Funerals for neglected people - an assertion of human worth

The following is summarised from a profound, complex and ennobling book that examines the rituals surrounding death and dying from an interesting anthropological and psychological perspective. The book is entitled

The message of the funeral rite is particularly clear. We escort a dead person upon the first stage of his journey; we "go with him to the riverside", thereby proclaiming in the action itself a common humanity, a common willingness to suffer on behalf of others and to share in the grief of the bereaved; a common vulnerability to the inherent dangers of living and dying, the sudden thrombosis and the slowly hardening artery, the powder-keg circumstances of our common mortality. We go out of fellow-feeling, out of sympathy for the grief-stricken, to give them the assurance of our emotional support.

We go for less tangible reasons, too. These are to do with a common basic human dignity that cannot, must not, be removed, and demands acknowledgment of its birthright. It is this that makes the most unassuming occasion an affirmation of value, a worthwhile celebration of humanness. Here in small, unspectacular funerals, the burial of neglected people, rather than on great state occasions or at the obsequies of the popular and beloved, is the true significance of the rite revealed.

When somebody dies whose relatives cannot be traced and a few neighbours turn out to say goodbye to the old fellow whom they had never really liked very much anyway; when the number of patients in the female psycho-geriatric ward at the mental hospital is reduced by the death of one isolated old woman, and the sister in charge brings along half-a-dozen patients, all equally old, equally isolated, to pay their last respects "because she hasn't anybody, you know"; these are the times when the funeral really counts, because this is what funerals are really about.

There is nothing merely sentimental in making this claim. It is intended to be taken quite literally. Such unpropitious occasions proclaim the real function of the funeral in the clearest and least ambiguous way.

They are not prompted by considerations of social prestige, or by the desire to make a show and impress the neighbours or reinforce the existing hierarchical structure within a community.

They are not ways of assuaging the guilt of ambivalence, in accordance with one of the most common and plausible psychological rationales of funeral display; indeed, these archetypal, critical, front-line funerals are noted for their absence of display.

They are not particularly valuable as outlets for powerful feelings of grief on the part of the bereaved, because there is often no one present who comes into the category of a bereaved person.

On these occasions it is neither an individual nor a community that is bereaved, but humanity. When the unpopular, isolated, socially stigmatised person dies and is buried with due ceremony, then Donne's famous sermon is revealed as simple, existential fact rather than superb rhetoric: "Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind. And therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for Thee."

The assertion of human worth, the honour due to human dignity, only demands a quorum because it is a symbolic statement, and symbolism functions according to paradox and not rational assessment. The less likelihood there is of anyone turning out to say goodbye, the more valuable is the action of the few who do; the more they represent mankind as a whole and express reality, the true state of affairs, for mankind.

This webpage forms part of the Global Ideas Bank (www.globalideasbank.org).

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