood feelings only when she later reinterpreted the event through adult eyes. In other cases, of course, time does not elapse between having the feeling and appreciating the unwritten convention that it does not fit.