They didn't even talk about her...

When one enters a shiva house he or she often makes a bee-line for the immediate family of the deceased.  After all we are there to offer comfort.  And so we say our "hello's", our "I so sorry's" and then we move aside so others can offer their condolences.  What do we do then?  Most people find another person they know in the house and begin the small talk:  "How are the kids?" "Did you see the news?" "What do you make of what President So-and-So said to Prime Minister Such-and-Such?"

This is exactly what happened in the home of a lovely elderly man who was sitting shiva with his two children for his wife who had passed away.  Both he and his wife had been in a car accident six weeks earlier.  He escaped with minor bruises while she suffered broken ribs and a broken sternum.  Unfortunately, her recovery did not go as expected and pnemonia after pnemonia and complication after complication eventually led to her death.

I was sitting with this lovely man's adult daughter, who is a congregant of mine, when she told me that after everyone had left earlier that evening, presumably for dinner, she and her father and brother had a chance to sit down quietly.  They were reflecting on the funeral and the beginning to shiva when the father and husband expressed his appreciation that everyone was there and his surprise that all the time they were there, "they didn't even talk about her."

One of my many "strange" minhagim (customs) when I visit a shiva house is I never make small talk with anyone other than the mourners.  I will often see other congregants there who want to catch me up or inform me of their grandson's latest achievement.  But in a shiva house I simply don't allow it.  I have had to ask people to call me in the office the next day or, perhaps to just wait until we step outside of the house - and I have gotten some nasty looks.  Especially when I'm not talking to the mourners, but instead sitting quietly waiting for them to approach me, people have a hard time understanding why I won't engage in idle conversation.

A shiva call is for the family of the loved one.  They should drive the conversation and when they don't our initiating, if we do so at all, should be about their loved one.  A shiva house certainly isn't a time to schmooze with friends.