The Amateur's Guide To Death & Dying

December 8, 2014

Cemetery Art – 12/08/14

The task of interpreting the symbols on a headstone or memorial is a daunting one. Although most of the symbols that you will see DO have a textbook meaning, it is quite possible that the headstone or memorial you are looking at was put there simply because someone liked the look of it. Therefore, it will have no meaning beyond the taste of the deceased or those left behind to morn. The point is that many people choose a memorial motif not for its textbook meaning, but simply because they like the ornamentation or design, because it feels “right” or appropriate.

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December 4, 2014

Chinese Funeral Etiquette

Traditional Chinese funeral is an elaborate ceremony that involves a number of rites and rituals. However, the etiquette that needs to be followed during these ceremonies is worth noting.

By Rave Uno

The funeral or death ceremony is one of the most important rites of passage that virtually every human being has to go through. Funeral rites differ from country to country and from culture to culture, but all of them are unanimously aimed at ensuring that the soul of the deceased enters the afterlife without any hurdle. People have been following various funeral customs and practices from time immemorial, and we indeed have ample archaeological evidence to prove that certain patches of land served as cemeteries and that certain platforms were used particularly to carry out last rites on a person. Even today, there are a plethora of funeral rites and etiquette that cultures across the world follow, and it is indeed interesting to know that some of these are ages old, owing to the antiquity of the culture itself.

China is, without doubt, one of the oldest surviving civilizations of the world. People of today’s China value their age-old customs and traditions as much as they value advancements in technology and modernization. For the Chinese, the funeral rites are an important part, not only of their religious lives, but also social lives.

Chinese Funeral: Protocol to be Followed

Funeral rites occupy a very important place in the traditional Chinese society, and all the set rules and etiquette need to be very strictly followed. It is believed that the one who fails to adhere to the rules and etiquette of the funeral invites bad luck to his/her family. Traditionally, the Chinese people are known to host lavish funeral ceremonies for their deceased near and dear ones because elaborateness of the funeral ceremony determines the status of the family in the society. This Buzzle write-up features some of the important etiquette to be followed during a traditional Chinese funeral.

Colors to Wear

► If you are attending a Chinese funeral as a guest, make sure that you dress yourself in sober and dark colors. While you can wear pale and muted shades, black is the safest color to opt for.

► Avoid wearing bright and colorful clothing, as such hues may symbolize moods, contrary to the one of mourning. Do not wear red; in China, it is associated with happiness.

► You can dress up in white clothes, but make sure that they are absolutely plain, with no designs at all. In fact, the deceased is also dressed up in a white robe.

► If the deceased lived up to the age of 80 or above, guests can wear a white attire bearing shades of pink or red. The Chinese believe that if a person dies at 80 or above, he/she lived life to the fullest, and had no desires left to be fulfilled. Therefore, such a death (if it is natural), calls for a celebration, and shades symbolizing happiness are acceptable to a certain extent.

During the Funeral

► The Chinese funeral involves a lot of rites which have to be completed properly. Traditionally, the period called “wake” precedes the actual funeral. Held either in the family home or local temple, this period lasts for several days, wherein family members and close friends are expected to bring flowers for the deceased.

► White Iris is the traditional funeral flower in China, so make sure that you take an elaborate wreath made of these flowers, if you are visiting during the “wake”.

► Though it is not customary, people generally also put banners with couplets about the deceased written on them, within the wreaths. Such a gesture shows that you are equally sad about the person’s death as his/her family.

► On the day of the funeral, all the guests are expected to give money in white envelopes (white is the color of mourning in Chinese culture) to the family members of the deceased. This can be directly handed over to one of the family members (or put into a donation box, if there is one), either on the day of the funeral or one day before.

► You can either write your name on the white envelope while you give the money or you can leave it blank; it is acceptable both ways.

► The amount that you may give varies, depending on the overall income of the family of the deceased, and also that of the guests. The amount of money also depends on the closeness of the grieving family with the guest.

► The minimum expected amount is 101 yuan (about $16), but there is no upper limit for the same. While enclosing money into the white envelope, ensure that you are donating in odd numbers.

► While the funeral is in progress, the members of the grieving family burn joss paper, also known as ghost money, to ensure safe passage of the deceased into the afterlife.

► Apart from joss paper, other miniature items such as houses, cars, televisions, utensils, etc., are also burned. It is believed that all these enter the afterlife with the deceased, so that he/she can lead a luxurious and a comfortable life, even after death.

After the Funeral

► Once all this is done and the guests are about to leave, the family of the deceased distributes red envelopes among them. Each of these envelopes contains a coin.

► Red, in Chinese culture, is the color of happiness. So, the distribution of red envelopes after funeral symbolizes the end of the period of mourning, and the beginning of a new start.

► As a marker of a fresh beginning, the guests are also made to consume a piece of sweet candy before leaving for their respective homes. Sometimes, the guests may also be presented with a handkerchief.

► It should be noted that the three items mentioned above viz., the envelope with a coin, the handkerchief, and the candy, should not be carried home by the guests. If done so, these items are believed to invite bad luck.

► It is also customary for the grieving families to present their guests with a red-colored thread, while they leave for their homes. This thread is believed to ward away evil spirits, and so, it should be taken home by the guests and tied to their doorknobs.

The Funeral Procession

► Once the elaborate funeral ceremony is over, a funeral procession to the final resting place of the deceased, the crematorium or the cemetery, is held.

► For this, a special band is hired and loud music is played until the place is reached. Traditional Chinese culture believes that evil spirits can be kept away by means of loud music.

► The family members of the deceased wear mourning clothes. The children and the sons/daughters-in-law of the deceased wear black and white colors, while the grandchildren wear a blue-colored attire.

► The other mourners are allowed to wear any shades, except the bright and bold ones, and it is also customary for them to wear a cloth band on their arms that signifies that they are mourning the death of their loved one.

► The arm on which the band is worn depends on the gender of the deceased. If the deceased is a woman, the band is worn on the right sleeve, and vice versa.

► More often than not, professional mourners are also hired; however, this is not mandatory, and depends largely on the financial status of the grieving family.

► The coffin, in which the corpse is laid, is kept in a hearse decorated with funerary wreaths and flowers.

► The children of the deceased walk in the front row of the procession, carrying a large portrait of their mother/father. They are followed by other family members and guests.

► Whether the deceased is cremated or buried, depends on the personal preference of the deceased himself/herself and/or his/her family. Both these practices prevail in the traditional Chinese culture, and both are equally acceptable.

It is worth noting that in Chinese culture, the funeral customs and rites vary from person to person, depending on the social status of the deceased and/or also his/her position in the family. They also depend on the age, marital status, and the manner in which the person died. So, while you prepare yourself to attend a traditional Chinese funeral ceremony, ensure that you have considered all these things so that you can follow the appropriate etiquette once you get there.
Complete Article HERE!

December 1, 2014

Life is but a dream – 12/01/14

What does “life is but a dream” mean?

Sometimes when something unbelievable happens, it’s so outrageous (usually in a good way) that it seems like you’re in a dream.

Life is what you make of it. So if you dare to dream, envision what you want it to be – it becomes your reality. It goes right along with the saying “You can be anything you want to be…”

In dreams anything is possible, impossible becomes possible. In life there are limitations with unseen forces that work along with our motives to confuse us more on the path to fulfillment. Life is but a dream – nothing is so easy as to dream it and make it happen right that moment without obstacles standing in way.

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November 28, 2014

Arguments against Brittany Maynard’s assisted suicide ignore her point of view on suffering

by Kelly Stewart

Brittany Maynard died earlier this month.

Diagnosed with incurable brain cancer at 29 and given six months to live, Maynard relocated to Oregon to take advantage of the state’s death with dignity law. The law permits “mentally competent, terminally ill patients with a prognosis of six months or less to live” to access, as Maynard describes it, “the medical practice of aid in dying.”

Maynard became an advocate and public face for the death with dignity movement. In an opinion piece for CNN and a widely viewed video, she describes the severity of her physical and emotional suffering, the comfort of knowing she can “end [her] dying process if it becomes unbearable,” and the importance of making that option available to people without the “flexibility, resources and time” that allowed her and her husband to relocate.

“Consistent life” Catholics have been some of Maynard’s most fervent critics. Pope Francis didn’t mention her by name but denounced the “false sense of compassion” that motivates death with dignity and abortion rights laws. Various other Catholic responses have characterized her death as evidence of the cheapening of human life; an act that denies the dying person’s responsibility to others; an affront to the dignity of dying people; or even a “slippery slope” that leads to eugenics and genocide. And consistently, Maynard’s Catholic and other Christian critics have appealed to the redemptive value of suffering.

Michael Sean Winters’ blog post “Brittany Maynard’s Suffering” is representative. He writes: “Christians must reclaim the ability to embrace suffering.” He offers a few caveats: We shouldn’t be masochists, and we should work to alleviate some forms of suffering, especially “those varieties of suffering in which we are complicit.” Still, he insists, “in the face of some experiences of suffering, we must never lose sight of the need to embrace it.”

For Winters, Maynard’s decision is fundamentally about a refusal to embrace suffering as meaningful — and, therefore, a refusal to acknowledge human finitude, vulnerability, and radical dependence on God. He characterizes this as a U.S. cultural as well as a generational problem. Children and young adults today, he suggests, have been sheltered from the raw experiences of pain and loss that accustomed earlier generations to the inevitability of suffering and instilled respect for its spiritual value.

Cathy Lynn Grossman’s blog post for Religion News Service “Does Suffering Have Spiritual Meaning?” takes a similar approach. Like Winters, Grossman frames the death with dignity question in terms of a spiritual vs. secular divide. The religious voices she includes in her article all oppose right-to-die laws: a Baptist woman whose teenage daughter has brain cancer, Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II, and Jesuit Fr. Kevin Fitzgerald.

“When can we say that the potential to grow or overcome or bear that suffering, that potential which made that suffering meaningful, is gone forever?” she quotes Fitzgerald as saying. “Why do we think someone is enlightened enough to know their suffering is not redemptive?”

Grossman does not, however, spend much time on Maynard’s moral reasoning. Instead, she frames Maynard’s decision as a secular, perhaps youthful abandonment of serious reflection on suffering.

“Her choice to die,” Grossman writes, “may reinforce to many — particularly religiously-disengaged millennials — that spiritual meaning, like suffering, is up to you.”

Readings these responses, I have been struck by how tenaciously Maynard’s critics avoid engaging her actual arguments and how little detail they offer in support of their own positions.

They write moving personal reflections on the deaths of loved ones. They offer general tributes to the relationship between love and vulnerability and suffering. They incorporate a few laments about secularism and young adults. But their discussions of Maynard, the death with dignity movement, and even their own theologies of suffering seem to remain at a general level.

That’s a problem, because when we discuss a concept whose history is as ugly as that of “redemptive suffering,” it is irresponsible to be vague. When we discuss the Christian meaning of suffering, it is irresponsible to ignore decades of feminist, womanist, and postcolonial work on the problems with its valorization in Christian theology. And when an actual suffering and dying person tells us, “This is more than I can bear,” it is irresponsible and cruel to respond that she couldn’t possibly know that.

Before she died on Nov. 1, Brittany Maynard made a case for the right of terminally ill people to end their suffering quickly. She argued that no one else could say when her suffering became intolerable, when her life became unlivable, when her dignity was diminished, or how she was to face her painful and untimely death.

If you read her arguments, listen carefully to her experiences of illness, and maintain — from a position of relative health and safety — that Maynard should nonetheless have embraced her suffering as a redemptive experience, please be careful, suspicious of yourself, and painstakingly detailed in how you make that case.

Under what conditions is suffering redemptive? By what criteria do you distinguish suffering that should be alleviated from suffering that should be embraced? When should your theology of suffering be imposed on people who do not understand their suffering as redemptive? What are the consequences of doing that? What are the consequences of not doing that? Is the embrace of suffering as “countercultural” for others as it is for you? And how do you know you’re right?

These sorts of questions should guide discussions of Brittany Maynard’s death and activism. And they should make us very cautious about finding grace in someone else’s suffering.

Complete Article HERE!

November 26, 2014November 26, 2014

Hump Day Humor

And Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

November 24, 2014

The Hanging Coffin

First appearing during the Spring and Autumn Period (722-481BC), hanging coffin is a unique funeral and sacrifice custom of the minority groups in southern China. People put the bodies of their ancestors into wooden coffins that were later placed in caves of precipitous cliffsides.

Most coffins were made with one whole piece of wood into various shapes. It was said that the hanging coffins could prevent bodies from being taken by beasts and also bless the soul eternally.

Famous Hanging Coffin Sites :

While hanging coffins can be found in many places in China, the strange thing is all of them only existed for a certain period in history. Those in Wuyi Mountain are the first appear in China, as early as in the Zhou Dynasty (1027-777BC) while those in Gongxian County of Southwest china’s Sichuan province are the most recent, which also marked the end of the hanging coffin custom.

Hanging Coffins of Bo People in Gongxian, Sichuan Provinve
Hanging Coffins of Guyue People in Dragon Tiger Mountain
Hanging Coffins of Guyue People in Wuyi Mountain

The mystery of hanging coffins

Why did the ancient people bury the dead in hanging coffins?

According to historical records, the Bo people believed “Coffins set high are considered auspicious. The higher they are the more propitious for the dead”. Also, after experiencing years of wars and natural disasters, the Bo people dreamed of going somewhere peaceful and quiet after their death. That is why they chose to rest their bodies on the precipices with the mountains and rivers around, all peaceful, beautiful and quiet. The Guyue people, on the other hand, held a high esteem for high mountains, and believed the higher the hanging coffin was placed; the better they could be protected.

How did the ancient people do it?

So how did the ancient people, including the Bo people and Guyue people, do it? This question once caused heated discussion among experts . Some believe the coffins were lowered down with ropes from the top of the mountain. Some ought the coffins were put in place with wooden stakes inserted into the cliff surface as artificial climbing aids. Others feel that earth ramps were the answer.

Cui Chen, a curator of the Yibin Museum, who examined the three different ways the coffins of the Bo people could have been put in place, has this to say:

“Earth ramps might have been used but experts discount this solution due to the amount of labor required, which would have been difficult in an underpopulated area. A timber scaffold supported on stakes in the cliff might have offered a plausible explanation but years of investigation have failed to find even a single stake hole. On balance the third option of lowering the coffins on ropes from above had always seemed feasible and now cultural specialists have found the telltale marks of the ropes which were used all these years ago. And so this part of the mystery of the hanging coffins has now been resolved.”
During the later years of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the imperial army cruelly oppressed the ethnic minority peoples of Southwestern China Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces. In particular, the Duzhangman and Bo Peoples fell victims of massacre. To escape their oppression, the Bo migrated to new locations. They hid their real names and assimilated with other ethnic groups. Like their culture they have disappeared but their descendents are still here for they are a part of us.
How the Guyue people hung the coffins onto the Fairy-water Rocks of Longhushan (Dragon TigerMountain) remains a mystery, since the hanging coffins are so dangerously located. Over the years, it has taken on a mystic air. Some people say the coffins were hung up with the aid from the immortals in the heaven, while others say there are invaluable treasures within the caves. Longhushan Administration Bureau once offered a 300,000 yuan ($US 36298) reward for solving the mystery, but so far no one has won the reward.

November 20, 2014

Right-to-die advocate’s video released after death

By Gosia Wozniacka

Nearly three weeks after her death, on what would have been her 30th birthday, Brittany Maynard returned to the national spotlight on Wednesday in a video (see below) in which she urges states to pass laws allowing terminally ill people to end their lives on their own terms.

The video, made in August, was released by an advocacy group that worked with Maynard during the last months of her life in a campaign that prompted a national debate about allowing terminally ill people to hasten their deaths.

The group, Compassion & Choices, is hoping that the practice will be expanded beyond the five that already allow it: Oregon, Washington, Montana, Vermont and New Mexico. But even though Maynard’s story received national attention, the groundswell of support on a legislative level for laws like Oregon’s has yet to materialize.

Compassion & Choices held a conference call with journalists on Wednesday, hoping to build on the momentum generated for the movement while Maynard was alive. After the news conference, the organization released a video that is partly narrated by Maynard.

In the video, Maynard says: “I hope for the sake of other American citizens … that I’m speaking to that I’ve never met, that I’ll never meet, that this choice be extended to you.”

The video includes photographs of Maynard before her illness. It also features the voices of other terminally ill patients and their family members.

In the conference call, Compassion & Choices officials said legislators in about a dozen states plan to introduce right-to-die laws next year.

Also on the call were legislators from Pennsylvania and Wyoming.

Rep. Mark Rozzi, a Pennsylvania Democrat whose 63-year-old father died of the same type of brain cancer as Maynard, said the young woman’s campaign and his family’s situation made it apparent why such bills are needed.

“I had to watch my father die of cancer… It was the most gut-wrenching experience our family and he had to endure,” Rozzi said. “He would always tell me this is not the way he wanted to live.”

A “death-with-dignity” bill was introduced in Pennsylvania last month. Rozzi conceded that it has been difficult getting bills out of the judiciary committee when they are opposed by the state’s Catholic leadership.

Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, a Wyoming Republican, said he plans to introduce such legislation in his state.

Oregon was the first state to allow terminally ill patients to die using lethal medications prescribed by a doctor. Maynard moved from California to Oregon to make use of the Oregon law.

The New Jersey Assembly passed a bill last week that would allow physicians to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients, with some legislators citing Maynard’s story as a deciding factor in their vote. But Republican Gov. Chris Christie has said he opposes the measure.

In California, the West Hollywood City Council this week passed a resolution that urges the Los Angeles County District Attorney to not prosecute physicians and family members who offer aid in dying to the terminally ill. But the state has no current bills or ballot measures on the issue.

Some religious groups and social conservatives, including a Vatican official and the American Life League, have heavily criticized Maynard’s decision. Pope Francis denounced the right-to-die movement Saturday, saying the practice is a sin against God and creation and provides a “false sense of compassion.” He didn’t refer specifically to Maynard’s case.

Compassion & Choices said its website has had more than 5 million unique visitors during the past month, while Maynard’s two previous videos have been viewed more than 13 million times on YouTube alone.

“I sense immense momentum right now,” said Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices. “Brittany Maynard is a new voice for a new generation of activists … she devoted her precious energy to help ensure other dying Americans would have a choice.”

Coombs Lee co-authored Oregon’s Death with Dignity law in 1993. She told KATU, “Brittany Maynard was 10 years old then. It’s an honor to carry on her legacy. It’s been 20 years of preparation for a witness like Brittany Maynard — to get this movement where it needs to be.”

Compassion and Choices said there may be more videos released. Maynard recorded countless hours of video in preparation for her death, and the movement she wished for.

A vigil to mark Maynard’s birthday is planned Wednesday night at the First Unitarian Church in downtown Portland. It begins at 6 p.m.
Complete Article HERE!