Remember All Souls
Death is one of the last and greatest taboos in our culture. Medically, we've managed to confine it to hospitals and hospices, away from prying eyes. Yet still it lurks in day-to-day life, of course, rearing its ugly head often when we're least expecting it.
It's an ugly prospect in a culture that pursues eternal youth religiously. Our celebrities, instead of ageing like fine wine, grow younger before our very eyes. Joan Collins hardly looks 40, yet she is now over 70. Death is the ultimate infringement of our rights, but if we can't beat it, then we try to ignore it, at least outwardly.
When death does come creeping, we tend to view it through individualistic eyes - even as Christians. Understandably, we're concerned to establish where we (and others) go next; but in focusing on reward and punishment, perhaps we forget about the effects - negative and positive - on those left behind, whether in the family unit or the wider community.
The sociologist Tony Walter, an expert on death and dying, suggests that we can learn from other cultures which acknowledge that our dead live on in different ways through their community.
Jewish people, for example, 'sit shiva' in their living room at home for a week, while friends, relatives and neighbours come to visit to talk about the departed. 'If community means anything, it surely means sharing our memories of the departed,' writes Walter. 'My dad lives on in the different people that my mother, and I, and others have become because of how he lived and how he related to us.'
It's like the little boy who remembers his dead father every time he ties his shoes, because it was his dad who first taught him how.
We all carry with us something of those we have known and loved. We have only managed to come this far along the road of life and faith because they have walked before us.
The church has traditionally created space in which to remember and thank God for these people. After Hallowe'en comes All Saints Day, when we acknowledge the heroes of our faith; then All Souls, next Sunday, when we stop to think of 'ordinary' people who have died, especially in the last year.
The good news is not just that they've gone to a better place, but that they live on, somehow, through us. We'd do very well, in a rootless, youth-centred culture, to remember this, as we remember them.
Brian Draper
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