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.
