Where We Have Wept Together
In our personal journey here on this earth, we are currently in the phase of scaling things down. Trying to live more with less and allowing roots to develop within a community, we are undergoing a grafting of sorts, reclaiming a heritage lost. The original tour guide on this expedition was the Holy Spirit, leading us into a fuller, radical service of the Lord. What has resulted is a confirmation of our idea that bigger is not better. And so it goes with death. In our current plain setting, we have found a simpler, gentler, more sensible way to handle the issues surrounding death. The emphasis, as with most aspects of life for our people, is on the spiritual.. As a result, the course of events when there is a death is somewhat different. The end result is dramatically different.
Reducing the involvement of previously unknown people at the time of death is, in our opinion, a good thing to do. Even the most sincere funeral director can only offer an “I’m sorry”; he is quite limited in providing real support to the family, lacking the essential depth gained only by previous knowledge of us personally. In reality, sorry can be the wrong word, when our loved one has won the race and knows no more tears or pain.
In our close-knit Amish community, we know the right word, because we know the circumstances and thus are more apt to know what to say and how to handle things. This is one reason why we favor the practice of first notifying immediate neighbors who know us, know our loved ones, know our context-who just know. This silent understanding is so sweet when death has touched a family.
These neighbors then contact other family members, car for the body, and procure a coffin (a handmade, homemade, pine box) and an undertaker. Before the undertaker arrives, most decisions and contacts have been made. His role is minimal due to his lack of a personal relationship. He will assist in the legalities, and physically treat the body. Those closer to the situation will arrange for burial in the neighborhood graveyard.
Women folk will clean and prepare the house, cook and arrange meals for several days, and simply sit quietly with the bereaved. The men take over chores, take turns digging the grave and assign four pallbearers as per the family’s request. They will plan the funeral, the wheres and whens, and round up the bench wagons (filled with church benches needed for the services).
The bereaved sit still, they pray for comfort and healing of their broken hearts. They meditate on the Word of God, of which the scriptures speak, recalling the memorized Bible verses of their lifetime, promises of great comfort. Such tender meditation and sober contemplation is best done at home. Thus, they stay home, tended by brethren who understand exactly what is happening.
For us this method has great advantage over grieving in a strange place, moving about stiffly as if in a hotel lobby. We view our loved ones at home where we have wept together before and will weep together again. When death in in community is a community event, things are stable and an unspoken layer of glue is added to our brotherly bond, having weathered yet another life experience together.
Home is a fitting place for a funeral, too, when we want to bring things back to human proportions. Plain funerals are generally well attended. Neighborhood women bring enough food to give lunch to all who attend, and there are many people because it is a community event. In general, those who are acquainted with the deceased or the immediate family will go to the home to offer comfort. There are no calling hours per se, but courtesy avoids meal times and late nights. A community can arrive in a constant flow, because attendance is quite high. Those closer by will be at hand more than once in the two day period prior to the funeral. All who are able in the community will attend the funeral, another liberty for those who work at home. Often school is dismissed in the local one-room schoolhouse.
It is a community passage. All are affected. We feel it a gentler, more common way to handle the touch of death.
The simplest such service we ever attended was the graveside service for a stillborn girl. The mother was unable to attend due to the difficult nature of the birth. Grandpa made a pine coffin, his sons dug the small grave. Quietly the family walked carrying the little box to the graveyard over the hill, where they met the ministers. A reading was read, a song was sung. Slowly, the brothers of the mother put dirt on the coffin. Shovelful by shovelful they showed their quiet, intimate care for their sister’s trial. It was extremely touching. We have come to appreciate this serene handling of death.
The serenity however does not occur because of the way things are done. So often people mistake the plane lifestyle as a peace giving thing in and of itself. The roots run much deeper than that. The plain people’s way of handling death is but a byproduct of a peace which passes understanding . A confidence. Our lively hope is actually the soothing salve which helps us cope with death. We are all agreed on our faith dash we are all quite sure of its soundness. It is part of our fiber. In fact, death is at the very core of our faith, and many facets of our life hinges on our view of death.
The largely post Christian western world may see our view as morbid, because we are actually living to die rather than dying to live, in a physical sense. Death is our beginning, not our end; It is the beginning of our eternity. Truly the day of death is better than the day of one’s birth. (Ec. 7:1)
This is our perspective as a people, from life to death and everywhere in between: we had all been strangers, afar off from God (Ro. 6:23). We prayed for help. We received peace, pardon, and the promise of life through the atoning blood of Christ Jesus (1 Jo. 17) . We became new, shedding our old cells and putting on a new creature with joy and praise in our hearts. When we die, many, many more of his promises will be fulfilled.
These tender things we will share at home. It is a sacred fellowship not given to be ushered in at a funeral parlor.
Do you know the piece of which we are speaking? We ask you, kind reader, to consider your latter end. Are you at home here in this world dash do you have steadfast confidence in your eternal destiny?
There is but one step between us and death, and each day we are given a merciful chance to consider these things, to open our eyes, soften our hearts, experience remorse, believe, and live. “ For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in Him, should not perish but have everlasting life” (Jn. 3:16).
