Grieving Rituals

I was at a funeral today for a friend of mine. He was in his late forties, not even as old as me. He was a real bush man. He always got lots of huckleberries and wild asparagus and saskatoons. He grew a big garden. He canned and made lots of pickles. He hunted and fished, he always got a moose and a couple of deer every year. He was generous. He was always helping someone, dropping off food from his garden, meat from his freezer, firewood for people.
He helped the old folks, he would take old timers out hunting and fishing so they could remember how it was when they were younger. He was one of those people that did so much you would think there must have been three of him to be able to do all that.
He was a pretty grizzly character. Usually dirty from work. Cracked, calloused hands with dirt permanently in the cracks of his skin. Always about four days worth of beard and uncombed hair that kind of stuck out all over the place. A lot of people would think he was pretty scary.

He cut and sold firewood for a living. He was always up and out in the bush by first light. He got killed last week cutting wood. He was cutting a snag and the top broke out as the tree was falling. It came straight down on him and killed him.

There was probably 500 people at his funeral. It’s amazing to think of how many people he touched and helped out in little ways. So many people got up and told about him stopping by with a bag of moose meat or a couple of frozen salmon, or a box of vegies from his garden, or coming home to a pile of wood in their driveway. The funeral was beautiful, all those people, families, young moms with babies, lots of elders who had to be helped to walk. Literally hundreds of people who will miss him.

He wasn’t big on philosophy, not much for politics either. He just lived the best way he knew how. No judgement of people. He’d been through plenty himself. I’m so glad to have known him I wish I could have spent more time with him.

good topic. i feel that i have gone through what i have heard Jon Young call the wall of grief(just coming out of in the last few months). only i never really grieved (maybe that’s why it took so dang long to get trough). For me it was going through the rewilding process from 19 to 28. Then at 28 i started going the other way wild to domestic. I could feel vital parts of wildness being smothered. I didn’t have a clue on how to raise 2 teens and live wild. i can remember going to work and crying on the inside.
I could literally feel the western system inside my body attacking the wildness.
I was one of those that didnt cry after the age of 15 or so. so i sure wasnt going to show this western system my weakness.
anyway im 37 now and can look at rewilding again without the terrible pain of lose i have felt for so long every time i revisited wildness. I realy hurt when i would go outside and feel a little wildness and be reminded of it.
i think some kinda ritual or something would have helped me faster. The problem is i am really shy and for a shy person that already doesnt like to be looked at to be the center of some ritual i wouldnt have let it happen anyway. dang ran outta time to write. so i cant edit this hope it isnt to choppy writing
Garth

Yah, ritual requires trust, esp grieving rituals, so any rituals to help someone through rewilding require a community of rewilders, or at least, a community committed to helping you, as a member. One problem I’ve seen over & over is that we’re all still very much on the bleeding edge, most of us don’t have a trustworthy community to develop a ritual like that.

Having said that, I can say from experience that solo rituals may help, but ymmv.

Woah. I must have missed that “Keening” thing. That’s friggin rad. I’ve been toying in my mind with the idea of doing a grieving ritual with some friends. I’d like to read a bit more about it and maybe attend a couple before doing one myself. I have a harder and harder time opening up with people these days. Maybe because all of the groups are compartmentalized. It’s like, Primitive skills friends over there, spiritual friends over here, family up there, grief ritual strangers over there… Why can’t there be some cohesiveness between the whole? Isn’t that real rewilding? Real relationships? Argh!

Sounds like a good man, may he be in peace.

My friend Emily (AKA Penny Scout) used to talk about healing rituals she had read about in which people dug holes and threw up into them.

So lately… I’ve been have a craving (for lack of a better term?) to do this. Like… When I think about it. I imagine digging the hole. What it will represent. I feel my body giving into it and emptying my grief into it. I keep thinking about it. Martin Prechtel talks about weeping into a hole. I think I may make time for it and try it out. I’ll get back to you on what happens.

Anyone else have a ritual like this they think about? One that they feel drawn to in a bizarre kind of way?

Peter, I’m curious whether you’ve tried weeping into a hole.

God I haven’t yet. I really want to. But there is still a fear of it being weird or people watching. I may go on a solo trek to the molalla corridor or Joyce lake and do it when I know there will be no one but the trees and bears watching me.

I gave it a go last night in my front garden. It felt good, not weird, and my cat stood there alongside me, which was sweet. So now I have a little crying spot. (Though honestly more snot than tears ended up in the hole…)

There have only been a few times in my adult life that Grief has became so utterly uncontainable that I have allowed myself to howl or keen a bit of it out, before sucking all the emotion back inside of me for fear of being heard. It would be nice to be able to release it freely sometime. A secluded hole sounds like a good place, but even a sound-proof room would be handy sometimes.

In Fanny and Alexander (probably my favorite film ever, and I mean the full-length mini-series version) there’s a short grieving scene. The two children, whose father has just died, wake up to the sound of howling, creep through the dark, and find their mother screaming, alone, and pacing by the father’s body. Screaming seems like a natural cleansing mechanism. Too bad it freaks people out.

People in this culture are so used to compressing grief deep inside themselves, or denying it completely. Hearing anyone else releasing their grief reminds people of their own, and the desperate need for us all to release it, even if unwilling to do so. But this seldom comes up, as this very culture is designed specifically to bury and ignore grief, or desensitize us thoroughly. But I think much of the anger and violence we see around us has its root in desensitization and unprocessed grief.

Hey Mindy,

That’s awesome you gave it a go!

You’ve inspired me. I’m going to try it this week!

One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is what I’m calling “Grief Triggers.” Things I intentionally do to trigger tears. I have a few triggers that I pull out when I need a little extra push, or to just make myself cry for no real reason other than I’m craving it. One is the Last of the Mohicans violin song. That movie is so epically tragic, and the music is so epically tragic, that every time it triggers me to weep.

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Another one is the Pan’s Labyrinth Lullaby. If you haven’t seen Pan’s Labyrinth, you should immediately watch it. (BUT NOT WITH CHILDREN). It is basically my favorite movie and is both a tragedy and simultaneously a story of redemption and reconnection to the spirit world. It’s really hard to explain. Best. Movie. Ever. I saw it in the theater and I was paralyzed with tears and sat their for 15 minutes crying until the turned the lights on and made me leave. lol. It’s hard to explain because the tears are both grief and praise. Happy and sad. It’s the best marriage of those feelings I’ve ever had. I’m tearing up just writing this thinking about it…

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Another cheesy one that I have from my youth is an… Enya song. haha. It’s called Boadicea. I had no idea who or what Boadicea was until recently when I watched the BBC Barbarians about the Celts. She was the leader of a Welsh resistance against the Roman Legions who conquered what is now Wales. The Romans raped her daughters and made her watch. So she retaliated and sacked London. Eventually, the Romans recovered and murdered her and destroyed her army. When I learned this, and that this sorrowful tune is named after her, it makes the song that much more powerful of a trigger for me.

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These are a couple of mine that I use when I need some extra push, or when I want to feel that sorrow.

Does anyone else have any grief triggers? What are they? Songs? Thoughts? Quotes?

I like the idea of grief triggers. Good topic! I don’t usually need triggers because I am a pretty frequent cryer. I cry more often out of overwhelming pleasure than I do from pain, but both kinds feel intertwined. I was triggered the other night by posting about an ebola story I heard on the radio—those tears were pain and pleasure rolled together, because the story was so tragic and also so wonderful. It felt good to take it outside, where it was so dark and still, and dig a little hole by the marigolds to cry into. Sowing little tear-and-snot-seeds.

I never did see Pan’s Labyrinth, but now I will. I hope you all go see the full-length “Fanny and Alexander” too. It’s super rich and hits every emotional target. Fantastic.

I never heard of Boadicea either until I was doing a little reading up on Barbarians last spring. Kind of amazing the stories that get buried and unearthed over time.

Lol, I’m a frequent cryer too, but I also frequently return to the things that make me cry. Haha.

Yes. You should watch Pan’s Labyrinth when the kids are asleep. It’s seriously my favorite movie.

Do you have a copy of Fanny and Alexander that I could borrow?

Also, heads up. There are a few super violent/gruesome scenes in Pan’s Labyrinth. Just a warning.

I do have a copy of Fanny and Alexander. Do you have a copy of Pan’s Labyrinth? Maybe we could swap.

I have a copy on Pan’s Labyrinth. Yes, let’s make a trade!

Anyone read Martin Prechtel’s new book yet? I just got it.

The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise

http://www.amazon.com/The-Smell-Rain-Dust-Praise/dp/1583949399

I still need to get that book. Meanwhile I thought I’d post this poem a friend shared recently, “Thanks” by W. S. Merwin.

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is