Project's Done, here's what I learned

So, my group finally finished, and submitted, our project yesterday so I figured I'd chat a bit about it.  We were looking at Polynesian burial practices, focusing on Hawaii.  It was fascinating.  I was looking up details about symbolism in Hawaiian burials, but unfortunately I kept hitting research walls.  You'd think there would be more out there because it's a really cool topic and falls under both cultural and mortuary categories, but apparently not!  All I could find was about leis, which, while being very interesting, wasn't what I was hoping for or expecting. 
Here's what I did find out:
1. You never throw a lei in the garbage or compost.  You either place it on a grave or toss it into the water in hopes of it floating back to shore which would mean that one day you will return to the island.
2. Hala flower leis are given at the end of a journey, such as death, and as such are considered bad luck if given in any other context, though they are quite beautiful.
3. Shell leis were used in place of floral ones on Salt Spring Island in order to mark Hawaiian graves as traditional flowers were not available. 
4. Leis in a mortuary context are a huge part of ancestor worship and a way of asking for favor.

RIP Pippin: options for saying goodbye to a beloved pet

So lately I've been thinking about how we deal with the death of beloved pet.  Don't worry, my Tzippi is still in surprisingly good health for a 13 year old blind and deaf pooch.  The vet was very impressed with her at her annual check up this week :)

Unfortunately some of our close family friends had to say goodbye to their amazing dog, Pippin, last weekend and it got me thinking.  What do you do when your pet dies?  I don't know what I'll do when that day comes or how I'll deal with the loss.  I did learn from my mother that most employers do not give you any time off to mourn a pet.  That's pretty crazy, right? Okay, I could see not giving off time for a goldfish that needs to take a trip down the toilet, but a pet that has been an integral part of your family for years?  That's cold.

The one and only time I had to say goodbye to a pet I was a little kid who didn't understand my mother when she told me that my hamster had been 'put to sleep'.  I thought that meant that he needed a good night's sleep and we would pick him up at the vet the next day. Clearly, that was not the case.

As far as memorial options for your pet, there are few possibilities.  There's the backyard burial oft portrayed in books and movies, but there are also options for cremation.  As I ponder this I find myself faced with a couple of dilemmas.  When one day we have to say goodbye to my beautiful pup, what would we do?  I could imagine spreading her ashes in some of her favourite parks, but we're Jewish and Jews don't do cremation.  Does that extend to pets?  Apparently not, (and here appears dilemma number two) since it turns out that burying your pet is illegal....?  Yes, according to some family friends burying your pet is illegal.  What happened to the pet cemeteries of old?  I think I'd need a place that I could visit to remember her or maybe that would prolong the pain and prevent me from moving on.  Who knows?   I did find a website for pet burial services in Victoria (petmemorialcenter.ca), so I'm a little confused about this and would love to locate more details! Maybe they just meant that you're not allowed to bury them in your backyards anymore...

King Richard III in a parking lot?!

Some crazy stuff in the news lately:  King Richard III's skeletal remains were found buried in a parking lot in Leicester.  They've even proved his identity beyond a reasonable doubt through mitochondrial DNA testing!  Apparently there's a direct descendent of the King's sister living in Canada who they were able to test.  They also checked his remains for injuries that King Richard sustained in battle, especially in the battle that killed him.
Who would've thought, the last Plantagenet king's remains found in a parking lot.  Seriously.  Now that's an amazing find and it'll be fascinating to see what gets published after they finish all of their tests and he's reburied in Leicester Cathedral.

Thinking about Grammy

Ok, so a few weeks ago I was talking about my first experiences with death and funerary practices, dealing specifically with those I had experienced in the Anglican tradition.  I said that I would soon be ready to talk about my first experience with Jewish funerary practices, so here I go.
When I was 11 years old my great-uncle died.  My grandmother and my aunt flew to Winnipeg to represent our side of the family, since we were not able to make the trip.  After their return my grandmother started thinking about what would need to be done if and when my grandfather died.  He was 10 years older than her and had a history of health problems, so, being as practical as she had ever been, she started talking to people about the roles she hoped they would play.  She decided who would give the eulogies and even asked the rabbi if all of the pallbearers had to be Jewish.  A few months later she died suddenly.  We ended up using all of the plans she had made for my grandfather's funeral for her's instead.
My mother took charge of the whole thing which meant that I had saw firsthand everything that went into planning a Jewish funeral.
My grandparents belonged to a different synagogue than ours, but they never went.  They always said that the only reason they still paid their dues was so that one day there would be somebody to preside over their funerals.  With that in mind, my mother called our rabbi.  Ironically, my grandmother had always said that you haven't really lived until Rabbi Bregman eulogized you.
After calling the rabbi, she called the Chevra Kaddisha.  They're volunteers who stay with the bodies and prepare them for burial, because in Jewish tradition the body is never to be left alone until it is in the ground.  They're the ones who washed her body and put her in a simple cotton gown before placing her in her coffin.
On the day of the funeral, which was only about three days after my grandmother died (and it was only that long after because she died on Shabbat, otherwise it would have been sooner), we all went to the cemetery and sat in the back room while everyone else entered the sanctuary.  We were to enter so that everyone could see us, the mourners.  My grandfather, my mother and my aunts, as the closest relatives to the deceased, wore black ribbons instead of partaking in the tradition of your clothing being torn to symbolize your loss.
I suppose that the actual service was quite similar to any funeral service.  The rabbi spoke, a close family friend gave a beautiful eulogy, and we all prayed that my grandmother would find peace.  We then headed out to the plot that had been dug for my grandmother, and, saying a few more prayers, we lowered her into the ground.  We then took turns shovelling dirt onto her grave and began the procession back to the cars, passing through rows of people giving us their condolences along the way. We returned to my grandfather's neighbourhood, where we had invited everyone to come and remember my grandmother with us.  And then for the next three days we hosted shiva.  Traditionally shiva lasts for a week, but being that our family is not very religious, we decided that three days of having people come to my grandfather's house and pray with us was enough.
Over that week and the weeks following, we spent a lot of time with family and friends.  They took amazing care of us, as we were not to lift a finger while mourning.  They cooked for us and cleaned and made sure that we were going to be okay.  And we were, eventually.
We light a candle every year on the anniversary of her death (based on the Jewish calendar) and say the mourner's kaddish, because there is no world in which it would be okay to forget the amazingness that was my grandmother or to forget everything she taught us.

Funerary practices and traditions with a BONES twist

This week's blog prompt fits perfectly with the episode of 'Bones' that aired on Monday.  In fact, it's too perfect for words and I'm practically jumping for joy because it was something I've been thinking about since I watched it.  It brought forth the question of what kind of funerary practice you would want your loved ones to perform after your death. The case that they were working on this week involved a woman who worked as a 'death consultant' at an ecologically friendly, and highly spiritual, funeral home.  As they experience this 'alternative' funerary practice, a debate naturally arises.  While Booth wants to have a traditional catholic burial and Cam wants to be cremated, they brought up a couple of different options as well.  Hodgins described how he wants to be launched into the sun because sun gives us life, so he thinks it would be poetic and appropriate to return him to the sun.  Bones said that she wanted to have a celestial funeral, whereby her body would be broken with a hammer and her remains would be left out to be picked clean by vultures.  However, realizing that a celestial funeral might not be the best 'final message' to her daughter she changed her mind and decided that she wants her ashes to be spread over a volcano instead. 
This got me thinking.  Are funerary practices performed for the dead or the living?  In some cases it's for the dead because it may be believed that they cannot move on unless their burial is performed in a certain way.  That being said, I feel like, more often than not, funerals/memorials are held for the living.  It's letting go.  It's closure.  That's one of the reasons that in Jewish funerals it is traditional for the family to begin filling the grave with dirt.  When my grandparents died, their funerals acted as celebrations of their lives where we who loved them could have a day to reminisce before moving on, however slowly.  After the funerals our family sat shiva and after that week we were expected to be almost okay, able to return to work or school. A month later were expected to be more or less back to normal.  A year later we were supposed to be completely fine.  While it may sound like a reasonable expectation, moving on is not always as easy as you would hope.  In my grandfather's case, he was old.  He had lived a good life.  It was his time.  That made it easier to move on.  But when my grandmother died, she was fairly young.  It was sudden and unexpected. Honestly it's been almost nine years and I'm only just starting to feel okay.  But that just goes to show that situational emotions can be remarkably inconsistent... Especially when you take into consideration my age at the time of their deaths.  I was 12 when my grandmother passed and 18 years old when my grandfather died.  Makes a difference, huh?  Anywho, there are my thoughts for the week :) 

What do your grave goods say about you?

This week we were asked to pose a question to ourselves and to our friends.  If one day an archaeologist came across your grave and excavated it, what grave goods would they find and why?  What things would you want to included in your burial? What would other people choose to bury with you?
I posted this question on Facebook yesterday and the first response I got was a reminder that Jews are buried simply and without anything that would be preserved long enough for an archaeologist to find.  That at most one would be buried in a tallit.  So I promised to put that little cultural factoid in here to avoid any confusion.  One day when it comes time for my burial, I will be wearing a simple white cotton gown and lie for eternity in a simple wooden box with absolutely no embellishments.
However, I found this exercise to be intriguing, so I reworded my post and here are a few answers I received from friends and family.  My father said I should be buried with a creme brulee torch.  My mother said a magen david (star of David), a book and my first ever stuffed animal, who I so creatively named Pinky.  My friends suggested items such as a sweatshirt from the camp I've worked at for the last three summers, a bottled frapuccino, a law book, chocolate and anything related to Hillel. One friend even suggested throwing some weapons in there just to mess with the archaeologists.
If someone were to one day come across a grave with these items in it, I'm not sure at all what they'd think.  They'd probably recognize the magen david as a religious symbol, as it's been around for a very long time already.  Other than that I think they'd be at a loss to interpret all of these items in a way that would enlighten them as to who I was, especially considering that some of these things would not preserve very well.
If I were to choose what remained with me for eternity, honestly, the only thing I'd want is my magen david, because there is nothing else that describes my identity AND would fit in a wooden box.

Explaining death and burial rituals to a 9 year old...

Lately I've been thinking about my experiences with death.  My first one was when my great-grandfather died.  I was about 9 years old.  I have no memories of him and honestly his death didn't seem to affect me at all, but the one thing that stands out in my mind when I think back to this event is that it was the first time I ever learned about funerary practices and how they differ between cultures.  By this I mean that my father explained (or tried to explain) embalming to my nine year old self.  I had nightmares every day for a week and begged my mom to not make me go to the memorial service.  I couldn't deal with the thought of being in the same room as an embalmed body, especially when I was told that it would also be cremated.  It was all just too creepy! The one factor that made it a lot easier to deal with was when my mother explained that Jews don't get embalmed.  I finally breathed a sigh of relief and moved on from my first encounter with death.  I didn't really think about it again until the next year when my great-grandmother died.  This time was a little rougher.  I actually had memories of my great-grandmother, but I was old enough to realize that it was her time.  She'd been battling Alzheimer's for as long as I could remember and it was nice to know that she was finally at peace.  Anglican memorials were held for both of my great-grandparents, so it wasn't until I was a little bit older that I went to my first Jewish funeral.  Honestly though, that's a story for another time.  Thinking about it still makes me want to cry so maybe I'll share it a bit later.