Dirt in the Grave

This has sat in my mind for well over a month and a half now…I thought the feeling would pass, and yet after two months I am still thinking on this subject. Have you ever had a moment wherein you see or hear something, and know that very event or moment is indelibly in your memory for a lifetime?

Two months ago a friend of mine and fellow worker here, at Homes of Hope died.

As is common in cultures the world over, we went to bury my friend several days following her death. Before we buried her, we dressed her, clothing her cold and stiff body. And later, this lasting moment of sheer clarity came as my friend’s body, in her casket, was lowered by steady hands deep into the earth. There was no pretty, fake grass hiding the yawning grave. Nor did we listen to a pastor pray and speak, and then walk to our respective cars to attend a potluck, well before the cemetery attendants would lower the casket into the ground, lest we see that final moment where the casket is placed in the ground and covered by dirt.

Instead, my friend, in her casket was steadied by the hands of the men of Homes of Hope as they struggled and strained to lower her gently into the earth. Once there, they climbed out of her grave, and we sang as fistfuls of dirt were thrown on top of the casket. And then the shovels were picked up by our men, dressed in their Sunday best for our dear friend’s honor, and together they shoveled the dirt to fill the grave as voices rose in sorrow to a good God whom has claimed our friend back to Him.

That sharp and instant moment I spoke of above: The act of burying our dead.

I have grown up in a time and place wherein am removed from death in such a way that I would only see a perfectly made up body of a loved one. I cannot think of a time where I experienced seeing a body lowered by family into a grave. How far from death I have lived, even as it has claimed family and friend.

Stunningly for me, how cathartic I found the act of watching my friend lowered by strong men into the ground, and then covered by Fiji’s red clay. In that moment, my friend was truly gone, and I knew this irrevocably.

I wonder if we are missing something deeply important when we are so far removed from death. The clarity for me of which I will remember is the completion of seeing her buried; quite freeing for me, actually.