The Cost of Keeping Death at a Distance

Yesterday Henry and I drove with a couple friends to the funeral of a dear family friend, Daniel Palomino. I posted photos from the day when we returned home last night. As funerals go, this was certainly a special one, and Henry seemed to take it in stride. If you look through the pictures from yesterday and read the back story, you will see it was a very hands on celebration of Daniel’s remarkable life. Before Daniel died Henry was aware of his long and difficult battle with cancer, and as it progressed, we would share an appropriate amount of details. So when Daniel passed and I asked Henry if he wanted to come along, there was no hesitation about going. The majority of the time was spent outdoors in a beautiful wooded setting and with the casualness that was so indicitive of the Dans, Henry was able to ask questions, walk around freely and be a part of the send off in a very special manner.

In modern American society, I think that we’ve really done a disservice to ourselves by taking the experience of death and funerals away from the intimacy of the family, and putting so much of that in the hands of the mortuary. I remember when a friend described the death of his father in another country. He told me about the family washing his father’s body, annointing him with oil and wrapping him in a shroud for burial. I couldn’t think of a more loving and intimate final expression of love for someone. Not unlike the imagery of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. I know death is hard, scarey and painful and a reminder of our own mortality. But we lose something when we distance ourselves so much.

I recall when my own mom died suddenly, and my sister Randi and I went to see her in the local funeral home. She warned me before we walked in, that the set up of the room meant that the moment we walked in, we would see her. There was no vestibule to act as a buffer zone. No place to draw in a breath before seeing her. We tentatively walked in, and there she was in a lovely paisley dress I had just bought for her. I saw my sister’s brow furrow a bit, and immediately she pulled out her makeup bag, and fished around for her own lipstick and rouge. I recall her ease and calmness as she spent a few loving moments reapplying and adjusting mom’s makeup so that she looked a bit more like the mom we all remembered. It was a sweet gesture of familiarity that put me at ease about the whole horrible situation.

So on Tuesday, after a brief service where we reminsced about our friend. Daniel’s brothers, father and partner, Dan, pulled and pushed the simple wagon, festooned with branches, daffodils and hyacinth down a narrow dirt path into the woods. We quietly followed to the plot which had been hand dug the day before by the landowners with the help of Dan. As we gathered around the family and said our goodbyes, I felt Henry pulling me closer to the front, seeking a better view, not wanting to miss out on what we were bearing witness to. We threw a bit of Califonia dirt over Daniel’s beautiful wicker casket, a few daffodils and the ashes of his former pets. We watched as shovels were picked up and Dan and Daniel’s brothers began filling in the hole. A few other men grabbed shovels to help and suddenly Henry went up to Dan and shyly asked if he could help too. In that moment Henry needed to take part in a real way to honor Daniel. The raw instinct of that little boy was really profound to me. He knew he was helping bury his friend and it was important to him that we remain to complete the job. Like all of us, Henry’s understanding of death is only what our hearts and brains have the capacity to take in. But I could not have been more proud of him as he worked side by side with those who loved Daniel. When he finished, I watched as Daniel’s elderly father pulled Henry close, wrapped his arms around him and in broken English thanked him for what he had done. This dad could not have been any prouder.