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.

Introducing me :)

Hi.  My name is Sarah and I'm a third year anthropology major and political science minor.  I'm absolutely fascinated by mortuary archaeology and I have been ever since I started reading Kathy Reichs' novels back in high school, so when I heard about a class called 'The Archaeology of Death' I was in heaven.  So, here I am, beginning my new blog for this amazing class :)
A brief explanation of my blog's title... I'm Jewish.  In Judaism whenever you are told that someone has died you are supposed to say 'zichrono livracha' and when written in English it is often abbreviated as z"l.  It translates to "may their memory be a blessing".  It's pretty much our version of 'rest in peace'.  It seems a fitting name for a blog about death.