Dying differently.

Ok so the title is inaccurate, this post is actually about how different the saying goodbye is, but didn't want to waste a good alliterative heading.

Today is Saturday and I have come home from the funeral of a church member who died of heart failure on Tuesday afternoon - yes I do mean this Tuesday, just 4 days ago.  That is the first difference, how quickly funerals go ahead.  A glance at the obituary page of the Asheville Citizen Times shows the short timescale as normal here. I presume it is linked to the pre-refrigeration era and the hot climate - but it does feel very rushed for the family.  Our slower pace allows for the fact of death to begin to sink in before the funeral.

Visitation - this took place yesterday at the funeral home chapel, a whole new concept to me.  As well as the funeral service, the obituaries announce when visitation will be.  This is a designated couple of hours when the family are available and anyone can call by and offer their thoughts and condolences. I think there is a good side to this - having an agreed time and space for such greetings may lessen the onslaught of supportive visits at home that could be overwhelming if family need space.

In practice though I am less sure, imagine the family line at a formal wedding do - where you queue to pass and greet everyone in line. Place that family line next to the coffin - an open casket - and ask them to stand there for several hours, only a few days from the loved one's death, and smile politely at all comers. It is an intense expectation.

And so to the funeral itself - there is lots I could reflect on the service, but I understand that this is very dependent on the minister leading it - in this case more Biblical quotes than references to the deceased and the life lived, and some self indulgent focus from the retired pastor.  So off to the cemetery, a full procession of everyone - cars having been parked up in formation before the service ready to be led out, with the full right of the road, through red lights, whatever, up to the graveside.

A web image 

And there the casket is set on a strange contraption above the excavated grave, last post and the flag for a former soldier and the minister's prayer - time to lower the casket? No, apparently it is the family's choice but very rarely do they stay to see the coffin lowered these days.  But surely that is the point of the graveside prayers, and the final committal - ashes to ashes, dust to dust?  I can see my liturgy tutor in full flow on the need to mark 'liminal moments' such as the final farewell.

And I missed seeing the contraption in action - designed to lower the casket into the lined vault (required for all burials in NC) and then to move the heavy lid into place to seal it before backfilling the grave.  It seems that there is a desire to avoid the inevitable decomposition - shutting out the earth, the world etc, alongside maintaining the surface neat and level for the groundskeepers.  

An advertising introduction to burial vaults

It all seems a long way from our wooden coffins and the occasional funeral where the rainwater needs pumping out of he gravesite, But then we avoid any sight of the deceased.  How much do we all dodge the reality of death in this day and age.  We can celebrate reduced mortality rates in our communities at least, but one effect has been to distance ourselves from the one certainty in life.