Rituals Following the Last Breaths — A Reimagine Event
In some way or other, ritual is a frequent part of our lives. Whether it’s the annual Thanksgiving dinner that most of us just celebrated, with the same menu year after year, or the reading of the names at the 9/11 yearly memorial, or the Sabbath ritual of lighting candles, Sunday mass, coming of age ceremonies, and so on—ritual is the formal way we acknowledge special moments in history, religious occasions, or important life experiences. Naturally, ritual is also quite important when it comes to death. The viewing and funeral services not only help us celebrate a life, they help loved ones return to a sense of order and balance amid the chaos and turmoil a death brings to their lives. That is how ritual serves us: it places events in a larger context, which brings a deeper sense of meaning and helps us feel that there is a rightness to what happens, even when an event is hard to understand and accept. This is the power of ritual and the reason that we emphasize it in the doula approach.
Earlier this month INELDA participated in a number of ways in the Reimagine event that overtook New York City. There were more than 300 events spread out across the city, in all the boroughs. It was an amazing, large-scale immersion in new thinking and exploration around death and dying. There were lectures, panel discussions, demonstrations, art exhibits, performances, all focused on examining how our society thinks about death at the same time that it pushed the boundaries. One of the events INELDA did, which I led, was a discussion on ritual with a demonstration of a ritual following the last breaths. For this event, I was joined by Amy Cunningham, a funeral celebrant and director who owns Fitting Tribute Funeral Services, which helps people in New York City plan for home vigil services after a person has died and plan for green burials. Amy discussed after-death care of the body and demonstrated how to shroud a body in a ritual way that maintains a sense of dignity and tenderness toward the deceased.
INELDA chose to do this kind of event because of the importance of ritual in doula work. There are many moments in the dying process, particularly toward the end, when ritual helps deepen the meaning of what is happening and restore a sense of order. Ritual is very appropriate at the start of a legacy project and when that project is completed, especially if the dying person can receive the project in a way that allows them to take it in and appreciate what it says about who they are, the impact they have had, and how they will continue to be held in the hearts of family and friends. Ritual also works well at the start of a vigil, periodically during the vigil, and particularly right after the person has died.
The discussion and ritual was held in a lovely meeting space of the Episcopal Actors’ Guild, on the second floor of The Little Church Around The Corner, in Manhattan. The space is relatively small, with a carpeted floor, vaulted ceiling, book shelves, and a stage. It has the warmth of someone’s living room. I began the demonstration of the ritual by asking someone in the audience of 40 people to act as the person who had died. A young woman volunteered and then lay down on the massage table we had covered with decorative cloth and a bright purple silk shroud. Then I asked seven other attendees to come up on the stage and act as the family.
The ritual we were about to perform together was based on an adaptation of a surfer ritual I had seen in an episode of Hawaii Five-0. In that ritual, friends of the deceased gathered in a large circle out in the ocean straddling surfboards. One person paddled out into the center of the circle to deposit their friend’s ashes. Then everyone removed leis from around their neck and threw them into the circle to cover the ashes. This ritual spoke to me of returning the person to the source of all life, the sea, and the beauty of life’s fragility in the symbol of the leis, traditionally used in greeting, saying goodbye, or as a sign of affection.
We were about to bring the spirit of this ritual into the small, intimate space of the Episcopal Actors’ Guild room. I asked the people acting as the family to hold in their minds the image of someone close to them who had died. In this way, I knew the ritual would become more real for everyone involved. All eight of us gathered around the “dead” person laying on the shroud and held hands. We observed several moments of silence to connect to the deceased person we were holding in our mind. The next part of the ritual had been carefully explained, so everyone knew the flow of actions we would take and understood their rationale. At the foot of the bed was a small table with a bowl of water that represented the sea, to which I had added several drops of rose essential oil and then scattered rose and sunflower petals across its surface to represent the leis.
After the moments of silence, each person as they felt ready to do it, went to the bowl of water and removed one or more flower petals. Then they approached the deceased to place the petals on a part of the body that would help them honor the person they were holding in their mind. One person placed place a petal on the mouth, saying: “I place this flower petal on your mouth because you always spoke loving and kind words. You never spoke badly about anyone.” Another person placed a flower petal on each arm, and said; “So many times you held me when I was crying. You enfolded me and made me feel safe. It is because of these arms that I became a loving woman and a loving mother.” Still another person said: “I place these petals on your feet because you taught me to be adventurous; you encouraged me to travel the world. When you were 89 you moved 3,000 miles because there was no one left at home and it was time to meet new people.”
The space we held around the bed was filled with a loving sense of presence for all the deaths we were honoring. The heart-felt expressions of gratitude hung in the air as I brought closure to the ritual by reading the prayer We Remember Them, which comes out of the Jewish tradition and is used as well by Unitarians. This prayer speaks to how the person who died will be remembered in each season for all the years ahead. The prayer ends with these words: “As long as we live you too will live, for now you are a part of us, as we remember you.”
This ritual was only one example of how a ritual following the last breaths might look. Rituals for this occasion frequently include the use of candles, flowers, acts of blessing the person, music, and prayer. Sometimes this kind of ritual might include washing the person’s body, or parts of the body in a last ceremonial act of caretaking. Sometimes people write last messages of love or wishes for what happens next that are placed on or around the body to be cremated or buried with the person. Sometimes people offer objects to go with the body, stuffed animals, a copy of a favorite book, clippings of hair, rosary beads, or a rock from the garden the person lovingly tended in life. Whatever is included in a ritual should be expressive of who this person has been and how the family wishes to honor them.
When this ritual was over, Amy Cunningham talked about the movement toward more green burials and how a deceased’s body can be cared for at home in preparation for a home viewing and possible funeral. She showed where to place dry ice under and on top of the body to dramatically slow the process of decomposition, so a person’s body can be kept for up to three days before going to a funeral home or to the cemetery for burial. Then she had people come up to participate in shrouding the body. A future article in our newsletter will cover the progressive after-death care of the body that Amy and other funeral guides do today to bring greater intimacy into how we treat a deceased person.
All in all, I felt that our ritual to follow the last breaths went extremely well. Tears were shed by those who participated. The people who simply watched the ritual unfold, expressed how touching it was to observe and how much it made them think about the way we might honor a person right after they die. It reconfirmed the value and importance of ritual at many points in the dying process, not only in the funeral service we do days after a death.