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| OK, folks, this is a somber and serious piece by the Professor.... |
One of the dubious “honors” bestowed on us by accelerating Geezerdom is the opportunity to attend more funerals and memorial services than perhaps we would wish for if we had any control over such things.
Of
course I’m not the first to observe that death is one of the most inevitable
and ever-present components of a life
well led. There is precious little any
of us can do when faced with the passing of friends, family and
colleagues. But we do owe it to them to
honor their life in some way. The question is how?
Societies around the world and throughout the centuries have developed
elaborate rituals around the dead, usually with a dual function: to assist the
dead person’s transition from this life to whatever phase
comes next; and to allow those who remain a means to start the
transition from a world with the loved one to a world without. It’s really quite an interesting area of
anthropology, and I wish I knew more about it.
In the final analysis, death rituals—like so many practices in
traditional cultures—can be viewed as
rites of passage.
America has not done well with any rights-of-passage
lately. As a university professor, I am
surrounded every day by bright, talented, funny people who no more view themselves as adults than I view myself
as the Easter Bunny. (And point of
clarification: I do not—nor have I EVER—thought of myself as the Easter
Bunny.) Research over many years
indicates that the average age at which our younger generations begin to regard
themselves as adults was 20 just two decades ago, but is currently 27 years of
age. So we’re not doing so well with the rite of passage to adulthood, it would
seem. And that’s a relatively easy transition.
How, then, are we doing with that rite of
passage from this world to the next? My
recent experience has made me question
this more vigorously.
You see, over the last two months, I have attended four
services to honor departed friends and colleagues; not one was a traditional
funeral. All of them occurred a number
of weeks after the death in question (“convenience” was cited in each case);
all of them were memorial services rather than funerals; all of them were
described as a “celebration of life.”
(All of them, by the way, were perfectly lovely, and I would not have
missed them.) The question I have,
though: : celebration of life is indeed in order—who could argue with that—but
should it REPLACE the grieving, introspection and acknowledgement of our
collective transience that characterizes a fulsome funereal service?
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| One of the Geezers—the Mathematician—likes to periodically dress in drag to mourn his lost youth. |
I wonder: should the acknowledgement that a death has
occurred and nothing will remain exactly the same again be put off for weeks to
allow extended family and friend to conveniently work a date into their frantic
schedules? Should it be put on the back
burner, or (perhaps worse) be ignored altogether in an effort to instead recreate
and remember how wonderful the world was when the loved one was still
here? Have we started evolving from a
fear of death (healthy or otherwise) to a state where we begin to IGNORE death? (Celebrate the life, but don’t mention the
suffering and bring everyone down!)
There is little doubt that the formal religious rituals that
previously guided us through our most dramatic and challenging transitions in
life (baptism, mar mitzvah/confirmation, wedding, funeral) have lost much or
even most of their effectiveness in our increasingly secular culture. But even secular rites of passage have
diverged from acknowledging the fear and uncertainty of the unknown future
toward a nostalgic look back at the wonderful, rose tinted (and controllable)
past.
Just look at high school graduation ceremonies which, in
many cases, threaten to turn into a talent show with robes. (A “celebration” of our wonderful children’s
achievements rather than a ceremony to mark the commencement of the next, daunting
phase of life.) So if formal rituals and
secular traditions are diminishing in their effectiveness, what are we to do as
we face these moments of gut-wrenching transition? I don’t know.
I suspect, though, that certain things might be worth considering:
• Death should be
acknowledged—and promptly. When a death
to someone close occurs, we simply must take whatever time and mental space we
can muster to deal with it. Many studies
of grief would agree with this. But
stopping our frantic lives is not only a good thing for us psychologically, it
is a gesture of HONOR to the departed.
By putting off these issues for weeks—or even months—do we diminish,
however inadvertently, the honor that is due?
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| To no one's surprise, this is how various Geezer funerals will end some day. |
• Death is not convenient.
Who among us has not experienced the passing of someone close, but for
some reason or another has been unable to pay their respects in person? Such things will always happen; we do live in
an era where people exist further and further away from each other in so many
ways. We do what we can; and sometimes
that feels bad or inadequate. But if, as
a society, we begin to think of honoring our dead as a thing which can be
scheduled into people’s lives conveniently, we run the danger that employers,
judges, coaches—and we ourselves—will deny ourselves the permission to STOP and
honor that which should be honored—immediately and emphatically.
-• Life is a mixture of dark and light, joy and sorrow, life
and death. Who would say that life
should not be celebrated? But dare we
overlook the shadow which surrounds the wonderful moments of light we
experience; the mortality which so intensifies each moment we seem to live
fully; the death, and resulting grief, which is so inevitably linked to a vivid
and active life well led?
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| The Professor may not like it, but this indeed is how we're sending him out, should he be the first to meet the reaper. |
Thinking it through, the Victorians may have overdone it a
bit with the wearing of black in emulation of Victoria’s flamboyant (and
long-lasting) grieving of Prince Albert.
The Egyptians might have gone a bit over the top in terms of the
structures they built to mark the passing of a ruler. And even though I appreciate the dramatic
gesture, I don’t want anyone torching my boat “Viking-style” to express
collective anguish regarding my death—whether or not I’m aboard.
It seems to me the
Irish have traditionally struck a nice balance with the celebratory,
humor-filled (and alcohol fueled) wake
followed by the solemn Requiem Mass. One
of the more moving ceremonies I have participated in was a Jewish service,
wherein the service occurred nearly immediately after the death, followed by
the burial with which many of us—including two young sons of the deceased—assisted
by placing shovelfuls of dirt upon the gradually disappearing coffin. Is there a secular equivalent to this
practice? How can we develop a way to
guide us through one of the most vexing rites of passage in a timely, fulsome
way? As the professor, I suppose I
should have all the answers. When it
comes to marking death, though, I’m left with mostly questions.
