When a burial takes place on a holiday weekday, they reduce their grief and permit only some of its expressions. Those expressions were elegy – when all chant together, and lamentation – when one woman speaks, and the others respond after her. However, in the future, "He will remove death forever, and God the Lord will erase tears from all faces."
When the sons of Rabbi Yishmael died, the Sages came to console him. He started first and lamented that his bereavements came in close succession, and he has bothered his teachers twice to go and comfort him (which emphasized the tragedy). Rabbi Tarfon compared the sons of Rabbi Yishmael to the two sons of Aharon and derived that the sons of Rabbi Yishmael will be accorded even more tremendous honor. Rabbi Akiva spoke last and said, "If king Achav, who only did one good thing, was accorded great honor, then the son of Rabbi Yishmael – how much greater honor they will have!"
When one takes leave of the dead in a cemetery, he says to him, "Go in peace," but when he parts from the living, he wishes them "Go to peace," because they can consistently achieve more significant spiritual elevation while they are still alive. By contrast, the Sages don't have rest even in the World to Come; the Torah study, which occupied them in this world, continues there.
Art: The Burial by Edouard Manet
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