Episode Twelve - The Pope; Why Rituals are Important

Pope Francis, death, rituals, funerals, grief, healing, traditions, memorialization, transitions, ceremonies

In this conversation, Anne-Marie discusses the significance of rituals and ceremonies in marking transitions, particularly in the context of death and funerals. She emphasizes that funerals serve the living, providing a space for communal grieving and honoring the deceased. The discussion also explores modern methods of disposition, such as green burials and aquamation, and the importance of creating personal rituals for healing and remembrance.

takeaways

• Rituals and ceremonies provide structure and meaning during transitions.
• Funerals are primarily for the living, not the deceased.
• You are not obligated to attend a funeral if it is emotionally charged.
• There are various modern methods of disposition, including green burials and aquamation.
• Creating personal rituals can aid in the grieving process.
• Music serves as a universal language for expressing emotions.
• Daily journaling can be a helpful ritual for reflection.
• Memorial plants can keep the memory of loved ones alive.
• Rituals can be personal, cultural, or communal in nature.
• Honoring emotions through creative expression is vital for healing.

Chapters

00:00
The Importance of Rituals in Transition

08:39
Understanding Funerals and Death Rituals

12:57
Modern Disposition Methods and Their Significance

16:33
Creating Personal Rituals for Grief and Healing

You can find me online at www.dearpsychopomp.com

or contact@dearpsychopomp.com

I hope your weekend is gentle and full of opportunities ♡

Transcript

So I'm sure that you've heard by now that Pope Francis has died at the age of 88. And I've had some listeners reach out asking, like what happens to him now? What's going on? And I know the funeral is Saturday, April 26th, after lying in state for three days, where almost 100

thousand people have come to view him and to pay homage.

And this is a time where I really want to emphasize and shed light on

where we can see, truly see why ceremonies and rituals and traditions are important when it comes to transitions of any kind. Transitions...


happen no matter what. You have no choice. It's going to happen. And having these ceremonies and these rituals, they are the punctuation needed in our lives to mark the beginnings and endings, unions and accomplishments. It's a way to provide structure. It is an intentional chance

to create meaning and healing, to bring people together and reinforce those social bonds. And it's a powerful way to acknowledge those changes in our lives. It allows us to connect to those who came before us. Hopefully by now, updated to reflect the century that we're in. Tradition is no excuse to treat anyone poorly, by the way. We are all humans.

feeling big emotions. rule number one on my own personal edict is do no harm to self or others. I digress.

As you know, I believe that life is a song. And the songs of our lives need cadence. They need that chance to breathe after a long verse. And we have so many rituals and ceremonies that we still practice today that we've forgotten their importance. Like your morning routine.

How do you prepare yourself for the day? Does it feel like a ritual? You know, for me it's wake up and take out the dogs and then tuck into a nice hot cup of coffee.


It's also specific meals on specific holidays. You know, turkey for Thanksgiving and everything like that. We have birthdays where we gather with our loved ones and we have a treat that has candles that we get to blow out and we get to make a wish. And then everyone celebrates. We have New Year's Eve, Halloween, which is my favourite.

you know, big shocker there. We have our seasonal changes, our equinoxes.

And even our greetings are ritualistic, not in a bad way, of course, but like someone says hello to you to acknowledge and address you. And they ask, hey, how's it going? To show that they're polite. And you say it's going to show the same. And it's not small talk, it's ritual. It's...

It's the same with bowing and handshakes and, you know, the good old curtsy and the bro-nod. It all says, hello, fellow human being. And it's so hardwired into us. So why is it taboo to talk about death rituals?

you guys.


Funerals are not for the dead and I say this as a former cemetery director. Funerals are for the living and a beautiful way to give tribute to and honor the dead and to acknowledge yes, they live.

Which, I mean, that can also be difficult if the person who died was not a good person. Petition to bring honesty back into funerals? My unpopular opinion is you don't suddenly become a saint just because you've died. I think...

It would be better to show empathy and compassion, but not to lie. Like, they may not have lit up every room they entered. They were human, whose actions and words mirrored the pain that they felt inside. And this is a last chance to wish them peace and rest.

for the deceased and for the ones they left behind too. It's a chance to be able to reflect on how you want to be remembered. And you know, I've been asked before, like, hey Anne-Marie, my estranged and abusive family member died. Do I have to go to the funeral? And the short answer is no. You are not obligated.

to put yourself into an emotionally charged and potentially toxic situation.


Funerals are not a reunion. If you want to go for your own closure or to support a loved one, then go. But don't worry about what other people will think or say. Like those kinds of people, are you really gonna give their opinions that much sway over you? The ones who judge and criticize others?

And, you know, remember that what other people think of you is none of your business. And they're gonna be like that no matter what. And that's on them, not you. You know, how other people treat you is a reflection of themselves. So you might as well do what's best for you anyways.

thank you for coming to my TED talk. Anyways. Around the world, there are a lot of similarities in death rituals. So for example, there's the preparation of the body. You know, we wash, we dress, or we lay them in shrouds, we anoint the body. There's...

viewing or awake to be able to get that communal support and communal grieving which is is a huge thing right now especially with the Pope who who has died on

on Easter and that's 1.4 billion Catholics?

who, and more, I'm sure, who are grieving the loss of this man.

And you know, there's always a service of sorts, usually with stories of the deceased or prayers or songs, eulogies, being able to...


to have the opportunity to talk about them and their lives. And you know, it's really hard even just writing a eulogy. You know, I took a course on how to write eulogies. And it's just how do you distill?

an entire life, no matter how short, no matter how long, how do you distill that into a few paragraphs?


you know, and there's different types of burial and cremations, and we'll get into that in a sec. But there's the mourning periods, which, honestly, those three business days that I got before having to return to work, are you kidding me?


The pressure that is put on to us in the 21st century to take our three business days to grieve this loss of a significant person in our lives and then return back to work like nothing happened and be productive members of society. Are you kidding me?


petition to reform that as well.

people who abuse that.


Also, petition to have the same treatment when a beloved pet dies. Because if you're like me, and I know I am, animals...


hold such a huge part of your heart and your home.

and we don't even get one day.


Ugh. Anyways.

Another thing that is common in death practices is the funeral attire. You know, often there's a particular color. know, North America, we love our black funeral garb or your Sunday best. Sometimes there's a particular color and people will try and comfort you with words.

and cards and flowers and food and there's that communal grieving like I said, you know, there's singing or chanting or praying or things like that. And then afterwards we have those rituals where we will visit grave sites on specific days or other places that have significant memories.

And you know, back to the types of disposition, like nowadays there are so many options. And you know, there's traditional burial with the caskets, the vaults, the cemetery plot, the headstone. There's traditional cremation done in a retort with high temperatures. There's green burial.

which is going to have its own episode soon because I'm very, very interested in that. That uses, you know, biodecreatable materials and no embalming to kind of give you a more natural return to Earth.


Which, fascinating fact, there's this phenomenon where each green burial results in a sort of unique, like last art.

depending on your life and your death and the complex interaction with the earth and the organisms that benefit from it, it kind of creates its own biodiversity hotspot that has micro habitats that support like insects and fungi and other growth while enriching the soil and supporting the plant growth and making this beautiful, beautiful return to nature.

that's kind of like your final fingerprint, which I thought was really beautiful. There's also sea burials, sky burials, there's aquamation, which is newer. I believe it's in... I believe it's legal in Washington, correct me if I'm wrong. I know they're looking at it here in Canada, and...

It uses water and potassium hydroxide, which ends up with the remains kind of similar to a traditional cremation, you know, where they are processed into smaller pieces that look kind of like sand. But it has a much smaller carbon footprint. So it's definitely greener. There's memorialization options with cremation and aquamation.

You know, I have a business where I make resin memorial keepsakes out of ashes and fur and feathers and things like that because...


the importance of something tangible to hold.

of someone that you love. It's immeasurable in its comfort and to be able to give that to someone else.

is is there's no words

And I mean, you can make happy capesakes too, by the way. You know, dirt from a favorite vacation or sand from that beach honeymoon. We don't have to only memorialize things that are gone.

Anyways, there's also recomposition.


which is fairly new. It involves microbes and organic materials, which I love. You can create and support plant and animal life with that and directly give back to nature. I mean, personally, I'd like to be aquamated and turned into some like moissanite science diamonds and then shot into space with like a giant t-shirt cannon.

So I can just sparkle amongst the stars. I want to go back to space, you guys. Let's see if we can make that happen. So with all that information, what rituals are important to you?

Are there outdated ones that might need a little updating? mean, change is inevitable. Are there some that you can create?

Some of the rituals that I use and recommend are daily journaling, even if there's nothing, you know, quote, profound to say.

I use burn letters. This is a fantastic way to create your own closure, to say the things that you left unsaid, to say the things that you want to say, but you know they won't land or they won't be well received.


It's just...

and that's Persephone, meow-ing. P-U-R-R, Persephone. Anyways. We also have, I'd like to recommend the memorial plants. When someone has been cremated or aquamated, if you can get your planter, you can put anything you want on it, stickers or pictures. You plant,

whatever you'd like, whatever flower, as long as it's good for your zone and all that stuff. Sprinkle some ashes in the dirt and let your love for that person keep growing and tending to them.

I also recommend a sitting vigil, but not in...

in silence. You know, it's true that hearing is the last sense to go.


And so if you can sit with your person, you know, unless they preferred silence, sit with them with music or stories or saying how left they are and, you know, keep letting them hear you and say what you need to say and doing a life review. I mean, I try to do that every six months. Doesn't always happen.

you know, I'm human, but being able to, okay, where am I? Where do I want to go? Where was I? How far have I come? And legacy projects. If that is something important to you to leave something behind or leave your mark on this earth.

You know, there's scrapbooks, there's media, there's letters, there's...

you know, the crafty folk with their memory quilts and the other crafty folk who make, you know, pillows out of a loved one's clothing. You know, I have a pillow made out of my dad's house coat, which is funny because he only really seemed happy when he was in his house coat.

And, you know, I also recommend music. It's universal language. We listen to the notes with our hearts.


and the words with our emotions.

and that's why music hits differently on different days. And so...


There's not much that you cannot say with music. It's definitely a love language. Like, hey, this song reminds me of you. It's powerful. Another thing I like to do, I have a little corner on the hutch in my living room where it says, light one up for your homies. And it has some...

battery-operated candles and I like to walk by them and see those fake flames just flickering in the fake wind. If you're going to use real candles I have to say as a previous 911 dispatcher be fire safe. If you're leaving the room blow out the candle

Just be fire safe.

You can also do like art, creative expression, dance. It's about the expressing and processing and honoring your emotions. It's that whole journey. It's not just the goal of, okay, I'm healed now or I'm ready. That was really fun.

And rituals, you know, big or small, are vital, vital tools for navigating grief. They can be personal, cultural, or communal, expressing sorrow and celebrating life and making those deeper connections. And having those rituals is


part of what makes us human. And we don't need to shy away from them, it's okay. We need this to be able to heal.

You know, I just want to thank you again, dear listener.

for listening to me ramble on and talk into the void about death. Your journal prompt is what ritual or rituals can you create to honour your loved ones and yourself?


Thank you for listening to this week's other other episode. If this episode resonated with you, please hit the like button, share and subscribe. And if your platform allows, leave a comment and kindly let me know what you think. Your support means the world to me and honestly keeps this podcast going. You can find me online at dear psychopomp.com or contact at dear psychopomp.com.

Death isn't a secret. Let's talk about it.