Many questions about the burials remain unanswered
During the excavation of a medieval archaeological site in a remote region of Siberia, archaeologists claim to have found the remains of four individuals buried in a crouched position. Such a strange burial had never been seen before in the region, and potentially denotes the practice of ritualistic sacrifices.
The discovery, reported by the Siberian Times, was made at the Yur-Yakha III site, which dates back to the 11th century and is located in the Yamal region in Northwestern Siberia. An analysis of the skeletal remains has indicated that three women and one man had been buried there.
Two of the women appeared to have been in their late teens or early twenties when they died. The man was thought to have been older, in his forties or fifties. All bear signs of having suffered from diseases.
“It’s hard to name all of their conditions, but for example we have found evidence for shoulder dislocation, teeth anomalies, sinusitis, post-partum trauma of the sacrum…”, lead archaeologist Andrei Plekhanov explained.
“It’s hard to say if this was normal for the period. The medical expert Evgenia Svyatova, who examined the skeletons said that the disorders were quite typical for that time, yet for four burials, it is a very large number of diseases”.
All appeared to be malnourished, an unsurprising discovery considering the harsh conditions they would have lived in.
Fire and mysterious rites
But despite having collected these important information, the team remains puzzled by the mysterious burials. They have yet to find convincing evidence to determine why the deceased had been laid to rest crouching.
The male remains suggest his body had been partially burnt after death
And the mystery deepened as the researchers conducted more investigations at the site. Their analyses have shown that the man’s body was set on fire after death – another ritual that was never documented previously in the medieval necropolises of the region.
“We can be sure that he did not die in the fire. His dead body was set on fire but not a very strong one. His bones remained almost intact, the fire damaged mostly soft tissues. At the moment, we do not know why they were buried this way, nor the significance of this,” Plekhanov, who works with the Arctic Research Centre of the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous region, said.
The team has hypothesised that the unique nature of these burials point to ritualistic sacrifices but it is also possible that these were just funerary rites specific to a particular local cultural group and that they simply had not been identified before.
Many artefacts, such as this one used to remove snow were found buried with the deceased
More excavation work is now scheduled to take place to learn more about the burials. The archaeologists will also focus on analysing the many objects that were recovered with the remains.
One of the women was buried with bronze bracelet bearing the image of a bear as well as a knife with a bronze handle, a tanning scraper, bronze and silver pendants, a ring and a ‘yangach’ – an object for removing snow from clothes. Fragments of pottery were also recovered. All these artefacts, recovered from the deceased in their afterlife, could provide new clues about the burial rituals of the region, in the Middle Ages.
[T]he first thing that many people read when they get their local newspaper is the obituaries. Some want to know if a friend or neighbor has died. Others are looking for information concerning the arrangements for the deceased. For some, reading the obituaries becomes existential when the deceased’s age is close to that of the reader. There are those who think it is a good day if they do not see their own names on the obituary page.
For more than a half century, William F. Buckley Jr. was the spokesperson and architect of modern American conservatism. One of his lesser known accomplishments was his mastery of the eulogy. The learned scholar Ernest van den Haag said of Buckley: “Buckley has re-elevated the art of eulogy to the high standard from which it had long ago fallen. So much so, that I am firmly resolved to leave this world before he does, for his eulogy is bound to be much better than mine.” (A Torch Kept Lit, p. 10)
James Rosen published “A Torch Kept Lit” in 2016. It is an annotated collection of 50 of Buckley’s eulogies and obituaries. Rosen’s commentary not only gives insight into Buckley, but helps to place each of the selections within the context of the world in which the person lived and moved and had their being. The categories — presidents, family, arts and letters, generals, spies, statesmen, friends, nemeses — give some indication of the range of Buckley’s interests.
In over 50 years in the ministry I have officiated at almost 450 funerals. When I was asked to conduct my first service as an assistant at the Grapevine United Methodist Church, I sought out the advice of one of the chaplains at Harris Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. He said that I should remember that the funeral service is for the living and not the dead. The service should be seen through the perspective of pastoral care. The purpose of the service is to help those who are attending the funeral to process what the loss means and what it means to continue without the departed. Of special importance is to help the people understand the grief process.
To help people with their grieving, I have found it helpful to be able to encapsulate the life of the deceased in a single image or phrase. Usually I discover this image or phrase while talking with the family or friends. This conversation is also a part of the grieving process. Once I have the image or phrase, I look for a Scripture text that illustrates or expands upon it. Then I look for other material that provides commentary or illustrates the image or phrase. My funeral message brings together the image or phrase, the Scripture lesson and the supporting material with the purpose of helping those attending with their grief.
A final piece of a Christian funeral is to give those who attend the assurance that God is with them in their loss. This can be done by pointing out how God was with the deceased during his/her life time. There are times when the grieving need to know that God is even there when they are angry with Him. Jesus’ words from the cross — “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” — resonate with how they feel.
The obituary has long been a part of American culture. William F. Buckley Jr. helped to re-elevate the eulogy to the high standard it once had in this country. The obituary and the eulogy help the grieving to remember and give thanks for the life of the deceased. It also helps those left behind to grieve the departed. The obituary and the eulogy are a reminder of our human mortality and give us cause to turn to God for His help during our time under the sun.
[H]umans may have ritualistically “killed” objects to remove their symbolic power, some 5,000 years earlier than previously thought, a new international study of marine pebble tools from an Upper Paleolithic burial site in Italy suggests.
Researchers at Université de Montréal, Arizona State University and University of Genoa examined 29 pebble fragments recovered in the Caverna delle Arene Candide on the Mediterranean Sea in Liguria. In their study, published online Jan. 18 in the Cambridge Archeological Journal, they concluded that some 12,000 years ago the flat, oblong pebbles were brought up from the beach, used as spatulas to apply ochre paste to decorate the dead, then broken and discarded.
The intent could have been to “kill” the tools, thereby “discharging them of their symbolic power” as objects that had come into contact with the deceased, said the study’s co-author Julien Riel-Salvatore, an associate professor of anthropology at UdeM who directed the excavations at the site that yielded the pebbles.
The Arene Candide is a hockey-rink-sized cave containing a necropolis of some 20 adults and children. It is located about 90 metres above the sea in a steep cliff overlooking a limestone quarry. First excavated extensively in the 1940s, the cave is considered a reference site for the Neolithic and Paleolithic periods in the western Mediterranean. Until now, however, no one had looked at the broken pebbles.
Possible use of the pebbles: retoucher or hammer.
“If our interpretation is correct, we’ve pushed back the earliest evidence of intentional fragmentation of objects in a ritual context by up to 5,000 years,” said the study’s lead author Claudine Gravel-Miguel, a PhD candidate at Arizona State’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change, in Tempe. “The next oldest evidence dates to the Neolithic period in Central Europe, about 8,000 years ago. Ours date to somewhere between 11,000 and 13,000 years ago, when people in Liguria were still hunter-gatherers.”
No matching pieces to the broken pebbles were found, prompting the researchers to hypothesize that the missing halves were kept as talismans or souvenirs. “They might have signified a link to the deceased, in the same way that people today might share pieces of a friendship trinket, or place an object in the grave of a loved one,” Riel-Salvatore said. “It’s the same kind of emotional connection.”
Between 2008 and 2013, the researchers painstakingly excavated in the Arene Candide cave immediately east of the original excavation using small trowels and dental tools, then carried out microscopic analysis of the pebbles they found there. They also scoured nearby beaches in search of similar-looking pebbles, and broke them to see if they compared to the others, trying to determine whether they had been deliberately broken.
Claudine Gravel-Miguel is with anthropologist Vitale Stefano Sparacello at the Arene Candide site in 2011.
“This demonstrates the underappreciated interpretive potential of broken pieces,” the new study concludes. “Research programs on Paleolithic interments should not limit themselves to the burials themselves, but also explicitly target material recovered from nearby deposits, since, as we have shown here, artifacts as simple as broken rocks can sometimes help us uncover new practices in prehistoric funerary canons.”
The findings could have implications for research at other Paleolithic sites where ochre-painted pebbles have been found, such as the Azilian sites in the Pyrenee mountains of northern Spain and southern France. Broken pebbles recovered during excavations often go unexamined, so it might be worth going back and taking a second look, said Riel-Salvatore.
“Historically, archeologists haven’t really looked at these objects – if they see them at a site, they usually go ‘Oh, there’s an ordinary pebble,’ and then discard it with the rest of the sediment,” he said. “We need to start paying attention to these things that are often just labeled as rocks. Something that looks like it might be natural might actually have important artifactual meaning.”
[R]eggie and Gloria Weiss love fat, vine-ripened tomatoes; healthy, homegrown asparagus; and good, wormy soil.
They prefer dirt-covered garden gloves to jewelry, mulch their food scraps, conserve water and are partial to a good natural fertilizer – especially, Gloria said, the kind goats make.With reverence for the environment, and appreciation for these simple things in life, the Weisses have made a decision to keep things simple in death.
The Spring Township couple have pre-arranged a green or natural burial.They are among a growing number of Americans who, out of what the National Funeral Directors Association calls “a deepening eco-consciousness,” have abandoned the modern American way of death in which the departed, nattily-clad and chemically preserved, are placed in expensive hardwood or shimmering steel coffins; lowered into one-ton reinforced concrete burial vaults; and, after the clods fall, are memorialized with massive granite or marble headstones.
More adults interested
Natural, or green, burials honor the rituals that are important to people, but without glitzy, synthetic trappings associated with modern funerals.
They are a way of caring for the dead with minimal environmental impact, according to the Green Burial Council based in Ojai, Calif.A 2015 study by the Funeral and Memorial Information Council showed 64 percent of adults 40 and older said they would be interested in green funeral options, compared with 43 percent in 2010.The funeral and burial industry is starting to take notice.Last summer, Gethsemane, a Catholic cemetery in Muhlenberg Township, became the first cemetery in Berks to offer a dedicated green burial section. That means no metal. No embalming fluid. No burial vault. No ashes.About an hour northeast of Reading, Green Meadow at Fountain Hill, in Salisbury Township, became Lehigh County’s first green cemetery when, in 2011, it dedicated a half acre of its 13 total acres to green burials.An hour west or Reading, Paxtang Cemetery in Paxtang Borough near Harrisburg reserved 12 of its 34 acres for green burials, and even had it zoned conservation to prevent future development.An hour southeast of Reading, West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Lower Merion Township was a regional pioneer in the green movement when it set aside an acre for green burials in 2008.
Earth-friendly caskets
Kuhn Funeral Home in West Reading, and Milkins Giles in Muhlenberg Township, stock caskets made of woven bamboo along with their traditional casket of steel and wood. Most funeral homes can easily attain and offer eco-friendly caskets to families, and families can purchase them directly from manufacturers.
Don Byrne, a native of Annville, Lebanon County, lives in Chatham, N.C., where he owns and operates Piedmont Pine Coffins. Using only non-power hand tools, Byrne makes each coffin with tongue-and-groove planks and dove-tail corners. Though his coffins are not used exclusively for green burials, he said the green movement has contributed to his workload.”They find that the simplicity of a pine matches something in the life or personality of their loved one,” Byrne said.His coffins, each requiring about 25 hours of labor, sell for about $1,800. Piedmont Pine Coffins is one of about 400 Green Burial Council-certified product makers, 399 more than existed in 2005.
Embalming
Modern-day funeral and burial practices, which have their origins in the American Civil War, veered well away from the biblical notion of ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
Battlefield surgeons and others began embalming dead soldiers during the Civil War as a way to preserve the bodies during transport from battlegrounds to their homes hundreds of miles away. The practice was also useful in combating a gruesome phenomenon known as exploding casket syndrome, caused by a buildup of gases inside the coffin during decomposition. Some 40,000 Civil War soldiers were embalmed of the estimated nearly 650,000 who were killed.The funeral of Abraham Lincoln helped popularize the practice of embalming and set the tone for elaborate farewells, historians say.On April 19, 1865, four days after his death, Abraham Lincoln’s body began a 1,654-mile odyssey that took him from the White House and the Capitol in Washington to his final resting place in Springfield, Ill. The trip included stops in several towns and cities, including Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New York, Buffalo, Cleveland, Indianapolis and Chicago. At each major stop, the coffin was moved to a central viewing place and then opened so that mourners could pay their final respects.
Down with the dead
In addition to embalming chemicals, a lot of wood, steel and concrete goes down with the dead.
“For all its verdant landscaping, the typical cemetery functions less like a bucolic resting ground for the dead than a landfill for the materials that infuse and encase them,” wrote Bethlehem-based environmental journalist Mark Harris, author of a book called “Grave Matters” and a leading advocate of green burial practices.A one-acre section of cemetery, with about 1,250 people buried, will contain 3,750 gallons of formaldehyde-based preservative, 187,500 board feet of wood for coffins and 2.5 million pounds of concrete. If steel coffins are used, and they are used often, that would roughly equal 162,500 pounds of steel, more if heavier gauge steel is selected.There are 2,728 cemeteries in Pennsylvania. The Charles Evans Cemetery, one of the most historic cemeteries in Berks County, measures about 120 acres, and more than 70,000 people are interred there. Gethsemane Cemetery in Muhlenberg has about 70 acres, and 32,000 are buried there.Arlington National Cemetery, arguably the nation’s most revered cemetery, is 625 acres.The funeral industry is estimated to be worth $20 billion with about 2.4 million funerals held each year, according to Sara J. Marsden, editor-in-chief for U.S. Funerals Online.The National Funeral Directors Association published the median cost of an adult funeral, with viewing and a burial at $8,508 nationally. According to www.funeral.com, the cost of a traditional funeral, which includes basic fees, transfer of body, embalming or refrigeration, body preparation, viewing and visitation, graveside service and the casket or coffin, ranges from $7,000 to $10,000.”There’s a desire in many areas of our lives to lessen our impact on the globe,” said Jessica Koth of the National Funeral Directors Association.
‘A natural evolution’
“There are electric cars, organic and locally grown food and recycling,” she said. “Green burials are sort of the natural evolution of our lives becoming green.”
In a green burial, the body is shrouded in natural fiber. Caskets, if they are used at all, are made of everything from simple pine to woven bamboo or wicker, sea grass, wool or cardboard. The dead are typically lowered by hand into a grave, where the forces of nature are allowed to exert themselves without obstruction from chemicals, unnatural fibers or man-made barriers of concrete, plastic or steel.The Green Burial Council certifies funeral homes, cemeteries and funeral products as green based on various eco-friendly practices. To be certified, for example, funeral homes must offer three types of biodegradable caskets made from material that is easily harvested and quickly regrown. Cemeteries must disallow burial of embalmed bodies, concrete and metal in their green areas. Coffin makers, among others, must get raw material harvested in responsible ways, to name just a few of the requirements.The Weisses said they aren’t out to make a statement or to prove a point, but given their green lifestyle, a green burial seems appropriate.Working with Kuhn Funeral Home on their plans, they chose simple, wooden caskets similar to those used in Jewish burials.”I don’t need all that contrivance,” Gloria said. “I don’t need all that fancy stuff. But some people do, and that’s fine.”
Back to the future
Green or natural burials are nothing new.
“This isn’t a trend,” said Jim Olsen, a spokesman for the National Funeral Directors Association. “This is what (society) has always done.”Timothy Kolasa, executive director of Gethsemane Cemetery, agrees: “It’s just really getting back to basics.””Some people are looking for a more simplified option,” he said. “Cremation has been that option for many years.”Kolasa added that the cemetery had been considering the move since 2012. No plots have yet been filled, but some have been pre-arranged.Paxtang Cemetery near Harrisburg opened in August, 2014, according to owner Alesia Skinner. An ardent supporter of the environment and green burials, Skinner opened The Woods Edge.Sylvia Crum, Skinner’s mom, loved the idea.”She was a country girl at heart,” Skinner said of her mom. “She came from a farm, and it was one of her happiest places. She was a very whole-earthy kind of a person. She loved nature.”Crum died of pancreatic cancer in August 2014 and became the first person to be buried at The Woods Edge.Tragically, Patrick B. Ytsma, 53, of Bethlehem, an avid bicyclist and architect, was struck by a car and killed while biking. He became the first person interred at Green Meadow in Salisbury Township. Friends, many of whom rode their bikes to his funeral on Dec. 10, 2011, said he would have wanted it that way.
Gravesite charges
Green burials can cost between $1,000 to $4,000, depending on the cemetery, according to CostHelper Inc., a Silicon Valley, Calif.-based provider of consumer information.
The Ramsey Creek Preserve in South Carolina, considered by some as the epicenter of green burials in the U.S., charges $2,500 to $3,500 for a gravesite.Natural burial plots at Gethsemane are larger, measuring 5 feet by 10 feet, than normal plots, and slightly more expensive, Kolasa said. “A cemetery’s only asset is land,” he said.Plots at Gethsemane range usually between $500 and $2,500, depending on location. The Weisses chose their little section of eternity near a hilltop and away from the car path.Casket costs can vary. A company called Final Footprint sells green caskets made with materials such as banana leaf, rattan, sea grass, wood and organic fibers for less than $1,000. They are made in the U.S., Poland and Indonesia, and are certified as fair trade. For $4.95, Piedmont Pine Coffins will sell you plans so you can build your own coffin with material that will cost you less than $200.
Movement inches along
Despite its passionate disciples, the movement is inching along in Berks County.
Green burials “will certainly gain in popularity down the road,” said Kyle Blankenbiller, funeral director and manager of Auman Funeral Homes, with two locations in the Reading area.”There’s not a real need right now,” said Joseph D. Giles of Milkins Giles Funeral Home in Muhlenberg Township. “I have no idea what it will look like in the future,” he said.But Olsen, a longtime funeral director from Sheboygan, Wis., who speaks nationally on behalf of the National Funeral Directors Association, said there might be a very good reason for funeral directors to get on board.Soaring cremation rates are burning up profits as families who cremate tend to buy fewer services from funeral homes.”I’ve lowered my cremation rate by offering this,” Olsen said. “I’ve found that by sitting down and listening to the families I serve I’ve actually captured a new portion of business.”Harris believes the pendulum is swinging back toward natural burial faster than some might admit.”This boomer generation is leaning green,” he said. “It’s the greening of society. They launched the first Earth Day, and now the leading edge of the boomer generation is slouching into retirement. They will bring those same green values to bear on end-of-life decisions.”Millennials, he added, are “definitely going green.”And while environmentalists aren’t exactly beating down his doors, Michael Kuhn, who worked with the Weisses, said, “It’s very appealing to some people.”Searching for the right words to describe the trend, Kuhn unwittingly stumbled into what might be the best description of all: “It’s kind of a grass roots movement.”
Collection features 75 perspectives on death in Ireland and whets appetite for further study
“The Humours of an Irish Wake as celebrated at St Giles London.” Original artwork: engraving by Thornton, published by Johnson c 1750.
By Bridget English
[T]he Irish wake is nearly as celebrated and stereotypical an Irish export as Guinness, leprechauns or shamrock. Its reputation as a raucous, drunken party that celebrates the life of the deceased is now regarded internationally as a desirable way to mark the end of one’s life, even for those who claim little or no Irish heritage.
It is conceivable, then, given the famous link between Ireland and death, that the Irish “do death well”. Where does this association come from? Do the Irish really “do” death better than anyone else? These are some of the questions behind a new collection of essays, Death and the Irish: A miscellany, edited by Salvador Ryan, a professor of ecclesiastical history at St Patrick’s College Maynooth.
The collection is part of a recent surge of academic interest in death and dying, as is evidenced by the publication of edited collections such as Grave Matters, Death and Dying in Dublin, 1500 to the Present (2016), edited by Lisa Marie Griffith and Ciarán Wallace, and Death and Dying in Ireland, Britain and Europe: Historical Perspectives (2013), edited by James Kelly and Mary Ann Lyons, both of which explore these themes from a historical perspective.
>Subtitled “a miscellany”, Death and the Irish is different from these publications because it features a medley of 75 perspectives on death and the Irish from historians, hospice workers, geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, theologians, priests, librarians, musicologists, and funeral directors, to name a few. It also covers a vast time span, taking readers from the fifth century to the present day.
Entertainment
The brevity of the essays (around three to four pages, including footnotes) and their pithiness, though a departure from the extended discussions commonly found in academic anthologies, is true to the form of the miscellany, which was originally intended for the entertainment of contemporary audiences.
Death and the Irish will interest readers looking for interesting tidbits of information on death and provides ample fuel for those searching for inspiration for further research.
Some tantalising morsels from the miscellany include: the tale of a young woman buried with her horse sometime between 381 and 536 AD; the variety of terms for death in the Irish language; social media’s role in keeping memories of the dead alive; an analysis of Stuart-era funerary monuments and what they reveal about women’s role in society; the 18th-century Dublin practice of laying executed corpses at the prosecutor’s door; a quirky account of the discovery of James McNally’s death by elephant in Glasnevin cemetery’s burial registers; and the story of a young cabin boy’s death by cannibalism.
Given the number of entries included in the volume, it is not possible to provide a detailed account of each, but a few entries are worth mentioning. Clodagh Tait’s Graveyard folklore and Jenny Butler’s The ritual and social use of tobacco in the context of the wake are particularly thought-provoking accounts of folk practices and the material cultures surrounding death. Tait’s gruesome description of the pieces of human remains that were collected for charms and the dead man’s hand that “could be used to make churning butter less onerous” provides readers with images that they are unlikely to soon forget.
One downside of Death and the Irish is that the experience of reading such short essays can be frustrating for anyone (particularly students) coming to the collection looking for an extended discussion of death practices in a particular era. Organising the entries by time period or by theme (burial, folklore, historical figures or events, etc) might make for more streamlined reading, but to do so would also destroy one of the collection’s main strengths, which is to bring disparate approaches together, taking interdisciplinarity to an extreme, provoking new ideas through a multilayered view of death in Ireland.
Under-represented
Despite the inclusiveness of Ryan’s miscellany, certain disciplines, such as history and theology, seem to dominate, while others are absent or under-represented. Philosophers have certainly shaped the ways that modern secular society conceives of death, yet there are no entries on the relationship between Ireland and philosophy.
Irish film, literature and drama feature some of the most insightful and humorous portrayals of death and dying in western culture, yet there are only three entries on literature, and these are limited to poetry (Irish language poetry, bardic poetry and 18th-century elegies).
These are minor criticisms and on the whole, Death and the Irish: A miscellany is commendable for its inclusion of marginalised groups such as Travellers, and for the links made between Irish practices and Jewish and Muslim beliefs. The Irish may not necessarily “do” death better than anyone else, but as this volume makes clear, the history and rituals surrounding death offer a rich and complex area of study, one that has much to tell us about Irish attitudes towards mortality and treatment of the dead.
In her new book, Hallowell Singers founder Kathy Leo tells how music comforts the dying, and offers lessons for the living
By Richard Henke
BRATTLEBORO—Kathy Leo, the founder and director of Hallowell Singers, last month published On the Breath of Song: the Practice of Bedside Singing for the Dying, a book that offers guidance and insight into the practice of singing for the dying and their families.
Through the telling of true stories and over a decade of experience in song and spirit with the Hallowell hospice choir, Leo has written a guidebook for anyone offering end of life care or helping a loved one die.
“After many years of teaching workshops to newly forming or active hospice choirs, the decision to write a guidebook through personal experiences of being with the dying became clear,” writes Leo at the Hallowell website, www.hallowell-singers.org.
“On the Breath of Song is a way to get close to the bedside to explore your personal relationship with death and dying. It serves hospice singers, music therapists, chaplains, compassionate caregivers, hospice workers, and palliative care professionals.”
Birthing and dying
Although Leo has now been working with hospice care for over 15 years, she was a midwife in the Southern Vermont area for more than a decade before that. She didn’t find the change too great.
“You are in the same space: birthing and dying have similar energies,” she explains.
Shortly after Leo began her volunteer work for Brattleboro Area Hospice, musician Peter Amidon and others were invited to the bedside of a Putney woman under her hospice care to sing for two nights.
Leo writes about the experience: “In a small house on a back road in southern Vermont, a woman is dying at home surrounded by her loving family. It is a winter evening in 2003, a few days before Dinah’s last, a group of friends from the community and her church, gather around her bed to sing. She joins in. She mouths the words when her voice fails her …
“As we sing around her, Dinah is held up by her loving husband Fred, a daughter on either side of her. … [Hallowell Singers] formed after two visits to Dinah Breunig’s bedside in her home, her family welcoming and present, during the final days of her life on earth.”
Hallowell is a chorus of volunteer singers trained to practice the therapeutic art of singing for the dying. Based in Brattleboro, the chorus serves hospice clients through its affiliation with Brattleboro Area Hospice and the greater community by request.
Leo, who had been Dinah’s hospice volunteer, answered the call from Noree Ennis, the patient care Coordinator of Brattleboro Area Hospice at the time, to create and organize a “hospice choir” that would be available as a service to anyone who desired singing at the end of life as an offering of comfort.
Peter Amidon and Mary Cay Brass agreed to serve as musical directors.
‘Gifts of grace’
Almost 40 singers signed up to be trained and taught how to sing at the bedside of a dying person. Usually 4 to 6 singers go to the home of a man or woman in hospice care.
“We do not want to overwhelm the space,” Leo says. “We know how to make ourselves small in energy. Before we enter a home, we quiet ourselves internally, which can take a lot of work initially. Once there, we offer songs that are gifts of grace for everyone involved, the dying, their family and the singers.
“Beautiful things happen with music. Singing also creates a special space for a family to come closer with the dying. So much happens in this space that is rich with life, death, and mostly love.”
Leo explains that Hallowell doesn’t call these events performances, but rather, “sings.”
“We tell people not to applaud, that is not what we are here for,” she says.
The name for the Hallowell Singers comes from a song Brattleboro therapist Stephen Spitzer wrote about a friend from Hallowell, Maine, who died from a bee sting. “What he wrote so embodies the spirit of our mission that we took it as our title,” Leo says.
Since its inception in 2003, Hallowell has served hundreds of families in the Southern Vermont community.
“Little did we know at the time that as Hallowell grew and evolved, it would become a central ’practice’ in our lives, a way to learn how to live fully and with deep gratitude,” Leo writes. “Our songs and our quiet presence bring comfort and offer support to the dying. The response of those we sing for is often emotional and calming.”
Hallowell still works very closely with Brattleboro Area Hospice. “They are more like family, really, and they helped to shape and form us through support and training,” Leo confesses.
But Hallowell also has its own hospice training.
A careful approach
Leo felt the need to address specific issues that arise when singing at dying persons’ bedsides. Hallowell trainings deal with how to prepare for a sing, both individually and as a group, how to involve the family, and how to approach what Leo calls “the sacred space of dying.”
“We need to learn to enter and leave the space seamlessly,” she says.
Soon enough, the word about the special work that the Hallowell Singers were doing began to spread.
“We were asked if we could do a workshop on how to start a choir in Middlebury,” Leo says. Soon more groups were forming choirs that asked for Hallowell’s help.
“We have also helped to launch a still growing number of hospice choirs throughout the New England region and across the country by teaching workshops, offering guidance and counsel, and being available for continued support for developing hospice choirs,” Leo writes. “We are honored to be a strong model for the growing movement of the practice of bedside singing for the dying.”
Besides the numerous smaller workshops, for the past six years, Leo and Amidon have given a weekend “deepening workshop” once a year at the Rowe Center in Massachusetts.
“These are always well-attended, and people come from all over the country, even someone from New Zealand who wanted to start a Hallowell choir there,” Leo elaborates. “This movement, which began in Putney, now is spreading all over the world. Who can explain it? Perhaps it was just the right time, but it is pretty amazing.”
True stories of tenderness
Leo has often been exhorted to write a book offering guidance and insight into the practice of singing for the dying and their families.
“I first was asked to write up a guidebook years ago, but I kept telling everyone and myself, ‘It wasn’t the right time, it wasn’t time, it wasn’t time,’” she says.
But finally Leo realized that she had no real excuse for delay, and the result was On the Breath of Song.
Although the book is intended to help others working with hospice choirs, this is definitely not a book a rules. Instead, Leo says she has written a book of true stories filled with tenderness and emotion.
“Singing for the dying is intuitive, where strict rules have no place,” Leo says. “Consequently, when I came to write down all that I have learned over the years working with Hallowell, I realized that the best manner was through stories which inform the teaching. At the heart of these stories are the songs we sing, and the spirit of love we bring to this practice.”
Lead coffins containing the skeletons found in the Jacobin convent.
Hundreds of burials discovered in a convent in Brittany, France, have shed new light on medieval and Renaissance funerary practices. Archaeologists have identified mummified corpses, as well as hearts and brains extracted from the deceased bodies that suggest that burials were still deeply rooted in superstition and religious belief.
In 2015, a team from the French national institute for preventive archaeology (INRAP) fully excavated the Jacobin convent in the city of Rennes, which had been founded in 1368 and served as primary burial site for the local aristocracy.
The archaeologists encountered around 900 burials spanning two periods – the 14th to 15th centuries and the 16th through to the 18th century. A number of studies backed by major historical evidence have previously suggested that funeral rites in Europe evolved from the Middle Ages to the Modern era through a process of gradual secularisation.
Another coffin discovered within the Convent in Rennes.
Embalming was a rare practice, usually reserved for the bodies of kings. During the Renaissance however, surgical interventions and embalming was seen as a common preparation for the display of the deceased’s remains, one that had no religious or symbolic value. Thus, archaeologists believe that burials became more secular as years went by.
During their excavations of the Rennes convent, the researchers came across a range of notable burial practices and used imaging and autopsies to study the remains. They were able to identify more than 600 skeletons, as well as two very well conserved mummies from the Renaissance.
For the first time, the archaeologists also documented the practice of heart extraction. They found five hearts which had been removed from the bodies and placed in heart-shaped urns, dating between 1584 and 1655. There was also evidence that the brains had been extracted from some of the corpses as some skulls had been opened.
The scientists conducted autopsies on the corpses to find out more about how they were buried.
Louise and Toussaint
In some instances, the hearts had been placed in the coffin of the person’s spouse. This was the case for Louise de Quengo, a benefactor of the church who was more than 65 years old when she died in 1656, during the Renaissance. The heart of Toussaint de Perrien, her husband, was placed on top of her coffin. He had been buried in another convent in a separate location.
While the team notes that embalming and surgical operations on bodies did occur in Renaissance burials, it is unclear whether this was done for secular and medical purposes or not.
“Louise de Quengo’s internal organs had not been cleaned, no padding had been introduced, the skull had not been cut into, and there were no incisions on the upper or lower limbs, as was often recommended in medical treatises of the period,” they point out.
The removal of the heart and the good state of conservation of the bodies rather served a spiritual and symbolic purpose. In the case of Louise and Toussaint, the idea may have been to honour them in two religious sites of which they had been benefactors. The husband’s heart on the wife’s coffin also suggests the strength of their marital love.
Hearts were removed and placed in heart-shaped urns.
The fact that Toussaint de Perrien’s remains are present at two different religious sites means that he honoured different religious orders, even in death. It also means that a greater number of prayers could be made in his name, giving him greater chances of entering heaven.
The scientists also believe that the presence of well conserved Renaissance mummies at the site echoes the Council of Trent’s affirmation of the “Resurrection of the Flesh” – resurrection would come with the Last Judgement and so preserving bodies would ensure the faithfuls would rise from the dead. Bodies were embalmed to be preserved for religious purposes, but not to be displayed.
Investigations in the Jacobin convent in Rennes shows that Renaissance society’s attitude towards burials was still influenced by age-old, religious practices, while the secularisation of burials likely came later.
