Differences of Dealing With Death

Warning – this may be too morbid to read at this time!

Most people do not see death the way that I do. Most people are not drawn to death the way that I am. Most people in my city have not been to as many funerals as I have – except my son-in-law Bruce and all his coworkers as funeral directors.

Most people attend few funerals but never go out of their way to do so.

At no place more than a funeral do you learn the great differences that exist in our world over the years and even today. We all bury our dead differently.

In my own family and some others around me – I have witnessed very different customs. One that unnerves me is the taking of photos of the corpse to preserve what they look like. Yes – really it happens. We have done this in our family.

Our custom and comfort with that may come from the Wild West days that some of our family came through – Great Grandfathers etc. When some one was bad and was shot to death… he was placed in a coffin… stood up/propped up for townspeople to have their photo taken beside him.

My… how we have changed. Today we just shoot the corpse with a camera… but the camera tends to take away the makeup and artistry of the embalmer – leaving a too real shot of a dead person.

In our western world we do almost anything to make death nicer and easier to deal with. One comical thing that has often happened is… the person in the coffin looks better than they have for years after the artistic embalmer completed his tasks. (Bruce has assured me he can take off 20 years when I finally go…)

My first contrasts in the death experience happened right here in Canada. From one province to the next we have different customs of dealing with the death. In the west and within certain cultural groups there are at least two church services – on the night before and one the day of the burial.

In certain cultural groups before the body is removed from the church or chapel the audience parades around the waiting corpse and each person kisses the dead loved one – one last time. (Yes – that is Canada… and I didn’t even know the dead person so I exited the church.)

Our life in Hong Kong included many shocks for me.

Nowhere did I feel the greater cultural difference than that of the funeral scene.

The one funeral business that I attended with a friend was a multi storied building – maybe seven floors with elevator accessing each floor. Each floor had about five or six chapels – big and small. Exiting the elevator you found your chapel either left or right. It was like looking for a conference room at a large hotel.

The day we attended our first funeral there was likely more than 30 funerals happening at the same time in the same building. Mourners wore white not black as in Canada – close family members in particular. Upon entrance to the chapel you were given a clean cloth that was damp to wipe your face and a candy to place in your mouth. Following that you walked down a long red carpet to approach the casket and stand quietly, then bow reverently – perhaps kowtowing three times (bowing of the head three times). Next you greeted the seated relatives to your left.

The westerners that read this will see the difference immediately – where we parade by the casket to standing relatives waiting to greet us then talk quietly with each other… a kind of reception so odd to the oriental mind set of Hong Kong.

No place did the contrast happen in a greater way than the place of burial. In Hong Kong most of the graves of people were used for a short 7 years at which time the bones were exhumed, cleaned, counted and placed in a bone bottle.

On one our hikes across an island we walked through the huge graveyard that is primary real-estate on the island. There sitting with a small blue baby bath tub in front of him was a worker wearing, black shorts, a T shirt, black rubber boots, and pink rubber gloves. He was concentrating on his work was he held what I thought was a femur of the deceased person. He was pulling the excess from the bone and washing it clean. His back was towards us and behind him was a pile of bones, ribs, arms, and on top of it was a grinning skull – smiling at us as we passed.

(Sorry for that one – I did warn you earlier.)

I vowed at that moment – just after I snapped a photo – that I would never, ever complain about my job again. Nothing could be a heavier task to accomplish that cleaning a departed person’s bones. And in the Hong Kong way – you were messing with the dude so don’t get it wrong. And wrong could be just leaving some of the bones behind – so yes – they were counted – all of them.

Why take them out of the grave? Well that grave was needed by someone else – starting that afternoon or morning. Think of it as a very busy motel – room service does it task around lunch time and the fresh bed is ready for the afternoon arrival. Which makes sense… most funerals took place in the morning.

Now this whole thread today was started in me after reading the new edition of National Geographic this week. I discovered another very strange culture through this edition. I also discovered why I like being a minister in CANADA and not Palermo, Italy.

Ministers in this area of Italy and in one church in particular featured in the article have to tend to former priest and church related people all the time. In fact today the present clergy sits at the entrance to this special place to collect the entrance fees from tourists that come to look and take photos.

Now – pause for a moment. In Canada the very best that we do in some churches is to have an honor wall where former ministers are hung for all to see. Sorry… that is their photos are hung up for all to see.

Not so in Palermo, Italy. The former ministers, some dating back as far as the 1500s are placed in a gallery kind of area entitled a catacomb – where they rest in peace by standing, hanging from hooks, sitting in boxes, laying in boxes that are open. The photos looking out of the National Geographic are pretty revealing to say the least.

In all of the churches that I pastored except one – I have followed other ministers. In some cases the previous guy was greatly loved and respected. In other cases they were not so loved as they left rather quickly.

But in none of the places I have been have I ever had to deal with the bones let alone the whole body of the previous ministers of that church.

Can you imagine the kind of mentality that thinks keeping the body in all the various stages it goes through until the very end… and looking after it?

Well some of these dear folk couldn’t imagine what we do in dealing with and in our death practices either.

In 2007 I witnessed the way that Kenya deals with death in the city of Nairobi… which is a relatively new city filled with millions of people… that when they die will have to be transported many, many miles back to a rural and isolated village that they originally came from. And that doesn’t take place until the family raises enough money to retrieve the body from the large city morgue(weeks or maybe years)… then purchase a casket and the bus to take the mourners and family 8 to 10 hours away… where the body may be buried sitting up with the head protruding from the ground… with designated family members sitting with the dead love one…. days, weeks… until the loved ones buries them selves slowly in the ground.

(Sorry again… I warned you…)

You can now see how we are so different across our very different worlds.

Yep – I dreamed of all this again this week. Last night there was this odd, older minister grinning down at me when I woke up in my dream. Oh boy. I told the dude that I was retired and his reply was… “Really?”

Sorry I warned you.

~ Murray Lincoln ~

Sources:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/02/sicily-crypts/musi-photography