Wednesday, May 06, 2009
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Monday, December 01, 2008
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Friday, May 09, 2008
StumbleVideo - Synchronisation
StumbleVideo - Synchronisation
Why do I find this so interesting?
It seems to have some significance...
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Home funerals
My sister died in October, and I'm sorry to say I didn't make the funeral, which was back in England. Funerals are important because they help people deal with their grief, and enable us to process whatever needs to be processed in order to let go, say goodbye, face the reality of what's happened, and then just get on with our own lives.
I'm sorry to say death hasn't been something my own family has been able to deal with very well at all. Of course I can understand why. I mean, we don't want to face death of loved ones, or look at the impermanence of this existence. But denying death really only means we can never really embrace our own lives, for you can't really explore one without accepting the other, whether it's our own life or death, or the life or death of a loved one.
Neither my father or mother have really been able to do death very well. My mother never really was able to mourn her own father's death, and my father couldn't deal with his brother's, that happened during world war two. PTSD is tied up with the inability to grieve, and I think their own stuckness transferred to their offspring. I know that growing up I was taught to fear death. But fearing death means fearing life. It means never really stepping into the flow, never really ever loving, never "going for it".
DH Lawrence talks about humans being "transmitters of life". Some of us, though, are the living dead, and the living dead suck the life from the living, and tells us we should avoid letting them "eat us up". But that's just what fearful people do: they eat up the courageous. They eat up the living, or might as well do.
I did a documentary recently about people who do home funerals. It's an old practice, abandoned during the 20th century, but apparently experiencing a revival of late, at least in some parts of America. A loved one dies, and the family and friends lay out the body, clean it, and prepare it for burial or cremation.
The idea of such a thing happening in my family is, frankly, unthinkable. It could never happen. Why? Because they wouldn't able to cope with it. My sister Janice probably could have, as she had the kind of courage that it takes to face life - and death - straight on. Perhaps that's why she lived her life that much more fully.
But I'm sorry to say that my mum would have been as likely to have lain out my sister for burial as...well, I can't think of any appropriate comparison. She simply wouldn't have done it.
And that's so sad. Because, difficult as it would have been, how much more would she have been able to actually deal with her death, and properly grieve?
I can't help thinking that not having the courage to face the death of loved ones is actually a terrible selfishness. Ironically, it probably increases the chances of experiencing the death of our loved ones as a result. That's the terrible irony of it.
But then maybe that's part of the whole business of survival. I've always thought that it's those who do the real loving that end up the victims of others' fears. Maybe that's what happened with my sister. Who can say? It's an irony that those who love have compassion for those that hate.
Perhaps that's why some of us end up becoming the victims of victims. It's almost as though we play some kind of cosmic game of "pass the parcel", where responsibility gets passed to the next person where it's held like a hot potato for as short a time as possible. But, of course, someone ends up being stuck with it when the music stops.
Love is a strange thing. Full of paradoxes, really. We love, but perhaps only the foolish love too much.
Yet just as society relies on altruism and true care, society also relies on that same foolishness.
For without those that stick their necks out and sacrifice, where would any of us be?
Could I do a home funeral? It's not something I'd wish to do. None of us really wants to bury someone we love. But death is, after all, a reality.
So I would like to think I could. Perhaps if I'd have been able to witness my own sister's death, and have played an active part in her funeral, I'd feel more at ease about something that I haven't really been able to put my finger on yet.
Perhaps, too, the terrible wound within my family might just have been healed a little had we all been brave enough to face it, hands on.
Friday, March 28, 2008
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