December 10.13. . . .Out of synch with “modern” life/”modern” death?

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From my journal: I took my wife to the airport early this morning in heavy rain, in the crazy swish and roar of the 4-lane’s river of red tail lights. Everyone on the highway rushing in and out, around each other at high speed on the rain-slick pavement, as if going somewhere very important, in a great hurry. I notice many of the drivers also talking on the phone. Anyone even half-sane must wonder: Where is this all going?      And just what IS the point?

We finally get to the “terminal”, hug and kiss each another good-bye and pray again, and I drive away. Such a sad and melancholy place—the airport in winter morning rain, many ghosts of loved ones leaving over the years, flying off into the sky…..“In the early mornin’ rain. Got a dollar in my hand, and an aching in my heart, and my pockets full of sand” –Gordon Lightfoot (from several decades back)

Am I supposed to get used to this!? Both the natural and the spiritual man alive in me crawl back away, gnashing and weeping.

Back home, a second cup of robust black tea–the Scottish Breakfast Tea Stephan got me for Christmas. Temperature in the thirties, no wind, big raindrops clinging to the limbs of trees. After an hour of rushed driving, how lovely is the stillness, just standing at the window a long time, looking out at the winter morning. I can faintly hear chickadees sounding cheerful in the gray drizzle. Silver wraiths of mist walk out of the forest, across withered fields.

From hard, arctic cold earlier this week, the air has softened, the drab ground thawed. Last traces of snow are gone. One of the very last of my eighteen aunts is being buried today at 2 p.m., no sun, no wind, just cold rain, a huddle of black umbrellas. From the funerals I’ve attended I’m not sure which causes the greater pain: the shock of death with its yawning black hole in the red ground and cold wind in the trees; or the inevitable awkwardness, platitudes and routines to which we reduce our poignant grief?  Watching and listening, I sense that I am not the only one who feels these things.

We’re obviously not comfortable having to stand so close to that unfathomable chasm, so we’ve created an artificial set of predictable shallows and cover-ups in the normal ways we deal, (or fail to deal) with death. Of course, the floral and funeral industries love it. And I wonder: why does the grieving family have to stand up there, smiling and hugging three hundred people in a line?  (I understand the conventional, practical answer to that question). But it seems an obvious discomfort for those who are hurting most. Isn’t there enough pain already? I do not think I could do it. Aren’t more compassionate options available to us, more genuinely healing for everyone?

It’s a “given” that all human institutions stand in perpetual need of revision, even revelation, transformation into something more life-giving, creative and divine. How can our modern handling of the whole death process be improved, i.e. more loving, truly enlightened with the ineffable Peace of  Christ’s Presence? (as with most institutions, it likely begins with a more thorough-going “death education”, from the earliest years).

Perhaps when most of us grew up on farms, a century or so ago, seeing disease, birth and death on a regular basis, we had a better understanding of life’s entrances and departures, not feeling the need to “dress it up” with expensive, gaudy paraphernalia, pretenses and well-polished pronouncements. At rural cemeteries early in the last century, those grieving as a loved one’s body was lowered into the grave were free to weep and wail their loss into the sky, the inexorable ground. This was healthy, cleansing grief. If such raw honesty and pain were expressed at most funerals today, it would likely make most people “uncomfortable”, and thus would not be acceptable, socially speaking, in most locations.

But back to the one who just died: both she and my mother, still in their teens, married their soldier sweethearts in that disturbed December when the world was at war, nearly seven decades back. Now the last of the ‘war and roses’ brides are being lowered into the ground in very costly boxes, heaped with expensive floral arrangements. Or with cremation, what’s left of their physical lives just floats away like smoke into the minor strings of winter rain. The chickadees keep chiming their cheerful little songs.

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–Quilla

January 10, 2014 | Categories: Meditations | Tags: Airports, birds, Christ, death, death education, grief, healing, leaving, rain, saying goodbye, Shalom, tea, the presence of Christ, traffic | Leave a comment