an odd day

A strange day today. As a part of our formation in pastoral care we spent the day with the funeral directors - T J Andrews in Meadowbank, and then at Rookwood Cemetery in the afternoon. It was an opportunity for those of us in ministry training to see behind the scenes of funerals and so forth. All of which of course involved viewing the body of a person who had died this morning both before and after embalming, and then being taken on a tour of the crematorium (ovens and all).

I guess in one way it was fairly confronting - staring death in the face from close up. In another way it was surprisingly mundane - very earthy and real. A bit like being at a farm and facing the realities of our food and drink no longer from the sanitized brightly-lit supermarket aisles, but instead through the heavy bulk of cows, the mud and machinery of the farm and the sheer normality of it all. It was the same with the embalming and cremating. Yes, it was an old man lying there who up until this morning had been living in a nursing home. Yes, he was someone's uncle or father or brother. And the realities of his suit and tie that he was dressed in (the tie with his soccer club's emblem). And yes, he was dead. But as when my own grandfather died, it was his body there, but it wasn't him anymore. This was one man's body, but it certainly wasn't the sum total of that man - whoever he had been (Even though he was kept completely anonymous - I spent a long time pondering what sort of life he'd had.)

And the same with the cremation centre - big ovens (700 - 1000 degrees), ashes and bones out the other side. Very real, and strangely very mundane. Not in a boring ho-hum sort of way - more that it seemed so surprisingly obvious that it would come down to these normal people operating this machinery and providing ashes for a family. It was fascinating and yet so real?

Like so much of everyday life in urban society, we're used to the packaged and presented outcome, rather than the everyday, physical process. It seemed sort of reassuring. Maybe it was demystifying of the whole death thing. A very strange, rather extraordinary and yet comforting day. Not what I expected at all.