The British talk less about our dead than almost any other culture on earth 🖋️ KateMaltby for ipaperviews
This Sunday, we are being asked to choose a person whose life you wish to celebrate this Sunday, gather a group of people together and share your memories with them
At the end of the feast, these dead are returned to their tombs, their shrouds refreshed and rotated into a new position. Local Madagascan journalist Volana Razafimanantsoa made a superb BBC Radio documentary in 2021 about the tradition. Her programme opens to a soundscape of song and stomping feet. “What you are hearing,” she tells the listener, “is a celebration… to remember those who have died, to share stories, and to celebrate their lives”.
While there will be no parading about with bones, their vision reminds me of the Famadihana: a day to gather the remaining members of a family or community, based on the principle that we process our grief effectively by coming together with others with whom memory can be a bond. Like the Malagasy, we should learn to think of our dead as much with joy as with grief.
For many of us, talk of drawing from other traditions is also culturally uncomfortable. Societies with a focus on ancestor worship often tie their mourning rituals to the renewal of the family as a primal, political and sometimes oppressive unit. In a secular society, with our familial bonds frayed and fragmented, do we even want more obligations to the family unit? Those of us who do have faith already have our own faith traditions in which to mourn.
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