Embracing ritual …
Continuing from my last piece, sadly my Grandfather died on Wednesday. He recovered from his pneumonia only for the hospital to find how advanced his cancer had become. And that was enough to finish him off.
As I said, he was 95 and had a good life.
I was really lucky last year to get the opportunity to go back to the UK for TestBash Brighton and spend time with him. Some of the stories from there include some of my favourite stories about my Grandfather.
The unfortunate truth is I live in New Zealand, some of my family is in the United Kingdom. It’s actually hard for there to be two places on the globe which are further removed. And that means you can’t just down tools and fly back. There is the expense, but also commitments.
My wife flew back for her fathers funeral in 2011, but he was survived by her mother, and she felt the need to support her through the process. When her mum died in 2014, my wife was dealing with anxiety issues which meant she could barely travel the 30km into town, never mind around the world. It was a bit of a relief that there wasn’t a surviving parent to support through it.
As a matter of necessity, we’ve had to develop our own ceremony to deal with the death of a loved one. The reality of living so far away is it’s expensive, and you often have other commitments.
Another key part of the puzzle is my faith — I don’t really talk much about it, but to me, it underpins everything I do. I’m Wiccan or a Solitary Witch (my wife is atheist). As such, Solitary Witches are essential “our own clergy”, meaning we’re empowered and encouraged to hold our own ceremonies to commemorate key life events, of which ironically death is one.
As a Solitary Witch, I had a couple of peer mentors who encouraged my development in the early days (I’ve been a witch for twenty years) and encouraged a lot of study and understanding of other religions and cultures.
Almost every religion and culture that ever there was tries to address “the big four” life events — “birth of a child”, “coming of age” (which someone typically becomes seen as an adult), “commitment” (for instance marriage) and of course “end of life” or death.
“Coming of age” is a fascinating topic I hope to delve into one day, but of course today we’ll be thinking more about death due to the passing of my grandfather.
As a Solitary Witch, of course, there’s a lot of chatter about “trying to do magic”. But I’ll let you into a really simple secret about magic — it’s trying to create something symbolic to create a moment of emotion and beauty.
With death, the themes are all about “journeying” and “giving something up”, in essence saying goodbye. One of the first ceremonies I did in the UK involved carving a piece of wood and including flowers on. I then carried it to a stream, said a prayer where I reflected on the life of the person I loved, and watched the stream take my offering away. As I watched it go, I said my goodbyes. I knew as it went out of sight that it was still there, but well away from me.
Since coming to New Zealand, the sea has been a big theme. The sea is a place of parting, and the sea reclaims and takes away. We can walk up to the shore but no further. It is then hugely symbolic of death.
We use the sea in different ways according to the person we’ve lost. We’ve been there at dawn, at night, during the day.
Sometimes when the person who’s died is more on my wife’s side, I’ll prepare a eulogy and some words to remind us all of who we’ve lost, and some fun moments. But as I’m outnumbered by atheists 2:1, I will avoid putting my own interpretation on death. We’ll try and share memories — the big ones and the funny ones. They can all cause us to get emotional, and we’ll often form a huddle.
There’s a huge rock on our local rural beach. It’s always the focus of our efforts. We’ll say a few words and then walk down in silence. In the walk down, much like the procession, as you file behind a coffin, I find my mind replaying much of my life with the departed. As our coast is bleak and windy, it feels like spirits are there, whispering, but just out of reach.
Sometimes we’ll bring a photo, and sometimes candles. For my Grandfather we brought some flowers to lay on a rock, where the sea would reclaim it. I wore Old Spice, his favourite aftershave, and we took a few sips of a small bottle of Drambuie, my grandmother favourite tipple. A little smell and taste to help connect with the memories. We’ve also sometimes let off a firework — it’s a roaring bridge of life leaving the ground for the heavens — what could be more symbolic?
We typically stand around for a while remembering, then moved up the beach, letting the sea reclaim.
It’s not the same as a funeral, but the key thing is to create space to remember them, talk about them and deal with their loss. I get upset, and that always says to me, I’m letting my emotions deal with something painful. It’s fundamentally what “end of life” rituals are about, letting our emotions out, letting us know we’re not alone dealing with grief and to think about the person you lost.
I had a talk to my brother about this. He’s been over in the Southern Hemisphere only two years, so dealing with this kind of stuff is new to him. And he doesn’t think too. His way of coping was to get drunk on a lot of whiskey because he felt sad, and admitted he needed to find a way to say goodbye.
To me, our little ceremonies are an important part of dealing with being so far from loved ones at such times. They are simple but meaningful. We each get out of them what we need, without having a world view which is alien forced on us.
