On dying & grief (Part 1)

I think about death.

Not in a fearful or worrisome way, or about what happens after we die, but about the role that death and grief play in our lives.

I’ve always been fascinated by explorations of death and grief, particularly in how differently these universal realities manifest in diverse cultures. We see bits and pieces of some of the differences in film and television: for instance, some funerals are portrayed as occurring strictly at the graveside, where there are chairs for the mourners and the eulogies are said (this tradition obviously wouldn’t work year-round in Canada!), while other times, services are portrayed as being held in funeral chapels (but rarely in churches, for some reason).

Some may recall the opening scene in the timeless Dr. Zhivago, in which Marya Nikolaevna Zhivago is carried in an open coffin, as per some Orthodox traditions, until the pallbearers reach the grave, at which time the coffin is closed, nailed shut, and lowered into the ground so that the mourners can throw soil on it before it is buried completely.

Last year, Netflix showed a series called The Casketeers, which followed the day-to-day activities of two Māori funeral directors in New Zealand. Unsurprisingly, many of their clients were Māori themselves, which meant that the rituals had, among other things, family members sleeping with the body in the days leading up to the funeral and a fearsome-sounding Haka ceremonial dance as part of the funeral service itself (usually outdoors – look this up, if you’ve never seen it done).

However, despite being Māori themselves, these funeral directors catered to the cultures of various other south Pacific peoples and carefully pointed out the subtle differences among them. The series was intended to give the viewer a human and sometimes humorous look into a funeral director’s world, but its cultural contrasts and insights made it even more than that for me because it showed that there are just so many ways to grieve.

As a child, I of course was not sure what to make of death. I held what wouldn’t necessarily be called a morbid fascination with it but certainly a strong curiosity about its role and the ritual surrounding it. My family and I belonged to the Ukrainian Catholic community in Winnipeg, so it was inevitable that we would be called to mourn the passing of our fellow community members from time to time.

I remember the first funeral I ever attended – not sure how old I was, but perhaps nine or ten in the late 1960s, and it was held in the then “new” hall of the Institute Prosvita building in Winnipeg. I’m not really sure why the service was there instead of at a funeral chapel – perhaps this was just the prayers, with a funeral mass slated to be held in a church the next day. I remember so clearly hearing the Ukrainian dirge “Vichnaia pamiat’” (“Eternal Memory”) being sung over and over – there was no mistaking that this melancholic, repetitive chant was specifically tailored to signify someone’s passing, and it was certainly a piece of grieving music that I would hear many times more throughout my life.

As was customary, it was an open-casket funeral and the man, who had been a caretaker there at the Prosvita Hall, really meant nothing to me, so I didn’t feel a sense of loss at all, but the entire process fascinated me, particularly the open casket, as this was the first time I had seen a dead body. I remember sitting with a friend, just slightly older than I and a “cool” guy I kind of idolized then (and for some years after), who cried once during the service, kind of spontaneously, it seemed, and I really wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Did he really know the deceased that well? Perhaps they had interacted in the course of the time we spent at the Hall participating in various community activities and he truly did feel a sense of loss. Or did he cry because he felt that he should? Regardless, it seemed a bit “off” because I don’t recall sharing any overarching sadness in our conversation as we sat through the parts of the ceremony prior to that. I’m not sure, but that little bit of sudden emotion has stuck in my memory ever since because of how real, yet incongruent, it appeared to me at the time.

Aside from the sombre dirge noted above, the Ukrainian Catholic community observed numerous other grieving rituals, including a service and a meal at 40 days after the death (a day on which it is said that the deceased’s soul finally departs the earthly realm) and during the period of a year afterward, during which time there should be no dancing and relatives would continue to wear black. These are not observed as strictly as they once were, but they were certainly the norm at that time. In some ways, adhering to these rituals meant that the reminder of death and ensuing grief was often present somewhere in the community.

As an aside, I remember my mother coaching me at that time on how to behave around someone who had suffered a loss and was grieving: don’t say anything that would remind them of the passing because it will make them sad. I learned much later that this was not necessarily the best thing to do, as memory is part of what keeps that person alive in the minds of those left behind, but I know my mother’s heart was in the right place. Even then, as my mother and I talked of these things, I began to realize the complex interplay among death, ritual, and grief.

I also clearly remember my first Ukrainian Youth Association summer camp, in 1968 (I remember it for a number of reasons – few of them pleasant, alas). A fellow camper, same age as I, had lost his mother to cancer scant months prior. He would wake up at night screaming, in obvious deep pain. My friend and I recently had an opportunity to get re-acquainted, as we both now live in New Brunswick; he told me that he had been sheltered from his mother’s last days and eventual death (we were nine at the time), thereby denying him the opportunity to say good-bye in whatever form that might have taken for someone that age.

That was the thinking at the time, though, as those around him (including his kindly father) honestly thought that they were doing the right thing but, if they could have seen into the future, they would see how he still re-lives and suffers through those stolen moments. Closure from such a traumatic event often seems as elusive as ever for my friend, even 55 years later.

Then, there was the first time I went to a funeral where someone had to bury their child – an adult child by this time, but their child, nonetheless. It was August 1973: the brother of the fellow with whom I had attended my first funeral was killed, as I remember it (and I could have the details wrong), in some type of motorcycle-truck encounter at the side of the road near Calgary. Apparently, he’d had some involvement with one of the local “motorcycle clubs” so that, when we went to the church for the funeral mass, the attendees included numerous members of that organization.

I’m sure I sat there wide-eyed, checking out these tough-looking bearded and mustachioed unfamiliar faces, with colours proudly displayed, my 14-year-old self trying to understand the bigger picture there. I remember being jolted awake to the outside world a little bit, as the club members were not performing the Ukrainian Catholic church rituals, such as standing at certain times or crossing oneself, with which I was so familiar. In my sheltered little Ukrainian Catholic immigrant enclave, it had never occurred to me that this was even possible.

Death and grief were thus always on the periphery of my pre-adult life – death was something that happened to other people, mostly. Sure, there was news from Ukraine (then a Soviet “republic”) about relatives on my father’s side dying (my grandfather in 1966, my namesake uncle, who was killed by lightning in his own back yard in 1970, and my grandmother in 1972), but I had never met these people and, the only reason they meant anything at all to me is that we all shared a last name. (My mother’s parents in Hungary were – and continue to be – even more of a mystery, although I knew that they had died well before I was born.)

The thought of my parents, (particularly my mother), actually dying entered my brain from time to time, and I found it truly frightening, even into my early 20s. Unsurprisingly, I had no real context of how old they really were (I knew their chronological ages, but we really don’t understand ages and life stages until we’ve lived them ourselves) or what sorts of health issues or other misfortunes could take them. They were both unfortunately too quick to play the guilt-inducing “I die soon” card throughout their lives so, even though I knew that my mother was somewhat unhealthy for assorted reasons, I was never truly sure what was real in that regard. I just hoped at the time that I wouldn’t have to figure it out too soon.

I left Winnipeg to move to Edmonton in late 1978 and, to that point, I’d never cried or really grieved in any way at someone’s passing. I’d never felt the need, that sense of loss so profound that would cause tears to flow in a way that I’d seen it happen for others.