DEATH, the Undiscovered Country
©Eileen Holland - www.open-sesame.com 
"We are spiritual beings having a human experience."
- Carlos Santana, in an interview

There is no physical immortality. We are all going to die, no matter how adept we are at magic. Death is the final Mystery. It truly is the undiscovered country, as Shakespeare called it. No one knows for sure exactly what happens to us when we die. I suspect the accounts we have from people who have died and been revived are probably accurate: floating above your body, seeing the light and going towards it, down the tunnel. Love survives death. The Goddess brings reunion with those who have gone before. I expect to find my grandfather and his fierce, unconditional love waiting for me at the end of the tunnel.

Reports of floating above your body, of being able to see and hear all that is happening below, are common to near-death experiences. Such stories come to us from all over the world, too numerous to be discounted. If I were in the room with a loved one at the moment of their death, I would look up to say farewell. I would trust my witch-sense to locate their spirit, and trust in our connection to communicate my final message.

Mythology gives us various psychopomps. These Guides of the Soul, gods and beings such as Hermes and Anubis, assist in making the crossing to the Other Side. Some are helpful, some malevolent. Are the myths based on reality? Perhaps.

Several years ago I was hospitalized with optic neuritis. There was a very elderly Oriental woman in the bed next to me, on total life support. My friends kept asking me if I found this upsetting, but I didn't. The soft hiss and whirr of her machines was just white noise, and I could feel her serenity. She had visitors every day, family members who came and sat quietly at her bedside. She was clearly not expected to recover, their vigil a death watch.

I woke very early one morning, before the hospital staff began bustling around. I glanced toward the window, where gray dawn light was filtering through the blinds, and was surprised to see she had a visitor at that hour. Someone was sitting quietly at the foot of her bed. I came more fully awake and realized there was no chair there, just a seated shape. The best that I can describe this being (paraphrasing Eliot) is that it was made of dark light, folded. I sensed it as male. It was shadowy, shaped like a big cloak with the hood pulled around the face. It was not evil and meant her no harm. It was simply waiting for her. The light grew stronger, until I could no longer make him out.

So, what did I see. Were I Christian I would swear I'd seen the Angel of Death with his wings folded around him. With a different belief system I would call him Fetch, the Grim Reaper, or a Spirit Guide. But I am a witch, so I tell you honestly that I am not certain what I saw. Optic neuritis gives you starlight vision, decreasing your normal eyesight but enabling you to see things like auras. I believe I saw an entity. But I was legally blind, with steroids dripping into my arm. I am not certain what I saw, or if we do have company on our final journey.

RITUALS

My family is Catholic. Their death ritual involves a wake, where the body is dressed up, made up, and usually displayed in its coffin. This takes place in a funeral home. They used to wake people for three days, but one evening is now the norm. Friends, relatives and neighbors come to pay their respects to the family. The wake is generally followed by a church funeral, limos all around, and a slow drive, with the headlights on, to a cemetery for burial. A graveside service may be substituted for the formal church ceremony. Family members then gather for a meal in a restaurant.

This ritual gives my family comfort, which I respect but cannot share. I may be a Pagan, but the display of corpses seems barbaric and disrespectful to me. I will not enter the Mummy Room in the Cairo Museum, or view mummies anywhere else for this reason. I do not understand the need to have someone's body present in order to honor them or say farewell. We are just meat once our spirits depart. Burial also seems wrong to me, as a witch. Cremation seems appropriate, more in accord with our environmental sensibilities.

As Neo-Pagans we must design our own death rites, rituals that are meaningful to us as well as giving comfort to those we leave behind. This prayer is from a beautiful ceremony the Farrars give in their book A Witches' Bible:

Ancient texts are good sources for prayers and elegies. This is adapted from an Egyptian prayer, Isis mourning Osiris. It could be done as a Lament for Two Voices:

Creating a funeral rite for a friend or family member is a loving thing to do. Scattering someone's ashes in a place that was sacred to them is a beautiful way to honor their spirit. So is planting a tree in their memory, or making charitable contributions in their name. The ceremony or ritual should be appropriate to the person it honors. I have always told my friend Erika that if she goes before me, I'd put a phone in her coffin. If there was ever someone who could figure out how to make calls from the Other Side, it's Erika.

For myself, I think a jazz funeral with a Viking cremation between sets would be nice. (If it wasn't illegal.) My ashes could go into an urn with this epitaph: "Yes, she rambled." I'd like them scattered anywhere in the North African desert, by whoever would undertake that quest, with these words from Eliot's Ash Wednesday:

ANGER, GRIEF AND MOURNING

Everyone grieves differently. One weeps, one rages, yet another goes numb. One culture requires sackcloth and ashes, extravagant mourning, while another expects a brave face and stoic dignity. All responses to death are legitimate.

A man in the Egyptian village where my husband grew up lost both his sons in a car accident. Distraught, he took his rifle outside and fired it repeatedly at the sky. When asked what he was doing he replied that he was shooting at God. There is nothing wrong with being angry when someone dies. My grandmother was so furious with my grandfather when he died, at 59, that she ripped up all his photographs. This made her feel better. It is normal to feel anger at an untimely or unjust death, and this anger must be acknowledged and dealt with in order that grief may be followed by healing.

I was overseas when my sister suffered a horrific miscarriage of a baby she had desperately wanted. She told me that one of the most difficult parts of that experience was the failure of those who sought to comfort her to acknowledge her anger. The usual platitudes that the child was in a better place, or with God, could not assuage her howling grief.

Howling grief is perhaps the only appropriate response to a child's death. Had I been there, I told her, I would have had her literally write her anger out of her body, even if this had meant scrawling "Fuck God," or "It isn't fair" fifty times. I told her we would have taken that paper out into the yard and buried it, releasing her anger. She says it would have made her feel better.

Closure is needed after a death to complete the grieving and begin the healing. Closure usually takes the form of a funeral, but not always. In the case of a murder victim closure may not come until the killer is caught and convicted. With an accident victim it may not come until the body is recovered, or the cause of the accident determined and corrected. Deaths without closure are the hardest to come to terms with.

We had a cleaning woman named Layla when we lived in Shibin-el-Kom. She was young, beautiful, cheerful, and a hard worker. One or another of her small daughters often accompanied her on cleaning day. I usually gave them whatever we had on hand that a child might like, things like chocolate and oranges, and Layla would protest at what she considered the excessiveness of these small gifts in a poor country. She clearly loved her kids. She had gorgeous, soulful eyes. She came, cleaned the house, and left one day, as usual. She did not try to speak with me about anything other than the cleaning. Absolutely nothing seemed amiss to me at the time, but I was very busy that day.

We learned later that Layla had gone home, locked her girls out of the house, poured gasoline over herself and set herself on fire. The neighbors came running but it was too late. Immolation is a horrible death, as we witches well know. They said it took her over an hour to die. They said a lot of things. But I never learned why, why or even if she did this to herself. I can still see her face, very clearly, see her in her black veil and robe.

Layla's death haunts me because I will never have closure, never learn for sure what happened to her. I can imagine several scenarios that would drive an Egyptian woman to such a desperate act. I can also imagine scenarios in which it was actually murder. But I will never know. She is always with me, in a strange way, because of this.

One year is the traditional period for mourning, with good reason. Anything less than a year seems disrespectful, a longer period excessive. Chronic mourning is selfish. We have to get up and get on with life, no matter how great our losses.