Death Defying
I got used to dying. It happens a lot.
I couldn't get used to the sorrow and sense of loss that drown every other emotion.
This week, a young man I knew was buried by his family, his parents, his relatives, his friends and his wider community. Dying shows no regard for the age of the deceased and has little respect for the age of those looking on.
Those at the top end of the age range have a slight advantage in dealing with tragedy. Not that they are comfortable with dying; they have experienced funerals far more often. That doesn’t make it any easier.
At funeral ceremonies, I sit in a row as far back as I can. I know what it feels like to sit in that dreaded front row. I feel for the sorrow of another family through the mist of my own remembered pain. It never went away.
What do you say on those occasions? Will words make a difference?
There are official words. Tradition demands them. They remind us there are issues here, deeper than our personal loss. We usually add more personal words; those that prompt memories; that bring smiles of remembrance; words that make us catch our breath as sorrow explodes inside us; words that struggle to keep the deceased lingering with us; those words, kindly meant, that hint that the emptiness within us will deepen over the next year. The ceremony takes care of all those words.
A hug afterwards says all the other important things. Anything that can’t be said by a hug isn’t worth turning into words. A hug is saying, ‘I’m here’.
What more is there to add?
When I stood in the line at the end of the burial ceremony, I didn’t want to hear your memories. I didn’t need to know your name. It wasn’t important to tell me how you knew this person I loved so much. It didn’t register when you said how sorry you were and how much you sympathised with me. I couldn’t deal with words. Please, I didn’t need to hear any more words.
I just wanted a hug from as many people as possible, from those who knew the person I had just left in the other part of the chapel or in a grave in the ground. I wouldn’t even have cared if you had wandered into the wrong funeral and were wondering who I was and who were these other people waiting to shake my hand and murmur quiet sounds.
Give me a hug. Don’t tell me to be brave and that I will get over it. I won’t get over it. I may learn to live with my loss, but it is now part of me and will never go away.
I like silences at a funeral. The buzzing words are kept out of the way and can’t fetter us. Silences tell us, this is what it will be like. They also say, here is where we will find the one who has gone. From now on, such moments of stillness will drop on us in the most unlikely places and at the strangest times. They will turn us into statues. In these moments of stillness the blessedness of fond memories will surge up and stop us in our path, sometimes with a tear, but as time goes by, hopefully, with a smile.
A hug shares the secrets to be found in the silence. It tells us, this is where the loved one lives on. In the silence of a hug, the loved one also is saying, ‘I’m here’.
I used to wonder about the custom of mourning for a year until I discovered that it took that long to work through the cycle of saying for the last time, ‘this time last year…’ Then that year passes and we are into counting anniversaries.
As if we ever need anniversaries to remind us of the gap in our lives. We do our best not to think about the regular things like visits, phone calls and cards for special occasions that were the familiar mark of the deceased. We may pretend the house is the same, but we are defeated by that chair, that special mug, the way the curtain always hangs, the magnet on the fridge door from Llandudno that can’t be thrown out. We still look up in expectation when the door opens and we imagine the loved ones coming in, smiling, ‘Hi’.
If only we could give them a hug.
