Closing, Lowering, and Giving Dirt

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As an undertaker, each family I serve has different ideas about what their service should be like, and I follow their wishes.  Most often, people want something similar to what they've seen before.  There is a comfort for grieving families, whose world has turned upside down, in following familiar rituals, and despite all the buzz about personalization, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of tradition and ritual.  

Another part of my job is to suggest new things to families that, in my experience, have helped others.  I try to encourage participation in the service,  and the consideration of rituals that may be new to them.

As I have discussed in previous posts, traditions that are considered normal and appropriate in some places can seem disturbing in others.  The traditions of closing a casket in front of family members and watching the casket as it is lowered into the grave, followed by sprinkling a handful or shovel of earth into the grave,  are not as extreme to people where I work in rural Wisconsin as a sky burial or promession would be, but many here  say they couldn't bear to do any of them.

Where I used to work in Portland, Oregon, watching as the casket is closed and again, as it is lowered are regular parts of the service, and I think that they can be healthy and meaningful for grieving families.  In the Jewish tradition, among others, family and friends sprinkle the casket and grave with earth.  This is a wonderful symbolic act of participation in the burial and accepting the reality of death.  At my father's burial, I shoveled some earth into his grave, and even at the age of 8, it was a moving and cathartic experience for me.  

One of the most important things a funeral does is to allow the grieving to accept the reality of death in a safe and comforting atmosphere.  Participation in the rituals helps us to perform that last loving service for the deceased, and that in turn allows us to accept emotionally, the reality of the situation, so that we may in time move on back into life.  In our minds, we know that the person is dead, but our hearts are reluctant to accept this unpleasant fact.

Watching and helping with these tasks can be emotionally demanding, but I believe it makes the rest of the journey that much easier.  We will certainly cry when we do it, but those emotions need to be expressed and worked through, and the funeral can be the best time to do it. 

Back to theEarth part 2

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http://www.ci.seal-beach.ca.us/parksandrec/parks.html

As mentioned in Back to the Earth part 1, the idea of returning to the earth is a powerful one. Often during committal services, the sign of the cross is traced in sand on the casket, and a powerful ritual in the Jewish faith involves sprinkling dirt into the grave of a loved one. I have seen and facilitated wonderful variants on these rituals. When an elderly woman in my town passed away, her family wanted some of the earth from the family farm to accompany her into her grave. It was important for them to know that she was resting in the same earth that had been such an integral part of her life and family history. They brought a pail of that soil to the committal service, and when it was over, I invited first the family, and then friends to sprinkle some of it on her casket. The family started, some a little shy about it, but after a few people participated, everyone wanted to be a part of this ritual. I'm grateful that the family brought enough for every one to sprinkle in a handful. The lesson I learned from this was just how moving the acknowledgement and engagement of her connection to her earth was, and how healing participation can be for family and for friends.

Tragically, little more than a year later, the woman's son passed away. When I suggested sprinkling the earth on his casket, the family said that he didn't have the same connection to the family farm. The powerful connection this man had was to the local baseball field. He had grown up across the street from it, played there, watched games there, and coached his sons and students in baseball there. We processed out of the church the day of his funeral singing 'Take me out to the ball game' and out into the churchyard where family and friends will always remember that they sprinkled sand from the baseball field into his grave.