JAMIE SUE AUSTIN

Hell Notes and Flowers

In the United States, like in much of the world, offerings or tributes to the dead are quite common. Wreaths and flowers laid across tombstones during Memorial Day are a form of ancestor worship we are all accustomed to. The term “ancestor worship” tends to dredge up images of primitive pagan cultures worshiping their grandfathers as God, but the practice of showing respect and honor to the dead is alive and well in the 21^st century. From candlelight vigils to roadside shrines, ancestor veneration (a more apt term) is all around us, and an integral part of society and the grieving process.

The intensity of belief in the power of ancestors to affect the physical living world varies from culture to culture. Offerings vary as well depending on the region. In the US flowers, wreaths, candles, even small plush animals or toys are common forms of tribute given to the dead. In the southern United States offerings of food, jewelry, and incense can be seen. Statues and monuments to the dead are common as well. In fact, some of our most famous national monuments, such as Mt. Rushmore and the Lincoln Memorial are colossal displays of ancestor veneration. Memorial Day is a nationally recognized holiday for honoring the dead. Easter, All Soul’s Day, and Candelmas are commonly respected days for ancestor veneration in the US as well.

Outside of the US ancestor veneration is just as common. In China, long thought of as a place of strong ancestral and filial ties, tributes to the dead come in a variety of forms. Depending on the belief system, some group offer tributes as a means of caring for their elders in the after life. Paper versions of common everyday objects are often burned as offerings to ancestors who in turn are believed to act as “guardian angels” by preventing serious misfortune. The belief that those who have passed before us are somehow looking over our shoulders and protecting us from harm is common even in the United States. A common Chinese offering is Joss paper, a form of spiritual money, burned to provide wealth for those living in the afterlife. Joss paper is often red or yellow with a foil stamp in the center.  Hell Notes are another form of spiritual money commonly used in China. They are bills, sometimes fashioned after western money, in excessively large denominations.  Aside from paper money, other objects are often offered to the dead such as paper mâché  cards, boats, houses, credit cards, and electronics. Incense, candles, and small food items often accompany these offerings. All through China and Singaporethe Hungry Ghost Festival is celebrated, much in the way that Halloween is celebrated in the US, with the addition of offerings to the dead and lots of food. Vietnam has similar customs using incense, candles, and Hell Notes as offering. Often Vietnamese families will prepare large meals for family gatherings and as an offering to the dead.

Traditions of ancestor veneration are not confined to eastern societies. In Egypt the influence of ancestors is very great. Large, expensive tombs were created to protect the remains of the departed. Bodies were ritualistically purified then mummified to preserve them for use in the after life. Food, money, furniture, spices, clothing, and sometimes even pets and servants were buried with the dead to ensure their comfort on the other side. During Samhain, in Ireland, it is believed that the veil between the living and the dead is thin. Food, light, and incense are left for the dead. A place is set at the table for any relatives who have passed within the last year. Samhain is observed by neo-pagans in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia as well. Modern Halloween customs have their origins in the holiday ofSamhain. Other popular holidays celebrating death include All Saints Day, All Souls Day, and Day of the Dead.

In Mexico, Day of the Dead celebrations include decorating gravesites and leaving gifts. Gifts range from flowers and toys to bottles of alcohol and candy. The home is also decorated for the event and offerings of food and drink are left out. Images of skulls are popular Day of the Dead decorations, though most skeletons and skulls look less scary than whimsical.  Skulls made from sugar and decorated with icing are given to both the living and the dead. Images of the Virgin Mary are also very popular. Overall the decorations and mood are much more colorful and bright during Day of the Dead than other during similar holidays.

Regardless of the tradition, almost every individual is accustomed to some form of ancestor veneration. It is hard to imagine a world in which no amount of care or concern was given to the dead. Perhaps it is an important part of the human psyche to believe that a connection with a loved one can remain after death. Or maybe, in honoring others, we ensure that ourselves will not be forgotten.

We Are All Dying

We are all dying.

Call it “the natural order” or call it entropy; it doesn’t matter.  Eventually, we all will die.

Is it bold to make that statement?  To say out loud a most uncomfortable truth:  that the end is inevitably coming?  The twentieth century with its wondrous technologies and patent cures has provided us with every conceivable method of escaping death.  From the daily vitamin, to CPR, to vaccines, hyperbolic chambers, and interventional surgery the modern world is ever contriving ways to avoid death.  While we blunder on the path to failed immortality we find ourselves increasingly willing to reject the most fundamental of natural processes.  Death, which once was widely accepted, spoke of, and examined in the light, is now shrouded in a tomb of dark denial. 

People morn in private.  They huddle in shallow groups ashamed of their pain and fearful of their emotions.  Our culture no longer prepares people for the end, but instead offers a myriad of ways to attempt to circumvent it.  At some point in our history we lost our connection with death.  We lost our understanding. 

It could have come with the industrial revolution.  As people ventured further and further from their families in search of work they lost their connection to the rights and rituals they once had.  It could have come with the embracing of modern medicine.  Medicine as we now know it denies death as a natural occurrence.  Instead, it pursues a never ending stream of treatments in an effort to thwart death.  It concedes to death only as the last possible alternative.  The disconnection could be due to our ever growing dependence on technology.  It could be that our reliance on machines to perform our daily duties, convey our communications, and solve our problems has taken from us a small sliver of our humanity.  Or maybe, it is just a matter of shear economics.  The family unit, now needing more than one income to survive, can no longer afford to attend to the dying.  The dying, creating a time burden on the family unit, must now be sent away for care.

What ever the reason, a cultural shift in attitude has lead to a change in the manner in which we die.  It is more common for a man to die within the sterile white walls of a hospital room than it is for him to die warm and safe in his bed at home.  Families, no longer equipped to deal with the medical, spiritual, and emotional needs of their loved ones feel that they are forced to hand over their burdens to trained medical professionals.  Less than one hundred years ago, such a thing would not have been heard of.  A person would be attended to in their final hours in the comfort of their homes.  We have lost the ability to realize death, suffering, and pain as valid aspects of existence.   We have circled our arms around the concept that a person willing to die at the end of their life is somehow deviant.  We have decided, as a culture, to pursue any means necessary to avoid death even if it means spending our last moments utterly alone.

Society now feels the strain of this cultural shift.  Medical costs to attend to the terminally ill in a hospital setting attribute a great strain to an already overtaxed health care system.   Families, having no financial way to provide end of life care for their loved ones, find themselves in difficult economic situations.  The elderly, ill, and dying find themselves “disposed of.”  Having served their usefulness to society they die surrounded by strangers and machines, away from all things personal and comforting; without dignity.  And overwhelming guilt wraps around the hearts of many individuals who feel that they were forced by circumstance to abandon their ailing kin to the cold hands of medicine.

At some point medical science has to give way to the inevitable.  It must entertain and accept the fact that it can not deny death indefinitely.  Hospitals, doctors, nurses all must work toward improving the quality, not the quantity of life.  Patients, family, and the population as a whole must be re-educated in the realities of death.  They must be given resources that help them cope with loss.  Death must be taken from behind the curtain and exposed for the ordinary occurrence that it is.  People must understand their options both to receive medical care and pain management in their final hours and their option to let go when the time is right.

Every person should discuss their wishes with those nearest and dearest to them.  Whether it is to die with hospice care at home or to be at the hospital towards the end; these matters should be discussed while a person is still able to make their opinions known.  Death should be an accepted topic of conversation in the home.  Reserving the topic of death till a death has occurred does not help develop the emotional tools needed to deal with loss.   Talking with others about family members that have passed on is not only an excellent way of paying tribute to their memories, but is a wonderful way to expose underlying fears and concerns.  Parents should strive to instill a healthy attitude about death and dying in their children.  Children should not be dissuaded from discussing death and should not be told to avoid “morbid” subject material.  Physicians should be brought into the discussion and should be used as a resource for better understanding.

In the end it is our attitude about death that has to change.  We can accept that death is a meaningful part of life and decide to die under the terms we define or we can continue to deny death and spend our final moments alive in pursuit of defying it.

Sitting Kentucky Mother's Mind: A Poem for My Mother

There’s a rocking chair 
on her porch that faces 
the sunset and every 
evening after her labors 
are through she lowers herself 
(like one would handle a 
Ming vase when packing it) 
safely into the wicker chair so 
that she may sit and watch 

the sun go down-

(memories; 
yes, life is a sun-path) 
rising at birth, shinning bright 
in the middle, and slowly 
sinking towards 
the end.

The radio beside 
her is playing tunes of 
yesteryear, old records 
of voices, the sound of her 
parents, her children, the 
clack of horses, the 
roar of airplanes- 
but it’s not on 
She looks down at it 
and with a spidery hand 
turns up the volume 
(it’s not plugged in…) 
and hears louder the 
sound of jowl bacon 
frying on the skillet 
and smells corn bread being 
baked in an iron frying pan.

There’s leather britches 
soaking on the counter 
(she’d much rather have dried 
green beans than dried pinto 
beans.) 
And it’s very, very rare that 
there be anything on the stove 
other than beans and hoecakes.

Lord ha’m mercy! 

She’s ate her weight in beans!

Outside the children are 
playing and she’s begging her 
mom for a nickel to go get a 
soda pop at The General. 
Her mom looks at her, shakes 
her head, and turns to put the 
kettle of softened beans on the 
wood stove to boil. 
She frowns at her shoes 
(dust covered hand-me- 
downs, she can see her little 
pink toes poking through- 
they only buy one pair a year and 
she’d like to keep’em clean) 
and feeling selfish, 
hugs her momma. There’s a 
rip in her worn-thin apron and 
the little girl commits it to 
mind to mend the tear. It will 
be a surprise. She leaves to 
play.

“Doodle bug, doodle bug, 
your house in on fire!” chant 
children who drive straw 
stakes into tiny holes (doodle 
bug houses) waiting for tiny 
bugs to clime the poles. 
There’s “Red Rover” at 
Tommy’s house and “Crack 
the Whip” near Susana’s, the 
older boys have gone fishing 
and the girls play with 
makeshift dolls of corn 
shuck and their mother’s old 
handkerchiefs.

But everybody is everywhere 
and her mom will let her walk 
just about anywhere in town 
as long as she doesn’t pass 
the fourth set of tracks into 
Junction City. There’s not a 
neighbor (and a neighbor can 
be up to ten miles away) who 
won’t welcome her into their 
home, feed her a little 
someth’n sweet if they got it, 
talk a spell and send her 
home happy.

The sun dips under coal mine 
and corn field alike.

There’s static on the radio. 
(there are no batteries inside.) 
Her children are playing in 
the yard, pretty sweet things 
that babble to themselves 
over Barbie Dolls and roar 
“Vroom Vroom!” while 
spinning the wheels of Hot 
Rods. The neighbor’s kids 
are always welcome (but, a 
neighbor is only one house 
down) and the children are 
more than free to roam where 
ever they like. Providing that 
it’s in the front yard where 
she can see them and they had 
best stay away from the house 
across the street, the woman 
who lives there is down right 
uncivil.

The oldest girl jabbering on 
the phone, the boy begging 
for money to go get pizza, her 
husband staring at he small 
ones with an odd fascination. 
A breeze of thought blow 
through her mind. “I’m 
happy.” On Friday she’ll 
take the kids to buy new 
clothes and shoes. Yes, 
shoes, the little ones tear up 

so many pairs so quickly.

The radio keeps flipping 
channels, there must be a plane 
over head. 
(Interference.) Just like all 
those new gadgets and 
whatnots of this day and age to 

interfere with every thing.

Through the static she can hear 
piano recitals with her 
daughters, half time music on 
the field with her sons and 
graduation songs. She can 
her the liberal “preaching”
of her youngest daughter (she 
isn’t that young any more) on 
everything from the fat and salt 
in the jowl bacon and the leather 
britches to the praising of 
modern technology. Kid’s far 
too young for politics. 
“I don’t buy none of it, I went 
through the depression and all 
my years as a young’n eat’n 
salt and fat and I ain’t gonna 
stop now!”, say an old worn 
out country twang. 
“But, you are dad are killing 
yourselves. You really should 
watch the way you eat.” 
How did she ever get rid of that accent?

It’s getting dark. It’s 
getting cold. The sun’s set and 
there’s a nice warm bed inside. 
She turns the radio off. 
(she’ll never know it wasn’t on.) 
Rises carefully from her chair and goes inside.
12

Victorian Hair Art

Hair is at once the most delicate and lasting of our materials, and survives us, like love. It is so light, so gentle, so escaping from the idea of death, that with a lock of hair belonging to a child or friend, we may almost look up to heaven and compare notes with the angelic nature–may almost say, “I have a piece of thee here, not unworthy of thy being now.” 

The Godey’s Lady’s Book of May 1855

Showcased in a small town salon against dark paneled walls and ancient bonnet dryers; a myriad of antique hair appliances offer a constant source of conversation for the loyal patrons.  The focal point, a large Victorian flowered wreath, catches the attention of almost every customer.  The wreath is beautiful and intricate.  It is also made entirely of human hair.

Afraid of zombies…

4 years ago - 1 -