Paul Andrews SJ looks at some perspectives on mourning for the dead from his experience of watching some Maori funerals in New Zealand. He also tells how they have turned alcohol consumption to social advantage.
I thought I knew about funerals.
What happens? After the death, the family decides on a day for the funeral, and puts notices on local radio or the newspapers. There may be a waking of the body in the home, or in a funeral parlour. On the eve of the funeral the body is brought to the church and received there by a priest, with a short service and a few words about the deceased.
Next morning, at a fixed time, the funeral Mass is celebrated. The priest gives a homily. Family or friends may say a few affectionate, respectful words at the end. Then the body is brought to the cemetery and buried, after a few more prayers. Many of the mourners gather for a meal after the burial. The style will vary depending on the circumstances of death – the mood after a sudden or tragic death is clearly different from the loss of a very old person.
By and large we do funerals well in Ireland. People take pains to attend and support the grieving family. We do them better than across the water. I once buried my aged uncle in London, where he had worked and lived for most of his adult life. The church part was done well. But the congregation! There were six people in the church, including his only son with a wife and two grandchildren. After the burial they had nobody to talk to, no way to work through their feelings. The son, a successful professional, went back to work that after noon. It was desolating to think that a good man could leave this world so little remarked or grieved for.
In New Zealand, my eyes have been opened by watching Maori funerals. They carry the marks of a culture in which the tribe and family count for a lot. Relations, even quite distant ones, will travel the length of the island to reassert their links with kinsfolk and say goodbye to the deceased. They gather in the Marae, the community hall, and greet one another at leisure. For three days they live with the dead person, grieving, talking, remembering, keening. The body is never left alone.
Death is a point where time intersects eternity, and there is solemnity in the way they mark that intersection. The proverb has it: God gave the white men clocks, but he gave the Maori time. The business of the day – indeed in many cases the business lasts a whole week – is to see off their friend; other businesses can wait. There are no deadlines.
The funeral service itself may be scheduled for eleven o’clock; but if the relatives have not arrived, the start is delayed until everyone is there. There are speeches, centred on the coffin. If you want to speak, you tell the assembly what bonds of blood or friendship entitle you to open your mouth about the dead person. There will be a succession of speakers, who hold a special stick while they are talking, then hand it on to the next speaker.
How would you describe what they say? The truth spoken in affection. They will speak of their grief, of the company they miss, the traits they loved. They utter what is on their mind. A son may stand over his mother’s coffin and give out to her for not giving him enough attention or time. Or a brother may speak sadly about what alcohol had done to the dead person.
It is easy to imagine the hazards of this custom: badmouthing the dead, dancing on their grave. That was not the effect I witnessed. There was a truth and a release in speaking what was on the mourner’s mind. It was therapeutic, especially because at the end of the day the feeling was of acceptance: he was one of us, of our blood, and we loved him as he was. If God can love us as we are, so we can love one another.
The custom saves the mourners from the sense you sometimes get at an Irish funeral of important things being left unsaid, maybe even of whitewash. Like so much of what we see when we travel, we do not want to copy others’ ways, but we are glad of a different perspective on something we do ourselves.
Funerals sometimes end in pubs, and that is another area where New Zealand has intrigued me. Southland, at the bottom of the south island, came under strong Presbyterian influence in the early days. For a long time there were no pubs, no places where you could get a drink. If you were living in the country town of Gore before 1940, you were unable to get a drink within a radius of five miles from the post office. So people travelled to villages outside that area, as Irish drinkers used to travel to what were called bone fide pubs.
In a 1942 referendum the people voted to change the system and allow the sale of drink within the town. Licensing laws were still strict. Until 1967 the closing time for hotel bars was 6 p.m., which led to what was called the ‘six o’clock swill’. The sale of alcohol was to be controlled by a Licensing Trust, which would employ people to manage the pubs, but would put all the profits into community services. Publicans were not capitalists, but civil servants.
The results are spectacular. The community trust has used its ample resources to build magnificent sports facilities, such as a multi-sport complex with a skating rink, four swimming pools and a huge gym for indoor events like basketball. It supports scholarships, a public library, a museum and art gallery, big playing fields for every school, children’s playgrounds, and roads so broad that you can do a U-turn on almost any street in town – and all this for a population of less than nine thousand.
No, I’m not suggesting that all Ireland’s publicans should become salaried civil servants, working for the profit of the community. The imagination boggles. But I have enjoyed getting a fresh angle on two issues that hit us all at times: death and drink. ?
This article first appeared in The Messenger (June 2008), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
