By
Obododimma
Oha
You must have
read it from the writings of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross or got the idea from the
monitoring of behaviour in some societies. Many people are afraid of death and
do not want to talk about it. As an area of silence in discourse, few people
that have the courage to talk about it may be seen as crackpots or people who
do not know that they invite death to come when they talk about it. An ancient
superstition that still affects discourse! But death remains an important and
interesting issue to talk about, apart from the fact that it is an inevitable
experience for everyone. We spend all our time trying to save our lives and
finally lose them. As mortals, we are built with expiry dates! This unfortunate
dread and its superstitious origin noted, the focus of this short essay is
funeral itself. The essay sees funerals as the entertainment of the living for
the living, and not the supposed pleasing of the spiritworld, making it
possible for the spirit of the dead to be welcome in the community of
ancestors, and other interesting imaginative schemes.
Funerals are
widely understood as final rites of passage and could differ from culture to
culture. Yet an intersection to all is that the activity is necessary and is
the last honour we can give the dead. Also, that the dead can get angry and
wreak havoc on the living if not so honoured! So, fear becomes a part of the
reason for doing it again. Who knows what
the dead can do and how? The best is avoidance!
Let us just do it to avoid trouble!
Further, it
is other people that normally organise and host the funeral. Culture frowns at
the idea of one hosting one’s funeral or making some arrangements ahead of
time. Although some have courageously gone ahead to buy their own caskets,
arrange for cremation, vigils, ambulance service, etc, many cultures do not
like this at all. They think that these are better done in one’s absence. And
so, whether a cow or a chicken is slaughtered when one dies, should not be what
one has to arrange. Arranging for one’s
funeral looks like a clear invitation being
sent to death! And nyanga dey sleep, trouble
come wake am! Fear, again!
In my Igbo
culture, slaughtering a cow for a deceased is considered a big honour, without
which the spirit of the deceased could react negatively. The superstition is
such that any tragedy that befalls anyone who refuses to give a cow is
interpreted as a manifestation of the anger of the deceased. If the spirit of
the deceased is in Hell, God would in spite of His omnipotence permit the evil
spirit of the dead (from Hell) to come to the world to wreak havoc. If the
spirit is in Heaven singing Halleluia, it will go on break, come to the world to
wreak havoc, and omnipotent God would allow it! The human assumption
(or fear) is that we do not know what happens over there across the bridge.
So, funerals
posture in satisfaction of what we do not know happens over there. Some people
who have gone there before can tell us. And they have been telling us, imposing
funerals to please the spirit of the dead. Somebody can even be given funerals
over and over again, provided there are resources to waste and cows to
slaughter or ground cannons to shoot in a more intimidating way.
What is a
funeral if not the FUN that your friends and relatives want to have because you
are dead? You will not partake in eating the bulls and goats they slaughter or
drink the bottles of beer. You are certified dead and going into that darkness
alone. If you wake up, they run and won't like it because you are spoiling
their FUN!
Funerals are
not so funny after all if my lean resources are spent to please the dead and I
have to go borrowing afterwards or sell a plot of land! Kinsmen that want to
eat beef should not remind me that I have not given a cow to my late father. Survival,
I know, involves some tricks in some societies, but fear and superstititon
should not be brought in to disarm unwilling souls.
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