How to help a grieving parent

By Jane Vock

Most adult children want to help and support their mom or dad when their partner/spouse dies. It’s a tough situation because you are also grieving the loss of one of the most significant relationships of your life. You can help yourself and your mom or dad by understanding grief and grieving, and the tremendous significance of this loss.

When a partner/spouse dies

The death of a spouse/partner is different from the death of a parent. They are fundamentally different relationships and are held differently in our hearts and minds.

The adult child understands and appreciates more fully what their surviving parent is experiencing if they themselves have lost a partner or spouse. It seems we humans often need to have the experience ourselves to really grasp what the experience is like. Grief and grieving are no exception.

Learn from those who have gone before you

If experience is the best teacher, what is the next best thing? To learn from those who have gone before you. Know that life is harder than you can probably imagine when someone you love dies. Act accordingly.

Adult children have been known to say, “I wish I had been there more for mom/dad.” Why do they say this?  They say it because they experience the death of someone close to them and realize how it really knocks us off our proverbial feet.  The meaning of the word ‘bereaved’ is “torn apart”. It can be hard to describe grieving. It embodies all parts of ourselves: the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. The difficulty in describing this experience is why many resort to using grief metaphors to describe it.

By the way, if you are someone with guilt or regrets about how you handled your parent’s death (or anyone’s death), you don’t have to hold on to this pain. There is a brilliant project, dubbed the Grief Secret Project. If you have what they call a ‘grief secret’, something you haven’t shared because you feel embarrassed, guilty or ashamed, you can share it there and let go of those negative feelings!

Grief and grieving: natural and normal

Literally every site on grief and grieving refers to it as natural and normal. This is often followed by information on how to tell when a person may need professional help or have “complicated grieving” or even “complicated bereavement disorder.” I am not denying this is the case for some, but for the vast majority of us, grief and grieving does not require the help of a professional.

For sure, there are things we can do to “metabolize grief”, such as telling stories, whether to family or friends or in a grief support group. The point is to be mindful about the unhelpful tendency to medicalize or pathologize grief and grieving.   I remember my mom saying that dad was the lucky one because he died first. Some might interpret this as a symptom of depression and that my mom needed professional. When I dug deeper, it seemed to me this comment was based on a realistic assessment of that moment. At the age of 81, mom was living alone for the first time in this big old 4 bedroom home, with 2 lots to maintain, considerably less money each month, and also had to figure out how to do or get things done that dad had taken care of before he died.

If grief and grieving are natural and normal…

What does this mean exactly? It means not getting caught up in stages of grieving, and deciding whether someone is in denial, or in some stage for too long or not long enough. It means not being rigid or imposing how one should grieve, how long one should grieve and deciding when it is supposedly time to “move on”. Your mom, for example, may want to remove your dad’s clothes out of the home immediately, or in a month, or a year, two years later, or maybe never. Does it really matter? Be careful not to pathologize this, despite the feelings it generates in you.  You probably don’t know what it means. Your timing isn’t necessarily your parent’s timing. Period.

Changed forever

When someone we love dies, we don’t move through it, “recover” or return to a pre-loss normal. Pointedly, the idea that “closure” even exists has been proposed as outrageous. While we resume life, and it can look like it is back to “normal” from the outside, we are changed internally. That is how significant it is. At best, then, one integrates this loss.

What to do given the significance of this loss?

Experiencing losses, especially the death of someone you love, is both a universal and an intimate and deeply personal experience. Your parent can guide you.

At the level of the everyday and the concrete, you can ask what they want help with or worry most about doing now that their partner/spouse has died. You can help turn that worry into action.  For my mom, immediate tasks were lawn mowing and snow removal, and being shown how to put gas in the car!

Be specific when you ask how they are doing. The general ‘how are you doing’ question has become a rather empty throwaway question. Get specific. How are you at night? At bedtime? How are mornings or meal times? The real value of asking is listening to the answer without trying to solve or fix it. It’s the expression of empathy and love and caring that gives the question its value.

Honour the relationship by telling stories and sharing memories. You will obviously have your own stories of your mom or dad, as well as family stories. Share them. Stories and storytelling are powerful and can help us metabolize grief.

Complete Article HERE!

Living to die better

Death doesn’t have to be scary. Talking about death early can bring peace before passing.

By Meredith Lumberg

We are taught in medicine how to treat illness, find cures, and prevent morbidity and mortality. One lesson school forgot to teach us is that we all die. In western culture, it’s not common to talk about death, so I’m here to start the conversation with you.

I wouldn’t be surprised to hear you shy away from visiting your grandparents’ nursing home, your hesitance to attend your great aunt’s funeral, or that hospitals make you uncomfortable. The experiences you’ve gone through likely shape your own perspective on death. It’s preferred by most to not think about it, because death is not celebrated, appreciated, or prepared for, especially in the U.S.

How does this connect to you? You’re young, healthy, and have your whole life ahead of you. That’s probably true for both you and me. Probably.

As a volunteer for a local hospice organization and as a pharmacy student gaining experience in end-of-life care, I can vouch that death is more common than you see daily. While most of the patients I see are well past retirement age, and as they like to say, “have lived a good life,” there are always exceptions. These exceptions often include sudden accidents or young people with cancer. Unfortunately, these incidents often leave patients with loose ends and their family members with tough decisions to make. If you don’t talk about death before it happens, it may not go the way you want.

How can you fix that?

1. Start by writing down your thoughts

Would you want to be an organ donor? (It saves lives)

Would you want something down your throat to help you breathe?

Would you want a tube in your nose to help feed you?

How do you envision your funeral?

Do these questions make you uncomfortable? That’s okay. Like I said, it’s ingrained in our culture.

2. Talk to your family or friends

Start a conversation with those closest to you about this topic. Ask them about their wishes and tell them about what you would want at the end of your life. Tell them about how this article sparked your interest, so they have no need to worry. It may be a new and surprising topic for them, so be prepared for funny looks at first, but expect a productive discussion to follow.

3. Fill out an advance directive

This is a document that helps guide others in the healthcare decisions you might want if you are not able to make your own. You can also make this document official if you get it notarized.

If you made it this far, this is probably the most you’ve thought about death. Talking about dying can help you avoid unnecessary suffering for yourself and those closest to you to bring peace before passing. With communication and understanding, we can all have a good death.

Complete Article HERE!

The daunting task of holding an Islamic funeral in a pandemic

For some Muslims, the pandemic strips away their ability to mourn

COVID-19 has upended the Islamic burial.

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Grieving is difficult. Grieving during a pandemic even more so.

In the Islamic tradition, a person’s passing is marked with an elaborate and symbolic funeral. But what happens to those traditions when the world is put on pause, and when tragedy seems never-ending?

Two Muslim leaders, Ahmed Ali and Payman Amiri, share their stories on how they’ve had to adjust their practices in the time of COVID-19, and how mourning has changed in their communities. They tell Scienceline about the symbolism involved in a typical Islamic funeral, what the transition has been like as the pandemic has ramped up and their experiences of having to deal with the dead while mourners grieve from afar.

Hannah Seo: Each of our lives are marked with landmarks in time: birth, maybe a graduation, perhaps a marriage and a few anniversaries…In the Islamic tradition, one of the most important of these events is actually someone’s death.

Payman Amiri: In our culture and tradition. Dying is part of life.

Hannah Seo: This is Payman Amiri, he’s the chairman at the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California, where he also works as an Imam. Imams are community leaders in Islam whose duties include teaching the Quran, leading prayers, and generally guiding the members of their communities. One of his duties is managing Islamic funeral services.

Payman Amiri: When somebody dies, you know, we try to sort of do that celebration of life, you know, like very formal in a big event and you just look at these family members that they are traveling with their loss.

Hannah Seo: But since COVID-19 spread across the nation, these funerals look vastly different.

(Guitar music)

Hannah Seo: This is Distanced, Scienceline’s Special Project about how different communities are responding to the coronavirus pandemic. In this installment, we’re looking at how the Islamic community has had to adapt its funeral services, which are important religious events.

Hannah Seo: Islamic funerals aren’t simple. They’re involved, meaningful, and the whole process can span up to several days.

Payman Amiri: The services include the washing of the body for the deceased person has to be washed in a proper way and they get treated with proper spices and herbs is a traditional thing for you. You put it on your skin and then you cover them in a white shroud…

Hannah Seo: He says that all the steps in a proper funeral service are imbued with history and symbolism.

(Guitar fades out)

Payman Amiri: So in our tradition, we believe we came from God, and our return is towards God. And so when you want to give them back, you want them to be washed clean. It has to be a white shroud, it has to be simple because every man and woman will go back to that white shroud. So it’s a symbol of humility.

Hannah Seo: Every aspect of an Islamic funeral is thought through, even the material…

Payman Amiri: It has to be cotton, it’s just everyone is treated equally because, you know, in God’s eye, everyone is equal.

Hannah Seo: Once the body is washed, the next part of the ritual can begin.

Payman Amiri: The body gets transferred to the cemetery, the body gets buried, facing toward Mecca, which is the direction all Muslims pray. And then you get the family members to, to say goodbye by putting flowers in the grave.

Hannah Seo: Or at least, that’s how things are supposed to be done.

(Guitar music)

For Payman, everything changed starting in early February, when he got a surprising call from a family in Santa Clara.

Payman Amiri: When she passed away and her family contacted us. It was the first case of community infection, and so it was a big deal.

Hannah Seo: Azar Ahrabi, a 68-year-old muslim woman from Santa Clara, California was initially diagnosed with pneumonia, but passed away from COVID-19 on March 9th. At the time, people thought she was the very first case of local community transmission of the new coronavirus in the county, but later, local health officials found two other cases who passed away before Azar’s case even came to light.

(Guitar music fade out)

Originally, Payman was supposed to arrange Azar’s funeral. But the virus, and fear of transmission meant that everyone had to take new precautions.

Payman Amiri: What happens if somebody dies with COVID they have to be in body bags, which were a thick bag with a zipper, and the body was in there. And then there are certain people who could only handle the body they have to be fully covered in PPE.

Hannah Seo: PPE is personal protective equipment: masks, gloves, etc. Suddenly mourning went from something close and intimate to something clinical, impersonal.

Payman Amiri: In our tradition, when somebody passes away, you greet the family with hugs and kisses and you hold on tight. And, of course, post COVID-19 nobody could do this.

Hannah Seo: And the moment that helps bring closure to the whole thing is usually a gathering.

Payman Amiri: Usually a lot of people show up in these memorial services, and it’s always the dinner. At the dinner table a lot of people share memories of the deceased person and it sort of helps the survivors put an end to that  chapter.

Hannah Seo: But of course the pandemic has rendered these practices impossible. With mosques, funeral homes, and various businesses shut down, that closure is hard to come by.

Payman’s struggles in the throes of the pandemic are not unique — far from it. Imams across countries have had to adjust in ways they never imagined.

Ahmed Ali: We had to go in people’s home, pick up the deceased. We went into the hospitals, we pick up bodies from there.

Hannah Seo: That’s Ahmed Ali, an imam in Brooklyn, NY. He says imams, as leaders of the community, have had to step up and show up for their people. Masjids and mosques, the usual places of worship and congregation for muslims, closed. Communities were left floundering, and only a few people were left to pick up the slack. For Ahmed, it’s been a lot to take over.

Ahmed Ali: Usually the imam’s job is to just lead the funeral prayer and rest the work is done by the funeral home, but all the employees left in the very beginning of this pandemic. And people were scared because they didn’t know how to protect themselves from this virus and nobody knew what actually this virus is. So, they called me and they say, ‘Imam, can you come and help?’ 

Hannah Seo: Shouldering all the roles himself, Ahmed became body collector, mortician, funeral director — you name it. And at times, it was gruesome.

Ahmed Ali: When we receive the body from hospital, usually they have all the IVs attached. And if the person was in critical condition, then they have tubes inside their mouth. And some time, when we remove the IVs, the blood start coming.

(Guitar music)

Hannah Seo: Ahmed says there were times he’d have to enter storage units with racks of bodies, checking toe tags to find the right person. It took its toll, and the burden was immense.

Ahmed Ali: It’s not an easy thing. So you can say it takes about two hour to wash one body. This was really difficult because picking up a body and taking it into the funeral home then unload it then put on a table, wash it, put inside the piece of cloth and then put it back inside the casket, then take it for the funeral prayer, then go to the cemetery lower down the body inside the grave. So this all work is actually really difficult.

Hannah Seo: If this seems like so incredibly much for one person to take on, that’s because it is. But Ahmed couldn’t turn away…

Ahmed Ali: I didn’t say no because this is a responsibility of an imam, that whenever things go, this kind of pandemic, then we have to show that we actually care for our community.

Hannah Seo: Comforting others is easier said than done, especially when you see your community hurting, with no power to change things.

Payman Amiri: I get emotional when [I know when] I do these services to start with because you see, you know, the family is crying and grieving when you feel for them.

(Guitar music fade out)

Hannah Seo: Recreating that connection and support during the pandemic, a time of intense disconnection, is challenging. The emotional burden of conducting a funeral is hard enough without the impediments of social distancing and Zoom preventing everyone from mourning the way they deserve to.

Ahmed Ali: Well, a lot of family members, they did use the Zoom and FaceTime and other apps to show the funeral service to their families around the world. I think, that’s an honor for me that I was able to help those families.

Hannah Seo: Ahmed Ali has led countless services all by himself, with no mourners or relatives around to claim the decedent as their own.

Ahmed Ali: Whenever I got a body with no family member, then I used to record a clip when we lower the body inside the cemetery.

Hannah Seo: Ahmed recorded these services in case friends or family came later, in case they came and wanted something to remember their loved one’s passing.

Ahmed Ali: But there are many clips I recorded and nobody ever asked for them. It’s sad because, you know, I was leading the prayer, I don’t know that person. But I was just there because, you know, I know that that person is a Muslim and a family to me.

Hannah Seo: With many states reopening, Payman and Ahmed’s lives have returned to some form of normalcy. In fact Payman recently had to organize the burial for another COVID-19 victim; this time, however, he was able to carry out a full service for the grieving family.

Things may have gotten better, but Payman and Ahmed are still anxious about the situation. The worst may be behind them, but  helping families process their loss is work that is never done.

Ahmed Ali: I as an imam just was able to stand next to them and tell them that, you know, this is reality of life. And now all we can do is pray for this deceased brother or sister.

(Prayer and guitar music in background)

Hannah Seo: This episode was reported by Jonathan Moens and me, Hannah Seo, for Scienceline. Thanks to both Payman Amiri and Ahmed Ali for sharing their stories.

Complete Article HERE!

How to Respond to Someone Grieving during the Holidays

With the Coronavirus there will be many people grieving this Holiday Season and this article discusses how to respond to them respectfully

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The Holiday Season is just around the corner. For many people it is a very happy time, however, if someone you loved passed away this year the Holidays most likely will not be a happy time because you are missing your loved one. This is true every Holiday Season, however this year it is likely to very different. In previous years there have been a few families grieving the loss of a loved one. However, this year due to the Coronavirus, there are over 225,000 families grieving. Therefore there will be a lot of people grieving this year.

A common problem people face regarding grief is they do not know what to say or do at times when someone is grieving. The reason we have this problem is that we do not really talk about death and grief in our society. There is a tendency to think that after funeral services are completed that people quickly resume normal life. This is not true. The grieving process can take a long time and everyone has their own way of grieving. This makes knowing what to say or do very difficult especially during the Holidays.

I have had many patients ask me what should I say or do when they are talking about someone who is grieving. Therefore, I researched the literature on grieving and came up with these suggestions about how you can respond to someone who is grieving during the Holidays or anytime.

The 10 Best and 10 Worst Things to Say to Someone in Grief

Sheryl Sandberg’s post on Facebook gave us much insight into how those in grief feel about the responses of others to loss. Many of us have said “The Best” and “The Worst.” We meant no harm, in fact the opposite. We were trying to comfort. A grieving person may say one of the worst ones about themselves and it’s OK. It may make sense for a member of the clergy to say, “He is in a better place” when someone comes to them for guidance. Where as an acquaintance saying it may not feel good.

You would also not want to say to someone, you are in the stages of grief. In our work, On Grief and Grieving, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and I share that the stages were never meant to tuck messy emotions into neat packages. While some of these things to say have been helpful to some people, the way in which they are often said has the exact opposite effect than what was originally intended.

The Best Things to Say to Someone in Grief

1. I am so sorry for your loss.

2. I wish I had the right words, just know I care.

3. I don’t know how you feel, but I am here to help in anyway I can.

4. You and your loved one will be in my thoughts and prayers.

5. My favorite memory of your loved one is…

6. I am always just a phone call away

7. Give a hug instead of saying something

8. We all need help at times like this, I am here for you

9. I am usually up early or late, if you need anything

10. Saying nothing, just be with the person

The Worst Things to Say to Someone in Grief

1. At least she lived a long life, many people die young

2. He is in a better place

3. She brought this on herself

4. There is a reason for everything

5. Aren’t you over him yet, he has been dead for awhile now

6. You can have another child still

7. She was such a good person God wanted her to be with him

8. I know how you feel

9. She did what she came here to do and it was her time to go

10. Be strong

Best & Worst Traits of people just trying to help

When in the position of wanting to help a friend or loved one in grief, often times our first desire is to try to “fix” the situation, when in all actuality our good intentions can lead to nothing but more grief. Knowing the right thing to say is only half of the responsibility of being a supportive emotional caregiver. We have comprised two lists which examine both the GOOD and the NOT SO GOOD traits of people just trying to help.

The Best Traits

Supportive, but not trying to fix it

About feelings

Non active, not telling anyone what to do

Admitting can’t make it better

Not asking for something or someone to change feelings

Recognize loss

Not time limited

The Worst Traits

They want to fix the loss

They are about our discomfort

They are directive in nature

They rationalize or try to explain loss/li>

They may be judgmental

May minimize the loss

Put a timeline on loss

The above information is meant to be used as a guideline. Everyone goes through the grieving process in their own way. It is very important to understand that point. It is also important to remember while the above is a guideline, the most important thing is your intent. So if you say a worse thing but you said it out of love the person will understand. The guideline will hopefully make you more comfortable to offer support to your grieving loved one or friend. Because someone who is grieving needs people to talk to without people feeling awkward. Also everyone is around immediately after the death and through the funeral services. Most people then go back to their normal lives. However, those who were really close to the person are still grieving and trying to figure out how to proceed with life. So don’t forget the person who is grieving can use emotional support for the first year especially. Therefore, do not forget to call, send a card or stop by occasionally. Especially around the holidays and birthdays.

Complete Article HERE!

Learning to Grieve

A poet and a psychologist consider the necessity of mourning our dead.

Uzo Egonu: Woman in Grief, 1968

By Clair Wills

“Maybe I didn’t die properly,” says Jamie (played by Alan Rickman) in Anthony Minghella’s early film Truly, Madly, Deeply. “Maybe that’s why I can come back.” His partner, Nina (Juliet Stevenson), has been driven mad with grief, following his sudden death while undergoing minor surgery. He wasn’t dangerously ill, and she hadn’t said good-bye. It is some years since his death, but she has made no progress at all in overcoming her grief; her despair has simply grown more acute. She cannot face her life without him. And she is so desperate for Jamie to return that he does—a little grayer than before, rather colder than before, but otherwise much the same. It turns out he’s been hanging around since he died—invisibly watching over her, but also just spending time lazing in the park, learning Spanish, and looking at the living.

Nina’s love, or perhaps her need for him, allows him to rematerialize and he joins her, moving into her apartment and hiding whenever the doorbell rings. Or maybe she joins him. At one point in the film she reluctantly drags herself away from him to go back to the office. She thinks she’s just late for work, but she has been missing for days. The two of them are caught in a kind of limbo. He didn’t die properly, and she can’t grieve properly. As the plot unfolds we realize that he has come back in order to break the connection. He behaves so impossibly—crowding her out of the apartment into which he invites scores of his ghostly, blokey friends—that she learns to accept that a life with the dead is a dead end. Nor is it much fun for the ghosts, caught forever in the moment of their deaths, permanent spectators of life’s unfolding drama. The message of the film is, Let them go.

As deaths from Covid-19 multiply across the globe, so do numbers of the bewildered bereaved. The trouble with the film’s well-meaning advice is that it presumes that the living occupy a position securely on one side of the border between life and death. But accounts of bereavement suggest that isn’t exactly the case. In 2008 the poet and philosopher Denise Riley’s grown son Jacob died suddenly of an undiagnosed heart condition. In the weeks and months following his unexpected death, she kept a diary recording its impact on her and especially on her experience of everyday being-in-the-world. Time stalled for her, or was “arrested,” like her son’s heart.

It wasn’t simply that the concept of a personal future was now hard to grasp, or to bear, with the role of “mother” that she had been inhabiting now wounded and under attack. But the experience of sequence itself—one event or one word following another—was no longer available to her. Words came out of her mouth askew; basic inductions, such as that the sun will rise tomorrow, no longer seemed to hold true; language as a whole, with its grammatical past, present, and future, was fatally compromised. Riley diagnoses this condition as one of sharing the time of the dead. Even though we may be able to narrate the story of a death with temporal markers such as “and then” and “after that,” when we think of our dead they are gone from us now, not then.

Complete Article HERE!

How do horses perceive death?

A study from Portugal analyzing the reactions of feral horses to the loss of herdmates has lessons about the emotions and intelligence of all horses.

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A sad event provided researchers in Portugal with a rare opportunity to observe how feral horses react to the death of a herd mate and to collect data that may advance understanding of emotions and intelligence in all horses.

Scientists from the University of Coimbra in Portugal and Kyoto University in Japan were doing routine fieldwork, observing a feral herd, when they noticed a 2-month-old foal whose hind legs had been severely injured in a presumed wolf attack.

“We started to work with this horse population in the north of Portugal in 2016,” says Renata Mendonça, PhD. “Every year in the breeding season, from April to July we conduct fieldwork. We are almost every day in the field following and observing horses’ behavior from morning to late afternoon. Additionally, this population is subjected to predation pressure from the Iberian wolf, and for the past two years, foal mortality has reached almost 100 percent and we believe it is mainly due to wolf predation. These two factors combined increased our chance to observe this event.”

The researchers watched the foal for nearly six hours, making notes on his behavior as well as that of his dam and other members of the herd in his vicinity. They noted the activity of the nearby horses—such as feeding moving, resting or social interactions—every five minutes and documented the approximate distance between all the observable horses and the injured foal every two minutes.

For the first several hours, the herd was walking, but the foal moved only when prompted by his dam. Eventually, the foal went down and was unable to stand. His dam stayed close by grazing and occasionally nuzzling the foal. About 15 minutes later, the herd began to move again, leaving the dam and foal behind. The stallion returned to the dam soon after and attempted to herd her away from the foal. After the seventh attempt, he was successful and the dam left, whinnying to the foal 10 total times during the separation. The foal responded only once.

A few minutes later, a second group of horses arrived in the area and remained within 20 yards of the foal for about 40 minutes. All the group members initially showed interest in the foal, but most eventually started feeding nearby. Two adult females, however, remained interested and licked and sniffed the foal for several minutes. The foal’s dam watched this interaction from a distance and whinnied 44 times, but the stallion prevented her from approaching. The foal responded only once, after the other adult mares had left.

The foal’s dam briefly returned to his side later in the day and clashed with bachelor stallions who showed an interest in her, but not the foal. Eventually, the dam moved away from the foal to join the herd, which was 200 meters away. The foal stood three minutes after she left but fell twice and made no further attempts to follow. The researchers estimate he died about an hour later.

Although conceding that it was difficult to watch these events unfold, Mendonça says researchers must try to avoid interfering with animals in the wild. “It is always hard for us to see our subjects of research get injured or die,” she says, “and our first instinct is to call for help or try to intervene. However, when we are dealing with natural causes, as in this case, we try as much as possible not to intervene. We have to think about the complex environmental and trophic interactions that are occurring and can benefit from such a loss. A carcass is a food resource for other animals, scavengers, which depend on them to survive and to feed their offspring (which were born in the same season), such as wolves, foxes, crows and wild boars.”

Mendonça says that the dam leaving her foal may seem heartbreaking, but it makes sense in evolutionary context. “Ensuring her own survival seems to be a priority for the mothers in the animal kingdom, in general, even if the mother-infant bond is the strongest bond established among individuals. While a mother can produce offspring every year (in the case of horses), developing, growing and reaching sexual maturity requires a lot of time and has a lot of costs, so, for the benefit of the species, it is more advantageous, and less costly, if mothers prioritized their survival over their offspring’s,” she says, adding, “The constant harassment by the two bachelor males could have hastened the abandonment of the foal. The situation might have been different if she had been alone with her foal.”

More difficult to understand, says Mendonça, was the attention the two unfamiliar adult mares gave the dying foal. “I was surprised by the reaction of the unrelated females toward the injured foal,” she says. “Usually adult mares and stallions behave agonistically toward foals from other groups. These agonistic interactions (e.g., chasing and bite threats) are observed when foals get lost from their band and approach other groups while seeking their own or when foals are lying down far away from their group and other groups approach. Showing affiliative behaviors, instead of agonistic as expected considering previous scenarios, could mean that the horses somehow perceived that the foal’s condition was unusual.”

As for the broader question of how horses perceive death, much more remains to be learned, but in the meantime it’s advisable to take equine emotions and reactions into account when managing domesticated horses.

“Some studies suggest that [after the death of a herdmate], horses show signs of anxiety, cessation of feeding and social withdrawal,” Mendonça says. “Therefore, it is important to consider horses’ needs when they are facing a situation of loss before asking them to complete or perform their daily tasks.”

Complete Article HERE!

What was a funeral like 8,000 years ago?

Newly discovered child burial site reveals ancient secrets

Entrance to Makpan cave, Alor Island, where the burial was discovered.

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Humanity has done a pretty good job of recording its collective history over the past two or three thousand years. Earlier time periods, though, are still very much shrouded in mystery. Now, a groundbreaking new archeological discovery in Indonesia is revealing secrets from 8,000 years ago.

Archeologists from The Australian National University have discovered an ancient child burial site located on Alor Island, Indonesia. While a funeral for a child is no doubt a morose and depressing event in any century, this unearthing is providing some invaluable insight on early mid-Holocene era cultural and burial practices.

Stunning burial practices unearthed

Articulated left foot (bottom left) and right foot (center) excavated in the ANU laboratory.

According to lead researcher Dr. Sofia Samper Carro, it’s clear that the child was laid to rest with a formal ceremony of some kind. The research team estimates the child was between four and eight years-old at the time of death.

“Ochre pigment was applied to the cheeks and forehead and an ochre-colored cobble stone was placed under the child’s head when they were buried,” she says in a university release. “Child burials are very rare and this complete burial is the only one from this time period,”

“From 3,000 years ago to modern times, we start seeing more child burials and these are very well studied. But, with nothing from the early Holocene period, we just don’t know how people of this era treated their dead children. This find will change that.”

Of particular note is the fact that the child’s arms and legs appear to have been removed and stored elsewhere before the rest of the body was buried. This sounds rather odd from a modern perspective, but researchers say it isn’t wholly unprecedented.

“The lack of long bones is a practice that has been documented in several other burials from a similar time period in Java, Borneo and Flores, but this is the first time we have seen it in a child’s burial,” Dr. Carro adds.

Why did ancient cultures remove arms and legs before burials?

The answer is probably lost to the sands of time, but researchers theorize some form of religion or spiritual belief is a likely explanation.

“We don’t know why long bone removal was practiced, but it’s likely some aspect of the belief system of the people who lived at this time,” Carro adds.

While teeth examinations project the child as being around six to eight years-old, the full skeleton appears to be closer to four or five years-old.

“We want to do some further paleo-health research to find out if this smaller skeleton is related to diet or the environment or possibly to being genetically isolated on an island,” the lead researcher comments. “My earlier work from Alor showed adult skulls were also small. These hunter-gatherers had a mainly marine diet and there is evidence to suggest protein saturation from a single food source can cause symptoms of mal-nourishment, which affects growth. However, they could have been eating other terrestrial resources such as tubers.”

“By comparing other adult burials we have found from the same time period with this child burial in a future project, we hope to build a chronology and general view of burial practices in this region from between 12,000 to 7,000 years ago which at the moment is still scant.”

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