death

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 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:

"We, the hidden children of the Goddess, know that there is not to fear in thy embrace, which none escape; that when we step into thy darkness, as all must, it is but to step again into the light. Therefore, in love, and without fear, we commend to thee our sister. Take her, guard her, guide her; admit her to the peace of the Summerlands, which stand between life and life.
And know, as thou knoweth all things, that our love goes with her."

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:

                 "Yet doth my heart yearn after thee and mine eyes desire thee.
                                Come to her who loves thee, who loves thee!
                             Come to thy sister, come to thy wife, to thy wife...
                                         Come to the wife of thy house.
                  am thy sister by the same mother thou shalt not be far from me.
     Gods and men have turned their faces toward thee and weep for thee together...
I call after thee and weep... yet am I thy sister, whom thou didst love on earth...
                                          My brother. . . my brother. . ."