ON MY LAST DAY in Belize, Luciano took me to the cemetery that houses his grandparents (including the stolen grandmother). The cemetery was filled with above-ground concrete graves, some well-tended, some fallen into disrepair. One cross, knocked over into the weeds, was wrapped in a pair of ladies’ underwear. Someone had taken black spray paint and crudely painted “Gaza Earth” and “Repent All Man” on a pair of graves.
Back in the far corner, under a tree, his grandparents’ caskets lay stacked one on top of the other, enclosed in one of the concrete-covered graves. “My grandmother, she didn’t want all this cement. She wanted just a hole in the ground, dust to dust. But, you know . . .”
Luciano lovingly swept the dead leaves off the top of the grave.
What struck me was how Luciano had been present for every step of his grandmother’s death. From stealing her body from the hospital, to holding a wake where the family drank rum and played ranchera music (Grandma’s favorite), to tending her grave years later.
Contrast that with the Western funeral industry, where mourners must navigate purposeful obfuscations after every loss. Most people could not tell you what chemicals are pumped into their mother during an embalming procedure (answer: some combination of formaldehyde, methanol, ethanol, and phenol), or why they are required to purchase a $3,000 stainless steel vault at the cemetery (answer: so the groundskeeping staff has an easier time mowing the grass). In 2017, an NPR investigation into funeral homes “found a confusing, unhelpful system that seems designed to be impenetrable by average consumers, who must make costly decisions at a time of grief and financial stress.”
We need to reform our funeral industry, introducing new practices that aren’t so profit-oriented, and that do more to include the family. But we cannot begin to reform—or even question!—our death systems when we act like little Jean de Brébeufs, falsely convinced we have it right while all these “other people” are disrespectful and barbarous.
This dismissive attitude can be found in places you’d never expect. Lonely Planet, the largest guidebook publisher in the world, included the idyllic Trunyan cemetery in their book on visiting Bali. In Trunyan, the villagers weave bamboo cages for their dead to decompose in, and then stack the skulls and bones out in the lush green landscape. Lonely Planet, instead of explaining the meaning behind these ancient customs, advised wise travelers to “skip the ghoulish spectacle.”
Cannibalizing your dear old dad like the Callatians may never be for you. It’s not for me, either; I’m a vegetarian (kidding, Dad). Still, it is demonstrably wrong to claim that the West has death rituals that are superior to those of the rest of the world. What’s more, due to the corporatization and commercialization of deathcare, we have fallen behind the rest of the world when it comes to proximity, intimacy, and ritual around death.
The good news: we are not beholden to our distance from and shame around death. The first step to fixing the problem is to show up, to be present and engaged. In large, modern cities like Tokyo and Barcelona, I saw families show up to spend the day with the body and stay to witness the cremation. In Mexico, I saw families visit the cemetery to leave offerings years after the death occurred, ensuring that no one is forgotten.
Many of the rituals in this book will be very different from your own, but I hope you will see the beauty in that difference. You may be someone who experiences real fear and anxiety around death, but you are here. Just like the people you are about to meet, you have shown up.
COLORADO
CRESTONE
One afternoon in August I received the email I had been waiting for.
Caitlin,
Laura, a very dear member of our community was found dead early this morning: she had a history of heart problems and had just entered her 75th year. Don’t know where you are, but you’re welcome to join us.
Stephanie
Laura’s death was unexpected. On Sunday night, she danced with abandon at a local music festival. On Monday morning, she lay dead on her kitchen floor. On Thursday morning, her family would gather to cremate her, and I would be there.
The cremation was scheduled to start promptly at 7 a.m., just as the sun broke through the blue light of dawn. The mourners began to stream in after 6:30. A truck pulled up, driven by Laura’s son, bearing her body wrapped in a coral-colored shroud. There had been a rumor that her horse, Bebe, would be making an appearance, but at the last minute the family decided the crowd and the fire would be too much for Bebe’s constitution. The announcement came that the horse was “regretfully unable to attend.”
Laura’s family pulled her body from the pickup and carried her on a cloth stretcher through the field of black-eyed susans, up the slight incline toward the pyre. A gong rang through the air. As I walked from the parking area up the sandy path, a beaming volunteer handed me a freshly cut bough of juniper.
Laura was laid out on a metal grate atop two parallel slabs of smooth white concrete, under the expansive dome of Colorado sky. I had come to visit the empty pyre twice before, but its purpose became more sober and clear with the presence of a body. One by one, mourners stepped forward to lay a juniper bough on Laura’s body. As the only person present who hadn’t known her, I hesitated to deposit my juniper—call it funereal awkwardness. But I couldn’t very well hang on to my bough (too obvious) or stuff it into my backpack (tacky) so I walked forward and rested it on the shroud.
Laura’s family, including a young boy of eight or nine, circled her pyre stacking pi?on pine and spruce logs, selected because they burn with heightened intensity. Laura’s partner and her adult son waited at the corners with lit torches. A signal was given, and they came together to set Laura aflame, just as the sun peered above the horizon.
As her body caught fire, white smoke swirled about in tiny cyclones, twisting upward and disappearing into morning sky.
The smell called to mind a passage from Edward Abbey:
The fire. The odor of burning juniper is the sweetest fragrance on the face of the earth, in my honest judgment; I doubt if all the smoking censers of Dante’s paradise could equal it. One breath of juniper smoke, like the perfume of sagebrush after rain, evokes in magical catalysis, like certain music, the space and light and clarity and piercing strangeness of the American West. Long may it burn.