Category: After Death Care

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Nine weird and wonderful facts about death and funeral practices

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It might not be something you want to think about very often, but it turns out that the way we treat our dead in the modern age is heavily influenced by the way our ancestors treated theirs.

When you look at death and funeral practices through the ages, repeated patterns of behaviour emerge, making it easy to see where some of our modern ideas about death – such as keeping an urn on your mantelpiece or having a gravestone – have come from.

So here are nine surprising facts about death and funeral practices through the ages:

1. Some prehistoric societies defleshed the bones

This was done with sharp knives. And we know this because human skeletons buried during this period show the traces of many cut marks to the skulls, limbs and other bones.

During the medieval period, bodies that needed to be transported over long distances for burial were also defleshed – by dismembering the body and boiling the pieces. The bones were then transported, while the soft tissues were buried close to the place of death.

2. Throwing spears at the dead

During the Middle Iron Age, “speared-corpse” burials were a pretty big deal in east Yorkshire. Spears were thrown or placed into the graves of some young men – and in a couple of instances they appear to have been thrown with enough force to pierce the body. It is unclear why this was done, but it may have been a military send-off – similar to the 21-gun salute at modern military funerals.

3. The Romans introduced gravestones

As an imported practice, the first gravestones in Britain were concentrated close to Roman military forts and more urbanised Romano-British settlements.

Back then, gravestones were more frequently dedicated to women and children than Roman soldiers. This was most likely because Roman soldiers were not legally allowed to marry, so monuments to their deceased family members legitimised their relationships in death in a way they couldn’t be in life.

After the end of Roman control in Britain in the fifth century, gravestones fell out of favour and did not become widely popular again until the modern era.

4. The Anglo Saxons preferred urns

During the early Anglo-Saxon period, cremated remains were often kept within the community for some time before burial. We know this because groups of urns were sometimes buried together. Urns were also included in burials of the deceased – who were likely their relatives.

5. Lots of people shared a coffin

During the medieval period, many parish churches had community coffins, which could be borrowed or leased to transport the deceased person from the home to the churchyard. When they arrived at the graveside, the body would be removed from the coffin and buried in a simple shroud.

6. And rosemary wasn’t just for potatoes

Sprigs of rosemary were often carried by people in the funeral procession and cast onto the coffin before burial, much as roses are today. And as an evergreen plant, rosemary was associated with eternal life. As a fragrant herb, it was also often placed inside coffins to conceal any odours that might be emerging from the corpse. This was important because bodies often lay in state for days and sometimes weeks before burial, while preparations were made and mourners travelled to attend the funeral.

7. Touching a murderer could heal

Throughout early modern times, and up until at least the mid 19th century, it was a common belief that the touch of a murderer – executed by hanging – could cure all kinds of illnesses, ranging from cancer and goitres to skin conditions. Afflicted persons would attend executions hoping to receive the “death stroke” of the executed prisoner.

8. There are still many mysteries

For almost a thousand years, during the British Iron Age, archaeologists don’t really know what kinds of funeral practices were being performed across much of Britain. And human remains only appear in a few places – like the burials in east Yorkshire. So for much of Britain, funeral practices are almost invisible. We suspect bodies were either exposed to the elements in a practice known as “excarnation”, or cremated and the ashes scattered.

9. But the living did respect the dead

Across time, people have engaged with past monuments to the dead, and it is common for people to respect older features of the landscape when deciding where to place new burials.

Bronze Age people created new funeral monuments and buried their dead in close proximity to Neolithic funeral monuments. This can be seen in the landscape around Stonehenge, which was created as an ancestral and funeral monument – and is full of Bronze Age burial mounds known as round barrows.

And when the Anglo-Saxons arrived in Britain, they frequently buried their dead close to Bronze and Iron Age monuments. Sometimes they dug into these older monuments and reused them to bury their own dead.

Even today, green burial grounds tend to respect preexisting field boundaries. And in at least one modern cemetery, burials are placed in alignment with medieval “ridge and furrow”. These are the peaks and troughs in the landscape resulting from medieval ploughing.

Complete Article HERE!

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Ancient Americans Mutilated Corpses in Funeral Rituals

By Tia Ghose

A skull exhumed from the Lapa do Santo cave in Brazil shows evidence of modification such as tooth removal. Hundreds of remains from the site show that beginning around 10,000 years ago, ancient inhabitants used an elaborate set of rituals surrounding death.
A skull exhumed from the Lapa do Santo cave in Brazil shows evidence of modification such as tooth removal. Hundreds of remains from the site show that beginning around 10,000 years ago, ancient inhabitants used an elaborate set of rituals surrounding death.

Ancient people ripped out teeth, stuffed broken bones into human skulls and de-fleshed corpses as part of elaborate funeral rituals in South America, an archaeological discovery has revealed.

The site of Lapa do Santo in Brazil holds a trove of human remains that were modified elaborately by the earliest inhabitants of the continent starting around 10,000 years ago, the new study shows. The finds change the picture of this culture’s sophistication, said study author André Strauss, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

“In reconstructing the life of past populations, human burials are highly informative of symbolic and ritual behavior,” Strauss said in a statement. “In this frame, the funerary record presented in this study highlights that the human groups inhabiting east South America at 10,000 years ago were more diverse and sophisticated than previously thought.” [See Images of the Mutilated Skeletons at Lapa do Santo]

The site of Lapa do Santo, a cave nestled deep in the rainforest of central-eastern Brazil, shows evidence of human occupation dating back almost 12,000 years. Archaeologists have found a trove of human remains, tools, leftovers from past meals and even etchings of a horny man with a giant phallus in the 14,000-square-foot (1,300 square meters) cave. The huge limestone cavern is also in the same region where archaeologists discovered Luzia, one of the oldest known human skeletons from the New World, Live Science previously reported.

In the 19th century, naturalist Peter Lund first set foot in the region, which harbors some of the oldest skeletons in South America. But although archaeologists have stumbled upon hundreds of skeletons since then, few had noticed one strange feature: Many of the bodies had been modified after death.

In their recent archaeological excavations, Strauss and his colleagues took a more careful look at some of the remains found at Lapa do Santo. They found that starting between 10,600 and 10,400 years ago, the ancient inhabitants of the region buried their dead as complete skeletons.

But 1,000 years later (between about 9,600 and 9,400 years ago), people began dismembering, mutilating and de-fleshing fresh corpses before burying them. The teeth from the skulls were pulled out systematically. Some bones showed evidence of having been burned or cannibalized before being placed inside another skull, the researchers reported in the December issue of the journal Antiquity.

“The strong emphasis on the reduction of fresh corpses explains why these fascinating mortuary practices were not recognized during almost two centuries of research in the region,” Strauss said.

The team has not uncovered any other forms of memorial, such as gravestones or grave goods. Instead, the researchers said, it seems that this strict process of dismemberment and corpse mutilation was one of the central rituals used by these ancient people in commemorating the dead.

Complete Article HERE!

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From rigor mortis to shouting at corpses: What I learned about dying from those who work in the funeral industry

There are only two rules when it comes to being dead: get someone to register your death and keep your body covered when moving it around. The rest is totally up to you – from getting your ashes tattooed into your loved one’s arm to punk funeral services

 
By Kirsty Major

The UK's only tandem hearse is one such alternative idea being adopted to mark the life of a loved one Good Funeral Guide
The UK’s only tandem hearse is one such alternative idea being adopted to mark the life of a loved one Good Funeral Guide

Halloween is one of the few times of the year when you are allowed to be morbid, so why not take the opportunity to think a little about your own funeral? If fear of death is fear of the unknown then we should definitely be more afraid of funerals. For a start, most of us don’t know that there are only two laws to keep in mind when planning a funeral: you have to register the death of a person within five days, and secondly, you can’t travel with an uncovered body on a public highway. Seriously, that’s it – the rest is totally up to you.

Why have some black-suited blokes coming to haul your body away in a Transit van to have your eyelids glued together, only to be subsequently burned to cinders in a glib 20-minute service at a crematorium, when your shroud covered body could be crowdsurfed into your mate’s Volvo or turned into a firework? I spoke to five women making funerals that work for the dead and their families about what makes a ‘good funeral’.

Not all dead people are ‘loved ones’

Let’s start with terminology. Hopefully you’re living your life being the best person you can be, but if you happen to fall short and die being widely regarded as a complete and utter a***hole, then your relatives should be able to say so at your funeral. Some people cause pain and funerals are a good place to finally put those feelings to rest (alongside your body).  

“I remember the first time any anger was expressed at one of our funerals, and I hadn’t seen that it was missing. This young man was in his late twenties and he had been a heroin addict for 15 years and his brothers were angry, as they had tried to help him for so long, and they just stood up and shouted and it was so brilliant and it was a relief to hear that,” says Claire Callender from the Green Funeral Company.

Tell your family to relax around your corpse

Before you pop off, try to remind your relatives that just because you have breathed your last breath it does not mean that your body stops being you. As a death doula – someone who provides care to the dying and their families – Anna Lyons describes “families who are happy to sit and hold somebody’s hand while they are in the dying process, and the second their heart stops beating and they stop breathing they shy away and their body becomes untouchable and something disgusting, because we have medicalised everything and we have stripped everyone of the normality of it.”

Ditch the funeral parlour 

Louise Winter, a funeral celebrant, says: “Funeral directors have come to see it as their duty to protect the living from the dead.” Perhaps instead, we should be protecting our dead selves from funeral directors. Tora Colwill, from Modern Funerals cautions: “You shouldn’t just pass over your body to be manhandled. The mortuary hub is often in an industrial estate, where they stack up the bodies and one by one wash that, cut that hair, embalm there… if we actually asked questions about how our bodies are being treated, some of the answers we would be unhappy with.”

There has been a move over the past 20 years to return funeral care, planning, and burial logistics back to the home, the traditional place where families dealt with death before the rise of the funeral industrial complex following the Second World War. Claire Turnham, a funeral planner, says: “It is not about doing things differently, this is the way things were always done, this is the norm. This is the traditional.”

Funeral directors are probably going to rip you off

For anyone who has yet to organise a funeral, the receipts would cause you to die of shock if you could afford it. Reflecting on her time working at a funeral directors, Anna Lyons says: “(A) lot of funeral directors push people toward spending more money. You are working with people at their most vulnerable and people have been taken advantage of for too long.”

Embalming is gross and unnecessary

Many funeral directors recommend that a body should be embalmed if it is to be displayed in an open casket during a wake or service. However, according to Cara Mair, co-founder of ARKA Original Funerals, “Embalming fluid is lethal, it is formaldehyde, and it is carcinogenic. The embalming process is so invasive and it is not needed.” Instead, proponents of the natural death movement like Tora Colwill use natural methods, often alongside the family, to prepare the body for an open casket. “When you die, you can use rigor mortis to your advantage. For example, instead of having your gums stitched through to keep the mouth shut, you can simply roll up a towel and place it under the chin keeping the jaw locked as your corpse begins to stiffen.”

You don’t even need to have a coffin

Undertakers offer luxury metal and wood coffins costing several thousands of pounds; instead coffins can be made from biodegradable cardboard that your family can decorate as part of the wake, or bodies can be buried in traditional shrouds which cost just under £100. Also if there is life after death, I would much rather wake up in a cool shroud to haunt people in.

Your funeral service can include anything 

Since there are really only two rules you can literally incorporate anything into your funeral service. Claire Callender and her husband Rupert use the ethos of punk and rave when helping families plan funerals: “I just throw out the rules, there is no set way of doing it, just make it up as you go along. And that is the punk, DIY, let’s just set up a record label in your bedroom, let’s just do it … with the rave aspect it is that thing about rave where you just found yourself dancing with a thousand people and you were all connected and you had this communal thing and you had a church without a religion.” Giving your family something to do allows them to process their grief, so don’t outsource it all to a funeral director. 

Throw the eulogy out of the window

By having one person who is allowed to give their version of your life you lose out on the rest of it. You are more than a mother or husband – maybe your ex-partner has a salacious story to tell about that one time in Vegas, because what happens in Vegas should not stay in Vegas, it should be told at your funeral to all of your assembled relatives. The advice given by pretty much everyone I spoke to was to get everyone in a room, preferably with your body and let conversations happen.

Crematoriums are the worst

The most important thing is to not have the service in a crematorium, or as Louise Winter, from Poetic Endings calls them, “hospices where flowers go to die”. For Callender they can be one of the most challenges places to work: “The crematoriums hate us because they just want to bring a dog in, light the candle and rearrange the chairs – it is because we are trying to bring ritual to a really spiritually barren place.”

You don’t have to choose between burial and cremation

You can do so much more with your corpse. You can be buried in a pod that later grows into a tree; blasted into the sky in a firework; or inked onto your loved one’s skin forever in the form of a tattoo until they too die and then it’s up to them where you end up.

If you do decide to get buried, you don’t have to go to a church or local authority cemetery – you can be buried in a natural burial ground or on private land. It is recommended that you check in with the landowner, police and local environmental health authority – nobody wants to become drinking water.

Finally, whatever you do at your own funeral, make sure it is honest

We don’t get to say the things we really feel because we are too anxious, or tied up in the tedium of the everyday. Funerals are the one time that people are listening and really want to talk about life, death, love and all of the things inbetween. Like really talk about it – not just pretend they are talking while they’re swiping away their phones. So make some space for that.

Complete Article HERE!

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Talk about death with your loved ones before you think you have to

Our way of dying is not sustainable.

BY MARINA SCHAUFFLER

“I could see that they were slowly leaving the sphere of TV commercial old age… and moving into the part of old age that was scarier, harder to talk about, and not part of this culture.”

– Roz Chast, “Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant?”

A chalkboard "bucket list" stirred imaginations and got people talking at an Indianapolis festival designed to help make conversations about death easier.
A chalkboard “bucket list” stirred imaginations and got people talking at an Indianapolis festival designed to help make conversations about death easier.

It’s a topic we avoid at all costs: the inevitable descent each person makes from that American ideal of youthful independence to frailty and death. Fearful of following that path ourselves, we resist discussing it – even as loved ones venture closer to that inescapable end.

In recent decades, American culture has opened to permit candid conversations about many topics once off the table – from gender identity and racism to addictions and disorders. But when it comes to end-of-life discussions, there’s still strong resistance. Those who seek to live sustainably can find that challenge enough, without facing what it might mean to die with integrity.

Many societal undercurrents reinforce our resistance. With urbanization, ties to the natural world have grown tenuous and we witness the life-death cycle less frequently. When we do, it’s often on screen – far removed from our daily reality.

Countries like Mexico and Poland hold collective rituals that help normalize the inevitability of death, but Americans prefer Memorial Day picnics, parades and summer-season sales. Our commercial culture worships youth and novelty, while portraying old age as a protracted talk with your doctor about pharmaceuticals.

Advances in medicine lend hope that we might keep death at bay, an illusion many doctors reinforce. “Our decision making in medicine has failed so spectacularly,” surgeon Atul Gawande writes in Being Mortal, “that we have reached the point of actively inflicting harm on patients rather than confronting the subject of mortality.”

Our cultural resistance to discuss life’s end causes widespread suffering for the dying, depriving them of what Gawande calls the right “to end their stories on their own terms.” Pressured both by medical personnel and by family members, patients can spend their final weeks in Intensive Care Units, swathed in tubes and surrounded by strangers. Even though 80 percent of Americans would prefer to die at home, only about 20 percent today do.

Denying dying people the chance to take what control they can has far-reaching repercussions for family members – who can struggle for years with the death’s emotional, spiritual and financial aftershocks. Many of them experience a sense of lingering regret over lost opportunities for connection in the final days, and some cope with debilitating medical bills. A quarter of households in one study had medical expenses in the five years before a member’s death that exceeded their total household assets.

Costly late-life medical interventions drive up health care costs, straining the budgets of families, businesses and government. Roughly 30 percent of all Medicare expenditures go to the 5 percent of patients in their last year of life.

We cannot afford to continue along this path; it is not sustainable by any measure.

Fortunately, the culture is starting to shift – aided by Gawande’s book and resources like The Conversation Project and Death over Dinner. These efforts address the gap between the 90 percent of Americans who acknowledge they should have end-of-life discussions and the meager third who do.

Columnist and author Ellen Goodman was among those who launched The Conversation Project in 2012 after realizing she’d never had those crucial value discussions with her own mother while there was time. People postpone these talks, Goodman told me, “feeling it’s ‘too soon.’ What we’ve learned is it’s always too soon until it’s too late.” The opportunity is lost once someone lands in the Emergency Room, ICU or Alzheimer’s care facility.

People envision end-of-life talks primarily with elderly parents, but they should occur among all adults. Despite initial reservations, many people find that these dialogues lead to warm exchanges and what Goodman calls the sharing of “deep family stories.”

Even in close-knit families, the responses of loved ones may come as a surprise. People often express desires “besides simply prolonging their lives,” Gawande writes, prioritizing concerns like avoiding suffering, bonding with family and friends, and remaining mentally alert. Contemplating the end of life can help us clarify what matters most – not just when time becomes short, but every day.

Ideally, these heartfelt exchanges lead to completing paperwork that can help guide family members and medical practitioners. The Conversation Project recommends that individuals authorize a medical decision-maker; complete an Advanced Health Care Directive (templates can be found online), and discuss end-of-life wishes with their health care provider. Medicare recently began compensating doctors for time spent having these discussions. Those who are at a late-life stage may also wish to complete and post a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) form.

One of the many benefits to initiating these dialogues early, Goodman notes, is that it can help family members agree to back the patient’s wishes. Absent that consensus, relatives can unwittingly make the process harder for a dying person through their own resistance to letting go. Roz Chast captures this poignant dynamic in her graphic memoir, portraying how her mother – facing her husband’s impending death – challenged the “defeatist attitude” of hospice and asserted “I told Daddy he was coming with me to 100 if I had to drag him kicking and screaming!”

The prospect of death – whether our own or that of a loved one – is inescapably fraught with fears and uncertainties. It’s easy to see how we’ve drifted into a kind of denial, and slipped into medically managing the end of life despite crippling personal and societal costs.

We owe it to ourselves and each other, though, to discuss what matters most in our waning days. Having that dialogue with loved ones could help us remain authors of our lives through the closing chapters.

Complete Article HERE!

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Things not to say to mourners (and some things you can do instead)

by Esther D. Kustanowitz

black-and-white-person-woman

When friends announce on Facebook that a loved one needs prayers, or is in the hospital, or that they’re going through a hard time, I get a sinking feeling. And while recovery sometimes happens, sometimes, it doesn’t. So when I read, “I am heartbroken to announce …,” my heart breaks, and the pain of my own loss reawakens, in sympathy for the end of a life and for what is to follow for those still with us — a year mourning the loss through text, ritual and the communal embrace that is vital, but stands in contrast with grief’s frequent companion: a stark and searing sense of solitude.

Death is part of the organic fabric of life, our liturgy tells us, arriving sometimes in a timely manner and sometimes in a shocking and unexpected instant years or decades too soon. But regardless of the individual circumstances surrounding a loss, family members and friends are left to mourn and to try to move through the grief to live their lives in a new normal.

Jewish rituals provide a year of structure for rudderless mourners, with customs that encourage communal engagement while acknowledging that the year is one in which the mourner is set apart from and different than the embracing community. While this state traditionally lasts a prescribed year, in emotional reality, it tends to linger. Five years after my mother’s death, when people check in on me, I’m grateful; Judaism says that I have been done with mourning for the span of a college education, but that doesn’t mean I’m back to the me I was before. It doesn’t mean that my mother’s absence from the world doesn’t affect me anymore. It’s just different.

I remember those first few months, and how many people, hoping to utter words of comfort, instead spewed forth words of frustration, anger, pain and even insensitivity. They were probably as appalled as I was, but I know — and I hope they know that I know — that their hearts were in the right place. I believe they were so concerned about saying the wrong thing that they often said something even less appropriate.

Each mourner is different. Each grief circumstance is different. Each person finds comfort differently, in different gestures and phrases. But here are seven things — in honor of the traditional seven days of shivah — that everyone should try to avoid saying, along with a few things you can do or say instead to express your love and concern for someone who is experiencing a loss.

Avoid awkward moments engaging the mourner, conversationally or physically. There’s a tradition to leave the conversational initiative entirely to the bereaved, to wait until he or she wants to speak. Some mourners crave the physical embrace of community, while others prefer a spiritual support and company, but not literal embraces (especially from virtual strangers). While challenging to all of us who love words and fear silence, or who are more inclined toward long and crushing hugs to convey what’s in our hearts, sitting quietly in a room next to someone who is grieving can send a powerful, wordless message of presence and support (even if you don’t touch).

“Read” the mourner and be mindful of your relationship with him or her. Are you a close friend, whose embrace the mourner may be expecting, or are you an acquaintance who hugs as an alternative to conversation? If you’re concerned about the potential awkwardness of your physical or verbal interaction, ask the rabbi or a relative what kind of support the mourner may want. You can also ask the mourners if they would like a hug, and don’t be offended if they say no — not everyone wants to be touched by everyone.

Avoid commentary about the illness or the last moments of the deceased. “At least your loved one’s suffering is over” falls into a category of things that people inside and outside the immediate family may think quietly, especially if the deceased has been through a long or public illness, but should not say. Similarly, “at least s/he didn’t suffer,” or “what a blessing that it happened so fast.” You are not the coroner, so don’t offer your opinion on the cause of death or its nature. Instead, sit quietly with the mourner for a while — if there’s an appropriate opening, gently ask the mourner to share their favorite memories or most memorable moments.

Avoid making comments about the afterlife. In some religious communities, it’s comforting to devout people to think about their loved one being “in a better place,” “taking his place at God’s side” or (as I’ve heard religious Christians say) “going to Jesus.” But, emotionally, most mourners do not find comfort in this concept (especially “God needed another angel”). Is there an afterlife? Heaven? Hell? Olam ha-ba, where you study Talmud all day? No one knows; there are too many theological and emotional potholes in grief’s road to cover over with religious speculation about the afterlife. Instead, focus on this life: “I hope the community is the right kind of supportive when you need it. And I’m always available to help you.” (More on this in the next paragraph.)

Avoid: “Is there anything I can do?” Think about the vastness of the word “anything,” and the one thing it cannot include: the return of the lost loved one. Also, offers to help are something mourners receive in abundance at funerals and at shivah, but as time goes on, the offers trickle down to nothing. A year in, people who haven’t been through a loss themselves may assume you’re “fine.” And while you probably will be functional to some degree, at least, you’re probably not “fine.” Instead, if you’re offering assistance, get specific — grocery shopping, picking up kids from school or activities, baby-sitting so that the mourner can have some personal time. Specific offers give the mourner a chance to say “yes” or “no, thanks,” but without challenging them to think deeply about what they need and what you can and cannot provide. And if you’re a friend who really wants to be supportive, offer assistance even after shivah, or during the year of mourning, or beyond, after the offers have faded away but the need for support remains.

Avoid judgmental commentary about the funeral, the shivah or about how the mourner is grieving. 

In many communities, there is variation in how people participate in mourning rituals. For instance, traditionally, shivah is held for seven days (shiv’ah means “seven” in Hebrew) for a close blood relative (parent, sibling or, God forbid, a child) or a spouse, and in a designated year of mourning, traditionally mourners abstain from “celebration.” But some (especially the non-Orthodox) are altering these traditions to fit their lives: sitting shivah for an aunt, uncle or grandparent, or only observing a few days of shivah. People want to connect to Jewish meaning and tradition, but not necessarily in a strictly Orthodox halachic framework. Saying things like “you’re not supposed to” or “not allowed to” grieve in a specific way is counter-supportive: The function of shivah, in particular, is to help the community gather around a mourner for support, not criticize the depth of their feelings or the minutiae of their approach to mourning. So don’t render a judgment as to whether it’s appropriate or halachic. Instead, if you’ve ever been on the inside of a year of mourning, you can offer, “If you ever want to know what helped me, I’m happy to share.” And if you haven’t been, just be there and listen.

Avoid over-empathizing with the mourner’s experience and emotional state. While this comes from a good place, saying, “I know exactly what you’re going through” minimizes the intensity of the mourner’s emotional state and shifts the conversation to being about you. For most mourners, especially at funerals and during shivah, this is not comforting; it’s a negation of their special status in that space. Occasionally, people double down on these kinds of statements, following up with an anecdote about a deceased pet or another “loss” story that isn’t equivalent — because no story of loss is ever really equivalent. Instead, saying, “I can’t imagine how hard this is for you,” or “I know it’s not the same, but I have some experience with loss if you ever want to talk,” is a better approach.

Avoid using shivah as an excuse to badmouth the community or its members. While this might seem a simple enough thing to avoid, the essential awkwardness that people feel when trying to comfort a community member may result in people blurting out things that are unintentionally hurtful. This may include criticizing the eulogies or the funeral service, or gossiping about the community’s failure to let everyone know the funeral was happening. Listen to the mourner. That’s why you’re there, to offer presence, an ear, and words of consolation when you have them. In most cases, that’s enough.

May we all know only simchas. But in the unfortunately inevitable event of a tragedy, let us focus our love and respect on the needs of those who are in the center of the grief circle, and may we as community members take seriously the sacred privilege of helping those who suffer to know that they are not alone.

Complete Article HERE!

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Understanding Muslim funeral practices

By Susan Shelly

Elsayed "Steve" Elmarzouky walks through the area dedicated to Muslims in Laureldale Cemetery.
Elsayed “Steve” Elmarzouky walks through the area dedicated to Muslims in Laureldale Cemetery.

Most people know little about the religious practices of those of other faiths.

Lacking interest, opportunity or sometimes both, we miss out on the significance and beauty of the rituals and ceremonies others use to acknowledge birth, coming of age, marriage, the process of aging and death.Muslims, of which there are about 250 families living in Berks County, have certain beliefs and observe certain practices when a member of their community dies.

Iman Anwar Muhaimin, who travels from Philadelphia to lead prayers at the Islamic Center of Reading each Friday afternoon, along with Elsayad “Steve” Elmarzouky, a Berks County Muslim leader, shared some information about Muslim funeral practices and beliefs regarding death and the afterlife.Understanding that, as with most religions, customs will vary depending on cultural differences, they described what typically occurs after the death of a faithful Muslim.

Preparing a body for burial

When an observant Muslim dies, the body normally is taken to a funeral home to be washed and prepared for burial. Locally, Elmarzouky said, bodies are taken to one of the locations of Bean Funeral Home and Crematory.

Family members or members of the mosque who are trained in the ritual washing of the dead perform that task. Men wash men, and women wash women.Muslims do not cremate the deceased, Muhaimin explained, because they believe that the body should be returned to God in the same state in which it was given.”God gives me the body, so I need to give it back to him,” Muhaimin said. “The idea is that the body is God’s gift to you, so you should give it back to God.”If cremation is necessary due to financial or other circumstances, however, it is permissible.”When we have to do something out of necessity, God understands,” Muhaimin said.

The burial of a Muslim

Once the body is prepared for burial, it is taken in a simple casket to the mosque, where believers can pray over it. A special prayer, called Salatul Janazah, is performed, and the body is taken to the cemetery for burial.

Muslims normally are buried with other Muslims. In Berks County they do not have a cemetery designated exclusively to members of their faith, but use a designated section of Laureldale Cemetery.In cemeteries where caskets are not required for burial, a faithful Muslim would be buried in a simple, white wrapping, Muhaimin explained.”We want to be as close to the way we came into the world as possible,” he said.Believers are called to put the body of a loved one in the ground with their own hands, so shovels often are available at the cemetery.Before the body is placed in the ground there are more prayers, mostly supplications on behalf of the deceased, Elmarzouky explained.”We ask God to forgive sins and grant a happy afterlife,” he said.When the body is placed in the ground, it is positioned so the face is looking to the East, the same direction in which Muslims face while reciting daily prayers.Usually, a Muslim is buried on the same day as the death occurs, or at least within 24 hours of the death.That practice, explained Muhaimin, is so the soul, which has been released from the body, is not looking back.”Once the soul leaves, we no longer have the right to hold it back,” Muhaimin said.

Muslim belief in an afterlife

The span of human life is part of the journey of the soul, Muhaimin said, but not the soul’s home.

“The soul is just passing through when it’s on Earth,” he said. “The purpose of earthly life is to gain enlightenment. It is not the end.”Muslims believe in heaven and hell, and where a person will reside depends on several things, Elmarzouky explained.To arrive in heaven, the deceased must have performed good deeds while alive. His or her relationship with humanity will be examined. And, the fate of the deceased lies largely with the mercy of God.Like many Christians, Muslims believe there will be a day of judgment, during which the righteous are raised up to be with God and the wicked sent to hell.A person who has lived a godly life will be rewarded with heaven, Muhaimin said.”Believers and righteous people who have lived in spiritual covenant with God will be in heaven,” he assured.

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What happens when you die?

EVER wondered what happens after we die? Here’s everything you need to know, from what happens to our bodies to if there’s life after death.

By Reiss Smith

Scientists have worked out how our bodies decompose after we die
Scientists have worked out how our bodies decompose after we die

What happens to your body after you die?

Medically speaking, death happens in two stages. The first, clinical death, lasts for four to six minutes from the moment a person stops breathing and the heart stops pumping blood.

During this stage, organs remain alive and there may be enough oxygen in the brain that no permanent damage occurs.

The second stage of dying, biological death, is the process by which the body’s organs shut down and cells begin to degenerate.

Doctors are often able to halt this process by cooling the body below its normal temperature, allowing them to revive patients before brain damage sets in.After 12 hours, skin loses its colour and blood pools at the lowest point of the body, causing red and purple bruising.

Before this, rigor mortis sets in, making the body stiff and rigid. This is caused by calcium leaking into the muscle cells, which binds to protein and causes them to contract.

Unless the body is embalmed, it will start decomposing as soon as blood stops flowing.

A process called putrefaction happens after bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract eats through the abdominal organs, releasing horrid smells which attract insects.

Maggots laid by blowflies eat the rotting body tissue and can consume 60 per cent of the body’s tissue in a few weeks.

The remaining parts are then eaten by plants, insects and animals, which can take a year or more depending on how the body has been buried.

dead

What happens to thoughts after you die?

Scientists have conducted much research into what happens to consciousness after death.

Reddit user r00tdude wrote: “It was just black emptiness. No thoughts, no consciousness, nothing.

Is there life after death? What do Christians, Muslims and other religions believe?

Without any scientific evidence of an afterlife, many religions offer their own explanation as to what happens after death.

Christians believe that after dying, spirits are sent to heaven or hell depending on their Earthly behaviour.

Depending on which strand of the religion you ask, sinners are sent to hell either for eternity or until they have repented their actions. Those who have lived their lives according to Christian principles will be sent to heaven.

Catholics believe in the idea of purgatory, a place between heaven and hell where sinners first go to repent for their wrong-doings.

Bodies decompose quickly unless they are embalmed
Bodies decompose quickly unless they are embalmed
The Islamic faith teaches that Allah will raise the dead on “The Last Day” – a date known only to him. On this day, he will judge all souls and send them to either paradise or hell.

Muslims believe that until then, the dead remain in their graves, where they will be sent visions of their fate.

According to Buddhists, spirits are reincarnated into new bodies until they achieve enlightenment. Upon doing so, they will exit the mortal coil and reach Nirvana – an “incomprehensible, indescribable, inconceivable and unutterable” place.

Many religions believe in the idea of an afterlife
Many religions believe in the idea of an afterlife
Unlike most religions, the concept of an afterlife isn’t central to Judaism, instead it focuses on actions made in life.

There are some mentions of an afterlife in the religion, but not one divided into heaven and hell.

The Torah talks of an afterlife called Sheol – a shadowy place down in the centre of the Earth, where all souls go to without judgement.

Complete Article HERE!