Death (and beyond) (2).

The blog has been silent for a while, but not because I didn’t have things to tell… in fact, it’s been quite the opposite. Around two weeks ago a close relative died, and it was the first time in this life that I had this scary companion following me anywhere: death. Scary for some people… for a reincarnationist, or at least a great number of us, death is —feels— different. That’s pretty good in itself… the bad thing is we just have to play our parts and we can’t say anything to the people around us, sometimes because we have to respect others’ beliefs and —only in the closest relatives or friends of the dead person— their grief; other times because the situation is already quite weird and no one dares say anything that goes beyond the social boundaries… and other times because we just don’t want to get into trouble, into endless religious/spiritual discussions that ultimately lead nowhere.

But I’ve been wondering: if we don’t speak about death when someone dies, when do we speak about death? Does anyone speak about death? What’s the point attending the funeral services to hear the priest preaching about eternal life in Heaven if none of the attendants really believe in it? It is already too late to bring some comfort for the soul leaving… who is likely confused in the astral realm by now, wondering how it is that their body broke but they are still alive.

I had never seen a corpse before (a human corpse I mean)… not in this life. The feeling was not too different to see my own body for the first time in an OBE, I thought: “So, this is it, our physical body is really so… insignificant. We are… nothing.” In my OBE I didn’t stop more than two seconds, I had more interesting things to do than looking down at such a small bunch of bones and skin and blood (I have to clarify this is NOT the way it looked like then, as from the astral we perceive the “energetic” side of everything). And there, in the hospital room, though it was hard for me to take my eyes off of the dead body, I also lost interest quite easily. I was there only to give comfort to my partner and help him through the toughest parts of it all, and I certainly was surprised I remained so calm and peaceful… even knowing we might have been watched.

It was later that day when I started to feel quite weird. If waiting patiently for my partner to say goodbye and mourning for both of them felt like a quite natural and private moment, it wasn’t so when we arrived to the funeral parlour a few hours later. The makeup and the arrangements in the coffin, placed behind a crystal and a pair of curtains, with a huge crucifix behind and two lamps, one at each side of the coffin, made it all more similar to a terror movie. But besides that, I was so shocked to see how other people behaved in the other parlours… many were dressed in elegant and bright-coloured suits as if they were attending a wedding instead of a wake, they would chat in loud voices and laugh as if we didn’t have dead persons so near, just at the other side of the walls… Reflecting about this, I came to the conclusion that maybe I was expecting a dark and gloomy room, with the coffin in the centre and a lot of chairs around, with sad and crying people sitting on them, all wearing black, and whispering to each other. At least that’s how I remembered my past life mother's wake in the Old West. I was only a kid and I know I had to tiptoe to see her lying there… The atmosphere was so, so different.

My partner said he had been in other wakes and things were different only two decades ago. He said it was more serious back then, and there was more sadness, sometimes to the point it was a bit hypocritical in the case of these persons who turn up and don't care, but we seem to have gone to the opposite end. Now it seems that funeral services have become kind of an entertainment business, where you go to an impressive —and quite luxurious— building, where even a coffee costs you half a kidney, where everything is perfectly scheduled and standardized so that you don’t even have to think, and where guests are provided with everything they need. The deceased person is there, but it looks so artificial that I don’t think anyone feels death is there, close at hand… I can even imagine children betting with their cousins if they’ll be brave enough to sneak and take a look to the grandpa, just having so much fun as no one seems to take it seriously. For a brief moment I nearly believed people had no more fear of death, I think that is good. But pausing a while, I realized I'd have been so wrong assuming that, and I suspect this has more to do with the superficiality we've grown, and this notion of "Let's ignore death, make it look like something without importance, someone that has died is just one more occasion to have a drink with friends and we don't even need to worry about what comes next". What I saw were people turning their backs on death, faking they had lost all respect for it, but I knew that inside most of them were still paralyzed, horrified to think one day they will be the ones in the coffin, wishing life was eternal, wonderful, perfect, not full of suffering and disgraces such as death.

But none would say nothing. Most of them were there only because a funeral is a social gathering and you would be criticized if you don’t attend, they were doing it just for obligation… and I think these people shouldn’t be there. I don’t want to be exposed like that when I die. I don’t want people I haven’t seen in decades come and sit at my funeral, look at my corpse and go when they never cared for me. If I could choose, I would be cremated immediately after death, I want neither shows, nor useless ceremonies, nor meaningless prayers I don’t give a damn for. I want it to be a private moment, for my soul and the ones who loved me, that’s all. My experience tells me when you’re dead you just don’t care about your body and what you leave behind, unless you are still too attached to the material world… but anyway, I think we must not lose the respect for the dead. I think dying is a sacred moment, and as such it shouldn’t lose its transcendental meaning. But in this Western World we’re losing respect for everything. And I think that’s so, so sad.