Sometimes the mood strikes me to write and let it flow.... My cousin passed away in April of 2011. He was 21 in college, young and beautiful who died of a terrible car accident too soon. Going to the funeral; I had to prepare myself (at least that’s what my sister warned me), and she was right. I had been to an Ethiopian funeral before; but I was really too young to know what was happening to understand our feudal culture. There is a mourning period, where you pay your respects to the dead and share the sorrow by visiting the family called Lexo. Men and women are seated separately and what usually happens is that there is constant loud sobbing and crying of the guests, and in some cases not for the person whose service we are attending.
Many times in these gatherings there is a long silence until someone walks in and does what feels like in some cases theatrical gestures like holding the forehead with both hands until attention is directed at them and the crying and sobbing begins with the beating of their chests. The pounding was to "hurt the heart"; to cause physical pain showing their grief at the loss. Relatives and close friends would visit the home of the deceased and share in the outward display of grief; bringing food and drink as the grieving family was not expected to cook or do household chores. Clearly I am not doing our funeral culture justice since I am sure there is more to this however, to me that weekend seemed to move in slow motion.
Death touched us each differently and, depending on our personal relationship with Tegene aka Chewknee (my cousin); we each traveled through grief at our own pace. Most unexpected was that our emotional walls dissipated and we spent that day communicating and reaching out to each other in ways we had not experienced before as a family. What came out of my cousin’s death was a bringing together particularly for my aunt and her sisters… a special closeness between those still living.
The strange thing about death is the gnawing distress arising from a sense of feeling our own guilt for the dearly beloved; but the other is how unexpectedly it offers a moment in time filled with tenderness that bonds people further as a family. But I can’t help wonder if this is the most therapeutic occasion for death and dying. And when we all go back to our daily grind; will we stay in touch for a week; a month or two or forget our unified effort where we shared the sorrow with the family.
There are times when I feel that I accept and understand the meaning and value of the transition of the death, and at times when I fight my personal despair. What is the perfect balance of these feelings? And, will we ever be able to achieve the ideal balance to learn the important lessons in this life?
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