Just thinking…it’s a matter of life and death

I’m listening to David Maslanka’s magnificent Symphony #4.  It’s incorporation of Bach Chorales and use of hymn tunes invoked in me the ambiance of a funeral setting.  No doubt, my state of mind before listening to the music influenced my response to the music.  Earlier today I had to take a cat to the vet to be euthanized. I was taking care of her while her owners were on vacation.  She had cancer and her owners had gone to heroic lengths to give her the best life possible as the disease progressed.  We knew that her time was near.  Today she reached the point where the merciful thing was to assist her in reaching the inevitable end that comes to all living things. As I held her close to me and witnessed her pain and the struggle that the tenacity of living sometimes outlives the usefulness, joy and purpose of life, I relived the horrors of being present when my mother and especially my father experienced their last moments.  It was a profoundly moving experience that overshadowed the rest of my day.  One is reminded of the sacredness and fragility of life.

Only purpose and relationship give life meaning.  So what purpose do we find in the life of a cat?  They once held a place in the balance of nature but with domestication, that role is greatly  diminished.  Instead, their place is primarily relational with their human benefactors.  As pets, they provide companionship and comfort to their owners.  In some cases, they also provide a sense of purpose and responsibility in their human families. Therefore is natural, normal and healthy to form loving attachments to our pets. When we lose them to tragedy, disease, age or misfortune, we mourn their loss and feel an emptiness in their absence.

So with the loss of a beloved family member or friend, we mourn but in an even more intimate, profound way.  Regardless of whether our parents were exemplary, inept or even bad, they were the models of our earliest experience and awareness.  They protected, nurtured, fed, clothed, sheltered and taught us.  They passed their genetic essence to us.  We are intricately and inextricably connected to them.  Perspectives broaden and mature as our world expands  beyond the home.  As children, teens and young adults we try to find and establish our own identity and separateness from our parents, but the link — strong or tenuous is always there.  Sometimes, to our discomfort and even dismay, we discover that we eventually become our parents!

How can we best honor our parents after their passing?  In some cultures, there is a celebration of their life.  Rather than mourning, there is joy and thanksgiving for the contributions they made to our lives and the lives of others.  There is also a sense of relief that they have cast off the bonds, limitations, weaknesses and frailties of human flesh.  For those of us of a metaphysical persuasion, we rejoice that they have moved on to a better place than this world with it’s uncertainties and troubles.  As for me, time never erases the pain of the connection lost with my mother and father.  I am grateful that their suffering and the indignities of old age have ended.  Nevertheless, their wisdom, experience, love, and guidance, the beauty of their personalities, the sense of continuity and belonging that they provided me are beyond my reach.  My heart aches the loss.

That brings me to reflection on funerals.  What is their purpose?  What is our response to the acknowledgement of the loss?  Should the sensibilities, beliefs and/or desires of the departed one govern the funeral even if the survivors do not share them?  Is the funeral for the dead or for those who love and survive them?  Or is it both?  Can it be both?  In our increasingly secular world, do the forms and content of funerals of the past hold relevance and meaning today?  Perhaps we should consider how other cultures deal with death and dying.  There is tremendous variety that goes far beyond our own traditions.  Exploring these questions may help us to find a practice that will fulfill our contemporary needs.