FUNERALS: LAST (DIS)RESPECTS
Funerals are a serious affair. Somebody has died, and we would want to give them a befitting send-off. Each society has a tradition of carrying out this activity. For some, it is a family affair. Others make it a community business where anyone who can, comes for the funeral – at times to bury people they know nothing about.
During the exercise, the bereaved would wish to go out of their way to show the departed honour and respect by feeding multitudes, having the best sound systems and hiring the best hearses – as we call the vehicles that carry the dead. This is a complete overhaul of the previous system where these guys were fed by the community.
This benevolence and generosity attracts both friend and foe, the caring and the care-less type. These people come with all manner of intentions. Some come to eat. Indeed, the first point of interest for many would be the catering tent. So bad is the situation that some shameless individual would spend the entire period of mourning, from the time the news of the death comes, to a week or two after burial. In some places, this is a very long time. Confiscation of one thing or another, the kind of stuff that can easily disappear into the pouch or pocket, is also common. The end result is that the family that was being comforted ends up being more miserable after the comforting than before, more stressed by the moral support than without it.
Not all the bereaved are innocent, though. Many are those who, as writes Mariama Ba in So Long a Letter, failed to provide that crucial financial support to make the medical procedure be done. Others could count the centuries they had between the time they last called the deceased and the funeral. Then we have the special category who come to take over from where the departed left. Wife inheritance is a point to consider.
No wonder we tend to be afraid of the dead. We are very disrespectful as we pay our last respects. And that is why, in case the departed comes back to life during the requiem mass, many, if not all people, would run away!
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