There were no undertakers near the homesteads of eastern Montana in the 1910's when my great grandmother died in childbirth with her tenth. Teenaged Elsie, washed her mother's body and placed the stillborn baby in her arms for display on the family table. As difficult as that would be, I'm sure there was also great solace for family members who did with their own hands what they could for those they loved and lost. In the past I have had ambivalent feelings about some of our culture's death rituals, especially the embalming, beautifying and displaying of the corpse. It seemed pagan somehow. But I found solace in those customs when my mother died. It was a comfort to see her face looking at rest in a way I had not seen for decades. It was a comfort when guests told stories about mom from the years before schizophrenia, an honor that they cared enough, after all these years, to come and share them. It helped me to know that my quiet dad and housebound mother had still made an impact beyond our family.
Now, of course, there is an entire funeral industry. Washing, clothing and displaying the body of the deceased is handled by professionals. Nevertheless, it was a comfort to help select a casket that suited mom, clothes she liked to wear, her favorite color for the casket spray. Those were the things I could still do for the mother I loved and lost, and lost again. In great grandma's time it was customary for someone to keep vigil with the body from the laying out until the burial. I suppose this might have originated in the time before embalming to make sure the person was dead and not deeply unconscious. Reed and I kept vigil the last hour of visitation when the rest of the family had gone home. I did not stay for the sake of potential visitors, I stayed because of mom. I knew, of course, that my mother was no longer in the small body in the coffin, but it was the last place she resided and staying to the end seemed the right thing to do--the last, right thing that I could do for her.
No comments:
Post a Comment