While sitting and chatting with some close friends recently, the topic of death came into conversation. I’m not entirely sure how it happened but it did; it appeared before us loud and proud. One of my friends began talking about the traditions in her family after someone dies: the two day wake, the funeral mass and subsequent burial at the grave site. The conversation continued, and I could not help but chime in and voice my experience with the deceased.
The way people pay their respects and bury the dead can differ according to religion, culture, even family to family. I am in no way “dissing” a certain way of grieving because really, the grieving process is something extremely personal, as I'm about to share with you now. I recently, though, saw saying goodbye to the deceased in a different light.
My 55-year-old uncle, *Joseph, passed away this December from a very brief battle with lung cancer. It was tragic for the entire family, as my dad and his three other brothers lost their brother at such a young age. His body was cremated, and the family had his remains for a couple weeks but was a bit unsure of what exactly to do with them. My uncle was never very religious so having a wake and funeral for him, in our eyes, would not have satisfied his spirit. The family has a plot where my dad’s parents are buried so we felt that putting some of my uncle’s remains with his parents would be exactly where he would want to be.
The actual service was a very intimate one; everyone huddling around the gravesite in a circle: children, brothers, nieces, nephews, cousins all in attendance. My other uncle (Joseph's brother) led off the service, saying a few words: about how uncertain we all are of death because it is so unknown to us, how scary beautiful it can be.
Then, all of my deceased uncle’s brothers, including my dad, clipped a small piece of their hair, putting it into the ground with some of my uncle’s ashes. Genetically proven, there is no one closer to you than your siblings. This is a ritual that Native Americans would perform. The reference to burial rituals by Native Americans gave the ceremony a very gritty, raw, real feel. Then, each and every person in attendance got to put some of my uncle’s ashes into the ground. Everyone also had a beach stone or shell (my uncle lived by the beach his whole life). We kissed them and placed them into the ground.
We were all part of the burial. Personally, I had a hand in completing the ceremony. Before this, I had always seen someone who is deceased as this separate entity that you could not touch: the body in the casket, the remains in an urn, up and away from any human contact except by the hired hand laying the remains in the ground. But not this time. Putting some of my uncle’s ashes into the ground really got me thinking; it was such a therapeutic process, something that I had never experience before. This time, I felt I was one with my uncle Joseph.
This burial process was so foreign to me but gave me a new appreciation for the beauty that death can bring. I no longer saw a deceased loved one as this separate, untouchable being, but instead as one with the Earth and mankind. In my opinion, having everyone involved in the burial was the absolute best way to heal. It allowed me to see that death can be a beautiful process; it allowed closure, and it allowed me to shine light on what was formerly such a dark topic.
*Name change
Your point about the difference in dealing with death and the grieving process is so true and definitely something I can relate to. Everyone that I have had the misfortune to lose in my life obviously meant a great deal to me, which made dealing with their deaths very hard. I found that going to their wakes, despite it being awfully raw, helped move along the grieving process, where funerals were more reserved for where you get to say your last goodbyes and paying your respects. My cousin said at our grandfather’s funeral that she had was disappointed that there had not been a wake, because there was a strange lack of closure without it for her, and I agreed. While that is my experience with losing loved ones, I find your experience to be extremely comforting. To be able to have that kind of experience with death, turning it into a sort of positive thing by finding the beauty in it is encouraging that death doesn’t have to be just sad and upsetting (without diminishing the devastation of it, of course). My grandfather always used to say that death is a part of life, and I think by taking that kind of stance on it makes dealing with it much easier.
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