funeral practices

[cellio]

Today while we were studying we ended up talking about funeral practices. My rabbi recently did a funeral for a member of an interfaith family, so there was also a priest or minister there and this led to some things my rabbi isn't used to, most notably the open casket and the things said to comfort the mourners. So he asked me how I feel about all that, given that my background is different from his.

I think I've always felt weird about seeing bodies at funerals and viewings. I certainly feel weird about it now. But I did as a kid, too; I was raised to never go into someone else's bedroom when that person was sleeping, and this seemed even more an invasion than that. (The analogy for death was sleep.)

The first two funerals in my life were when I was 5 (in one case) and either 5 or 6 (in the other case). One was my aunt Mary, and her death was not unexpected. (Well, it came as a surprise to me, because no one had told me the reason she kept giving things away when we visited, but it was expected by the adults.) The other was my grandfather, who died without any warning at the age of 50. (Heart attack. No prior problems. Died in his sleep.)

Now, especially in the case of my grandfather, we heard a lot of things like "he's in a better place now" (with Jesus, with the angels, etc). Christianity has a lot of focus on the afterlife, so it makes sense that these ideas would be comforting, especially when someone dies young. The religion of my childhood taught me to look forward to the afterlife -- that this time on earth is just a passing thing, vastly inferior to what awaits if we're good. (Yes, I asked the obvious question early on: if you try to hurry things along to reach that goal sooner, you won't reach it at all.)

This sort of thing never comforted me, though. I guess I was, and am, too much of a here-and-now person; especially in the case of my grandfather, I was a greedy child who wanted him back now. I didn't believe he was in a better place, and even if he was, I wanted him to wait. Five-year-olds aren't very sophisticated, but there you have it.

As an adult, I find the theology foreign. We should live good lives, of course, but because doing so makes this world a better place. God gave us this world to care for and live in, after all. An afterlife, if it exists, is a bonus; this world is certain and that one is not. So when someone dies young it's not a comfort to think about the afterlife; rather, I think about all the things that person was doing or might have done in this world and how we're the lesser for his absence.

I don't believe that death is a punishment; people don't die because they were bad and God zapped them. (Well, I suppose it can happen, but it's not the usual case.) But death is not a reward, either; it just is.

Someday, I hope a long time from now, I'm going to have to face the funerals of my parents. I'll be told lots of things by well-meaning religious people that are supposed to comfort me and that won't; fortunately, I'll also have a community that has a different approach, one that seems to resonate more for me. I'm not sure there's anything else that will produce such a sharp division between what my relatives do and what I do.

I'm not sure all this babbling has a point, really, but I found myself thinking about it after our conversation, and I wanted to write something about it.

Comments

Re: Shmira

[cellio]

I'm also told that in some areas they wait three days for the funeral to be sure the person is really dead.

I've heard that too -- with parallels drawn to Jesus' death. (I don't know more details, sorry.)

Oh, and she said the open casket comes from the practice of kissing the dead person on the lips to prove you a) really cared and b) didn't kill them. Yeuucch.

Ewww. I have never even touched a corpse, let alone kissed one.

Five years ago, at my (maternal) grandfather's (Greek Orthodox Christian) funeral the family was lined up and we were each sent up individually to stand in front of the open coffin, right there in the front of the church, with the strong expectation that we would say a prayer or touch it or something. Doing this at all creeped me out a little; doing it in front of the entire freaking congregation really bothered me. I considered just standing, looking, and then moving on without doing anything, but that would have come off to that crowd as unloving or something. So I quietly said a short blessing in Hebrew [1]; I think only the parents and maybe the priest heard exactly what I said. (No idea if the priest was Hebrew-literate; my parents weren't.)

When my (paternal) grandfather died when I was a child, I remember having a conversation with someone -- an aunt, I think, not a parent -- about why he looked like plastic. It must not have struck me as particularly natural-looking.

[1] "Dayan ha-emet", for those who are curious. I didn't have all of kaddish memorized at that point; I had a copy in my pocket to read privately at the cemetery.

Dead bodies...

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

I have touched dead bodies -- even before my parents died. I worked in the hospital as a candy-striper, and because I've always been one of those "dependable" sort, I ended up taking bodies to the morgue when transport was slow. The older people were easier, somehow... but the most touching was a baby who died, about 11 months. Her mom didn't want her to go "alone" to the morgue, so I wrapped her (the baby) up and carried her down. It was decidedly peculiar, as she was still warmish, but her mom had been holding her for a while to say good-bye. I remember that I held out until I got to the morgue, and then I cried. Her name was Stephanie.

When my mom died, I was in the room with her. My sisters Peggy and Linda and I started giggling, because her head just sort of slipped to one side and her mouth fell open -- just like she looked every night when she fell asleep in front of the TV. I had spent all day sitting with her, even though she was mostly under morphine. When she died, I remember the three of us all walked up and rubbed her feet, just like we did when we'd come in at night and she was asleep in front of the TV. It was.... closure, in a very personal way. My sister Barbara thought it was really inappropriate, but the nurses smiled at us and hugged us. They had come to love her, too, and their care of her was very tender.

Gosh. All these memories. I think I'll go take a shower and cry for a while.

Re: Dead bodies...

[cellio]

Hmm, I should clarify: I don't think the idea of touching a just-dead body would bother me. Both of my parents are (or were) EMTs and my mother was a nursing student, so death was not something I was ever taught to be squicked by. If, for example, one of my parents were to take ill, I'd want to be there at the end, holding hands. But the idea of handling a body that's been chemically preserved and made up seems very different to me. I don't know if I could be part of a chevra kadisha (it would be a kind thing to do), but I don't think I could prepare an embalmed body for display.