There are some who go through life without the need for God, for symbols, rituals, or traditions and suggest to others that we each make our own way through life’s passages. I listened to a woman on the radio recalling the suffering she experienced with the death of a much beloved husband. She preached that mourning was personal, not communal. Each mourner needs to find her own path through the pain. Do what feels good. Lie in bed all day. Don’t get dressed if you don’t feel up to it. It isn’t necessary to send thank you notes to acknowledge those who have sent cards, letters, flowers or donations in the name of the loved one. Yet, writing notes of thanks, gives the mourner an opportunity to find reasons to be grateful at the darkest time. Each note written reminds the mourner that she is loved by others. Each time she puts pen to paper she will remember some special moment that she and her husband shared with that particular member of the family or that particular friend.
We live in a society that expends enormous amounts of energy sharing every moment of life with tweets, Facebook and all manner of social media, yet death is to be made into a private matter. Death is not a private matter. Just as God was present to bless Isaac after the death of his father, Abraham, and bury His beloved Moses, in our desire to imitate God, we, too, want to honour the dead and comfort the mourner because each death is a loss of light to the Lord. Death is no more a private matter than birth. We come into the world to family and community surrounding us with love. Family and community are there for us in death. “Fear not death; we are destined to die. We share it with all who ever lived, with all who ever be.” Ben Sira Ecclesiaticus
Religion provides the mourners and the community with rituals, tradition and symbols to honour the one who has died, give voice to those who remain behind and provide them a way back to the living.
My child, shed tears over the dead,
Lament for the dead to show your sorrow,
then bury the body with due ceremony
and do not fail to honour the grave.
Weep bitterly, beat your breast,
Observe the mourning the dead deserves…
And then be comforted in your sorrow;
For grief can lead to death,
A grief-stricken heart loses all energy…
Once the dead are laid to rest, let their memory rest,
Do not fret for the, once their spirit departs. Ecclesiasticus 38:16
We follow ritual and tradition for the same reason we follow a map; to get from one place to another without losing our way. My parents died fourteen years part. I had already traveled with friends and family as they had walked the path of grief. I participated in the rituals and traditions of death, burial and mourning with them. Accompanying others becomes a dress rehearsal for the day when we must face the death of a loved one, when we must say good bye to a friend, a spouse, a parent and the most painful of all, a child. When it was my turn to grieve the death of my parents, and with the death of my mother, my last parent, accept becoming an orphan, I wasn’t completely bereft or lost wandering in the desert with no landmarks to point the way, because the rituals and traditions were familiar to me and comforted me; say this prayer, stand over here, move over there, shovel the dirt over the casket to confirm that death is real. I walked along the path with my friends and family walking with me, holding me upright.
