Death and Ceremony

So my grandmother passed April 11th. Death is such an unusual thing. My great grandmother passed away last September and I mourned but I wasn't as close to her. This seems a bit different but at the same time it doesn't. I didn't have the chance to go to my great grandmother's funeral but I was able to fly home and I attended my grandmother's funeral and burial. On the plane ride over I was reading a dream psychology and active imagination book by Robert Johnson and there was a chapter about how important ceremony is. It made me think a lot about ceremony and its importance. The book used the example about modern people (this book was written in the 70s P.S.) who walk away from going to church because they don't believe they need church to enhance their spirituality. It also spoke about how our primitive ancestors put so much emphasis on ceremony because they understood the importance of ceremony and how it is able to bring you closer to spirituality.

The author wrote about how our ancestors were closer to spirituality and their inner selves and how much ceremony plays into that. This all makes me think about symbols and metaphors and how ceremonies cover these things. For example, I really am not a big funeral fan. It doesn't do anything for me. I understand how some people need to gather and talk about the person and mourn together, but it just has never done much for me. I even felt slightly inappropriate because I couldn't help myself from smiling a lot at people at my grandmother's funeral, because I am just used to smiling at people usually. I also wanted to laugh to myself because everything felt so, oh I don't know, movie-ish, it was almost comically depressing. It just really didn't have a lot of meaning to me. Though when I went to the burial, it was completely different. I had more emotion and was able to take that ceremony much more seriously.

Listening to the preacher say the final words over her casket and laying the flower on her casket and watching them lower her into the ground, that meant so much more to me. It was beautiful and I was able to let go and mourn properly. I watched my tears fall onto her casket in the ground as I leaned over to rail to look down at her for the last time. It was all very beautiful and very sad. But the words and their metaphors as well as the metaphor of lowering her body into the ground as a final goodbye was really amazing. I really believe it helped me process her death and allowed me to let go and find my peace with her spirit released into heaven. This week has really made me think more about ceremonies and how important they really are. To take away the importance of a ceremony takes away the higher connection it has to the inner self and the power of the universe. I think I may focus more on ceremonies and look deeper into their metaphors to understand their importance and how it can help my inner self and my connection to spirituality. Though that may be a more difficult task in today's society, but who doesn't enjoy a challenge?