Thursday, January 24, 2013
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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.
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