Author: cwirka

Death doula. Amateur at everything.

Final Ceremonies – Rites that are left

~ cwirka

I wrote a little piece for Soul Artist Journal about rites & rituals showing up in death work and how they impact our view of time. And there’s some other good writing from others in the field! You should definitely check it out. My piece is also below:

Carl is frail, forgetful and spirited. Carl is 83 years old, based on best available sources. And Carl will admit that while he is a source, he might not always be the best available. Carl is dying. That’s why I know him. I’m a regular visitor to the hospice where he’s residing.

First thing I noticed, Carl smells good. Good enough to say as much upon first meeting him.

“You smell good.”

“It’s an uphill battle in this place.”

And so Carl and I become friends.

Carl is not the type to seek out a death doula. But Carl can gab. I lost entire mornings chatting with Carl, only noticing the time when the less-than-enchanting aroma of lunch started to creep around corners, only further proving Carl’s point.

According to Carl, he’s smelled nice for longer than anyone still on this earth has known him. Beginning in his twenties, every morning, after a shower, he would spritz a bit of a Vetiver cologne on his wrists and throat. The scent is deeply ingrained in his memory – his nose habituates to it so quickly he often finds himself asking others if he’s wearing any. The smell is nice and all, but it’s the ritual that keeps him returning to it. Carl feels like himself in the moment of applying cologne.

One of the beautiful things about rituals is their ability to play with time by making certain behaviors timeless. A sip of coffee in your oldest mug before anyone else is awake. A weekly yoga session at your regular studio. A monthly card game with friends. A yearly autumn camping trip. Participating in a ritual is not an effort to “go back” to an earlier experience, but instead a chance to be in a moment that is outside of time.

When Carl applies cologne, he’s not an 83 year old man in a hospice. He’s also not a fresh faced twenty-something just out of university. He’s not a man in his early forties taking a moment before driving his daughter to soccer, or a man in his sixties, working from home, but dressed in a tie anyway. He’s Carl. An eternal Vetiver spritzer in a ritual that transcends age. All versions of Carl who have put on Vetiver are blurred together. And, for a moment, 83 year old Carl is ageless.

The next time I see Carl, there are some Tiki mugs on his bedside table, a beach ball in the corner of the room, and sunglasses missing a lens atop the TV. He assures me that he can’t see well enough to care whether the lenses are there. How very “chill” of him.

Some of Carl’s children and grandkids visited this past weekend. It was a family anniversary of some sort, but mostly an excuse to have a little party while Carl still had a little party in him. A longtime Beach Boys fan, his grandkids really leaned into the “beach” part. Despite the vibe being more Jimmy Buffet than Brian Wilson, he was rapturous about the summer  shindig.

“My daughter was smart enough to bring sunscreen!”

I glanced up at the overhead lighting and then over at a palm tree cutout taped to the wall. Carl needn’t be worried about UV rays, but try finding a quicker trip to the hot, sticky beach than the smell of zinc/coconut/cocoa butter. No need to apply, just breathe in.

One last trip to the beach. A ceremony soundtracked by God Only Knows. And a new highlight in the life of an 83-year-old.

A ceremony isn’t just an occurrence, it is also a transition. Things are different going forward. There are no more beach days for Carl. A final rite of good vibrations.

Getting married, becoming an adult, joining a group – there are rites involved for each. By going through the ceremony you are signifying you have changed. You can’t go back to being a child. You can’t wake up having not gotten married.

If we see ritual as an opportunity to briefly pull ourselves “out of time”, rites and ceremonies can do the opposite. We say goodbye to the boy or girl we’ve known while welcoming the man or woman they’ve become. We say farewell to two lovers and eagerly welcome a newly wedded couple.

Often a person’s final ceremony take place after death, as a service for the grieving. But to have the chance, as Carl did, to mark an ending, a change, a transition – that is powerful. It allows both the dying and their loved ones the opportunity to say, “This is special. Things can’t be the same going forward. But this experience is part of us forever.”

A rite is an eclipse – a unique, singular and rare date. A ritual is the light of the sun – consistent, and never most notable thing about a day. Both can enrich our lives immeasurably.

Rites and rituals are ways for us to take some control of time. It will keep moving forward, but we can adjust our relationship to it. Rites can make time feel unique and rituals can make it disappear entirely. As complimentary forces, they punctuate notable times while pointing at eternity.

So in the calendar of life we can see those solar events, those days of transition. They stand out starkly from the rest. While at the same time, the sun keeps rising, a little earlier, a little later, but the same. The rite provides a jolt of energy, the ritual provides a pulse. Both keep us in touch with who we are.

The official Death Becomes You gift guide!

~ cwirka
The last Noel

This isn’t a death doula gift guide or anything like that. I support any effort to promote the de-stigmatizing death, but I have no fashion tips or art suggestions or quirky knick-knacks to have around your place to celebrate death in our lives. Sorry.

Honestly – don’t buy new stuff. If you can, give people something you make or has meaning to you. Part of promoting a good death (and a good life) means re-framing priorities. Capitalism is not helping.

But perhaps you’re dead set on giving a unique gift.

May I suggest a brick?

Get your friends and loved ones a brick! Get one for yourself, even!

I got a brick

Benefits of a Brick

  • Each one is unique. None of the flawlessly dull or dully flawless elements of modern tech.
  • Never needs charging.
  • No updates. Depending on how you plan on using it, a “vintage” brick is just as effective as a brand new one.
  • No subscriptions or plans to sign up for.
  • And, if you’re like me, you probably only need one. No need to replenish!

Now, it should be noted, I bought myself a higher-priced brick, but I also frame it as purchasing property and making an investment in the future. For now the brick is a nice/odd addition to the apartment. When I’ve died, 23 grams of cremated me goes into the hole in the middle of the brick, gets fired up, and the brick will then be part of the People’s Pyramid. It’s fun and weird and silly and creative. I highly recommend reading more about it.

Artist’s Rendition of the People’s Pyramid

I’ve been thinking about bricks and gifts and building materials and death. A few years back I was working at a Minoan archeological site on a tiny Greek island called Mochlos. It was not a season for excavation, instead the focus was on shoring up these exposed walls. As it turns out, being buried makes for good protection from the elements; now that the walls are dug up, effort has to be put in to ensure they stay up. So, there I was, sweating in the sun somewhere in the Aegean, doing masonry work on walls that were first put up 5,000 years ago. Working with the same ancient bricks, with the same simple goal of wall building. Measured in bricks, the past isn’t so far away.

Working with stones – “nature’s bricks“

Sometimes it’s good to view time from a less-human perspective, or think about time in lifetimes that aren’t roughly 80 earth years. To think of time in tree-lives or brick-lives. Sometimes using precise measuring terms doesn’t quite get across how time feels.

You could point at a wall from an ancient (or even not so ancient) site and say, “these bricks have been around for hundreds or thousands of years, these bricks have seen countless events and leaders, and still they stand!“

Well, of course “still they stand!” It’s what bricks do. It’s why we still use them. Honestly, it’s the least remarkable thing about bricks. If a building stops standing, it’s rarely because the bricks stopped working.

Enjoy a simple brick as a memorial. It’s a (very) long term investment.

You can’t spell cemETERy without TREE.

~ cwirka

Rarely are human edifices and nature so aligned as a park cemetery. It’s telling that humans are most harmonious with nature when dead. Seems kinda obvious now that I’ve written it out.

ANYWAY – I love trees in cemeteries. Partly because they are beautiful. They really set the mood. But I also love what trees represent. And what they can represent.

The nice thing about cemetery trees as symbols is that they always “work”. If you were walking through a graveyard and see a headstone with the symbol of an upside-down torch, you’d know it had specific meaning. What that meaning is – likely no idea. And that symbolism can be lost to time. In a few thousand years archaeologists are going to think, “these people didn’t understand fire AT ALL – or they’re magic!” (Probably not, but still the specific meaning may be lost without taking it to “ancient aliens created the pyramids” level of stupidity)

Trees are beyond this. A tree as a symbol of life and growth seems obvious enough. But much more importantly – trees don’t need to be symbols to be valuable. Trees are successful just by being trees. Was it put there deliberately? By chance? (You never get a carving of a skull with wings by chance)

The tree is inextricably tied to seasons. Being part of the cycle of life and death, trees serve as a simple reminder of our place in time and nature. 

Do I have any favorite cemetery trees? Why thank you for asking.

The Yew Tree

Look, a lot of tree species are in the running for best cemetery tree, the yew comes up often. And why not? They can live hundreds of years, outlasting many generations and remaining a living symbol for a long time. Its association with life and death makes sense in a way – the yew is exceptionally toxic and dangerous if humans consume it, yet the Japanese and Native Americans both used the yew for healing properties. And a slightly darker connection to death – the yew went nearly extinct in parts of England thanks to the Hundred Years War – the English’s advantage often attributed to their long bows, made out of yew. Guns came along and saved the yew. Thanks guns (find the silver linings)! (1)(2)

Death Becomes Yew

The Hardy Tree

Sadly, this tree has recently fallen. But a truly special and strange graveyard tree. Thomas Hardy, poet and novelist, quite good, I’d say, was a young man at an architecture firm that had to move some graves at St. Pancras Old Church in London. Make way for the rapidly expanding underground transit! 1860’s – What a time to be alive. Bodies were exhumed and moved; Mr. Hardy saw it fit to arrange the leftover headstones in a nice little ring around this ash tree. And it grew in and around the graves until 2022, when the tree succumbed to a fungus that had infected it in 2014. Fittingly, the caretakers knew the end was coming, just not exactly when, so the tree was getting in-home hospice care. (3)

Roger William’s Apple Tree

More commonly known as The Apple Tree that Ate Roger Williams, but that’s too sensationalistic for me. The founder of Rhode Island was originally given a less than dignified burial in an unnotable and undernoted grave.  It was 200 years later, in 1860 (apparently the heyday for cemetery tree news), when they dug ol’ Roge up, only to find a sizable root had grown right through him – even splitting at the legs. And an apple tree no less! Cemeteries, apple trees, founder mythology – it’s all very New England. (4)

Any good tree/grave combo

See picture. The symbolism is bursting out…

Tree graves

One of the more curious grave types is the tree grave. Thick with symbolism – sometimes shaped as a cross, or a series of logs for mom, dad, etc., or sometimes just a stump to signify too short a life. There’s also the unavoidable symbol of carving a living thing out of rock to memorialize the dead while surrounded by living versions of the carving. Weird. A lot of the tree carving can be attributed to Woodmen of the World, an organization founded to provide life insurance to rural families. If you were game for getting a grave that looks like a stump, they’d chip in. Their symbolism is inspired from the idea of pioneers clearing out the woods to provide for their families, which is fine, but totally lost on everyone today. (5)

Has anyone used petrified wood as a gravestone? I think that’s a great idea. Maybe carve it into a life-like tree? Wood that became stone and has existed for millions of years carved back into a tree to memorialize a death – can you have too much symbolism?

Auld Lang Syne and Farewells as old as Time

~ cwirka
Chromolithographic print from 1905 titled “Auld Lang Syne”

While the flipping of the calendar year is often met with celebration, it is typically done while looking at hope and dreams of the future. And that makes sense – the past few years have been weird and rough for… (searches the internet) huh – everyone! Surviving another year inevitably feels like a victory. Even if we’re not sure what we’re looking forward to, we can at least say we got through what’s now behind us. Which is the standard order of things.

Because of that, there isn’t much celebratory “farewell” within our end of year bashes. But, in a lovely example of… irony? No. Self-reference? No. Circular something or other? Whatever… In a lovely example of being an example of itself, Auld Lang Syne, THE New Year song, is sung enthusiastically about remembering the good times and people that got us here. I’m not the nostalgic sort, but it’s great to have a very old song about remembering the past being used to remember the past. Was Auld Lang Syne ever a new song? It works so well as a farewell song because we haven’t said farewell to IT. How many people have sung the half-remember and hazily-understood lyrics and thought of a loved one? And now we all share the memory of using the very same song to connect with our very singular pasts.

And there’s a hand my trusty friend!

And give me a hand o’ thine!

And we’ll take a right good-will draught,

for auld lang syne.

(Standard English remix of the Robert Burns cover of Auld Lang Syne)

To be fair, it’s also a drinking song. That’s why we sing it. And perhaps the lyrics aim to fight the memory damage wrought by drinking.

It’s not an uncommon hear the song at graduations, weddings, and (obviously) funerals. It looks backwards, not with longing and regret, but with love and appreciation. A perfect way to enjoy a first/last moment of the year; the past celebrated, the present enjoyed, and the future unconsidered. And when you cast your mind back to times worthy of recollection, think of all the people in the past centuries who you’ve now shared a moment with. For auld lang sine.