Category: Saying Goodbye

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What is the best way to explain death to a child?

By Dave McGinn

[T]he popularity of bestselling memoirs such as When Breath Becomes Air and The Bright Hour, both meditations on death by authors who died young, suggest that death is a topic many of us like to think about (while alone, reading silently) – yet, it is still a subject many of us are woefully bad at talking about, particularly when it comes to discussing it with kids.

We all need a better “death education,” says Dr. Kathy Kortes-Miller, an associate professor of social work at Ontario’s Lakehead University and author of the new book Talking About Death Won’t Kill You: The Essential Guide to End-of-Life Conversations. Like a new website launched last November by the Canadian Virtual Hospice, the book takes what remains a taboo subject and shows how to talk about it openly and honestly. The Globe and Mail’s Dave McGinn spoke to Kortes-Miller about having that conversation with children.

Why do we have such difficulty talking to children about death?

As parents we are cultured and conditioned to protect our children. Our generation, we didn’t really learn how to talk about it. Before I was a parent, I was really good at talking to children about dying and death. And then I became a parent myself and found that it was a lot harder than I thought it was.

What’s the risk of ignoring the subject, or not bringing it up unless they do?

It keeps it as an unknown and as a scary and almost a taboo topic. We [need to] recognize that this is a transition event in our life and one that we can prepare for and one that we can learn about, and by doing so, that’s going to help us to live life more fully and prepare ourselves for the end of life.

What is the best way to explain death to a child?

It depends on the age of the child, of course. But one of the ways to do it is by looking around at nature. Kids are inquisitive. They’re interested in how things die and what happens to them. So often they’ll see things in nature and ask questions. Those are really good ways to get the conversation started. As they get a little bit older they start to watch TV and they start to read books. There is a lot of dying and death in media that children are exposed to, and those are also really good conversation starters.

You mention that nature often presents an opportunity to talk about death. I’ve been guilty of telling my kids a dead squirrel they saw was just sleeping.

That’s an easy one to do. We’re almost scared to use the D words – dead, dying and death. But we confuse them if we use euphemisms. Having worked with young kids in a counselling role as a social worker in a hospice unit, when we talk about “oh, grandpa’s just gone for the big sleep,” instead of he’s died, kids get nightmares. Kids don’t want to go to bed at night because grandpa went to sleep and he didn’t wake up.

When a child wonders what death is, is there a good description of the physical process that won’t scare kids?

I would sometimes talk about it from a physiological perspective. The reality is that sometimes we get really, really sick or we get old and our body no longer functions the way we need it to, and as a result, some of the things such as our heart or our brain stop working, and as a result, our body dies. It stops working. And that’s kind of the way I would begin that conversation. I would leave it then on the young person to ask some questions, to see what they want to know more about.

You say in the book that bedtime can be a good time for these conversations. Why?

Bedtime can be great depending on the age of your child. Often, there are rituals and time spent at bed reading books and tucking in and doing all that stuff, which is a great time to have conversations. As children get older and we move in to more of what I call the chauffeuring ages, car-time conversations are really good too, particularly because the kids don’t have to make eye contact.

Is there a euphemism for death that you loathe most?

One that’s probably most common is the idea that people “pass away.” I talk about this story of Sam in the book when he got really confused because he was in school and in school they talk about passing to the next grade, and the only person he knew who had passed was his mom. So that one I think particularly for children is a big one.

Kids usually seem capable of processing much more than we give them credit for.

Yes. For sure.

Helping a child or teenager who is grieving the death of a parent or loved one is always difficult. What do you tell them? How do you help them understand matters? The Canadian Virtual Hospice recently launched a website, KidsGrief.ca, to help answer those questions. It is especially important to talk to young kids about the four C’s, says Andrea Warnick, a Toronto-based registered psychotherapist and co-lead on the project.

“The four C’s are four common concerns that kids have when either somebody’s seriously ill, dying or has died in their life. We’re really trying to encourage families to address these even if kids aren’t bringing them up,” she says.

  • Cause: Am I some way responsible? “A lot of parents are really surprised when they find out that their child has been thinking that they did something to cause the illness or death in their family,” Warnick says. She has worked with children who thought their mom got throat cancer from yelling at them to clean their rooms. “We really want families to let their kids know that this is not their fault, they did not cause this in any way,” she says.
  • Catch: “A lot of families will avoid the word of the actual illness. So as opposed to saying, ‘Daddy has cancer,’ or ‘Dad has ALS,’ they’ll say, ‘Daddy’s sick.’ And for kids whose reference for sickness is that it gets spread across the daycare, or one person gets the flu and then the next person does, that scares them and they often think it’s going to happen to them to or they can catch it,” Warnick says. You can still hug your dad, still kiss him. You can still cuddle.
  • Cure: You have to let your kids know they can’t cure it. “This is not in their control,” Warnick says. “A lot of kids will use the power of their imaginations to come up with pacts, promising a higher power that they will never fight with their mom again if they cure them, and then of course they fight. I’ve had a number of kids feeling very responsible that they did something that could have happened otherwise.”
  • Care: This is one of kids’ biggest fears. “If there’s a parent or a primary caregiver who is ill or dying, who is going to take care of me?” Warnick says. Or if the person has already died, is this going to happen to my other parent or whoever it is who is now taking care of them? “A lot of kids are really worried about that. And that’s where we really walk families through how to talk about that. Some families are tempted to say no, it won’t happen to me. And we can’t promise a child that. So we really encourage families to say: Most likely I’m going to live to be very old, but if anything does happen to me, this is who is going to take care of you. Hopefully, guardians are picked out. Let them know what the plan is.”

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Inside the Bangkok temple where dogs are given human funeral ceremonies to speed their rebirth

Thailand’s bereaved pet owners who take their dearly departed dogs to Wat Krathum Suea Pla, a temple on the outskirts of Bangkok, where ceremonies and rituals are believed to speed the animals’ reincarnation and boost their karma

Beckham died of old age last night, but he’s on his way to a new life. Or so the pet’s owners hope.

By Tibor Krausz

The Suwans, a family of five, have brought the earthly remains of their dead pet to Wat Krathum Suea Pla, a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok. They’ve come to administer the last rites to their late canine companion to boost his karmic prospects.

“Beckham was like one of my own children to me,” says Saythan Suwan, 43, a mother of two. She rescued the dog from the streets in 2004 and named him after English footballer David Beckham, who is hugely popular in Thailand.

A member of the Suwan family places new monk’s robes on Beckham during the service. The robes are donated to the monks on Beckham’s behalf.

The stray pup became a loyal member of the Suwan household. He guarded the premises, played with the children and shared a bed with grandma, who died recently at age 84. When Beckham took his last breath, the Suwans bathed his body, sat in vigil, and the following morning took him to the Buddhist sanctuary to be cremated.

“We want to do the best for him so he can be in the best place in his next life,” explains Saythan, a saleswoman. “If Beckham is reborn, I hope he gets reborn as a member of our family again. We hope he will come back to us as a puppy.”

To help ensure this happens, the Bangkok family have paid for a private ceremony at the temple on their dead dog’s behalf.

In the predominantly Buddhist country, where age-old superstitions still hold sway, most locals believe that by performing meritorious deeds, such as giving alms to monks, they can earn valuable karmic points for deceased loved ones, thereby hastening their rebirth in an auspicious new incarnation. And for an increasing number of Thais, like the Suwans, these deceased loved ones include pets.

The Suwans are gathered mournfully in a small chapel, where Beckham lies draped in lily-white funerary shrouds on a bier among colourful garlands and bouquets of flowers. One by one they sprinkle the dead canine with marigold petals and take turns pouring scented water over him from a small decanter.

“If I’ve wronged you, please forgive me. If you’ve wronged me, I forgive you,” a funeral assistant intones on account of the dead dog, during a service with stylised rituals that closely follow those of human funerals.

A monk places votive offerings on a dog during a pet funeral.

Sitting cross-legged on antique wooden chairs inlaid with mother-of-pearl, four monks chant plaintively for Beckham’s benefit. In return, the family offer the monks new robes and provisions in their dog’s name.

Beckhamis then taken outside to a small crematorium custom-made for pets, where the Suwans place roses fashioned from wood shavings on his corpse in a final tribute.

“We will scatter his ashes in the [Bangkok’s] Chao Phraya River,” explains Anyamanee, one of Saythan’s daughters. “We scattered my grandmother’s ashes there. She and Beckham were always together in life,” she adds. “We want them to be together in death, too.”

Outside, another dog is waiting to receive the same treatment. Lying peacefully on a metal table is Nimbus, a 10-year-old husky. He looks as if he is asleep. The night before, he began pacing agitatedly and died soon afterwards, explain his tearful owners, a Thai-Chinese man and woman.

“He seemed to be in pain and then he passed away,” the man, who identifies himself only by his nickname, Chok (“Luck”), says between sobs. “We believe he will come back to us – maybe in another form.”

Presently it’s Boozo the poodle’s turn. He’s just died of renal failure. He is placed in a small fuchsia coffin where he’s wreathed in flowers. “He brought us so much joy and so much luck,” Payao Tang-on, 63, says. “We won the lottery because of him.”

She now wants to get the dead pet on the spiritual highway to rebirth. “If we had buried him, his body would have taken a long time to decompose,” Payao says. “This way his spirit can get into a new body faster. He may even be reborn as a person.”

According to Phrakru Soponpihankij, the temple’s abbot, only a few animal species – including elephants, horses, dogs and cats – can be directly reborn as human beings. “But usually, even loyal companion animals can’t earn enough merit on their own in this life for that, so people have to do it for them,” he adds. “Monks are intermediaries between this life and the next. They can help animals gain more merit.”

A Thai family prepare to scatter their Shih Tzu’s ashes into the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok.

Next up for a treatment of monk-assisted extra karmic merit is Luke, a small mixed-breed dog with fluffy, off-white fur, who died of bone cancer. “He was as good a pet as you could ask for,” says his owner, a retired American executive who came with his Thai wife to bid tearful farewell to the dog. “We want to send him off to something better,” he adds. “I’m not sure I believe in the Buddhist concept of reincarnation, but you never know.”

Within three hours on this Saturday morning, four dogs and a cat are cremated in quick succession at Wat Krathum Suea Pla. On some days, says Worratap Janpinid, who operates the crematorium, as many as 20 dead pets are brought here for funeral services – mostly dogs and cats, but there have been rabbits, monkeys, birds, tortoises, goldfish and even monitor lizards.

“I’ve cremated thousands of pets,” Worratap says. A wiry man in his 20s, he is covered in magic tattoos all the way up to his shaven pate, and wears unwieldy signet rings with protective amulets on several fingers to ward off misfortune and death. “Many people who come here have good hearts,” he says.

One bereaved dog owner drove his dead companion 1,000km to the Bangkok temple from the southern Thai province of Satun for a proper pet funeral. The sanctuary lies in a warren of winding streets in an industrial area that was once marshland. It’s one of the few Buddhist temples in Thailand that assist pet owners in administering proper funerary ceremonies for their animals.

Teerawat Saehan, the owner of Pet Funeral Thailand, that specialises in elaborate funerals for pets at Wat Krathum Suea Pla, in Bangkok.

Many other temples dispose of the bodies of pets and stray animals, but they do so with little ceremony. Routinely, the carcasses of beloved pets are burned in incinerators, often without their owners’ knowledge. This practice appalled Teerawat Saehan, the proprietor of a pet grooming salon who was invited by a customer to a dog’s funeral. “It looked as if pets were treated like rubbish,” he recalls.

So a few years ago Teerawat set up Pet Funeral Thailand, a small company that specialises in elaborate cremation ceremonies for pets. “We started replicating human funerals for pets,” says Teerawat, 37, an amiable man who also sports magic tattoos. “People come to us because we do things properly.”

Business is booming. Each month the company hosts 300 to 400 pet funerals, which cost anywhere between 1,500 baht (US$48) and 400,000 baht. The price depends on variables such as the length of the service and the number of monks present. The most expensive pet funerals are overseen by as many as 60 monks and feature special funeral processions, including motorcades. At some of these funerals, the flower arrangements alone can cost 100,000 baht.

But it isn’t these lavish affairs that impress Teerawat. He’s more moved by acts of generosity by poor people. Not long ago, a hard-up family’s two dogs died in a house fire that sent all their possessions up in smoke. With the little money they had left, they paid for a proper funeral service for their dogs.

In a similar show of kindness, when a street dog called Daam (“Black”) died, vendors at a food market where the dog had lived on scraps all chipped in for her funeral. They even brought food for her so she wouldn’t go hungry in the afterlife.

Lolling indolently at the side of the pet crematorium is a stray black mutt, also called Daam. She was dumped last year at the temple with a broken foot and has become something of a resident mascot at cremations. She seems oblivious to the mournful goings-on around her.

Perhaps, Teerawat muses, Daam is here to atone for bad deeds she had committed in her past life. “It’s sad to see dogs suffer and die,” says the businessman, who owns two Rottweilers. “But there’s hope for them in the next life.”

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10 People Whose Hearts Were Buried Separately From the Rest of Them

Richard the Lionheart

BY Bess Lovejoy

[T]hough it may seem bizarre today, having your heart buried apart from the rest of your body wasn’t uncommon for European aristocracy of the Middle Ages and beyond. The practice arose in part during the Crusades, when high-ranking warriors had a tendency to die in “heathen” places that weren’t seen as desirable burial locations. But transporting a whole body back to Europe made things pretty stinky, so corpses were stripped of flesh and ferried back to Europe as skeletons, with the inner organs (including the heart) removed and buried where the Crusaders had died. By the 12th century, members of the English and French aristocracy also frequently had their hearts buried separately from the rest of them.

Heart burial became less practical and more symbolic by the 17th century, partly as a religious practice associated with the Jesuits and other Counter Reformation groups. (Some scholars think the heart’s powerful symbolism became particularly important while the Catholic Church was undergoing a moment of crisis.) In Western Europe, it became common for powerful individuals, such as kings and queens, to ask that their hearts be buried in a spot they’d favored during life. In more recent years, Romantic poets and other artists also picked up the practice, which has yet to be entirely abandoned.

1. RICHARD I

Richard I, a.k.a. “Richard the Lion-Heart,” ruled as King of England 1189-99 but spent most of his reign fighting abroad, which is how he earned his reputation for military prowess. (He also may or may not have eaten the heart of a lion.) He died after being struck by a crossbow while campaigning in Chalus, France, and while most of his body was buried at Fontevraud Abbey, his heart was interred in a lead box at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Rouen, France. The organ was rediscovered during excavations in the 1830s, and in 2012, forensic scientists examined it—now mostly reduced to a grayish-brown powder—to learn more about Richard’s precise cause of death (some think a poisoned arrow dealt the fatal blow). The crumbling heart was too decayed to tell them much about how Richard had died, but the scientists did learn about medieval burial rituals, noting the use of vegetables and spices “directly inspired by the ones used for the embalming of Christ.”

2. ROBERT THE BRUCE

Robert the Bruce, King of Scots 1306-29, asked for his heart to be buried in Jerusalem. But it didn’t get all the way there—the knight he entrusted it to, Sir James Douglas, was killed in battle with the Moors while wearing the heart in a silver case around his neck. Other knights recovered the heart from the battlefield, and brought it back to Melrose Abbey in Scotland for burial. Archeologists rediscovered what they believed to be the heart in 1920 and reburied it in a modern container; it was exhumed again in 1996, and reburied beneath the abbey’s lawn in 1998.

3. ST. LAURENCE O’TOOLE

ST. LAURENCE O’TOOLE

St. Laurence O’Toole, the second archbishop of Dublin and one of that city’s patron saints, died in 1180 in France. His heart was sent back to Dublin’s Christ Church Cathedral, where it rested inside a heart-shaped wooden box within an iron cage—at least until 2012, when it was stolen. The dean of Christ Church Cathedral has speculated that the heart might have been taken by some kind of religious fanatic, since it has little economic value, and much more valuable gold and silver objects were ignored. (Weirdly, the thief, or thieves, also lit candles on one of the altars before fleeing.) The item has yet to be recovered.

4. THE PRINCE-BISHOPS OF WÜRZBURG

The prince-bishops of Würzburg (part of modern Germany) practiced a three-part burial: their corpses were usually sent to Würzburg cathedral, their intestines to the castle church at Marienberg, and their hearts, embalmed in glass jars, to what is now Ebrach Abbey. The practice was common by the 15th century, though it may go back as far as the 12th. Their funerals at the Marienberg castle also featured what may be one of history’s worst jobs: a servant was required to hold the heads of the corpses upright during the funeral, which featured the body seated upright and impaled on a pole. The funerals lasted for several days. There were more than 80 prince-bishops; a German cardiologist who made a special study of heart burial says “about 30” of their hearts found their resting places in the abbey.

5. ANNE BOLEYN

According to legend, after Anne Boleyn’s beheading in 1536, her heart was removed from her body and taken to a rural church in Erwarton, Suffolk, where the queen is said to have spent some happy days during her youth. In 1837, excavations at the church uncovered a small, heart-shaped lead casket inside a wall. The only thing inside was a handful of dust (it’s not clear whether it was actually the heart), but the casket was reburied in a vault beneath the organ, where a plaque today marks the spot.

6. LOTS OF POPES

Twenty-two hearts from various popes—from Sixtus V in 1583 to Leo XIII in 1903—are kept in marble urns at Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio a Trevi in Rome. Traditionally, the hearts were removed with the rest of the organs as part of the postmortem preservation process, and kept as relics just in case the pope became a saint.

7. FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN

Romantic composer Frédéric Chopin died in Paris in 1849, and most of him is buried in that city’s Pere Lachaise, but he asked for his heart to be buried in his native Poland. His sister carried it back to their home country, where it is preserved in alcohol (some say cognac) within a crystal urn inside a pillar at the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw. In 2014, scientists conducted a late-night examination of the heart to make sure the alcohol hadn’t evaporated, although their secrecy frustrated scientists who hope to one day examine the organ for clues about what killed the composer.

8. THOMAS HARDY

THOMAS HARDY

The English poet and novelist Thomas Hardy wanted to be buried in his hometown of Stinsford, Dorset, but friends insisted that a burial in Westminster Abbey was the only appropriate choice for someone of Hardy’s literary prominence. But when town officials found out that Hardy’s body was destined for the abbey, they threw a fit, and so a compromise was reached—most of Hardy went to Westminster, but his heart was buried in Stinsford churchyard (where it has its own grave marker). A persistent, but unproven, story has it that a cat ate part of the heart when the doctor who was removing it got distracted; a gruesome addendum says the animal was killed and buried alongside the organ.

9. PERCY SHELLEY

When the poet Percy Shelley died sailing the Mediterranean in 1822, local quarantine regulations dictated that his body had to be cremated on the beach. But his heart allegedly refused to burn, and a friend, the adventurer Edward Trelawny, supposedly plucked it out of the flames. After a custody battle among Shelley’s friends, the heart was given to Percy’s wife Mary, who kept it until she died. Her children found it in a silk bag inside her desk, and it is now said to be buried with her at the family vault in Bournemouth, England.

10. OTTO VON HABSBURG

The powerful House of Habsburg practiced heart burial for centuries, with many of the organs buried in copper urns in Vienna’s Augustiner Church. In 2011, Otto von Habsburg, the last heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (which was dissolved in 1918), had his heart buried in the Benedictine Abbey in Pannonhalma, Hungary. The rest of him was buried in Vienna. The erstwhile crown prince said he wanted his heart buried in Hungary as a gesture of affection for the country—one half of his former empire.

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Saving the Earth By Dying

The environmental toll of conventional burials is stark, with a typical 10-acre cemetery containing enough coffin wood to build more than 40 houses and enough embalming fluid to fill a swimming pool.

by

The deathcare industry is changing, and with it are the ways we dispose of our bodies.

Situated just south of San Francisco, the small town of Colma, Calif., has become famous, or perhaps infamous, for its motto: “It’s Great to Be Alive in Colma.” Which is ironic, given that the town’s population of dead people far outnumbers its living residents by nearly 1,000 to one. 

Among the living is Joe Stinson, 72, a funeral director and owner of Colma Cremation and Funeral Services. Over the course of his decades-long career caring for the dead, he’s seen a lot of changes the industry. The latest? A growing movement toward eco-friendly burials.

“Green burials are changing how we, as a society, look at burying our dead,” says Stinson, who believes that just as our own deaths are imminent, so too is the widespread adoption of environmentally friendly deathcare options.

In the past few years, a wave of eco-friendly startups have focused on how humans can continue to be good stewards of the earth even in our afterlife. At its core, a green, or natural, burial minimizes environmental impact by reducing carbon emissions and making sure no harmful substances leach into the ground. This can include biodegradable caskets, like those made from handwoven willow or seagrass, or simple cotton shrouds. And the use of the toxin formaldehyde to preserve a corpse is a definite no-no. After an unpreserved body is lowered into the ground, it eventually decomposes, mixing and nourishing the earth around it.

According to the Green Burial Council, which provides eco-certifications for burial practitioners and products, the number of GBC-approved providers in North America has grown from one in 2006 to more than 300 today. (To be sure, that number is certainly higher, as deathcare providers don’t have to be GBC-certified to offer green and eco-friendly options.)

The arguments for a more environmentally conscious burial are mounting, literally, as the concrete, steel and wood we bury along with our dead piles up. (According to one estimate, there’s 115 million tons of casket steel underground in North America, or enough to build almost all the high rises in Tokyo.) What’s more, the formaldehyde used in embalming is a known carcinogenic, putting funeral directors at a higher risk for cancer. Then there’s the pollutants — from embalming fluid to the toxic chemicals used in casket varnishes and sealants — that can seep into the groundwater. As for cremation, that takes an environmental toll too, as the burning of fossil fuels emits harmful carbon dioxide into the air.

“This, by no means, should be at the top of our environmental priority list, but it is something that can be easily dealt with,” says Phil Olson, assistant professor at Virginia Tech who specializes in death studies. “What we need to be worried about is the crap we put in the ground with the body. We need to talk about the environmental impact of forestry and all the energy it takes to manufacture the metals in coffins.”

Sustainable caskets can be made out of willow, seagrass, bamboo and other biodegradable materials.

Most green deathcare providers are hybrid operations, offering both conventional and natural burial options, but there are a few in the U.S. that specialize solely in green funerals and burials. One such operation is Fernwood Cemetery, located in Marin County, Calif., about an hour’s drive north of Stinson’s funeral home in Colma. On any given day at the bucolic cemetery, which sits above the rolling hills above Sausalito, you’ll find people walking their dogs, riding bikes or just lounging about. The only clue that it’s a burial ground is the occasional boulder engraved with someone’s name.

“We had some people coming through who were lost and asked what park we were in,” jokes Cindy Barath, the funeral director for Fernwood.

As for costs, well, that depends on where you live — or, rather, where you die.

Anyone in the cemetery business will say that death is like buying a house; it’s all about location. And in cities such as San Francisco, where there is more space devoted to housing and mixed-use buildings, creating an affordable option for a green burial is still a ways off. Fernwood, for example, charges between $10,000 to $15,000 for a full funeral, with a large chunk of that money going toward buying a plot of land. Compare that to the national average for a traditional funeral and burial, which is about $8,500.

Still, the costs for a green burial can be significantly less than a traditional internment, since you’re not paying for body preservation, an expensive casket made of steel or exotic wood, or a concrete grave vault. And some in the green-burial movement are working toward a model where a separate plot for each grave isn’t even necessary.

In Seattle, Recompose — formerly known as the Urban Death Project — is designing a three-story human-compost facility that turns dead bodies into reusable soil. The ambitious project, started in 2014, is still years from completion. If it succeeds, though, the company plans to replicate the model all over the world.

“Things in this industry happen slowly,” says Olson, referring to the snail’s pace of getting conventional cemeteries onboard with green burials.

In this regard, both Olson and Stinson point to cremation, which was introduced in the U.S. in the late 19th century. But it wasn’t until almost a hundred years later that cremations became more popular than burials.

Stinson, for one, is ready for the sea change he believes will eventually sweep the entire industry. Noticing the uptick in people requesting greener options, he’s begun offering more eco-friendly options, such as caskets made of seagrass and biodegradable urns.

For years, Stinson says, burials have always been fairly black and white: Either you’re cremated, or you’re put into the ground.

Looks like now we’re finally seeing shades of green.

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Sinners, sailors and those who died by suicide: The adults buried in Ireland’s cillíní

Deprived of a Christian burial on the basis that they were unworthy, who are the adults in Ireland’s hidden graves?

Historian William Casey shows the site of a 1920 unofficial graveyard (cillín) a few miles from the village of Ballydehob in west Cork.

By Graham Clifford

[A]cross the water the odd light twinkles on Heir Island. It’s an idyllic evening and the retiring sun shoots a last glance at Jeremy Iron’s castle dressed in its unusual orange.

We’re standing by the shore at Skeaghanore West near Ballydehob. Remote and beautiful spots, just like this, are now coveted by those who seek the beauty and solitude of West Cork – but this was once a place where untold sadness lingered.

In Famine times, people from neighbouring parishes would make the long walk to this spot to gather shellfish in a desperate attempt to stay alive. Exhausted and starved, many died once here and are buried in a cillín overlooking the shore.

With local historian William Casey I attempt to get a closer look at the grave, located on a former ecclesiastical site, pulling back the thick coverage of briars and torn bushes.

“You could have hundreds of Famine victims here,” explains Casey.

“Grown men and women as well as children. This was their last attempt to live but when they lost that battle for life they’d be carried here and laid to rest, one after the other.”

Though cillíní are generally recognised as unofficial burial grounds for unbaptised children, records show that adults, such as Famine victims, were often buried in them too.

And it’s shocking to discover why so many Irish adults were deemed unworthy, by the Catholic Church and wider society, of a traditional burial down through the centuries.

Those who died by suicide, sailors, strangers, mothers who died in childbirth, criminals, murder victims, those with mental illnesses or physical deformities, people who died in a duel, excommunicates, were laid to rest in remote cilliní alongside little babies and children.

“Canon law lists ‘Those to Whom Ecclesiastical Funeral Rites Are Denied’,” explains Dr Eileen Murphy, an archaeologist at Queen’s University Belfast, who has studied cillíní closely.

She continues: “While most people buried in cilliní were unbaptised infants we also have examples of older individuals such as a pregnant woman in the cillín at Tonybaun, Co Mayo. Her skull displayed unhealed weapon injuries and I think it is the violent nature of her death that may have necessitated her burial in the cillín. We also have a newspaper account from Co Down of the body of a suicide victim who died 30-years previously and was discovered in 1842.”

Tom Cassidy, Conservation Officer with Limerick County Council, worked on an archaeological survey of Co Galway in the early 1980s.

The foreshore where people searched for shellfish near the site of a 1920 unofficial graveyard (cillín) a few miles from the village of Ballydehob in West Cork.

He says: “Galway has the highest concentration of recorded cillíní in the country. We came across a burial ground near Gort where two adults were said to have been buried. One was a British soldier who met his end during the War of Independence (from 1919 to 1921) and was buried in a cillín so his body wouldn’t be found. The other, we believe, was a man who was killed in a faction fight during a fair in the town. You could see from the stone markers that these weren’t infant’s graves.”

Incredibly some cillíní were still in use up to the early 1980s. Officially there are 1,393 cilliní in the State but most historians believe this figure is a mere fraction of the real number.

Emer Dennehy, an archaeologist now working with Transport Infrastructure Ireland, explains that in some cases mothers and babies who died in childbirth were buried together.

“In some cases it’s recorded that the baby would be buried between the mother’s legs in what were known as ‘tandem burials’. And if the mother died without being ‘churched’ (a blessing given to mothers after recovery from childbirth) then she could be buried in a cillín as well.”

Dennehy carried out one of the most detailed studies into cillíní when she surveyed the hundreds of such burial grounds in Co Kerry. She told me about the logic behind the traditions – especially as they related to suicide victims.

“The thinking which came from the church was ‘if you bury the person who died by suicide in a normal graveyard then they will contaminate it for everyone else buried there’. It was all about fear. They reckoned that only God could decide when you die so these people weren’t welcome. It was considered they, and so many others, ‘died outside the Grace of God’ and the Church completely played on this.”

Understandably, families, so desperately fearful of the stigma associated with suicide, would attempt to cover up the cause of death.

It’s believed this practice continued well into the 20th century so that a conventional burial could be granted.

For many, interment of an adult family member in a cillín was the worst shame to be endured.

Archaeologist Noel Dunne tells of “Mags Kilteel” – discovered by a passing merchant as an abandoned baby in Kildare around the 1890s, she became part of the Broderick family. But when she died, in her mid-20s, she was interred in a cillín rather than with the rest of her adopted family. Forever an outsider.

A range of unsettling practices in cillíní have been recorded. According to folklore some children were buried face down if they were handicapped or illegitimate or when childbirth almost resulted in the mother’s death.

Along the coast, sailors, and other unknown individuals washed up on the shore, were buried in cillíní. Written accounts provided by the National Folklore Collection confirm sailors were buried on the Great Blasket Islands. Similarly, we know sailors were laid to rest at a cillín in Renvyle, Co Galway, as well as in Dooks, Co Kerry, and on Heir Island.

While convicts and criminals would also have been buried in unconsecrated ground Dr Linda Lynch, an Osteoarchaeologist, explains that most would not have been buried in cillín.

“As cillíní are mainly located in rural areas, its less likely convicts would be buried there. It would be more usual for them to be buried near prisons and urban centres – in prison graveyards.”

Like this cillín in West Cork, many such graveyards across the country are left untouched by farmers and landowners who know not to encroach on these places of mass burial.

Buried, too, beneath the thorns, the gorse bushes, the long grass and the ferns are stories of unimaginable pain, suffering and tragedy.

In many cases stones mark out the dimensions of the infant’s grave but what of the larger dimensions, the last resting places of so many adults labelled inferior to those buried in graveyards.

Shunned in life and then in death.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Writing a ‘Last Letter’ When You’re Healthy

Participants in the Stanford Letter Project working on letters to their family members.

By VJ PERIYAKOIL, M.D.

[O]ver the last 15 years, as a geriatrics and palliative care doctor, I have had candid conversations with countless patients near the end of their lives. The most common emotion they express is regret: regret that they never took the time to mend broken friendships and relationships; regret that they never told their friends and family how much they care; regret that they are going to be remembered by their children as hypercritical mothers or exacting, authoritarian fathers.

And that’s why I came up with a project to encourage people to write a last letter to their loved ones. It can be done when someone is ill, but it’s really worth doing when one is still healthy, before it’s too late.

It’s a lesson I learned years ago from a memorable dying patient. He was a Marine combat veteran who had lived on a staple diet of Semper Fi and studied silence all his life. A proud and stoic man, he was admitted to the hospital for intractable pain from widely spread cancer. Every day, his wife visited him and spent many hours at his bedside watching him watch television. She explained to me that he had never been much of a talker in their 50-plus years of marriage.

But he was far more forthcoming with me, especially when it became clear that his days were numbered. He spoke of his deep regret for not having spent enough time with his wife, whom he loved very much, and of his great pride in his son, who had joined the Marines in his father’s footsteps.

One afternoon, when I mentioned these comments to his wife and son, they looked incredulously at each other and then disbelievingly at me. They thanked me for being kind but stated that my patient was incapable of expressing such sentiments.

I wanted to prove my credibility and to make sure that his wife could actually hear her husband professing his love. I knew he was unlikely to speak to them directly. So I took my huge family camcorder with me the next morning on medical rounds and – with the patient’s consent — recorded an open letter from him to his family. When I gave them the taped letter as a keepsake, both his wife and son were moved to tears.

The experience inspired an idea that has grown into the Stanford Friends and Family Letter Project. With guidance from seriously ill patients and families from various racial and ethnic groups, we developed a free template for a letter that can help people complete seven life review tasks: acknowledging important people in our lives; remembering treasured moments; apologizing to those we may have hurt; forgiving those who have hurt us; and saying “thank you,” “I love you” and “goodbye.”

A letter by a project participant named Harvey Brown, written with the help of his wife, Wanda Brown.

While these may seem intuitive, many people don’t complete these steps before they die, leaving their family members with unanswered questions and regret.

(A video showing people participating in the project can be seen here.)

The letter template, which is available in eight languages, allows writers to express gratitude, forgiveness and regret. In one letter, a participant wrote to his wife, Lily, “I wish I had loved you more.”

Many writers use the templates to express pride in their children in ways they might not do in person. One wrote to a son, Michael: “You are so courageous to change your major and do what it takes to be successful to reach your dreams.” Another wrote, “Life for us was never easy but you overcame obstacles.”

And some apologize. A man named Tyrone Scott wrote to his daughter, “I’m sorry that I wasn’t there when you were growing up. If I could relive my past, I would not have let your mother take you away from me.”

The letters can be a chance to let go of grudges. Shirley Jones wrote, “To Harold: You have forgotten to repay some of the personal loans you obtained from us. We are wiping your account cleared.”

So we invite you to use the “Dear Friends and Family” template and write your letter now while you still can.

Those with chronic or serious illness may use the illness letter template; there is also a healthy letter template for those in good health. In working with people from diverse cultural backgrounds, I found that some were reluctant to complete the “goodbye” task for fear that it might become a become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I recommend that people write only the parts they feel comfortable with.

Once the letter is written, you can choose to share it with your loved ones right away. You can also store it in a safe place or with a trusted person to be given to your family in the future. Some people prefer to use the letter as a living legacy document and update it over time.

It may take tremendous courage to write a life review letter. For some people, it evokes deep and troubling emotions. Yet it may be the most important letter you will ever write.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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A Burial at Gethsemani

Abbey of Gethsemani

By Gregory K. Hillis

[I]t was a surprise to enter the Abbey of Gethsemani’s church and see a body lying on a bier. Br. Harold was dressed in a white cowl and his face bore no signs of being made up by a mortician. He did not look like he was sleeping. He looked like what he was: dead.

He was not alone. The community had kept vigil with Br. Harold all night, each monk taking turns at the bier, praying the psalms with him one last time, prayers he knew so well from decades of saying the Divine Office.

As the funeral Mass began, Br. Harold’s bier was carried directly in front of the altar. There was no casket and his face was not covered. He simply lay there, a monk among his brother monks, albeit a now silent and unmoving participant in the Eucharistic feast.

After the Mass, his bier was carried out the doors of the church to the cemetery, filled with hundreds of identical white crosses. Here are buried monks from more than 160 years of monastic life at the Abbey. Among them is Thomas Merton, known in the community as Fr. Louis, buried beside Dom James Fox, the abbot with whom he so often clashed.

Along with the monks and members of Br. Harold’s family, I processed to a freshly dug grave. Although I’ve come to know quite a few of the monks of the abbey, I didn’t know Br. Harold. He was already in the infirmary with Alzheimer’s when I moved to Kentucky. I learned, though, that I missed out on a beautiful and simple man who breathed God in deeply, particularly when looking at a flower in bloom.

To allow Br. Harold’s brother monks, family members, and friends to be near the graveside, I found a spot on an outlook near the church that stood above his final resting place. Cistercians dig their graves very deep and they bury their dead without caskets. From my perch I could see that a pillow had been placed in the grave, on which had been placed a flower. There was also a ladder leading into the grave.

After graveside prayers, one of the monks descended the ladder while others lifted Br. Harold from the bier. The sheet he was on had six long straps attached by which he was lowered into the ground. As his brothers lowered Br. Harold down, the monk standing in the grave gingerly held Br. Harold’s head.

There was love and gentleness in the way the monk did this. I was reminded of the care with which my wife and I would put each of our newborn sons into the crib, doing all we could to make sure that his sleep wasn’t disturbed. When Br. Harold reached the bottom of the grave, I could see his brother monk almost tuck him in for his rest. He carefully laid Br. Harold’s head on the pillow, placed a white shroud over his face, and then ascended out of the grave, pulling up the ladder behind him.

From my vantage point I could see Br. Harold at the bottom of the grave, and then, shovel by shovel, being covered in dirt. Truth be told, it was disconcerting to see a human body—not a body in a casket, but simply a body—be buried. But never before had the words Christians recite on Ash Wednesday—remember you are dust—been as real to me as they were at that moment.

More importantly, I had never experienced death as something beautiful before this funeral. What I witnessed was the care and love of a community for one of their brothers, a care that extended to the very depths of the grave.

On Ash Wednesday we are reminded once again of our mortality; some of us need this reminder more than others. However, there’s something about my experience at Br. Harold’s funeral that leads me to contemplate my mortality not as something to be feared, but as an invitation to give more completely of myself to those in my community—to my wife, to my sons, to my students and colleagues, to those in my parish, and to those in my neighborhood and city.

Br. Harold lived a life of prayer and devotion in the context of a community, staking his own existence to the existences of others. In his life, he gave himself to his community. In his illness and death, the monks in the community gave themselves to him. At his funeral I learned that to confront our mortality is to come face to face with the reality of how deeply and truly we need one another. 

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!