THE THINGS WE DO...: A good way to go (11/22/98)

THE THINGS WE DO...

by Orysia Paszczak Tracz

A good way to go

To the good memory of Anna Hasyn-Barabash Hrycenko and Walter Kwas.

We have to deal with this topic sooner or later, whether we want to or not. Debates on euthanasia, life support, going home to die, living wills, Dr. Kevorkian, etc. all show us that we are beginning to deal with death, or trying to.

The way people all over the world deal with death in their rituals and customs indicates that most probably - psychologically and emotionally - they deal with it better than most North Americans.

For Ukrainians, both in Ukraine and in the diaspora, death is not necessarily the cold, lonely end to life that it has become in many contemporary societies. Of course, the person aware that he/she is dying usually still regrets having to leave this world; the ones left behind do mourn his or her loss. But the traditions and rituals of death and the funeral help make this last stage of life more bearable.

Long before the coming of Christianity, the Ukrainian worldview held that the family (i.e., also clan and nation) is composed of three parts: those living, those "departed," and those not yet born. Taras Shevchenko titled one of his longer works "To the dead, the living, and the unborn countrymen of mine, living in and outside of Ukraine, my friendly epistle" (1845).

After death, the ancestors of the family and clan were believed to reside in the fields and in their crops, in the orchards and forests, and in the skies.They helped ensure that the harvest was good. At the feast of obzhynky (harvest), the best grain stalks were gathered into a special sheaf, which was brought home from the field with much ritual. This is the sheaf (the didukh) that at Christmas Eve was ceremoniously carried into the house and placed in the pokuttia, the special corner for the duration of the holidays. It was believed that the ancestors who had resided in the fields during the summer entered the home in that didukh.

The empty place setting at the Christmas Eve table is for the souls of the ancestors who come to celebrate with the family. In his work "Hutsulshchyna" (1899), Volodymyr Shukhevych notes that it was considered a terrible sin to remove any food from the ancestors' plate before Christmas morning. There were so many souls in the house for that evening that before sitting down to the special meatless, non-dairy, 12-course meal, family members would blow upon and brush their chair or bench seat, in order not to sit on a soul. I remember doing this as a child in New Jersey.

When the carollers came around, specific koliadky (carols) were sung not only for each member of the family, but also for those who had "departed" during that year.

At Easter, right after the Resurrection services, the family would first stop at the graves of parents, to greet them with "Khrystos Voskres" (Christ is Risen), before heading home for Easter breakfast. At a specific date after Easter, the community would gather at the village cemetery for provody (literally, accompanying someone, as if on a walk or journey). This would begin with the religious service of panakhyda at each grave, and end with a picnic of traditional Easter food. Pysanky, Easter breads and liquor were left on the graves, and horilka was poured on the grave, so that the departed could share in the feast.

There was even a special Easter just for the dead, called Rakhmanskyi Velykden (Easter for the Rakhmans - righteous Christians). Eggshells from Easter breakfast were tossed into the streams because it was believed that the shells floated down the rivers to the seas and oceans to the place where the souls lived. When the eggshells reached the souls, it was time for them to celebrate Easter.

The above traditions, while not directly related to death and funerals, illustrate how throughout the year Ukrainians would be - and are - aware of those who died, and how they would honor their memory. While there is sadness, there is neither morbidity nor avoidance in remembering the dead.

It was most important for a person to have a "good death," writes Yevhen Onatskyi.

For the Hutsuls, as Shukhevych notes: "The righteous death is only one from which a person dies in bed; there are another 11 'faulted' ones: when man angers God, then God sends a misfortune as a result of which a man either drowns, or someone kills him, or he burns to death, or dies from a fall, or hangs himself, or is killed by a [falling] tree, or shoots himself, or poisons himself, or someone stabs him, or drinks so much that he never gets up again." (1908)

"Normal" death was accepted as inevitable, also as a great equalizer, since "that's all the truth there is in the world, death doesn't know who is rich and who is poor."

But accidental or sudden death was greatly feared, because then one could not prepare to meet it properly by settling affairs with family and neighbors, asking them for forgiveness for any misunderstandings or transgressions.

A solitary death was considered a terrible misfortune, because then there would be no one to light the candle (held by the dying person), or to hear his or her last words and wishes. "May God prevent a death without people!" and "May God prevent a sudden death!" are two common exclamations. My mother-in-law, well into her 80s and physically not well, feared being alone for longer than a few hours. It turned out that she was afraid that if both of us left for a vacation together, she may die alone. For the last few years of her life, someone was always with her.

While a deeply religious woman, my mother-in-law was a living example of the continuity of Ukrainian dualism: the pre-Christian and Christian beliefs combined. In the spring of 1984, pigeons started using our roof as a meeting place. Certain birds were considered messengers from the world of the departed. One evening, as she was going back inside from the back yard, my mother-in-law motioned towards them, and very matter-of-factly said, "Those pigeons are waiting for my death." She died in July of that year.

It was also believed that the righteous died easy deaths, while evil people, or those who were familiar with the "unclean spirit," died in agony and took a long time to go. This is certainly a cruel, wrong and unfair way of looking at life, but in peasant societies very much was "black and white." Windows and doors were opened to let the soul leave faster; sometimes the person was bathed with certain flowers or herbs to be more comfortable in dying, and to speed the process.

In North America, in large urban and rural centers of concentration, Ukrainians have their own funeral directors who understand the rituals required. The night before the funeral itself, there is a fairly short service for the dead called the panakhyda. If a large crowd is expected, the service is held in the church from which the funeral will take place. If not, it is held in the funeral chapel. This sung service permits the friends and members of community to pay respects, especially those unable to attend the funeral itself.

The funeral, usually held in the morning, begins with the liturgy, after which the panakhyda is repeated. If it is a large funeral, usually there is a male choir singing the responses instead of just the mourners. By tradition, male voices and special mournful melodies combine for a rich, emotional service (in contrast to the female wailers of the past).

At the end of the evening panakhyda, at the funeral services in church and at the cemetery, the song "Vichnaia Pamiat" is sung by all. These two words (meaning "eternal memory," i.e., the deceased will remain with us in memory forever) are repeated over and over in the lovely melody, which itself is repeated two or three times. It has a cathartic effect, and brings tears to the eyes even of those who have no relation to the departed.

At least in North America, there no longer is a wake, with someone sitting up all night with the body. Ritual lamenting or wailing songs by female family members or hired wailers are no longer practiced. In these songs, among the most ancient of oral folklore, the wife, sister, mother or child would talk to the dead relative, asking: what I do now, who will do all the things for me that you did, etc.

Viktor Petrov writes that, "The laments/wailing (holosinnia) ... have preserved all properties typical of ideological folklore, i.e., folklore in that stage of its historic development when folklore was still social ideology and social ideology was folklore, in the complete identification [of both]."

At a funeral in Winnipeg (1990) of a young man who had died trying to save a friend from drowning in a snowmobile accident up north, his still young mother reached to touch the casket as it was being carried out of church, and called out her son's name. I had the feeling she wanted to say more, but some relative's hand touched her shoulder to stop her. The modern "proprieties" of even a traditional family stopped this mother from expressing her grief naturally.

In "Facing Death," John Updike wrote: "... As a domestic reality, at least in the Western world, dying has been eased out the door - sent off to the hospital or the nursing home, and the corpse dispatched straight to the mortician, who is handsomely paid for performing his magic out of sight. Open-coffin funerals, the norm in my boyhood, have all but vanished in Protestant middle-class circles. Men and women not involved in mortuary, medical or police work can now lead full, long lives without ever having to see, let alone touch a corpse."

In Ukrainian funerals, the casket remains open for the viewing and the funeral, unless the circumstances of death require that it be closed. In Ukraine, the open casket would be carried by pallbearers or on a horsedrawn wagon to the cemetery, with special pallbearers carrying the top of the casket separately. A remnant of ancient burial practices was that of taking the coffin to the cemetery on a horse-drawn sleigh, regardless of the season. When Patriarch Slipyi wrote his will in 1984, he began it with the phrase, "As I get ready to be taken away by the sleigh ..."

Another example of what present-day North Americans would consider morbid is the normality of photographing the funeral and the deceased - especially if there are relatives living far away. I remember my parents receiving a number of photographs from funerals in Ukraine over the years. During my father's funeral in 1978, photographs were taken to send to his family in Ukraine. My mother still has the sepia photograph of her first baby in a flower-surrounded tiny white casket. The baby had died at 14 months of age during World War II.

In general, while at North American funerals, it is common for the family to leave the cemetery with the casket still above ground, left for the undertaking staff to lower it later, in Ukrainian funerals everyone waits until it is lowered into the ground, with the priest and mourners tossing earth into the grave. This is changing based on cemetery staff arrangements.

Because the dead are considered to be merely "departed" and are aware of their surroundings, even today in obituaries one of the phrases used is "May the earth be [as light as] a feather for [over] him/her." An illustration of the intense relationship of Ukrainians outside of Ukraine to their homeland is the frequent practice of tossing a handful of soil from Ukraine onto the grave. If the soil is from the deceased's own village, this is considered even more comforting.

In contrast to "English" North American customs, during the Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox funeral services, only the priest gives the eulogy. There is always a meal served after the funeral to those attending. This is held in the church hall, community hall, or in the home (if the funeral is very small). At the pomynky (root word, pomianuty: to remember or reminisce) or tryzna (origin: 8th-11th century funeral feast), hot food and alcoholic drinks are served at a sit-down meal. Here, family and friends reminisce about the departed.

An ancient pre-Christian dish still served by some families at the pomynky is kolyvo, a porridge of cooked wheat grains and honey. The only difference between this and kutia, served at Christmas Eve, is that the latter contains poppy seeds, a symbol of fertility. Understandably, a dead person no longer has any use for that.

Where even a few decades ago remembrance services in church were held on each of three days after the funeral, and on the 10th, 30th and 40th days, now the panakhyda is celebrated on the 40th day and on every anniversary of the death; during Lent, requiem services called sorokousty (root word: "forty") are celebrated for each departed member of a family. This is yet another example of how the family joins in remembering those departed on various occasions during the year. Announcements of such death anniversary services are published in Ukrainian newspapers, often with services being held in many cities at the same time, depending upon where relatives live.

As generations of Ukrainians blend into either the mosaic of North America, they can be comforted in knowing that when it's time to go, the way will be so much easier because of remaining ancient Ukrainian funeral traditions.

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