Is it always respectful to mourn death so intensely?
Or, put another way, is it sometimes disrespectful to mourn them rather than celebrate their lives? To many, this is heresy, but to other cultures, it is a matter of respect, not contempt.
This came to mind when I saw and looked at a remembrance of the Night Of The Dead, a sculpture I bought in New Mexico five years ago, on the Night Of The Dead celebrations, a major holiday in Mexico. Today, as it happens (to my surprise, honestly), November 1 and 2 is when Night Of The Dead feasts and celebrations occur worldwide.
The Day of the Dead originated several thousand years ago with the Aztecs, Toltecs, and other Nahua people, who considered mourning the dead disrespectful. For these pre-Hispanic cultures, death was a natural phase in life’s long process. The dead were still considered community members, kept alive in memory and spirit—and during Dia de los Muertos, they temporarily returned to Earth.
In many cultures, death is viewed as something that happens to the body but not the spirit or meaning of a life.
I had a lot of time to think when I was a kid, perhaps too much.
One of the things that always disturbed me was how my relatives and the families of my friends mourned the dead. It wasn’t until I joined a Quaker Meeting when I was 14 that I realized different faiths and cultures saw death the way I did, that mourning the dead rather than celebrating their lives seemed disrespectful, even demeaning to me.
One of my few close friends when I was young died of cancer, and his funeral was heartbreaking for me and his family; I still remember the cries of pain and mourning. I remember thinking that this was what people did, but it did not in any way reflect his life, which was full of humor, kindness, and hope. Why, I wondered, did it have to be that sad?
I knew then and now that this is a radically different way of seeing death than most people do, and I respect that and the many rituals that surround conventional religion and death in America. I sometimes think I was born to be a heretic. I mean no disrespect to anyone’s grieving.
In America, death is most often a subject to be avoided; it is considered a horror to be pushed aside until it is upon us. It’s not something people want to talk about, or our culture discusses much.
(Today’s Dia de Lose Muertos celebration is a hodge-podge of pre-Hispanic religious rites and Christian feasts. It takes place today and yesterday, as does All Saint’s Day and All Soul’s Day on the Catholic calendar, always around the time of the fall corn harvest.
Maria and I have both decided not to have a funeral but to be cremated, our ashes scattered in places of our choice. We both want our closest friends to gather in either case and laugh and celebrate our existence. I would be depressed if my passing left people in grief and sorrow; we all have the right to be happy. We all will die in one way or another. My daughter said it was a great idea. She is a natural-born wiseass.
Later in life, I realized that many cultures and faiths shared my views. Many consider death a reason for gratitude and celebration, a matter of respecting the dead rather than the more painful response, mourning them. I liked the Aztec idea that the dead remain in our hearts and souls; they don’t disappear.
I still think of my friend, who was a cousin. And I still smile at his memory.
In my family and the others that I saw, the death ritual went on for weeks and months, involved wakes, churches, synagogues, priests, and rabbis, sometimes went on for years, and involved tears, grieving suffering, the tearing of garments, and the covering of mirrors, depression, and isolation. There was food everywhere.
I did not think my mother wanted that from me, and so when she died – we had many problems – I chose to skip her funeral and celebrate her life. She loved me very much in her way, and I didn’t want to lose sight of that. And I didn’t want to mourn her; I tried to remember her.
In my Quaker Meeting, people gathered to celebrate the lives of the dead and express gratitude for knowing and loving them. That felt good and right to me. In many of the funerals I have attended, there is only gravity and loss, rarely celebration.
This idea came up differently when my dog Rose died. She was the most important dog in my life.
She saved my life more than once and helped me survive my new life on a farm.
When I came upstate and stumbled and bumbled onto my first farm, and when she died, I decided against mourning for her. She was critical to me. I wanted to celebrate her life and my time with her. I went up on the hill behind the farmhouse (I have her ashes on my mantel) and thanked the spirits for bringing a wonderful, loyal, and brave creature like that into my life at a desperate time.
When Rose was alive, I took her and the sheep to the hills and read St. Augustine to them. She was faking listening or understanding, but you would never have known it. When I fell on the ice, which often happened, Rose would nip at my ear until I woke up and got up.
I decided to stop mourning the loss of dogs and celebrate their lives. I decided I would rather live with a dog than mourn a dog, so I went out and got another one. I didn’t want to be one of those people on Facebook who celebrated the dog’s death a decade earlier and still mourn for it.
I smile whenever I think about Rose. Nothing about her would make me sad and disrespect her contributions to my farm and life. I never cry when I think of Rose; I always smile.
After Rose died, I got Red, as great a dog as Rose, in different but essential ways.
He became a magnificent therapy dog, and I loved him dearly. When he died, we dug a hole in the pasture and buried him right there, putting some rocks on it to mark it. I say hello to him every day. Nothing about his life or his time with me makes me sad; there is nothing for me to mourn.
I didn’t realize it until this morning, but my Day Of The Dead sculpture sits beside Rose’s ashes on the mantel.
I don’t tell others what to do, and social media has made me a passionate believer in minding my business. We all have to find our way, especially through grieving. I feel I have found my peace with death, and it’s a good place.
I most want people to laugh and smile when they think of me, and if I die first, Maria is likely the perfect person to make that happen. There is nothing wrong with crying through grief; there is nothing wrong with smiling about a life.
She smiles and laughs at me all the time.
