And the undertaker cried

After a funeral during Covid 19 lockdown, the local crem only allowing only 10 mourners and those to gather with distance outside the front of the crem.  The service with reduced time, happening there, and only then the deceased could be led into the crem chapel and the curtains closed.  This in an area where the dominant culture is to keep curtains open and for those leaving a funeral service to touch the coffin in a final farewell.

I had had to 'meet' with the family remotely over the phone, as had the funeral director - neither of us able to give the level of service to the family that we usually would although our best in the situation.   As the family left I commented to the funeral director how strange it was and limiting, and whilst my first lockdown funeral they had done so many, and the person who was so professional in front of the family turned to me with wet eyes.  This prompted the poem below, and whilst undertaker is now an old term, funeral director didn't have the same rhythm.

And the undertaker cried

I don't know you and I didn't know your loved one
You invite me in
Tell me their story
Entrusting me to hold that story
To hold the mirror
reflect their lives.

I couldn't reach out a hand
You couldn't sit in the chapel
We gathered outside in these strange times
And the undertaker cried.

Remembering over 90 years lived
The child, the young in love,
the wonderful parent
Memories shared
only hints of the fullness of life lived

I couldn't reach out a hand
You couldn't sit in the chapel
We gathered outside in these strange times
And the undertaker cried.

Emotions released
hearts aching
tears falling.
The final farewell
reduced, constrained,
in viral times.

I couldn't reach out a hand
You couldn't sit in the chapel
We gathered outside in these strange times
And the undertaker cried.

I don't know you and I didn't know your loved one
You invite me in
Tell me their story
Entrusting me to hold that story.
I did what I could but wish I could give my best,
sit with you, reach out to you,
You didn't see, as you turned to go,
The tear in my eye, and
how the undertaker also cried,

I couldn't reach out a hand
You couldn't sit in the chapel
We gathered outside in these strange times
And the undertaker cried.

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.