"During such tragedies, daily village life comes to a halt while everyone sits and mourns together."
So wrote a friend of mine who works at an orphanage/school in the hinterland of Nigeria. The tragedy she speaks of is the death of three young boys, who had apparently locked themselves in a closed car and died in the heat.
I participated in a funeral recently. My friend was buried in a small family cemetery, that looks exactly like a family burial place should look. Neighbors had come and dug the grave by hand. Because I was riding with one of the staff from the funeral home, I was present when the guys gathered again, and with good-natured ribbing and joking--that wasn't at all irreverent, if you understand the culture--filled the hole and covered the grave with the sod they had removed a few days before.
In my community it is still common for folk to pull to the edge of the road and stop when a funeral procession goes by. It is silent testament to the reality John Donne wrote of when he counselled those who hear the village bell announcing someone's death, "never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
When we gather to grieve, even if it is just for a moment as we pull our car to the side of the road, or as we take a moment to sign the register at the funeral home, it is an entry into the grief of another and a reminder of our own mortality. One cannot easily claim earthly immortality while shoveling dirt into a hole that contains the body of a friend and neighbor.
Not to put urban-ites down--I'm sure they have their own rituals--but I have been in funeral processions that passed through large cities. We had to struggle, even with the help of police on motorcycles, to keep the cortege together. Too many people, in too big a hurry to get to where they were going, not realizing where they are really headed.
Lord deliver us. May we, like these simple African villagers, acknowledge the grief of another and our own mortality.
No comments:
Post a Comment