Holly Pruett
  • Home
  • Blog

The Facts of Death

2/28/2016

 
Picture
When my dad was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at the age of 63, I was not yet 40. My mom (long divorced from my dad) sought to comfort me by pointing out that we were going through the same experience - she had a parent dying then too. I responded with an aggrieved protest. "Yes," I said, "but it's not my turn."

"The facts of death, like the facts of life, are required learning," writes Thomas Lynch, the literary undertaker.

Too few of us, these days, grow up learning the facts of death.

In a recent interview Stephen Jenkinson breaks this poverty down into three of its primary faces:
  • We no longer have a shared understanding of what happens to us when we die.
  • We no longer understand, culturally, what dying asks of us.
  • We have hardly any lived relationship with those who came before us, our ancestors.

​Attending four memorial services in the past week (and officiating three of them) reinforced for me the importance of these ceremonies not just in comforting the bereaved, but in establishing a relationship that bridges the gap between the living and the dead.

Many funeral and mental health professionals speak of "closure"; of accepting the reality of the death that occurred. As Lynch puts it, "seeing is believing; knowing is better than not knowing; to name the hurt returns a kind of comfort; the grief ignored will never go away.... The light and air of what is known, however difficult, is better than the dark." 

Picturethe spectacular Frances Wasserlein
For me, a good memorial is less an ending than a new beginning; less about closure than opening. It's the beginning of a lived relationship experienced not through coexistence on the physical plane, but through memory, story, inspiration, and all the other ways we become attuned to feeling the presence of that which is no longer seen.

All the ways we keep a place set at the banquet table of our lives for those who came before us: The ​lighting of six memory candles at a memorial that will be relit in six separate households going forward. Pebbles and petals from a beachside scattering ceremony that carry the potency of the day into other settings. The commemoration of the 60th anniversary of a sister's birth in the year after her death. The gathering of hundreds of mourners from two countries and many communities, bound into one people with memorial nametag buttons.

Our ancestors are more than our most recently deceased, of course, far more than those few whose names and faces we'll ever know. But the ways in which we honor and stay connected with those who die on our watch seems a decent starting place for the ancient relationships most of us in North America no longer know how to access.

Picture
Click the image to view a one-minute video clip of Frances Wasserlein, used to "give Frances the last word" at her memorial.

Comments are closed.
    Picture
    Picture

    Archives

    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    October 2012
    September 2012

    Author

    I want to know your story. And I want to help you tell it. If you’re eager to embrace the meaning in your life and to connect more deeply with others, you’ve found a kindred spirit in me.

    Categories

    All
    Adventures
    Anniversaries
    Beginning Of Life
    Ceremonies
    Coming Of Age
    Community
    House Rituals
    Memorials
    Pet Loss
    Publications
    Seasons
    Transitions
    Tributes
    Weddings

    RSS Feed


  • Holly Pruett Celebrant LLC – Creative Life Ceremonies from Cradle to Grave
  • Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant ® | Funeral & Wedding Officiant | Interfaith Minister
  • [email protected] | 503.348.0967 | Portland, Oregon, USA
  • Copyright © 2012 | Design by Red Door Designs
  • eMail
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google Plus
  • RSS Feed
Design by Weebly Templates and Weebly Themes
Storybrand Website Design by Red Door Designs