Loneliness in bereavement, loneliness in death work

It's a commonplace that being bereaved can be a lonely and isolating experience, perhaps particularly in cultures in which emotional restraint and an assumed stoicism is the norm. (Are we Brits just now emerging from this norm and creating another? In my celebrancy work I come across plenty of stiff upper lips, but also plenty of wobbly lips and hugs.)

It's certainly true that each of us has to grieve alone, in so far as each must follow her unique journey of grief, each of us in her own way. But I think that grieving, the state of being for a while a bereaved person, can also bring people together. Not only in the obvious sense that family and friends may gather to support and help you, but because sometimes people will empathise, people you don't know especially well, and offer help -  emotional, practical or both. 

Recently, a couple I know were bereaved in tragic circumstances. New neighbours they had met only three times turned up with a casserole for my friends' supper, and took their young daughter off for a playtime whilst we talked. No fuss, no silly "Oh, I know how you feel, I remember when I..." Just essential, heartwarming neighbourliness exactly when it was needed.

Then there is the potential loneliness of funeral workers. Secular celebrancy can be a lonely business, in that it can generate high levels of uncertainty about the rightness of what we've written. I used to worry, in my more paranoid moments, that I'd be recognised and avoided in the street. I think this has happened only once. Celebrancy is in some areas increasingly competitive, so "colleagues" are less likely to provide the shoulder to cry on or the listening ear. The celebrancy organisations (BHA, IoCF, Greenfuse etc) offer some kind of support network, opinions on the efficacy of which, er, vary; nothing to stop celebrants from setting up a closed forum of like-minded people around the country. Could be of enormous value.

I think it must be much more of a problem for funeral directors/undertakers. The remnants of the old taboo about body-handling; the idea that the sight of the undertaker in his formal gear is a little chilling, a memento mori when we are not used to such reminders (in our culture, at least); the thought that we don't want to have to meet one any time soon; and the fiercely competitive nature of the business would, I imagine, create isolation in one prone to such feelings.

Actually, some undertakers I work with are generally quite jolly people. One is a lay preacher, an energetic, friendly man well known in his community; another is also well-known sociable, has a quip ready when people say "nice to see you, X, but not too often, eh?" (well, he manages not to yawn, at least!) 

Other seem to suffer a bit more from the various pressures of the work. Of course, any good undertaker takes the work seriously

but do they feel isolated by their work? I'd be interested to hear about it.

In fact, I'd be interested to hear about anything from anyone. It's so lonely being a blogger, you've no idea, you tap tap away, throw your thoughts upon the aether, and what comes back? Nothing. It's so.........sniffle sob sniffle....isolating......



Oh, suit yourselves, as Frankie Howerd used to say!

Drugs Trip vs Natural High vs Presentmomentness

Someone I know says that in one sense she has been looking, in meditation at which she is expert, for an experience that relates to her LSD experience. (Her alleged LSD experience. Which was a long time ago, officer...)

It seems she had moments of huge insight and benevolence, out of time, in harmony with the world around her, courtesy of LSD or other hallucinogenics. The doors of perception were cleansed, and she saw, as Blake said she would, the Infinite.

That interested me. Now I never took LSD way back then. Because I was terrified of it, I guess. But I did go and see Donovan, all dressed in a white robe, who sang about the natural high being better than the drug high.

Words slip and crumble, don't they, but I take "high" as being a different thing from "tripping." With my relative ignorance about hallucinogenics and narcotics, I assume being high e.g. on an opiate or on cocaine or amphetamines, as being quite different from a hallucinogenic experience. If that's so, then a natural high is lovely, and I think quite common. Who hasn't been both elated and calmed at the same time by a moment of intense natural beauty, a piece of music that moved you out of yourself? Who hasn't been excited out of her head by some sporting moment?

(Well, not me, obviously, other than possibly, the first shot...)

(This druggy talk will eventually relate to mindfulness and mortality, just you wait and see...)

So I think we can put the true natural high to one side for the moment. It can relate to mindfulness, but in a different way. And I think we can accept that sedative or stimulant drug-taking, however useful or pleasurable people may find it to be, is not going to cleanse the doors of perception and help you live in the eternal present.

Mindfulness meditation, Zen practice, various effective meditation techniques - can help you simply exist in the present moment. Further, out of that can come a calm acceptance of your place in the universe, a feeling of identity with an infinite and unclassifiable reality. And that state, lived in even occasionally, can help you accept the insurmountable and otherwise outrageous news that one day you will fall off the log, your physical being will disintegrate and be otherwise distributed. (Sorry if that's a bit of a spoiler for anyone's self-narrative...)

Now, this next paragraph may be nonsense. Do tell me if so. But my guess is that an LSD trip is much less consistent, much more variable, much less easily acceptable, and much more temporary. Most people - no, everyone - I know who took acid back then, stopped, eventually. Some people it wrecked, some people it hasn't. (I'm not moralising here, just observing.)

Meditation won't give you synaesthetic swirling wonderlands of colour, won't give you the sound red or visions of Lucy in the Sky. But it can be a door into the infinite. It can cleanse the doors of perception. It can take you beyond either/or.

And it won't give you flashbacks or bad trips. It isn't a substitute for a trip. It isn't a trip. It just is.

I'd love some old head to put me right here....

But I think

(Sorry, I do appreciate that you can't communicate a good trip through irritating graphics...)

is probably less useful a route to awakening, to enlightenment, than simply:

I mean, taking acid may have helped people escape a dreary conventional life, but has it helped people face their mortality? I'd really like to know!

Follow the heron into the springtime

It's a chilly but beautiful sunny morning at Mundi Mansions, and for my multitude of reader, time for another song from the wonderful Karine Polwart, about the end of winter and the coming of spring, with all the usual metaphorical richness relating to relationships, life, the whole business.

And there's a good feeling of acceptance in the last verse: we need the sermons of ice and salt water and stone, but we also need - daffodils. Don't we?

The clip has slightly scratchy sound quality, but don't you love the mud on her boots (festival time) and the nervy immediacy she brings to her singing? Live, indeed. Blessings upon her head, and yours, and mine too - it's SPRING!

Follow The Heron

The back of the winter is broken
And light lingers long by the door
And the seeds of the summer have spoken
In gowans that bloom on the shore

CHORUS
By night and day we’ll sport and we’ll play
And delight as the dawn dances over the bay
Sleep blows the breath of the morning away
And we follow the heron home

In darkness we cradled our sorrow
And stoked all our fires with fear
Now these bones that lie empty and hollow
Are ready for gladness to cheer

CHORUS

So long may you sing of the salmon
And the snow scented sounds of your home
While the north wind delivers its sermon
Of ice and salt water and stone

CHORUS X 2

The Present Moment

Once you get into this stuff, little reminders pop up here and there....

This on a wall at Dartington Hall.

Over to you.

Evolution, comfort, Mrs and Mrs Darwin in grief

Last post was about evolution and how accepting it might be a liberating thing, might help us accept the impossibility, the outrage, of our own mortality.

But it's not always easy, is it? Even in the abstract. 

I think way back I posted a clip of this song, performed and co-written by Karine Polwart. I thought I'd pop it up again - it still works powerfully on me. The setting is Mr and Mrs Darwin grieving for the death of their daughter. 

I won't put up the clip of KP singing it, because you might just want to regard it as a poem as well as a song, it seems that strong and true to me.

We all look for comforts and supports; Darwin builds his own cathedral....

We're All Leaving

There is thunder on the skyline
And it tears her breath away
Like the twilight steals the day

A father's kind hand could not command her
To return to him once more
Like a soldier from the war

We're all leaving
Even the ones who stay behind
We're all leaving in our own time
We're all leaving in our own time

Each night surrenders to a morning
But beneath the April sky
He can hear an endless cry

On smiling fields there's a battle raging
And for every bloom he knows
Another flower never grows

We're all leaving …

And he has no Ark to bear him from this Flood
Just a broken vessel wrought in flesh and blood
Though the riptides pull him under
He will not cease to wonder
At the beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty

He brings her mother to the church door
And while she prays for what will come
He walks those woods alone

And there he builds his own cathedrals
And on every whirring wing
He can hear the whole world sing

We're all leaving …

Words & Music: Karine Polwart (Bay Songs 2009) & Dave Gunning (SOCAN)

Evolution and mortality

Pretty big title, hunh? Just one point, though.

Someone was writing on the BBC website recently about human day/night rhythms,  and putting forward the theory that artifical light disrupted the rythms with which homo sapiens evolved. Seemed plausible. Then s/he used the phrase ..."than evolution intended."

Noew I'm no evolutionary scientist, but that's bollocks, isn't it? Evolution doesn't "intend" anything. It simply happens.  It has no agency, intention, or identity. And if "intended" was just a metaphor, it's a seriously misleading one.   It's an easy error to make, though. One way we understand our world is to give human traits to nonhuman forces. The wind sighs in the trees, etc. But evolution can't intend, any more than gravity or electricity can, I guess.

So -what? Why does this matter? (Well, to me, anyway.) Because it can be really liberating to accept that evolution is a fantastically complex but entirely arbitrary set of interacting processes.

Death and life, generations, are part of evolution, which depends of course on generations of creatures - generational succession is evolutionary, evolution is generational. So all creatures live, die, and evolve. Even us. So that's one thing I can stop worrying about!

Evolution links us to the entire planet and all its life forms. We sit, as it were, in the midst of evolutionary change. We belong in it, it is part of us, we are evolving.

I think we can accept this whatever religious or non-religious beliefs we have, whatever the stage of spiritual journey each of us is on. 

(Sorry to all those who refuse to accept the idea of evolution - now that refusal really is a bit of a watershed! Flat earthers.... welcome to their beliefs, but please don't foist them on our children.)

All hail the mighty Darwin and all those who work away challenging, modifying, adding to his work. And happily, evolution also resulted in a very nice, humane sort of genius, to boot!

Well, that remains to be seen. But misunderstanding or misrepresenting evolution won't help us!

Mortality and folk music in Trelawnyd

Up to Trelawnyd Memorial Hall yesterday for Folk at the Hall, which ran from one o'clock to eleven o'clock. Trelawnyd is a village not too far from Chester; the fact that a day's music performed by some highly-regarded and accomplished singers and musicians is to be found in such a modest setting in front of a small audience is entirely down to the skill and enthusiasm of one family and their helpers. They don't make any money out of their ventures - at best they break even. Lovely people, lovely day, very reasonably priced. Thanks to you all. 

But my subject today is less this generous spirit than the nature of much of the "folk" music that we hear today, and how it just might relate to perceptions of mortality and human continuity.

Eliza Carthy, talented scion of trans-generational folk heroes Norma Waterson and Martin Carthy, once summed up the difference between pop music and folk music: pop music, she felt, is most concerned with expressing individual, personal feeling, folk music with telling a story. So if this idea works, in folk music, perhaps the feeling is expressed more in terms of events and less as direct statements.

 Folk music which originated in the tradition (however modified) seems to me to have a distancing effect - yes, there is often more of a story, and that can generate a strong feeling of continuity.

Yesterday I heard a folk trio called Faustus sing the old ballad "The Banks of the Nile." The song presumably originated during the Napoleonic wars. It was very well arranged, sung and played.

The song is about a parting between a soldier and his love; she says she'll disguise herself and come with him, he says that's not possible, and off he goes. Then these words, which jumped out at me:


Oh, cursed be those cruel wars, that ever they began  
For they have robbed our country of many's the handsome men  
They've robbed us of our sweethearts while their bodies they feed the lions  
On the dry and sandy deserts which are the banks of the Nile.

Or on the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates, or the Rhine, or the Somme, or....

Human continuity, and the realities of war, down the centuries. This isn't an introspective exploration of individual feelings; it sprang out of a simple, anonymous, archetypal story. 

Perhaps a realisation that people have been suffering the same tribulations and griefs, celebrating the same joys and delights, for many many generations, helps us to take a quick look in the general direction of our own mortality? I can't see that getting locked into an individual self-absorption with the facts of mortality is going to do much to help.

Here's Faustus with the song, not in Trelawnyd but in the wonderful "Songs from the Shed" series. Poor sound quality, but it gives you an idea.

Back to Folk at the Hall - it was noticeable, in a tiny venue, how friendly the musicians were, with each other and with us. No narcissistic vanity, self-dramatisation, posturing and competing. Non of the stuff that can often crop up with pop/rock. Strong musical personalities all, clamorous egos none. 

Songs from the Hall, songs from the shed - I love this directness, this simplicity of approach. It relates to the world we live in, even if the song is about the Napoleonic wars. 

Oh, and two of Faustus are also in Bellowhead. Quality will out.