mistercrayon wrote:Hindu funerals are weird, especially for a kid and the language is couched in euphemism. My grandfather (dad side) died when I was about 4. We spent all of the time after the passing at my grandma's house (his house too) as the tradition is to pray a lot and so on. Anyway my dad or uncle said for the day of the funeral my grandfather was coming back home. I thought this was delightful. In truth, the coffin is brought to the house (this is an amalgam of western tradition and indian tradition as I'm pretty certain that there is no coffin tradition in india) and people do some ceremony and more prayers. It was a pretty stark image as the coffin is also open. There's a look of serenity but also a kind of matteness about the person. The mouths are also open, I don't know if this is ceremonial or a natural occurence. Afterwards the coffin was taken to a crematorium which is a further amalgam as indian funerals I think are traditionally open fires. I didn't actually go to a cremation I think until my grandma passed away but that wasn't until I was much older. The whole thing is a weird feeling. I feel I should be sadder but some of the ceremonial stuff is difficult to fathom for me. Also most of the deaths have occurred when people have been old and their kids have done okay in their lives. For me it's difficult to be too sad in these situations. I mean the best we can hope for in life is a decent innings and a metric of success is getting your family to a place where it's okay? so I don't know it seems difficult to begrudge a rest if that makes sense. (most of the time the people were old and fairly ill, as is normal, so I think the feeling of keeping them alive longer is countered by only increasing their suffering which is totally unfair). Hinduism aslo believes in reincarnation and so on. It's an odd belief but has some scientific merit (i.e. the soul moves on but has no memory of past lives, which is basically the atoms moving from animal to animal or whatever). It also feels like to me that the actual death won't be the part where it's truly sad, but when normal things happen but have a giant gap. Deaths have this raw emotion that is unusual and hot so it can cloud a lot of pain. But those moments, unguarded, when you expect and it's not filled... those I think will be the biggest blows for me.
Thanks.Liveinadive wrote:Sorry to hear that Panty. Hope your lot are ok.
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