"Death leaves you in a dreamy shock."

September 1, 2020 4:10 PM

Pa’s Smile

The first and only time I bought dry ice, the grocery store clerk asked if I was going camping. “No,” I muttered, then managed to stop myself from saying it was for a body. The ice really was to lay my father’s corpse on. An air force colonel who was skeptical of organized religion, my father, who we call Pa, wasn’t sure the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of leaving the dead undisturbed for three days was necessary. But, as he said after being diagnosed with late stage lung cancer, “I’ve gotten so much from Buddhism for good living, I’m not going to pass up their tips for good dying.”

Jamail Yogis reflects on his father's last wishes and final days.
posted by Lexica (8 comments total)

Jamail points out that many other traditions have a 3-day period where a dead body lies before burial which to me ins interesting because in my faith, Sunni Islam, you try to minimize any waiting at all. I remember when my father died it was like a whirlwind and it was really a matter of hours between me arriving at the hospital and finding out he had died, to the body being transported to the mosque where my brother and I washed his body, to his body being buried. It was nice that there was a plan in place, nothing as intentional as Pa's, more of a default procedure that we had to do with people guiding us along the way, so that we could just be on autopilot during it all, because I think it was a good thing for us to be on autopilot so that everything could get done. But at the same time there wasn't a space to just sit with the situation. There was grieving afterwards that went on for a long time but I like the idea of just sitting around the body of my father, talking about him and grieving our loss of him while he was there. Maybe at the end of the three days we'd just know it was time to return him to the earth, OK it's time. I don't know if that would make any difference long term. I can see wisdom in doing it both ways.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:49 PM on September 1, 2020 [29 favorites]

That was nice. Needed a little surge of peace to wash over me tonight.

Thank you.
posted by notsnot at 5:55 PM on September 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

They used to make coffins with ice compartments built into the bottom for use at viewings.

Absolutely beautiful piece. Thanks for posting.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:15 PM on September 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

I've heard these instructions in my quasi-Buddhist training: leave the body alone for three days. Dry ice helps. And there are many more people outside the Buddhist traditions who wash the body and leave it in the parlor (renamed the "living room" in deference to the funeral parlor industry) for visits from friends or family. This tradition has been revived, especially in California.

My plan honors both my Vajrayana tradition and my family tradition: donate my body to a local medical school. From what I understand, it is more than three days of refrigeration before the kids start working on you.
posted by kozad at 7:58 PM on September 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

we were reading The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which Tibetans actually call The Great Liberation for Hearing in the Bardo.

That's a great piece of information there. I've read that book -- tried to, anyways -- might be I need to dip back into it again, at 65 rather than 29.

This man had a wonderful death. The kind I'd like, if I had cancer, just so long as there was good pain management if the cancer is the kind that breaks your bones up.

~~~~~

Most of the deaths of people I've been close to were not good deaths. I think probably my mothers was the best, 92 years old, we spoke the night before she took off; she had breakfast that next morning, started in on this new book, went to lunch, back to her room after lunch and picked up the book for maybe an hour and then she set it down and began an 18 hour glide out the door. She was the matriarch, all of her sibs and all of my fathers sibs were gone, my father was gone, my mother got to be a gateway for information -- and love, too -- from all of my cousins and all of us kids, too. Good pain management or she'd have spent her last 15 years in hell, which she sortof did anyways -- bone on bone in her shoulders, same in one of her hips, etc and etc. But she sure loved the love she got to pass around.

Only *very* late in her life did she finally let up all of her Jesus jive, and once she set that down we got to be friends; she told me her favorite poem --"Oh Captain, My Captain" by Walt Whitman, his grief palpable over Lincoln's murder; it really is one hell of a poem. And I went online and found all kinds of information about the poem, including his handwritten drafts, and mailed that to her. Then told her two of *my* favorite poems ("The Winds of Fate" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox and also "Crossing The Bar" by Tennyson and sent her information about them, also. I can't begin to tell you how strange it was to be her friend, strange but really nice, too.
(I didn't send her "This Be The Verse" by Philip Larkin, and if you read it you'll see why.)

~~~~~

Anyone who gathers behind my passing I'd just want them to listen to "The Great Gig In The Sky" off "Dark Side Of The Moon' record. A nice guy here gave me a copy of that song split into six threads, I removed only the thread of the guy talking, left the piano, guitar, everything else including -- and in particular -- that unbelievably beautiful, haunting vocalization by Clare Torrey. That song made that record, and Clare Torrey made that song, without her vocals it's a great record but not one of the best of my life, which it damn sure is. Just like with so many painters I find it hard to credit that she's just another kid on the bus but that is the case. I don't believe that but I know it's true. But I still don't believe it.

~~~~~

30 years ago, give or take, I picked up the phone one afternoon after getting in from work and someone said my name, and I said "Who is this?" and it was Kathy, first time since we met that I didn't know her voice. She was in Arkansas, some horses-ass doc said she had a cold or some shit, she had a tumor size of a small lemon in her throat, small but bigger by the minute. Her sister called me later that night, or maybe the next day, and told me that this is "IT." and I was going to hook it on up to Mineral Wells and pick up Brenda and together we were headed to see Kathy; Kathy was gone before I could pack a bag. I had them hold the phone to her ear "I love you, Kathy, I love you. You're so goddamn wonderful. I love you, Kathy." And she was gone.

Let me tell you a little bit about how fucking arrogant I am. I was of the belief -- and held hard belief, too -- that a life lived properly, well, you're straight with everyone, and needn't go rushing off to tell someone goodbye. That's one of the most stupid things I've ever held to, perhaps the most stupid -- I'd have give anything to see her, tell her in person, hold her hand, hug her, tell her I love her.

I didn't go to her funeral -- she had five other ex-husbands to show though. Six husbands, dead before 40. She was on the run, always. You want to know how sticky Kathy was; two weeks after her funeral her second ex, who she'd left me for, who had everything to live for, he put a .44 magnum into his mouth and ended the hurt. He'd done what I'd tried for years, he'd found himself another bitty redhead, but she was as stable as Kath was a runner. He truly had everything to live for. But Kathy was sticky as hell; I've had guns in my own mouth behind the foolishness of losing her.

~~~~~

I sure hope that there's something on the other side, hope that there *is* another side. I've got people I'd love to see, a nephew who I really want to kick in the ass behind his dying of alcoholism (I'd kick him but maybe on the other side there nothing hurts; I don't really want to hurt him, though his death truly was like getting hit by a car. I really, really loved that kid, and I still do.) And Kathy, maybe she's not hurting like she did here, maybe she's not running anymore. That'd be the best.
posted by dancestoblue at 11:48 PM on September 1, 2020 [34 favorites]

Great post, Lexica. Comment flagged as fantastic, dancestoblue.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:36 AM on September 2, 2020

What a lovely way to die. The Buddhist I know wishes to be put out on a funeral pyre to let the turkey vultures near his house do their work.
posted by bluesky43 at 8:23 AM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'm a Buddhist, and I've always been afraid of being buried alive, so I've insisted for years that my corpse be left out for at least three days before it's buried/cremated/whatever people decide to do with me. I'm pleased to learn that there's a Buddhist rationale to strengthen my argument.

Incidentally, I got a copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead recently, so this resonates even more. Thanks so much for sharing it.
posted by heteronym at 2:17 PM on September 2, 2020 [3 favorites]