Thursday, January 31, 2013
Laying to rest
The laying out of the dead happens in many
religions. A final procession of the bereaved to gaze upon the face of the
dearly departed seems inextricably bound up with primeval feelings. It is the
equivalent of putting your fingers in the nail holes of Christ. It is a public
affirmation before witnesses that this person is no more amongst us. For some
it is also a last glimpse of the wholeness of the individual. In the Azimuth
Trilogy there are many encounters with death and the handling of it among
different peoples and sects. The most ghastly punishment to be inflicted upon
the bereaved is to cut up the body and distribute it where it cannot be found
and made complete. I have long held the theory that the dismemberment of
corpses by psychopaths harks back to such primitive rituals.
Someone close to me has just died. In Ghana
this means the preparation of the body for the (in this case) church and the
last viewing where the congregation queue to pay their final respects
(sometimes as indicated in an earlier blog, up to a year after the formal
pronouncement of death, the body being kept nearly
frozen – not actually frozen as ice crystals form and disfigure).
Preparation involves making the person as near to the original as the cadavar
will allow. There is much veiled criticism if this is not done with sensitivity. The shroud (ie
the clothes to be worn in the coffin) must represent the style and character of
the deceased (a bohemian cannot be buried in dodgy stodgy old people’s dress).
They must be white for the marriage to God (or death as I, as a non-Christian, see it). They must be
specially made to be worn the once. The hair must be brushed at the very last to be
as naturally consonant with images people have of that individual, the face
must be made up with the cosmetics she used, there should be white socks and
often there must be extra undergarments so that the slow decay into fleshless
bone which often happens with the elderly, is disguised. In other words, the
final picture should be of rude health, a person somewhat younger than in this
final reckoning.
The Egyptians were rather good at all this
but the superstitions and taboos linger today. The send-off on the last
great journey requires many protocols, even, as in Ghana, where there is suspended
‘inanimation’ before the final goodbyes.
Labels: #Dying art. Presenting death.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
-->
Jacking
up death
An amusing coda to the recent musings on
death and how we might stage it arose the other day at a friend’s countryside
retreat here in Ghana. A powerful figure on the political and economic
landscape for decades here, my friend was commenting on a recent bereavement
and the disposal of the body. As I said the other day, cremations have arrived
in Accra.
He did not take to the notion at all, the
reason being that he was worried that he might be in a coma when the all-consuming
fires embraced him. I suggested that the crematorium might try burning a tiny
part of him to check his state of consciousness but no, burial was what he
wanted. He said that if he was not dead but woke up under the ground, he might then
lever the lid off his casket. I said that he would need to leave instructions
that the lid should not be screwed down and that the earth above should not be
too deep. (It reminded me of Tarantino’s Kill
Bill scene where the alluring assassin, Uma Thurman, uses her karate powers
to break free from the earth, pounding the coffin lid until it splinters under
her bloody knuckles.) I also suggested that he should be interred with a car
jack to facilitated awakening from his deceptive sleep of death.
In Azimuth the dire warning that you will
cut up and scatter your enemy’s dead body across a terrain to prevent the
soul’s journey to the next place, is dramatically realised. You cannot cross the divide, less than
whole. It is a harsh deterrent to those who might mess with you, your cult and
your god.
Nor has this atavistic belief completely
disappeared. Recent distress in the UK at organs being appropriated for research without
permission from hospital mortuaries and, as a consequence, offering up the body,
incomplete, attests to it.
www.chronometerpublications.me
Labels: #Death rituals and beliefs.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Authoring
your own funeral
Did you ever see The Big Chill? Friends gather for the funeral of one of their own
tight group. It was very funny at the time but what brings it to my mind was
the soundtrack which included The Weight
and other 60s and 70s rock hits from The Rolling Stones et al. Part of its
fascination was the notion of a funeral being other than an airbrushed and
glossy choreography of a life. As my last blog explores, funerals tend to be
for the living rather than the dearly (?) departed. As a consequence they can
leave the mourner feeling bitter about what remains unspoken, or unresolved or
that the quirks and failings in the deceased’s character have not been
addressed and embraced. It seems extraordinary that it should be so. In Ghana
there is a latter day Christian tradition that the dead should be given a
warts-free send-off to the next place. As though the Christian God is mindful
and persuaded by a funeral’s carefully orchestrated marketing.
If you live in a land where your last
wishes count for anything, you can choreograph your own funeral and take the
ticklish issue of people being forced to distort their public views of you, out
of their hands. This is sometimes called a ‘living will’. Some undertakers
provide you, in advance, a comprehensive document to fill in, covering every
aspect of your funeral-to-be. So – you can ignore, deny, evade the
responsibility of ensuring that your funeral is true to the curious mix of
strengths and weaknesses that make you who you are, or you can wrest control
from people’s failure of courage or desire to project a one-sided picture of
you..
Arranging the final curtain can then be
seen as your last act, a self-portrait, an autobiographical creation to hang
before the congregation, whatever their religious or atheistic leanings.
Imagine, you are reaching across the Great Divide and saying, “Hello, this was
me and don’t you forget it.” I think it is within your last rights to exert this last opportunity to shape fate and leave
a tasty mix of sweet and sour in people’s mouths, resonating with the memories
of the person they once knew.
A wry novella I wrote last year describes an
unusual choreography of death and can be downloaded FREE from
www.chronometerpublications.me
Labels: #Funerals, Dying wishes. Living will.
Monday, January 14, 2013
A Dying
Art
Last week I heard of a birth and a death on
the same day. Both events very close to me. The door to the place beyond seems
to be a revolving one.
Here in Ghana much of people’s lives is
spent doing the rounds of births, deaths and marriages. (The extended family can run into hundreds of people!) It is a phenomenal
industry and involves the collection of funding from all family members
to support it. I suppose, in emergent countries, there is a greater likelihood
of old traditions sitting alongside modern life without conflict. Anyway,
it is possible to go to one of the events mentioned above, every weekend. It is
THE social activity and it brings food and drink to everyone and constantly cements
tribal as well as family loyalties.
The death part of the equation is steeped
in protocols. About 80 % of Ghanaians are Christian and the death alluded to
above, was of a Christian woman in her eighties. Normally she would be made a
wedding dress for laying out in public view in the church as she is being
married to God. Her hands must be covered in gloves, her hair washed the day
before, her feet covered by ankle socks and her face made up to look as she
might have done earlier in her life. None of this is executed by an embalmer (as in Six Feet Under) but by a female
member of the family, perhaps the eldest daughter.
A body may be kept in the morgue for up to
a year before burial as members of a family’s diaspora are contacted and make
plans to return home from the UK or the US or wherever else. It is the group of
family elders (always driven unseen by the women) who ensure that protocols are
met. It is very inflexible. There is a ten page guidance document which covers
every conceivable element from food to flowers, from seniorities to attendant
roles and functions. Only certain accessories are allowed in the coffin. Even
if the deceased is famous for some symbolic piece of clothing, it will not be
permitted to be with the body as it lies in local state. While the young want
to spread ashes poetically where an individual made her mark on life and land,
the elders may insist that the urn is buried. The elders determine everything.
If my wife, for example, asks me to follow certain steps (no service, a
humanist end, cremation, certain songs and no hymns) the chances of her wishes
being carried out are negligible. I cannot overrule the female seniors.
Funerals are for the living and the living are very adamant about what is
permitted.
In Azimuth, a fanatical religious sect cut
up their enemies into tiny pieces and spread them wide and far because they
believed this would prevent the spirit from ascending to the place beyond. It
also made the sect’s enemies very frightened of it! (www.azimuthtrilogy.com). Thus it is in
Ghana, at least in my limited experience.
I suppose death preoccupies me as one of
the great mysteries of existence. I’m a believer in the atoms untangling and
spreading across the cosmos at death, some sticking around to be part of the
constitution of a new life (the revolving door again.) My last novella The Sense of Being Sinbad is a sort of
meditation on what is actually possible, leading up to one’s death. It is free
for you to download. Tell me what you think about it at:
www.chronometerpublications.me
Labels: #Dying. Cultural norms in Ghana. Preparing for death via a novella.