Till death do us part
NEED PHOTO
RIGA - “Did you hear, Solzhenitsin became a great Russian writer yesterday,” I told Peteris.
“No. Why?”
“He died.”
It takes crossing into another life for a writer to be elevated into a position of a great writer in Russia as great writers have served as prophets for the nation and its people. And no one likes prophets.
“We ridiculed you, Aleksandr Isayevich,” said a man in the crowd of mourners walking by the body of a dead writer laying in state.
“We ridiculed you. You are the best writer in the world,” he said.
Reading this well-written account of the funeral in Kommersant, I thought of two things: the way different nations handle death and what happened since my grandfather died.
I’ve been to many funerals in the West. I attended a funeral once when a coffin stood right outside the doorway of a south Michigan church. Every time someone walked in, the door would hit the coffin making a noise. I attended a funeral which ended in cremation, when a coffin moves on the belt into a firy furnace to be buried. Another graveside service ended with people leaving the coffin above the ground – some in the West apparently believe that seeing the body of a loved one lowered into the 6-foot deep hole is too distressing, so they avoid it all together not realizing that this constitutes a normal grieving process.
Westerners think it’s too traumatic of an experience seeing your loved one lowed into the ground and covered in dirt. They seem to shun death, hoping to avoid the unavoidable. They want to look young, feel healthy. Elderly are shipped into nursing homes away from people’s eyes. Then, they gradually make a transition into death and even then family and friends aren’t confronted with the Eternal Question.
I remember when the former US president Ronald Regan became great. His body had laid in state at the U.S. Capitol, a coffin covered in an American flag standing into the middle of the rotunda. People passing by where saying goodbye to an expensive wooden box rather than their former president.
Russian - and Latvian - funerals take place with an open coffin. I attended a funeral of one of my friend’s mom in Latvia last January, which was a simple protestant funeral, but it had an open coffin standing in a chapel where people who knew her could gather to give her the last respect. “She lost so much weight,” I remember a woman saying.
Then, a processional marched through the cemetery into the graveside before men shut the coffin with a lid.
In January, my grandfather died. We buried him using all traditional Old Believer rites, including an open casket. My grandmother regretted not taking any pictures of the funeral. Since then, my grandmother has been faithfully visiting his grave. For Russians, a grave isn’t simply a place of burial, it’s a place of communion between the living and the dead.
“How are you, Grisha,” my grandmother would say, calling on my grandfather’s name. “Have you missed me? How is it for you here in the rain?”
The response is always the same: silence.
My grandmother has been going to his grave every Saturday: to clean up, plant flowers– and more importantly to talk. The grave site now has transformed from a flowerbed grave into a stone monument to my grandfather.
When I was gone on a three-week trip recently, she went to the cemetery to cry, to complain about life, and find some kind of communion with her deceased husband. From time to time, we take a picnic and go to the grave to give remembrance to the dead. And almost every time, my grandmother leaves sweets, meat cakes, and a shot of vodka for my grandfather.
August 11th, 2008 at 15.35
Regarding open coffins- I was to only one funeral in the USA that did not “feature” an open coffin. That funeral was my father’s. We chose that because the shell that was my father’s body was not him. I have had a number of non-American friends remark that they found the open-coffin practice to be bizarre. A typical remark would be “how can people seriously believe that the person so pristinely made-up is somehow the person being buried?” To them a closed casket allows people to really remember the person as they were, not as at either the moment of death or some funeral director’s idea of them. In my time living here I have been to a number of funerals that did not have an open coffin.
August 11th, 2008 at 18.46
Hi!
I’ve been to many Latvian funerals here in the US and there doesn’t seem to be any hard-fast rule about open or closed casket as far as I know–more a matter of personal choice, preference. As Tom mentioned, those morticians sometimes can do a dastardly job on people, making loved-ones look like complete strangers. And then again, yes, there is that about people ravaged by disease, trauma and wanting to remember them as they once were. To me it’s about the very essence of that being, the soul, rather than the body.
I remember sitting at the table discussing this very subject with a Russian friend of my mother’s once, a spry, feisty woman with definite opinions. She was absolutely mortified when she heard my views, insisting that the coffin should always be open–how else could there be a proper parting, a good bye
. I’m so glad now that at that time, being much younger, I had the wisdom, fortitude to hold my tongue, not argue and say nothing. This woman lived well into her 90’s and when she died, we attended her funeral with open casket, all done in the proper, traditional orthodox way. Another one of my mother’s Russian friends met with a tragic, untimely death by falling out of a 3rd story window. And of course the casket was also opened ( I think there was some kind of a thin veil covering her face), which made me wonder again about always having to follow these strict rules and regulations.
When my mother’s beloved sister, my aunt Nadia passed a few years ago, my mom went to Latvia to attend the funeral. She commented that there were many more rituals that she knew nothing about when she grew up attending the orthodox church. One of which was leaving a shot of vodka at the grave site, something she didn’t like at all, especially considering the fact that my aunt was hardly a drinker. But the rest of the relatives who supposedly had consulted with the priest said that this was all part of tradition that should be followed now and so, it was.
I know that Latvians and Russians from what I hear do go to their loved-ones grave sites often, planting flowers, tending the graves and there are picnics, special days of remembrance ‘kapu svetki’. And I think this is fine but then there’s a part of me which always remembers this particular poem written by some anonymous person, which goes something like this ( I can’t find the words right now): it’s written from one whose passed on to the other side to their loved-ones left behind, telling them that they can stand at the grave, place flowers there, but to always remember that they (the dead) are no longer there in that grave, particular space, rather that they’re now part of the air, sun, stars, particles in the universe.
Irena
August 11th, 2008 at 23.29
Certainly, I’m not arguing for one or the other, but I’m pointing out that I found Western funerals a bit odd. Yes, absolutely, it’s about the person’s soul - it’s about the person’s being, however, I think it’s therapeutic to say good-bye to the shell through which you had known the person. I’m quite sure my grandmother hasn’t forgotten her husband, hasn’t forgotten his soul, but she had said goodbye and she knows where his body is and she finds immense comfort in that.
August 18th, 2008 at 21.53
Hey Aleks,
I have a new russian ell student. can you email me any tips on teaching him english? For example what hleped you learn English when you started. Any tips would be great!
Thanks! Sarah
August 18th, 2008 at 21.54
I mean what helped you learn english when you started? (I typed to fast)
October 23rd, 2008 at 16.09
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