This year I’m not going to write about Mother’s Day, but the next best thing, death.
I’ve just came across the work of photo-journalist Alain Schroeder in a series called Living for Death, and the story blew my mind. I want to share it and hear your thoughts.
In Toraja,Indonesia, the rituals associated with death are complex, require extensive planning and are expensive. Therefore, when a person dies, it can take weeks, months even years for the family to organize the funeral. During this time, the deceased is considered to be “sick” and kept at home. Relatives continue to interact with them offering gifts of cigarettes and betel leaves, drinking coffee, having meals by their side and conversing with them. While, it remains a sad time, the transition from life to death is a slow and peaceful process strengthening family bonds. Depending on the family, the body may be kept uncovered, bundled in layers of cloth or in a coffin.
The funeral ceremony, Rambu Solo, lasts 3 to 7 or more days according to the social status of the family and includes, traditional dances and processions for receiving guests, buffalo and coq fighting, animal sacrifice and large feasts. In the region of Pangala, the Ma’ Nene, or cleaning of the corpses, ceremony takes place in August after the rice harvest. Coffins are removed from their burial sites and opened. The mummies are cleaned, dried in the sun and given a change of clothes. Expressions of sadness are mixed with the overall happy atmosphere surrounding these moments of bonding with loved ones and honoring ancestors.
I find this culture’s attitude toward death immensely moving, and wonderful. The first person I discussed this with one person who was mildly disgusted, and observed that it seemed very primitive. Another person was delighted.
Maybe primitive isn’t so bad. The First World has divorced itself from most primitive customs, starting with childbirth.
I remember in every detail the birth of my first child, and reaching out for him. It was totally without thought, just a primitive reflex. But instead of handing him over, the nurses took him and wheeled me alone to the recovery area. I still feel cheated out of those first moments of motherhood! Now, many of us believe that children should be born at home, and that’s a great step backwards, toward the primitive.
I wonder if our culture is capable of a step backwards in its attitude toward death. We are so squeamish about it that The Neptune Society is making a fortune off of our rush to be rid of our dead. Just hurry up and throw their ashes into the sea so we can begin our Journey of Grief, or of Fighting Over The Will.
Everyone seems to like celebrating Dia de los Muertos, with it’s Goth costumes and other hipster friendly activities. But the Toraja take it to another level. Maybe somewhere between their culture and ours there’s a way to accept and embrace death as part of a natural cycle if not a voyage to the other side.
In Mexico, it’s not uncommon to surround your dead loved one with ice until all family members have had a chance to visit and say goodby. In the deaths I’ve experienced, there’s a haste to get the body out of the house. Because death has suddenly made the loved one a piece of refuse? People probably had more respect during the Plague than they do now in the US.
Looking at Schroeder’s photos, I noticed in one that far from looking primitive, a mourner is carrying a fucking nice handbag, probably a designer knockoff.
So perhaps it’s possible to straddle both worlds, the modern and primitive, in a way that connects us to our humanity and spirituality while still allowing for nice handbags! This is my dream.
What about you?
Reuters had a whole series of articles about people selling off body parts in the unregulated and horrifying “body broker” industry:
https://www.reuters.com/search/news?blob=body+brokers
When my grandmother died she was gone; the thing the funeral creeps did to her body (authorized by my shitass uncles against her will) yielded a grotesque abominable mockery of the woman she had been.
And also too as well I find that the odors of the living are hard enough to tolerate. Sure, keep the dead on ice for an extensive viewing but don’t hug them by the humid river banks or perfume them and bring them in for lattes at the CB&TL. Gross.
“In the deaths I’ve experienced, there’s a haste to get body out of the house.”
Though it’s no longer so Sister Wolf, prior to my reaching about ten or so it was far more uncommon that wakes occurred in a funeral home. The actual burials however always taking place after three days.
My Scots Grandfather’s death being my most “spectacular” experience from those former times. The womenfolk (but not my Grandmother) washing and preparing his body. The menfolk placing the old friend in his stay-open casket, all through the three days sitting alongside him and talking about “old times” (apparently) Granddad involved in the regaling (one of his friends[?] even going so far as to lift him so he could “share” a good shot of the neighborhood’s finest[?] whiskey (moonshine) product – the womenfolk for the only time of my memory not taking the menfolk to task for even having Spirits in the house in the first place!
Mind. The only environs I witnessed these things were in deepest Hillbilly Arkansas. Also as I’m typing this it occurs to me musicians were about (fiddlers prominently) playing what I’m thinking now were most probably dirges and such from “the old country.” Mournful for sure, real slow but beautiful sounding in my long distance memory’s ear.
Another thing occurs to me as I wind toward finishing this – a post a boyhood pal of mine who’s now a professor of English at an overseas university posted to his blog which, may go some distance helping explain to your audience’s understanding these particular weirdnesses:
http://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/2007/08/finding-myself-lost-in-translation.html
So far as I’m aware these wakes no longer occur.
But you know something Sis? I’m finding myself sorta wistful for the times that gave me such memories as these. Everything today seems so … oh I dunno, “industrial” mebbe?
As I’ve come to my 83 year-old Mom’s this morning and thought to ask her some few questions about what I wrote above, I now find I made a mistake.
(Not so uncommon Romeo, see my reply to your’s on the previous post.)
Anyway, not “wakes” rather “vigils.”
And another criticism from my Mom – she considers it important that I include that, “at that time the loved one’s remains waited for burial in the visiting parlor.” (What today I think would probably best be understood to be the living room.)
JK…the living room is a general use room for the family, the “visiting parlour” would be a better version of your living room, but for visitors. You know how Brits like to keep up appearances.
A lot of what you describe is still part of a Catholic funeral in the UK.
My uncle insisted that his body be propped up in the coffin, like he was sitting. This way, those who came to the wake HAD to look at him. It was eerie, for sure, but my cousins (his kids) and I appreciated the weirdness and humor and two of his sons imitated the look on his dead face before bursting into laughter. The younger of his two sons nailed it.
Thanks Suspended,
Admittedly I was dependent on modern American household architecture, there being generally an entranceway, perhaps what we here call a “den” (family room, tv, maybe a pc, videogames) then a “living room” which purpose serves for visiting; more infrequently a “great room” which is multi-purposeful. I do recall rooms my Mom mentioned as above alas, “parlor/parlour” having pretty much, passed from fashion.
As you’re a Brit – the name Galloway ring a bell? Over on David Duff’s blog his son Lawrence speaks well of the name. Seems to intimate that that fellow Hadrian built some kinda fence owing to the likes of the Galloway family. Anyway, that’s my Mom’s maiden name. Hence, Granddad’s.
I sooooooo want this for myself–imagine what fun everyone would have organising the perfect scenario to sum up my life……
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/us/its-not-the-living-dead-just-a-funeral-with-flair.html