Cross-Culture: Deaths and Funerals

I thought it'd be fun to do a mini informative series of posts about cross-cultural differences between America. My hope is that by highlighting an American practice and contrasting it to a Ni-Vanuatu practice, people who read this blog will get to know more about my country of service. As I'm home on home leave, I keep getting struck by little things -- talk of funeral arrangements, baby showers, how kids should/should not behave -- that differ here than in Vanuatu. Sometimes the differences are pretty subtle, but I think it's interesting to consider how we as Americans have our own culture and our own practices that differ from others.

I want to start with something pretty heavy, which is death and funerals.

I'm choosing death and funerals for several reasons. One is that I listened to this absolutely bonkers/great Fresh Air podcast this weekend called A Mortician Talks Openly About Death and Wants You To Too. The mortician in question wants Americans to be more comfortable with death, to have wakes, to accompany their dead family members to the crematory, to eschew embalming, to use degradable shrouds to bury their dead, et cetera. She believes that practices that let living family members come into closer contact with their dead are more natural, healthy, and conducive to a successful grieving process. While I was listening to the podcast, I did think, Wow, actually, when I die at the age of 103, I would like it if my family dressed me in my nicest outfit at home and then bury me quickly in the backyard where they'd see my headstone every day. That would actually be nice. My second thought was -- Wow, absent her discussion of embalming and cremation, she is basically describing Ni-Vanuatu death practices to a T. It's because of this extreme disparity between American and Ni-Vanuatu culture surrounding death and funerals that this just has to be the first post.

In America, people might die at home or in the hospital. A doctor or a coroner has to pronounce the person dead, and if he or she dies at home, the police have to be called. If the dead person wanted to be an organ donor, some tissue might be retrieved. You call family and friends, and have the body taken to a funeral home. Typically the staff of the funeral home embalms the body, puts on makeup to look more natural, and puts the body in clothes selected by the family. Sometimes people hold wakes. Observant Jews will have a funeral very soon after death, but most other people will wait a certain amount of time so that all family can make the arrangements to come. The funeral might have several components. For example, for my grandfather Peter Gritis, there was a Catholic mass and an Elks ceremony in March, followed by a military burial at Arlington in July. We can and do have large gaps between when a person dies and when their body is buried, usually for family convenience but sometimes because of scheduling at a cemetery. And when burials happen, they happen in a coffin, sometimes with trinkets or mementos inside. There are prayers at the graveside, people might throw flowers, or the family might throw handfuls of dirt. Afterwards, usually there's a headstone, although sometimes people use crypts. In the case of cremation, the ashes will either be collected in a box, collected in a box and buried, or scattered somewhere scenic or meaningful. That's how we deal with death.

In Vanuatu, it's different. I'm going to describe death and funerals on Tongariki, but this is the general pattern in small villages in remote areas throughout the country. Most people die at home. This is because when people are very sick, doctors will encourage them to go home to die. It's not being heartless. When people from an outer island die in a remote hospital, their families usually will suffer an extreme financial burden to charter a boat or a plane to take their bodies back to their home village. This can be several thousand dollars, in a country where most people make their money through small scale agriculture. You don't call a doctor, because it's pretty obvious when someone is dead. The women of the family will wash the body immediately and wrap the body in cloth, and place the cloth on pandanas mats. The news goes around. That day, within a set of hours, everyone who has a relationship with the deceased or their family will come over to cry and wail. This will go on for hours as a sign of respect. You'll see some people are really bawling while some others aren't crying anymore, but they'll still wail. There are hymns and prayers. Afterwards, everyone will shake hands with the deceased's family. The village all eats together, and school is cancelled the next day out of respect.

The burial happens either the same day or the next morning. In one case, I heard of a burial that was delayed for three days because a child thought that their father was poisoned by magic, and this was considered extremely disrespectful on the child's part. Unlike the mourning part (which is called a ded), the burial is basically private. Often the burial will happen very close to the house. A friend of mine had her brother buried by their outdoor eating table, and they would decorate the tomb every year. The general style is to have a raised coffin-shaped cement block plus a headstone, or simply a cement headstone with the name written in.  

There are some things that I think are better about funerals in Vanuatu. I think it's wonderful that grieving is communal. You never have a situation where there's a death in the family and people don't seem to know, or care. I think that there is something that is more humane about how deaths happen at home, and how people bury their dead nearby. I don't think that this is possible for us, since except for Native Americans, none of us have kastom land, the way Ni-Vanuatu do. But I think it's beautiful, and I think it underlies the tie to the land and the space.

On the other hand, I think that it's better that in America we have our time to have funerals and say our respects. I find it very sad how many deds I've been to where the deceased died somewhere else, and the family found out a few days later but wasn't able to attend because the burial had to be held that day. A good friend of mine had her father die on another island, and, of course, she wasn't able to attend. Maybe we'd be better psychologically if we all got together and grieved/mourned/wailed it out for four hours communally, rather than spreading our grief out, bit by bit, but at least daughters in America can typically attend their father's funerals.