I know the topic of death is morbid but call me weird, but I like to read books about mortality. As they say, the more you face mortality, the more you appreciate life. In fact, I remember reading before that a common denominator among those who make it to the list of happiest places on earth think about death everyday such as the Bhutanese. Yes, ironically, thinking about death everyday could have positive effects. Knowing that you have limited time on earth which could just end any time without warning makes you value your life better and treat time preciously. Maybe this is also one of the reasons why I never get bored or lonely. 😜My latest read that is mortality-related is about death rituals in various parts of the world. In our spot on earth, our practice is to place the dead body in a glass-covered coffin, have a wake for a few days, and bury the dead in the cemetery. In the last few years, cremation has also become more common. But these two are nothing compared to what I learned from the book “From Here to Eternity” by Caitlin Doughty. The rituals got me so curious that I ended up researching online and reading more about some of the individual rituals. Sharing with you those I found really interesting.
Toraja, Indonesia
In Toraja, Indonesia, between the period of death and funeral, the body is kept at home and this period could take several months or even several years.😱 During this period, they also consider the person only sick and not yet dead.
While at home, the family cares for and mummifies the body. The family members bring food to the corpse daily, change the clothes and they speak to the body as if the person were still alive. Speaking to a corpse is a way for them to stay connected.
The Torajan guide who accompanied Doughty for example, shared that his dead grandfather stayed in their house for 7 years before he got buried.😱 And guess what? He and his brother slept with the dead corpse of their grandfather on the same bed. In the morning, they put his clothes on and stood him up against the wall. Every night, they laid him on their bed.
The Torajans also have a ceremony held every few years (every 3 years I think) called ma’nene’ (ma-ne-ney) wherein they take out the mummified bodies of their dead from tombs, clean them, change their clothes, serve them food and give them things which the person liked when he/she was still alive e.g. if the dead person used to smoke when he/she was still alive, they would stick a cigarette on the corpse’s mouth during the ma’nene’.
Again, their practices sound really strange to most of us but when you hear the stories of the Torajans, such ritual greatly helps them in dealing with the loss of a loved one especially when the death is unexpected. When I researched online and saw some photos, you could truly see the love, joy and pride the Torajans have for their loved ones’ corpses.
Barcelona, Spain
In Barcelona, Spain, the rituals are somehow similar to ours because they also hold wakes (or maybe we got the concept of wake from them having been under Spanish colonization). Anyway, for their wake, they have 2 options:
(1) Spanish style viewing wherein they display their loved ones in a coffin surrounded by flowers behind one large pane of glass (like a department store display window); and
(2) Catalan style wherein they slide the open coffin into a Snow White display case in the center of the room.
For either setup, they maintain a steady temperature around the body of 0 to 6 degrees Celsius because the bodies are not usually embalmed as they are buried within 24 hrs. And because corpses are not embalmed, decomposition time is faster, thus, ground graves and mausoleums in Spanish cemeteries are usually for lease for a minimum of 5 years (which is roughly the decomposition time vs embalmed bodies which take about 20 years' transition time). Then when the corpse has decayed down to bones, it is transferred to a communal pit so the vacated tomb can be reused by newer corpses. That's what you call grave recycling. What a nice concept.
Nepal, Tibet
The ritual in Tibet for me is the most unusual. It made me cringe the first time I heard about it. But once you try to understand their underlying belief, it does make sense.
When a Tibetan dies, the family lights butter lamps and monks pray over the body. Come funeral day (usually 3 to 5 days following the death), the family and relatives stay at home to pray and they do not attend the funeral. Instead, it is the villagers who bring the dead body to a sky burial site via horse or a car.
Once they reach the sky burial site, the master of the ceremony performs a ritual over the body, burns incense and tsampa (roasted flour) to summon the vultures, then proceeds to chop the body in smaller pieces. 😱 The vultures feast on the dead remains. If the vultures consume the entire body, it’s a good sign as it means the person is good and did good deeds while he/she was still alive.
Chopping the body of a loved one - even if it is lifeless - is something unthinkable and shocking for us but Tibetans believe that the corpse is nothing but a discarded shell, and the spirit of the deceased has already moved on. They consider offering bodies to vultures as the last great and honorable thing to do - a way to offer your life back to earth.
Tokyo, Japan
The Japanese are well-known for being one of the longest-living in the world. But since Japan has a shrinking young population, there are 70 year olds taking care of their 90 yr old family members, and there are a lot of the elderly who also live alone. Because of this, the Japanese has a term called kodokushi which means lonely death or a phenomenon of people dying alone and remaining undiscovered for a long period of time. Sometimes it takes weeks or months before dead bodies are discovered in their homes. The first kodokushi which became national news in Japan was in 2000 when an old man was discovered 3 years after this death, and only because payments for his monthly rent and utilities stopped because the savings account from where his payments got auto-debited reached zero balance. Can you just imagine if his savings were bigger and lasted for several more years to cover his rent and utilities?
In Japan, 99.99% opt for cremation, which is one of the highest cremation penetration in the world. Because of this, there is waiting time before a body can be scheduled for cremation. It could take a week or more before it can be cremated especially in urban areas. So bodies are usually refrigerated in morgues but since there are very limited hours to visit the morgue and it’s not a proper place to mourn, the Japanese have so-called corpse hotels. In the book, the author visited a hotel called Last Tel - short for last hotel - where corpses are refrigerated and at any time you want to spend time with the body of your loved one, you can rent a room.
Now for their cremation process, what’s different with theirs is they don’t pulverize the bones. Instead, family members are handed chopsticks - one wood and one metal chopstick. The chief mourner begins by picking up bones starting with the feet and put them into the urn. Other members join and continue up the skeleton. If the skull can’t fit intact, the cremator might help break it up into smaller pieces by using metal chopsticks. The horsheshoe shaped bone in the jaw is placed in the urn last. Excess ash can be brought home or left with the cremator to be collected by ash collectors and buried in cherry groves up in the mountains.
As for Japanese burial places, they are so hi-tech. In one place where the author went, visitors have a card with a chip and when scanned at the entrance, all Little Buddhas of tombs light up in blue except for the visitor’s tomb which lights up in white so it can be easily spotted. With a click of a button in the master control, there could also be a light show depending on the season or occasion. And with another click, all little Buddhas of those celebrating their birthdays or death anniversaries could also light up. Amazing.
Then, the Japanese have also indoor cemeteries where there are pods with a traditional granite gravestone, complete with fresh flowers and incense. How is it different from the cemeteries we know other than being indoor? The gravestone in each pod has a rectangular hole. When u swipe your card, a robot behind the wall will retrieve the urn of your loved one and the tombstone bearing your loved one’s name will appear in the rectangular hole of the gravestone. How hi-tech, practical and space-saving.
Most of the rituals may sound really bizarre for some of us but even if each culture has different beliefs surrounding life and death, there is one thing in common - it’s never easy to cope with the loss of a loved one.
