February 17, 2025 • 46 mins
#122. Let's Chat... about how the Covid pandemic reshaped important death rituals.
These 'Let’s Chat' episodes are conversations with guests who have experience/expertise in a particular area of loss.
In this episode, I (Claire Sandys) chat to Natasha Mikles who is an assistant professor at Texas State University.
Natasha is a scholar of stories about death and what happens next, and researches traditions related to death and grief around the world (especially in Tibet and the Americas). Her most recent book, ‘Shattered Grief: How the Pandemic Transformed the Spirituality of Death in America’, examines how Covid-19 affected the spirituality of death and the grieving rituals surrounding it.
Grief is not just a personal experience, it is a community journey shaped by rituals that connect us to the dead and each other. This conversation reveals how Covid-19 drastically altered the rituals we rely on during loss, redefining our understanding of mourning.
We explore the fascinating world of death rituals across different cultures, including the Tibetan sky burial ceremony. Natasha and I reflect on how the pandemic forced religious communities to innovate, balancing tradition with contemporary needs, often using technology as a bridge to maintain connection in times of isolation.
This episode discusses the vital role of community in mourning, the psychological impact of Covid-related deaths, the importance of ritual, how other cultures and religions honour and recognise death, and how Covid-grief can differ from other forms of grief.
Plus, how you can have your body eaten by vultures in the US ...legally!
For more about Natasha: www.hellscholar.com
For her book:
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/shattered-grief/9780231558921
Amazon: https://gogl.to/3Mzd
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Claire (00:00):
Hello there and thanks for joining me for another
episode of let's Chat on TheSilent Why.
I'm Claire Sandys and throughthis podcast we're exploring how
and where we can find hopethrough grief and loss, and in
these let's Chat episodes I talkto a guest who has experience
or expertise in a particulararea of loss.
In this episode, I'm chattingto Natasha Mikles, who is an
(00:22):
assistant professor at TexasState University.
Natasha is a scholar of storiesabout death and what happens
next and researches traditionsrelated to death and grief
around the world, and especiallyin Tibet and the Americas, and
her most recent book, ShatteredGrief how the Pandemic
Transformed the Spirituality ofDeath in America, examines how
(00:42):
COVID-19 affected thespirituality of death and the
grieving rituals surrounding it,like social distancing, and how
often this meant thatconventional funerals couldn't
be held, or how religiouscommunities were disrupted at
the exact moment mourners turnedto them for support.
This pandemic caused a dramaticchange not only in rituals, but
also how people found meaningafter the loss of a loved one.
(01:03):
So in this conversation we talkabout the importance of ritual
and how it can not only help usbut also let us grieve, and how
other cultures and religionshonour and recognise death, and
why and how COVID grief candiffer from other forms of grief
and how you can have your bodylegally eaten in the US by
vultures.
And because I want to capturesome useful magic from each of
(01:25):
these chats.
A bit like the Hermans on ourusual episodes you need to check
out www.
thehermancompany.
com for more on those I'mbuilding a tool shed,
metaphorically, of equipment tohelp us face and get through
loss and grief.
So at the end of each of theseepisodes I ask our guests what
sort of tool their subject wouldbe and then I add it to my shed
.
And so far I've acquired a veryuseful range of tools.
(01:45):
So grab a cup of tea, a coffeeor maybe a ranch water
apparently, that's a Texas thingor a whiskey that's a Natasha
thing and relax with me andNatasha as we chat death rituals
and COVID-19.
Natasha (01:57):
I'm Natasha Mikles.
I'm an assistant professor atTexas State University in San
Marcos, texas.
There I teach classes in ourreligious studies program,
primarily in Tibetan and Chinesereligions, but also in world
religions, and we might say kindof thematic courses about death
, dying and narratives aboutkind of what happens next, like
(02:19):
in the afterlife.
I'm also the author ofShattered Grief how the Pandemic
Transformed the Spirituality ofDeath in America, which just
came out this past year withColumbia University Press.
Claire (02:31):
So tell me what brought you into this kind of world,
because it's not your averagelittle girl's dream to go into
this kind of area.
Rituals, death, shattered grief, all this kind of stuff.
So is this something that'scome from personal experience
you've been through, or is itjust something you're really
interested in?
Just tell me how you kind ofgot here.
Natasha (02:46):
So I was trained in what we call Tibetan studies, or
I was trained as a Buddhologist.
What that means is that I wasprimarily a scholar of Asian
religion, of Buddhist traditionsas they were practiced in China
and Tibet, and I should say Iam still a scholar of that.
But during the pandemic, ofcourse, worldwide global travel
was halted and I was unable togo back to my fieldwork sites in
(03:09):
Tibet and China.
And as I was kind ofcontemplating how this was going
to affect my career, because Ihad just been made into what in
America we call tenure trackpositions I'm not sure how it
works in the British andEuropean academies, but in a
tenure track position you haveto kind of publish a certain
amount of stuff that's within acertain timeframe and then they
decide if you get to stickaround or not.
(03:30):
So, as this was happening, afriend of mine sort of I
wouldn't call him a close friend, but an acquaintance of mine a
young man died reallyunexpectedly from COVID-19.
He was a PhD student at TexasState University but was also
teaching full-time in theirEnglish department and he was a
friend of mine in the sense that, you know, we met about once a
(03:51):
week or maybe once every otherweek with a group of other
professors to have beers atthose little pub across the
street from the university andjust talk about kind of complain
about our students and vent.
And his death really, I think,struck all of us really hard,
because it wasn't the kind ofCOVID-19 death that most of us
were seeing on the television.
This was January 2021.
(04:13):
So the vaccine had just startedto kind of enter into our
conversations about COVID-19.
And I think, like many academics, I began thinking immediately
analytically and began thinkingabout how all these funeral
rituals had changed because ofCOVID-19 and death.
I actually talk in theintroduction of the book about
(04:35):
watching his funeral from Zoom.
At this point the funeral homestill had not the one that his
parents chose to go with for hisfuneral, did not have a great
digital virtual setup, and solike they had this little camera
kind of position that lookedlike it was like maybe like kind
of just positioned very rockilyover the door, like maybe they
had like hooked it onto the walland all these elements of Hindu
(04:56):
funerals that I was reallyfamiliar with my research in
Asian religions were still beingdone but were being modified,
and I immediately began thinkingwhat other changes are being
made and how can we documentthis period?
As a scholar of religion, I'mvery interested in documenting
important transformationalperiods as much as possible so
that future researchers can havethis type of data.
Claire (05:19):
Fascinating.
Did you ever think about whatCOVID was doing death-wise
before your friend died?
Or was that literally the pointwhen you started thinking?
Actually, this is changingthings.
Natasha (05:28):
I've been thinking about COVID-19 and death before
that because my research is onBuddhist death traditions and
kind of Buddhist ideas of theafterlife and rebirth and
particularly Buddhist hells.
Because of my Tibetan Chinesecolleagues on different social
(05:48):
media groups, I could see how inChina Tibetans were being
scapegoated as the people whowere, you know, like happened in
many countries.
They were the ones who werebringing COVID into what was
otherwise the Chinese government, trying to say otherwise this
would have been a problem.
So Tibetans, other minoritygroups, foreigners, but also
watching how Tibetans wererelying on traditional Buddhist
practices to combat COVID-19.
So there's a certain pill thata Buddhist monk can make in
(06:13):
utilizing all sorts of differentherbs but also different types
of prayers and rituals that alot of my Tibetan friends began
taking as a means to combatCOVID-19.
And so that was veryfascinating to me.
But I think the death of myfriend really took it from being
something that was academicallyinteresting to really
experiencing it myself.
And while I had elderly parentsand I was of course worried
(06:34):
about COVID-19 for them, I thinkkind of having to hit someone
that was actually younger thanme and in my immediate friend
group really kind of changed thetenor, changed the entire
parameters of the conversation Iwas having with myself about
this you know I don't know muchabout what the, the funeral
rituals or anything would likethat would be with Tibetan
people, buddhist, anything likethat.
Claire (06:56):
So what are the sort of the main differences that you
would see with dealing withdeath in that culture compared
to like American or British?
Natasha (07:03):
So for Hindu death rituals there's a kind of need
to take care of the body rightaway.
This is something that we seealso in Islam and in Judaism,
this kind of need to take careof the body, usually within 24
hours, if at all possible.
So there's that kind of rush aswell with Hindu death rituals,
this belief that until thefuneral happens, the soul of the
(07:24):
individual inside the bodycan't go on to their next
rebirth.
So usually Hindu priests ifthis is happening in India,
hindu priests will come and dothe funeral themselves.
They do believe in cremation,and so what happens is they will
set up a funeral pyre, afunerary pyre, and as they set
(07:45):
that up, the priest is chantingcertain important passages from
the Vedas, which are thesesacred Hindu scriptures that are
prized especially for theirkind of, we say, their orality,
for their sound, for theirability to kind of communicate
and to speak.
The important, foundationalsound of the universe itself is
(08:10):
the way some Hindu teachers havedescribed it.
Once they have the pyre set upand the body has been blessed
and usually smeared withturmeric, the priest usually
it's the oldest son, but in thecase like my friend Arun, his
father had to be the one toactually light the funerary pyre
, so usually it's the oldest son, but here it was his father had
(08:33):
to.
Now in America, because we don'tallow open air cremations
except in very specific places.
What that means is that thefather ends up having to be the
one to actually hit the buttonthat starts the cremation
machine.
So that's how that ritual hasactually gotten transformed in
(08:54):
America.
Then, as the body's burning, aspecial frenu work will actually
puncture the skull to make surethat the soul can get out.
So seeing a lot of those things.
There were things like Q-tips.
It was very strange to beseeing this ritual that I was
very familiar with from myresearch but being done with
like Q-tips in place, because atcertain points you're supposed
(09:16):
to smear turmeric all over thebody or over the head.
And you know the priest didn'twant to get close because it was
a COVID positive body and so hehad this like Q-tip and it was
just kind of like spraying itvery far at a distance.
You never really forgot thatyou were watching a COVID
funeral in any way, shape orform.
So Tibetan funerals oftensimilarly incorporate elements
(09:36):
like that.
I mean I can talk about Tibetanfunerals if you'd like.
Claire (09:39):
Yeah, give us a little bit about what they're like,
because it's so different fromanything we know I they're like,
because it's so different fromanything we know.
I think it's really interestingto see how other cultures are
doing it and how we can learnfrom those, especially if they
help with the grief in a waythat we might not be doing.
Natasha (09:52):
So Tibetan funerals there's an idea that once a
person dies, you don't want totouch the body, because wherever
you touch the body there'sstill this idea that there's a
consciousness kind of movingaround the body and if you touch
the body on the shoulder,that's going to make the
consciousness leave there andbecause it's not the head, it
(10:12):
will have not as good a rebirth.
So I think with both Hinduismand Buddhism there is this real
concern with rebirth and makingsure that the person who's died,
that a particular good karma isgoing to come out, so they will
have a better rebirth, arebirth as a human, a rebirth in
a divine realm, a more pleasantrebirth.
I'm trying to think.
I usually think about badrebirths since I research
Buddhist hells, but so withTibetan Buddhist funerals
(10:36):
they'll often so the body willbe left for about seven days in
the house and a Buddhist monkwill come in, usually one who's
been trained by a teacher, andread what's called the Tibetan
Book of the Dead or the BardoTudral.
So this is it's actually areally interesting text that is
kind of talking about what theconsciousness of the person
(10:57):
inside the body is going to beseen as they go through the
afterlife, or as they go throughthis what's called Bardo, this
kind of intermediate periodbetween one life and the next
life.
So the text is literally likeyou are going to walk forward
here, you're going to see thiswrathful deity, don't be afraid.
This wrathful deity is justyour own mind projecting its
(11:18):
fears back at you.
You're going to see this, youwant to go this direction.
And so the monk is kind ofreading this into the ear,
chanting it over the body,sometimes reading it directly
into the ear of the corpse orthe deceased person, as they are
helping to guide the personthrough this intermediate period
.
And there is actually a lot ofinteresting fears in the
(11:38):
tradition that the monk will belying when he says that he can
read this text.
So I know from my own work onBuddhist hells that certain hell
literature will say thatthere's hells reserved for
Tibetan monks who said that theycould read the Bardo Tudral and
that they were able to, butactually were lying and were
just kind of spouting randomwords.
(11:58):
They get reborn in a veryspecial, very, very bad hell
because they not only lied butthey also affected the rebirth
of dozens, potentially hundreds,of other people.
Yes, so after that's finished,the family will take the body
and then the kind of traditionalform of body disposal into.
That has been sky burials,where vultures eventually eat
(12:22):
the body Usually.
I only had an opportunity tosee a sky burial once, but the
family brought the body up tothe top of the mountain along
with monks who went up.
They blessed the body and thenthe Buddhist monks actually had
to leave immediately because itwas very bad karma for them to
see this and there's a specialritualized practitioner who
actually begins to slice up thebody in different ways.
(12:46):
At the Sky Barrel that Iwitnessed, I had not planned to
see one.
We were just visiting themonastery and the family saw
myself and a couple of myfriends that were there and I
think was surprised to see abunch of random white people in
the middle of Tibet and saidthat they were about to do this
and that if we wanted to standkind of on the outskirts so we
(13:07):
were pretty far back, wecouldn't see any details that
they were okay with that and Iremember, as we were watching it
, all these vultures.
There's a big hill and thevultures of course know what is
about to happen.
They're getting filled withanticipation and they're all on
the hill and the sun comes outand the vultures all kind of
open their wings and Iunderstand biologically it's
(13:28):
because they're trying to heattheir bodies up.
It's like they're trying to getwarm.
But it did look like this verybeautiful moment of the vultures
thanking the family fordonating the body to them.
Um, so there was a in maybeabout 60 or 70 vultures on the
hill.
All it's just their wingsspread directly, facing directly
towards the family.
Claire (13:46):
Whoa, what a sight.
Natasha (13:48):
Yeah, so, and then, but yeah so, then the bone cutter
will kind of slice off bits ofthe flesh to try to get the
vultures excited and then kindof steps back and lets the
vultures devour the body.
And then kind of steps back andlets the vultures devour the
body, and then one thing I wasactually very unprepared for
(14:10):
when I saw this was just how Ihad no idea how fast vultures
can eat a body.
I think it was about threeminutes and all that was left
was bones.
And then he sucks back in andhas a large mallet where he
actually breaks the bones up andmixes them with butter and a
little barley flour and thenfeeds them to tinier birds.
So within the course ofprobably about 20 minutes the
(14:32):
body's entirely gone.
Claire (14:33):
That's incredible.
I honestly thought that wouldhave been hours, if not days.
Natasha (14:37):
Yeah, wow.
And this is not the only kindof like.
This is the most famous form ofbiodisposal in Tibet.
Really important people arecremated, but there's not always
enough trees to do thateverywhere, and most Tibetan
Buddhists believe that by givingyour body back to the vultures
in this way, it's actually akind of final act of generosity
that earns good karma foryourself and good karma for your
(15:00):
family.
Claire (15:00):
Yeah, I remember talking to somebody who worked nearby
in a national prey center.
There's a vulture project goingon trying to help them.
I think it might've been inIndia where they have, like is
it Temple of Silence orsomething?
They have a certain kind ofdeath ritual.
Natasha (15:13):
Yeah, towers of Science .
It's the Parsi community, sothey were originally the only
living Zoroastrians alive today.
Claire (15:19):
Ah, okay, they were having trouble because people
were starting to take medicationa lot more.
Oh, fascinating I think it wasDiclofenac specifically was
killing the vultures when theywere eating the bodies, so they
were having to reintroduce morevultures.
It was amazing I can't rememberexactly what it was, but the
knock-on effect of this onemedication affecting the
vultures, which then I think itwas less food for the carnivores
(15:40):
that were roaming around, butit was amazing the effect on all
the different creatures thatwere involved in it.
That's fascinating.
Yeah, it is such a fascinatingarea because, like I said, it's
so different from anything wehave here.
It's, I mean, for some people itwould seem quite horrific
because we just don't even seebodies at all, let alone any
kind of separating the parts forvultures.
Yeah, was there any part of itto you?
(16:02):
That was really shocking,because obviously you know how,
how these cultures work.
But was it?
Is it hard to watch?
Or was there anything that wasso different that it was just
like, actually this is quitedifficult to see yeah, I think
for myself personally, theseeing the sky burial became
difficult.
Natasha (16:16):
I do remember there's one part where this like there's
intestines just go flying inred, like it's kind of it's
almost funny.
It's not obviously it's notfunny, but I think that kind of
was his moment, like oh, this isreal, like yeah, what am?
I watching yes and um, at onepoint I did I started to get a
little sick to my stomach and II did have to turn my back, but
I remember I could still hearthe vultures breaking open the
(16:37):
bone marrow, like the bones toget the marrow inside.
That's a very distinctive soundand, and you know know, I kept
thinking to myself, like youknow, I think I wasn't before
then.
I wasn't entirely certain aboutmind body dualism.
Is there a soul that's separatefrom the body?
And in that moment I was likethere is a soul separate from
the body and that person is nolonger in that body, and that
(16:58):
being very arresting, you mightsay.
Claire (17:01):
Would a whole family go to something like that?
Is that something children areintroduced to, or is that just
an adult thing?
Natasha (17:06):
I'm not entirely certain.
The one that we were at, therewere no children and it was a, I
would say, middle-aged woman.
Just by again, we're kind offar away, but just by looking at
color of the hair and kind ofthe shape of the body from where
we were, I think they wouldprobably keep most children away
from that.
But I do remember the familywas really not crying at all.
(17:30):
I think on one hand you couldsay that for them that this was
this incredible gift that theywere giving to the vultures and
they knew that this was kind ofgiving good karma.
There's also some Tibetanpopular stories that say if you
start crying over the death of aloved one, that the loved one
in the bardo will startexperiencing rains of blood and
pus for all of your tears ohgosh, you should not cry for the
deceased loved one.
This actually is where we seealso in Sikh cultures have very
(17:51):
similar stories, not exactly thesame, but that if you do cry
overly much once the kind ofmourning period is over, if you
keep crying you are going toactually negatively hurt your
loved one in the afterlife or inthe kind of next rebirth.
Claire (18:04):
Gosh, that really does dictate your grieving, doesn't
it?
Because you wouldn't obviouslywant to do that to somebody.
It's so different.
It's really interesting.
But I also want to see yourCOVID research and what came out
of that.
So, yeah, tell us.
What was it around it that madeyou think, rather than just
being interested in this andthis is fast, because some
people have been fascinated bywhat COVID was doing but also
(18:28):
you wanted to keep going further, to do research on it and then
a book on it.
So what was it about that thatmade you think?
Actually, there's just like somuch here and why does it need
doing?
Why do people need to knowabout?
Natasha (18:37):
this.
I started by doing interviews,just cold emailing.
At first I thought I'd just beemailing religious professionals
, so priests and imams andrabbis and pastors, and I
started emailing them to ask howwere the funeral rituals that
they were doing changing becauseof COVID-19.
What immediately beganhappening was they said well,
you really should talk to thishospice doctor who I've been
(19:00):
working with to kind of helpmake sure that any Episcopalians
who die in hospice have thelast, you know, final prayer,
the last rites, done for them.
And then through that it kindof became clear that this wasn't
just something concerningreligious professionals.
This was actually concerning awhole community of people, the
whole.
There were dozens ofindividuals involved in every
(19:22):
single death happening withCOVID-19 that were all being
affected by the pandemic.
So it kind of exploded out.
And what I found, as a scholar,really interesting was, as I
began doing more and moreinterviews, all these things
that I had learned about as agraduate student, like all these
theories, like Durkheim'stheories of communities and
(19:42):
Hayden White's theories ofnarrative and emplotment, all
these like very high leveltheoretical ideas I got to
really see on the ground, got tosee them how they're being used
or just how people wereembodying these kinds of
theoretical ideas just in theireveryday life.
And I had this realization thatthis was actually a very
important moment to help toprovide this like tiny little
microcosm to think about howreligion works in society and
(20:08):
how the experience of grief canactually change and transform
the way that we think aboutreligious identities and
religious communities, and thatif I didn't document this very
dramatic period, that that datacould be lost, because even
right now, you know 2024, we are, you know we're all, everyone's
in this rush to go back tonormal, or we are, have been in
(20:28):
this rush to go back to normal,and we're almost trying to
forget that COVID-19 happened.
And so it's important toremember it, to kind of document
that exact little period and tosee how, to kind of test
theories to see does religionwork this way and how does the
idea of trauma inform, then theidea of a traumatic death inform
, our religious communities?
Claire (20:49):
And what sort of things have you been learning from that
?
How does it affect them?
Natasha (20:57):
I think COVID-19 provided an important
opportunity for a lot of peopleto re-evaluate what a community
and what a ritual meant to them,and sometimes they had the
support of their religiouscommunities in doing this, and a
lot of times they didn't.
Here in America, I think therewere a lot of religious
communities who didn't want toaccept that COVID-19 was
happening, but also didn't wantto change the way things had
always been done, didn't want toquestion why do we need this
(21:17):
particular ritual?
Or to talk about why thisparticular ritual continues to
be important and useful, and soI do think COVID-19 provided
this kind of this importantopportunity to evaluate and to
make these changes and to thinkabout what would we want a
religious community to look like?
Claire (21:33):
Yeah, I guess at that time obviously a lot of
religious communities were shutdown so they couldn't meet.
I mean, I never thought we'dsee a day when the churches were
shut down across England, letalone across the world at any
kind of meeting like that, thereligious stuff all being shut
down or not being allowed tomeet.
What was the impact of thatacross a nation when it came to
things like COVID and death andmourning and funeral rituals?
Natasha (21:55):
I think there was this real, this incredible shift to
the virtual kind of virtualspace that we've all experienced
, and I think that for a lot ofreligious leaders, while they
all said that you know,obviously virtual participation
is often not as fulfilling asin-person participation that
this was really important, butthey actually said that we never
(22:17):
would have made this jump asquickly as we would have without
the pandemic kind of forcing usto.
This is something that is goingto remain a part of our church
community in some capacity inthe years to come, and so I
think there are good things thatcame out of this, some people
pushing communities to enterinto virtual spaces.
(22:38):
This also benefited those whoare disabled or homebound or
otherwise unable to safelyattend church services and
church meetings, and so I don'twant to say that the move to
virtual religious practices isnecessarily always bad, but in
when my interviews, when I spokewith people who lost their
funds to COVID-19, by and largeeveryone found the virtual
(23:00):
funeral unfulfilling, and mostof them seem to be haunted by
the funerals that theyenvisioned for their loved ones,
for their parents andgrandparents, and that they
could not have.
Claire (23:11):
Yeah, very difficult.
I think and, like you said, insome ways again people now can
attend funerals from across theworld that they could never have
got to physically because ofthat, because we had to do a lot
of virtual stuff with funerals.
It's definitely not the same,and the restriction on the
numbers at funerals and thingswould have been horrible for
people.
But I guess a lot of things.
I was just thinking about allthe people who don't get to say
goodbye, Because obviously thereare always people who haven't
(23:32):
said goodbye to relatives.
You know there'll be peoplelistening now that didn't get to
say goodbye to a relative.
They died in hospital, nothingto do with COVID, they didn't
get there in time, they weren'tthere at the right time.
That's always a situation thathappens which is incredibly hard
to deal with, Do you think?
Natasha (23:52):
it's different or does especially.
I talk about this idea I callthe liturgy of death, which is
the idea that we have an idea ofhow a death is supposed to
proceed and we kind of have amental map of what our loved
one's deaths are going to looklike and oftentimes, as you
point out, it doesn't happen.
People are not able to get tothe hospital in time, or people
or someone has a traumatic deathfar away from their family.
(24:14):
But even when that doesn'thappen, we're still able to do
to follow up with the otheraspects of it, the other
community building aspects, theyou know, friends and family are
still able to come visit youafterwards.
You are able to.
Even if you couldn't be thereat the moment of death, if you
couldn't be there at the funeral, you are still.
Everyone in your society stillwill acknowledge that you are a
(24:35):
mourner, that you are now inthis new stage, also due to
individuals that might have lessrisk tolerance for COVID-19,
people were really unable to getthat kind of social support and
(24:56):
unable to be sociallyrecognized as mourners.
They also weren't able to besocially recognized as mourners
because at least here in America, 50% of the country didn't
think the pandemic was happeningand if you said my loved one
died of COVID-19, a lot ofpeople I interviewed when they
would tell their friends andfamily my loved one died of
COVID-19, they would kind of getquestioned and being like well,
(25:21):
did they have diabetes, werethey overweight, like what other
issues were there?
And I think that's probably avery human response.
People don't want to understandtheir own mortality.
You want to find some kind ofreason why so and so die, but
that you would be protected inthat capacity.
But the reality is COVID-19 waswhat one of the doctors I
interviewed called a Russianroulette disease.
(25:42):
You had no idea who would liveand who would die from it and
that there were certain thingsthat made it more likely.
But at the end of the day thedoctor said I've seen perfectly
healthy people get put onventilators and die who had no
reason to.
And for those people Iinterviewed who had to kind of
endure this questioning, itreally devalued their loved
one's death.
It made it feel like it wassomehow like an acceptable death
(26:06):
to have.
It was okay that their lovedone died from COVID-19, or at
least it was understandable.
I think it's really hard togrieve in that environment.
No one wants to be told thatyour loved one's death is an
acceptable death that we'regoing to put up with because we
all want to go to a bar afterdinner.
Claire (26:21):
Do you think that it's had a lasting impact?
Do you think that there's beensomething from this that will
just keep impacting?
Natasha (26:28):
I think there will be no-transcript friends group and
(27:03):
I found that to be thatcontinues to be remain as active
as ever.
Claire (27:23):
And so I think that for a lot of people, covid-19 grief
is still very real, even if oursociety doesn't want to talk
about it.
You know, if someone else diedof something, you wouldn't
necessarily say, well, were theyobese?
Did they have lung issues?
But with COVID, peopleobviously feel like they have
that freedom to do that andthat's really difficult.
It's like a disenfranchisedgrief isn't it.
It's something you feel youcan't really grieve to the full
extent.
Is that sort of what'shappening in the COVID groups
(27:45):
you're talking about?
Is it the lasting effect oftalking about that?
Or is it that people are stilldying of COVID and you've got
new people coming with that sortof grief.
Natasha (27:53):
I think people are still dying of COVID-19, but
because now I think people stillhave COVID-19, but we're able
to have the types of funeralspeople wanted to have.
My period of field work wentfrom January 2021 until August
2021.
So a very specific six monthperiod, because people are now
(28:13):
able to have the gatheringsafterwards to have the kind of
social recognition.
I think there is a lot greaterrecognition of COVID-19 grief or
that there's less of this typeof questioning and there's kind
of more societal and socialsupport.
I think what the COVID-19epidemic really proved was that
we can't really grieve inisolation and that grief in
(28:34):
isolation just is incrediblypainful and leads to unfulfilled
grief.
One thing I always say to mystudents is that there's this
one scientific principle thattalks about to understand what
an organism needs to survive,and you need to find all those
places with the organism wherewe only see what things have to
be in place that needs tosurvive.
And you need to find all thoseplaces with the organism where,
like where we only see, like,what things have to be in place
(28:54):
that organism to thrive.
So you could talk about thiswith, like earthworms.
You can talk about this with,like different types of fish,
that they need certain you knowwater and they need certain
amounts of types of food.
With humans, the only thing that, like human communities, are
diverse across the planet.
The only thing humancommunities really need to
survive is other humans.
You never see a human living bythemselves, completely without
(29:17):
any other human around them orany kind of framework.
We see that with languagedevelopment, we see that with
social development and I thinkwe see that with grief that
humans need each other to grieve, to recognize their grief, to
help guide their grief, but alsoto share their grief, and I
think, because during thepandemic people couldn't do that
(29:37):
, their grief really becamehalted.
So, even though we still havepeople die to COVID-19 today and
it is still incredibly painful,I think the fact that you can
have that shared griefafterwards makes the experience
different than in the 2020 and2021 period of the pandemic.
Claire (29:52):
And I guess those that went through it in the pandemic.
It could bring up stuff nowwhen you're seeing people who
are having loved ones die ofCOVID-19 and they're getting all
that freedom.
I think if that was me, there'dbe another level maybe of grief
or anger or frustration or likean unfairness that you missed
out on that, and so you couldalmost be grieving again for
what you missed out on aroundthe ritual and around the
(30:14):
community and seeing otherpeople and so, yeah, that must
be really difficult.
I don't think people thinkabout it in this level much.
So I think it's a reallyinteresting thing to look at and
to tap into, because you'resort of only aware of what
you're aware of in your vicinityand what happened with COVID.
We don't really hear much aboutwhat happened individually in
different countries, especiallywhen it comes to things like
death and funerals and howpeople were doing it.
(30:36):
Have these other communitiesthat you've been looking at,
whether it's you know HinduBuddhism?
Have they?
Have they gone back to thefuneral rituals they were doing
before?
Has it changed anything abouthow they do things or have they
gone fully back to how thingswere pre-pandemic?
Natasha (30:49):
They've largely gone back to how they were
pre-pandemic, although I knowthat with some of the Buddhist
communities that I look atbefore, if you had a loved one
die in a Buddhist community, youwould need to get some Buddhist
monk or some Buddhistindividual to chant sutras, to
chant various texts for them.
It used to be you'd have to goand fly to the country where
(31:14):
your loved one died and get amonk there.
But I do know that a lot of theBuddhist temples at least here
in Austin, texas, where we havea small but sizable Asian
American population that theyare starting to offer that they
will chant virtually for yourloved one in China if they die
and you can't get back, or theywill chant virtually for your
loved one in Hong Kong orMalaysia are the three that I'm
(31:34):
thinking of right now.
I think that's something thatis this type of innovation that
I think will continue to remainin religious communities.
Another innovation that I'vebeen seeing is and this has been
happening for a while is thingslike the virtual puja in
Hinduism, so having certaindevotional rituals that you can
do online and can do virtually,and I think that this has
(31:56):
generally a very good thing formost people who want to
participate in a kind ofreligious practice but might not
be near their community.
But one thing I do talk aboutin the book that I think is also
concerning is these virtualcommunities are allowing people
to self-segregate even more.
There is something verydangerous about the idea of
continuing to reinforce yourbubbles and to become more and
(32:20):
more into only a kind of liberalreligious community or only a
very conservative religiouscommunity.
Claire (32:24):
It's just really interesting how something like a
worldwide pandemic can makefunerals and other rituals that
go more virtual.
Because if you'd have suggestedthat pre-pandemic you know most
communities would be like, well, no, no way, why would we want
to do virtual?
That's crazy.
But it's just one illnessspreading across the world has
just changed how we do things.
Are there things about theseother funeral rituals you've
(32:46):
seen in any religion orcommunity that you think that
seems to be really helpful orvaluable to grief, or it's
something that maybe we shouldadopt more kind of in the
western world, I think one.
Natasha (32:58):
One thing that I think really kind of came through for
a lot of the individualinterviewed was that kind of
really respecting the role thatritual can have, not as a
reflection of grief, but as athing that shapes grief itself.
So when I talk with my students, we talk about how a reflection
of grief, but as a thing thatshapes grief itself.
So, when I talk with mystudents, we talk about how, a
lot of times, the study ofreligion in the West oftentimes
(33:19):
says you have a belief first andyou express that belief with a
ritual, and this is largelybecause we have kind of
Protestant Christian foundationsto our culture that say that
belief is primary.
The reality, though, is thatfor most religious traditions
around the world, belief ispretty much secondary to ritual
practice, and that often, ritualcan help shape our beliefs, and
(33:41):
so I talked about this a littlebit in my chapter, looking at
just kind of ritual as aphenomenon.
During the pandemic, oneBuddhist nun I spoke to said
that she had a parishioner or akind of congregant whose husband
died, and she kept saying I'mnot sad, I don't feel sad, but
she obviously the Buddhist nunsaid well, but she's been
(34:04):
married for 40 years.
It was very, very strange.
So I started telling her tocome in and do more rituals and
come in and you know here's akey to the temple Come in and do
different types of sutra,chanting for your husband in our
memorial hall and that actuallymade her experience, the grief
that allowed her to give herthis kind of out.
And some of the Muslim leadersthat I interviewed here in
(34:35):
America talked about how evenhaving these important being
able to do these importantfoundational Muslim death
rituals, like washing the bodyand kind of wrapping the body,
actually were importantopportunities for people to
actually feel their like, tohave the expression of their
grief, to feel like their griefhad a purpose.
And so I think that a lot oftimes we don't really honor
ritual as the thing that lets usgrieve.
(34:55):
Ritual doesn't have to expressour grief, but it can be that
thing that tells us you're now amourner and you've now lost
your father, your grandfather,your mother, your child and
you've entered into a differentstate.
I think that can be a reallyimportant tool.
Claire (35:10):
In England it's very much.
You can kind of choose what youwant to do.
In some ways there's a lovelyfreedom in that because you
could honour the person howeveryou wanted to, and I've done
interviews with funeralcelebrants who have done them in
circus tents and all differentplaces have honoured the person
that was alive, which is greatif you've got the creativity in
that moment to think of thesethings.
But on the other side of things, I think when someone dies, a
(35:31):
lot of us don't know what that'sgoing to look like.
That's quite scary, it'sconfusing.
Do they want to be cremated?
Do they want to be buried?
They seem to be the only twooptions that people have on
their minds.
So there's like we've got topick one.
What do you want?
What do they want?
And then beyond that, it's likewell, do I want to be in a
church, no-transcript service?
(36:02):
But that might not feel verygenuine to them because they
don't have any kind of religiousbeliefs.
So the whole thing is a littlebit disjointed.
We sort of have some ritualsleft over from a religious
country when we were a bit moreChristian, and then, unless
you're in a religious communityin which case you would know
roughly what it looks like,because you'll see it happening.
I don't think people know muchabout it and I think that's such
a shame because, like you said,there is no space really for
(36:25):
having that ritual.
If you knew this is what wasgoing to happen, the body was
going to be in the house for aday, let's say, or there was
going to be an open casket.
You'd have time to mourn, you'dbe wearing black or you'd rip
your clothes or you'd put ash onyour face, whatever it is.
If you had something specificand I can really see how that
would shape your grief and helpyou through and allow you that
space to mourn.
But here we just hide it away.
(36:48):
It's like, oh, someone's died.
Quick, get the funeraldirectors in, move them away.
Do you want to see them or not?
Probably not, okay, that's fine, let's have a quick service.
And it's just like, where isthe space to really allow that
grief to kind of feature?
So I definitely don't thinkwe've done ourselves any favors
by getting rid of any of therituals we might have had in the
past where people would wearblack or something just to show
they were mourning.
I think that would be a reallyhealthy thing to see other
(37:10):
people mourning, because thenwhen you go through it, you know
what it looks like.
Or also, if you're mourning,you know I'm not alone in this.
Someone else is mourning overthere.
Yeah, there's so much to itwe've lost.
I don't know if that'ssomething that will come back at
any point, or I don't know,maybe we're we're too far.
Is it similar in America, orhave you got more of a diverse
range of how people do it?
Natasha (37:29):
I think it is similar in America.
I think especially, um, youknow America a couple years ago.
We has hit the very bigstatistic that now most
Americans do not identify asbelonging to a religious
institution.
Honestly, I tell my studentsthat doesn't mean they're not
religious, it just means what itmeans to be religious has now
changed and that is less of akind of institutional,
(37:50):
hierarchical kind of focus tothat.
And so I do think that that issomething very prevalent here in
America, and one of the funeraldirectors I interviewed talked
about even before the pandemic.
He said that before thepandemic, the most difficult
clients that he worked with,most difficult families he
worked with, were people whodidn't have religious identity
(38:11):
and didn't really know what theywanted.
Because he's like I can't makethese decisions for you and I
can't tell you what's going tofeel significant in that moment.
Only you can do those things.
But, as you said, these peoplehad never really thought about
what would a funeral look likeand what would a funeral look
like that looks significant.
A very famous scholar ofreligion talks about ritual as
(38:32):
the assertion of difference.
A very famous scholar ofreligion talks about ritual as
the assertion of difference,meaning that rituals feel useful
and feel important when theyare very obviously different
than ordinary time.
So in Judaism you sit shiva forsix days and you sit and you
aren't allowed to leave thehouse, and I think that that's
actually really important.
You are doing something verydifferent than your regular time
(38:53):
.
You're doing something veryunique and special, and I think
having that set apart time is soimportant for grief and so
important for rituals to beeffective.
Claire (39:02):
What do you think all these other religions, or do you
know what they think of howwe're doing it over here, making
it shorter and shorter and sortof cleaning it and putting it
away?
Do they have an opinion on that?
Natasha (39:12):
Not that I know of.
So we always say religiousstudies is unfortunately
generally a lot of Westernersstudying not Westerners, and
there hasn't really developedthe idea of not Westerners.
So like Chinese scholars orIndian scholars coming back to
America to study us.
I think whenever we get to thatpoint, I think we'll be in a
really great place becauseobviously, as you point out,
(39:34):
they would notice things in ourown culture that we might not
see just because that we're partof it.
So but I do know that you knowmost of the people that I
interviewed who are.
You know, I interviewed onlyAmericans, but of course,
america is one of the mostculturally and religiously
diverse countries in the world,and so the people that I were
interviewing who were part ofsecond and third generation
(39:55):
immigrant communities so SikhAmericans or Buddhist Americans
they would talk about how one ofthe major things that would
decide what funeral home theywere going to is just how
familiar they were with theirrituals and that these rituals
were very precious.
These were some of the mostunchanging rituals that they
would.
One person I interviewed saidlike it's so important to me as
(40:16):
a Muslim, even though I don'tattend mosque every Friday, that
I have a Muslim funeral for myfather.
But this is central toeverything.
I need it to be.
Claire (40:24):
Yeah, it must be fascinating for funeral
directors in our countries whenthey come across these other
religions and how they do thingsand watching how they do it
differently.
Since you started studying allthis, has this shaped what you
want for for your funeral?
Do you know what you want thatto look like?
Natasha (40:35):
in terms of my funeral, I know I just want a really big
party.
I'm polish, irish catholic, soI think on both sides, you know,
you get a big, big wake, kindof a big crazy whiskey field
party.
I've thought about my bodydisposal.
So at texas state university wehave what's called an
anthropological forensicresearch facility, which is a
very fancy way.
It's kind of colloquiallycalled the body farm.
So I know I want my body to bedisposed of there, so I will be
(40:59):
eaten by vultures there.
Claire (41:00):
I thought you were going to say sky burial.
Natasha (41:02):
I can't do a sky burial but I can do this.
The only way to have your bodyeaten, at least in America
legally, is by doing one ofthese body farms.
There are two places in Americayou do open air cremations that
often then the vultures come toeat the kind of charred remains
afterwards.
But there's nowhere to do a skyburial here in America.
And this actually was an issuewhen I interviewed.
(41:23):
You mentioned the Parsis andthe Towers of Silence.
I interviewed the Parsicommunity in Houston and the man
who ran that said that COVID-19actually you know it made it
harder to get to ship goodsacross the world.
But one of the things that madeit harder to ship was bodies,
because a lot of the Parsis inHouston, if they died, would pay
to have their bodies shipped toIndia where you can do the
(41:45):
towers of silence.
And this became a problembecause some of the bodies got
delayed in transit along the waythere.
Claire (41:52):
Shipping bodies.
I need to find someone to talkabout that.
How does that work?
Yeah, oh, that's reallyinteresting.
I'm always fascinated by peoplewho work in the funeral
industry.
I know some people think it's abit morbid when you talk about
it, but I think there's a lot ofvalue in thinking ahead for
these things.
Do you think it can be helpfulin some way to sort of think
about these things, either forourselves or, you know, asking
those we love what would theylike?
Do you think that's a goodthing?
Natasha (42:12):
Very important to talk about this and to begin
envisioning what type of funeralyou want, but also begin
envisioning your loved one'sfunerals, not only so that you
know their wishes, but also sothat you can begin thinking
about the fact that you or yourloved ones will die.
One of the people I interviewedwas a death doula an end of
life specialist doula an end oflife specialist and she talked
(42:40):
about how, when the familydoesn't know what someone's
final wishes are for theirbiodisposal or for their rituals
surrounding it, that actuallycan cause more pain for them
that having that moment.
There can be great comfort inknowing that you are fulfilling
what your loved one wanted atthe very end.
Claire (42:53):
Yeah, one of our guests said a while back that she
thought the funerals were forthe living, not the dead.
Natasha (42:57):
Yes.
Claire (42:58):
And I've often thought about that.
And I was actually chatting tosomebody this week.
They were talking about someonewho a friend of a friend who'd
had a pure cremation.
So they'd been sent off forcremation and the ashes get sent
to you and that's pretty mucheverything.
And she said I was likeliterally I wouldn't do that for
my husband, like even if thatwas what he wanted, I'm the one
grieving, I'm going to have someform of gathering Afterwards.
(43:20):
I just couldn't do it.
I can totally see thetemptation and I can see why
people would want to, because Iguess you just don't want to go
out into a funeral and see loadsof people and you know when
you're at that raw grief stage,I totally get it.
But I do see the importance ofwhy people should do it and the
gift it probably gives you andothers to allow that space for
(43:41):
grief.
So it's something I woulddefinitely make myself do.
I do worry that we can even geteven quicker with death and make
it something that clean andsort of clinical, and I'd
probably say, if people haveregrets about doing that at some
stage to have a gathering lateron, I don't think it
necessarily matters when it is.
If you've had one of those andthought, oh gosh, I missed out,
or you know, have a gathering orremembrance thing for somebody.
(44:01):
It can be done at any stage,just like grief comes up at any
stage.
So thank you for everythingwe've been talking about and we
could go on talking for agesabout loads of this stuff but
what I want to ask as the lastquestion is what kind of tool
this is.
So we've talked about theimportance of death rituals and
how they can shape our grief andall the benefits they can bring
and the different ways peoplecan do them.
So if these are a useful toolthat help people through loss or
(44:23):
help them in their grief oreven prepare for it, if I went
to the shed to pick out thattool, what kind of tool would
represent this area?
Natasha (44:30):
so in thinking about rituals, I kind of think like a
rake, like one of really big,when you have to rake leaves,
and those ones that are likereally big fan outspread, and I
think that that can be a reallyimportant symbol for thinking
about rituals and thinking aboutthe way that they rituals can
serve to bring people togetherand can kind of unite various
strands of identity, unitedifferent focal points of one's
(44:53):
life.
I think that ritual can justserve to bring people together
at moments of crisis in the waythat when you're kind of raking
with all those big, wide rakes,you can bring all those leaves
together.
Claire (45:05):
A rake, and one of those ones that fans out a bit, which
means I can differentiate itfrom the previous rake that I
had, which is a more traditionalwooden one, in my mind, another
very useful tool for my shed.
If you want to find out moreabout Natasha, you can check out
the links in the show notes formore on her and where to find
her book.
Thank you so much for thisconversation, natasha.
It's fascinating to chat topeople who are in such different
(45:26):
areas of study and interest.
Ritual is so important when itcomes to saying goodbye and it
reminds me of the conversationwe had in Lost 41.
Lost without a body with LisaKolb Ruland.
The body of Lisa's husband wasnever found and she said one of
the hardest things was not beingable to have the rituals and
the traditions of a funeral.
These are things we often don'trealise we're taking for
(45:47):
granted when someone dies, andit reminds us that even in these
moments when life feels at itsworst, there are still things to
be grateful for.
If you want to find out moreabout me and Chris and our
experience with infertility andchildlessness, or the podcast or
Herman's and loads more, popover to www.
the silentwh y.
com.
Thanks for listening to TheSilent Why.
If you've got a subject you'dlike me to chat to an expert on,
(46:09):
please get in touch via oursocial media or the website or
the email the silentwh y@ gmail.
com and let's chat.
Hello there and thanks for joining me for another
episode of let's Chat on TheSilent Why.
I'm Claire Sandys and throughthis podcast we're exploring how
and where we can find hopethrough grief and loss, and in
these let's Chat episodes I talkto a guest who has experience
or expertise in a particulararea of loss.
In this episode, I'm chattingto Natasha Mikles, who is an
(00:22):
assistant professor at TexasState University.
Natasha is a scholar of storiesabout death and what happens
next and researches traditionsrelated to death and grief
around the world, and especiallyin Tibet and the Americas, and
her most recent book, ShatteredGrief how the Pandemic
Transformed the Spirituality ofDeath in America, examines how
(00:42):
COVID-19 affected thespirituality of death and the
grieving rituals surrounding it,like social distancing, and how
often this meant thatconventional funerals couldn't
be held, or how religiouscommunities were disrupted at
the exact moment mourners turnedto them for support.
This pandemic caused a dramaticchange not only in rituals, but
also how people found meaningafter the loss of a loved one.
(01:03):
So in this conversation we talkabout the importance of ritual
and how it can not only help usbut also let us grieve, and how
other cultures and religionshonour and recognise death, and
why and how COVID grief candiffer from other forms of grief
and how you can have your bodylegally eaten in the US by
vultures.
And because I want to capturesome useful magic from each of
(01:25):
these chats.
A bit like the Hermans on ourusual episodes you need to check
out www.
thehermancompany.
com for more on those I'mbuilding a tool shed,
metaphorically, of equipment tohelp us face and get through
loss and grief.
So at the end of each of theseepisodes I ask our guests what
sort of tool their subject wouldbe and then I add it to my shed
.
And so far I've acquired a veryuseful range of tools.
(01:45):
So grab a cup of tea, a coffeeor maybe a ranch water
apparently, that's a Texas thingor a whiskey that's a Natasha
thing and relax with me andNatasha as we chat death rituals
and COVID-19.
Natasha (01:57):
I'm Natasha Mikles.
I'm an assistant professor atTexas State University in San
Marcos, texas.
There I teach classes in ourreligious studies program,
primarily in Tibetan and Chinesereligions, but also in world
religions, and we might say kindof thematic courses about death
, dying and narratives aboutkind of what happens next, like
(02:19):
in the afterlife.
I'm also the author ofShattered Grief how the Pandemic
Transformed the Spirituality ofDeath in America, which just
came out this past year withColumbia University Press.
Claire (02:31):
So tell me what brought you into this kind of world,
because it's not your averagelittle girl's dream to go into
this kind of area.
Rituals, death, shattered grief, all this kind of stuff.
So is this something that'scome from personal experience
you've been through, or is itjust something you're really
interested in?
Just tell me how you kind ofgot here.
Natasha (02:46):
So I was trained in what we call Tibetan studies, or
I was trained as a Buddhologist.
What that means is that I wasprimarily a scholar of Asian
religion, of Buddhist traditionsas they were practiced in China
and Tibet, and I should say Iam still a scholar of that.
But during the pandemic, ofcourse, worldwide global travel
was halted and I was unable togo back to my fieldwork sites in
(03:09):
Tibet and China.
And as I was kind ofcontemplating how this was going
to affect my career, because Ihad just been made into what in
America we call tenure trackpositions I'm not sure how it
works in the British andEuropean academies, but in a
tenure track position you haveto kind of publish a certain
amount of stuff that's within acertain timeframe and then they
decide if you get to stickaround or not.
(03:30):
So, as this was happening, afriend of mine sort of I
wouldn't call him a close friend, but an acquaintance of mine a
young man died reallyunexpectedly from COVID-19.
He was a PhD student at TexasState University but was also
teaching full-time in theirEnglish department and he was a
friend of mine in the sense that, you know, we met about once a
(03:51):
week or maybe once every otherweek with a group of other
professors to have beers atthose little pub across the
street from the university andjust talk about kind of complain
about our students and vent.
And his death really, I think,struck all of us really hard,
because it wasn't the kind ofCOVID-19 death that most of us
were seeing on the television.
This was January 2021.
(04:13):
So the vaccine had just startedto kind of enter into our
conversations about COVID-19.
And I think, like many academics, I began thinking immediately
analytically and began thinkingabout how all these funeral
rituals had changed because ofCOVID-19 and death.
I actually talk in theintroduction of the book about
(04:35):
watching his funeral from Zoom.
At this point the funeral homestill had not the one that his
parents chose to go with for hisfuneral, did not have a great
digital virtual setup, and solike they had this little camera
kind of position that lookedlike it was like maybe like kind
of just positioned very rockilyover the door, like maybe they
had like hooked it onto the walland all these elements of Hindu
(04:56):
funerals that I was reallyfamiliar with my research in
Asian religions were still beingdone but were being modified,
and I immediately began thinkingwhat other changes are being
made and how can we documentthis period?
As a scholar of religion, I'mvery interested in documenting
important transformationalperiods as much as possible so
that future researchers can havethis type of data.
Claire (05:19):
Fascinating.
Did you ever think about whatCOVID was doing death-wise
before your friend died?
Or was that literally the pointwhen you started thinking?
Actually, this is changingthings.
Natasha (05:28):
I've been thinking about COVID-19 and death before
that because my research is onBuddhist death traditions and
kind of Buddhist ideas of theafterlife and rebirth and
particularly Buddhist hells.
Because of my Tibetan Chinesecolleagues on different social
(05:48):
media groups, I could see how inChina Tibetans were being
scapegoated as the people whowere, you know, like happened in
many countries.
They were the ones who werebringing COVID into what was
otherwise the Chinese government, trying to say otherwise this
would have been a problem.
So Tibetans, other minoritygroups, foreigners, but also
watching how Tibetans wererelying on traditional Buddhist
practices to combat COVID-19.
So there's a certain pill thata Buddhist monk can make in
(06:13):
utilizing all sorts of differentherbs but also different types
of prayers and rituals that alot of my Tibetan friends began
taking as a means to combatCOVID-19.
And so that was veryfascinating to me.
But I think the death of myfriend really took it from being
something that was academicallyinteresting to really
experiencing it myself.
And while I had elderly parentsand I was of course worried
(06:34):
about COVID-19 for them, I thinkkind of having to hit someone
that was actually younger thanme and in my immediate friend
group really kind of changed thetenor, changed the entire
parameters of the conversation Iwas having with myself about
this you know I don't know muchabout what the, the funeral
rituals or anything would likethat would be with Tibetan
people, buddhist, anything likethat.
Claire (06:56):
So what are the sort of the main differences that you
would see with dealing withdeath in that culture compared
to like American or British?
Natasha (07:03):
So for Hindu death rituals there's a kind of need
to take care of the body rightaway.
This is something that we seealso in Islam and in Judaism,
this kind of need to take careof the body, usually within 24
hours, if at all possible.
So there's that kind of rush aswell with Hindu death rituals,
this belief that until thefuneral happens, the soul of the
(07:24):
individual inside the bodycan't go on to their next
rebirth.
So usually Hindu priests ifthis is happening in India,
hindu priests will come and dothe funeral themselves.
They do believe in cremation,and so what happens is they will
set up a funeral pyre, afunerary pyre, and as they set
(07:45):
that up, the priest is chantingcertain important passages from
the Vedas, which are thesesacred Hindu scriptures that are
prized especially for theirkind of, we say, their orality,
for their sound, for theirability to kind of communicate
and to speak.
The important, foundationalsound of the universe itself is
(08:10):
the way some Hindu teachers havedescribed it.
Once they have the pyre set upand the body has been blessed
and usually smeared withturmeric, the priest usually
it's the oldest son, but in thecase like my friend Arun, his
father had to be the one toactually light the funerary pyre
, so usually it's the oldest son, but here it was his father had
(08:33):
to.
Now in America, because we don'tallow open air cremations
except in very specific places.
What that means is that thefather ends up having to be the
one to actually hit the buttonthat starts the cremation
machine.
So that's how that ritual hasactually gotten transformed in
(08:54):
America.
Then, as the body's burning, aspecial frenu work will actually
puncture the skull to make surethat the soul can get out.
So seeing a lot of those things.
There were things like Q-tips.
It was very strange to beseeing this ritual that I was
very familiar with from myresearch but being done with
like Q-tips in place, because atcertain points you're supposed
(09:16):
to smear turmeric all over thebody or over the head.
And you know the priest didn'twant to get close because it was
a COVID positive body and so hehad this like Q-tip and it was
just kind of like spraying itvery far at a distance.
You never really forgot thatyou were watching a COVID
funeral in any way, shape orform.
So Tibetan funerals oftensimilarly incorporate elements
(09:36):
like that.
I mean I can talk about Tibetanfunerals if you'd like.
Claire (09:39):
Yeah, give us a little bit about what they're like,
because it's so different fromanything we know I they're like,
because it's so different fromanything we know.
I think it's really interestingto see how other cultures are
doing it and how we can learnfrom those, especially if they
help with the grief in a waythat we might not be doing.
Natasha (09:52):
So Tibetan funerals there's an idea that once a
person dies, you don't want totouch the body, because wherever
you touch the body there'sstill this idea that there's a
consciousness kind of movingaround the body and if you touch
the body on the shoulder,that's going to make the
consciousness leave there andbecause it's not the head, it
(10:12):
will have not as good a rebirth.
So I think with both Hinduismand Buddhism there is this real
concern with rebirth and makingsure that the person who's died,
that a particular good karma isgoing to come out, so they will
have a better rebirth, arebirth as a human, a rebirth in
a divine realm, a more pleasantrebirth.
I'm trying to think.
I usually think about badrebirths since I research
Buddhist hells, but so withTibetan Buddhist funerals
(10:36):
they'll often so the body willbe left for about seven days in
the house and a Buddhist monkwill come in, usually one who's
been trained by a teacher, andread what's called the Tibetan
Book of the Dead or the BardoTudral.
So this is it's actually areally interesting text that is
kind of talking about what theconsciousness of the person
(10:57):
inside the body is going to beseen as they go through the
afterlife, or as they go throughthis what's called Bardo, this
kind of intermediate periodbetween one life and the next
life.
So the text is literally likeyou are going to walk forward
here, you're going to see thiswrathful deity, don't be afraid.
This wrathful deity is justyour own mind projecting its
(11:18):
fears back at you.
You're going to see this, youwant to go this direction.
And so the monk is kind ofreading this into the ear,
chanting it over the body,sometimes reading it directly
into the ear of the corpse orthe deceased person, as they are
helping to guide the personthrough this intermediate period
.
And there is actually a lot ofinteresting fears in the
(11:38):
tradition that the monk will belying when he says that he can
read this text.
So I know from my own work onBuddhist hells that certain hell
literature will say thatthere's hells reserved for
Tibetan monks who said that theycould read the Bardo Tudral and
that they were able to, butactually were lying and were
just kind of spouting randomwords.
(11:58):
They get reborn in a veryspecial, very, very bad hell
because they not only lied butthey also affected the rebirth
of dozens, potentially hundreds,of other people.
Yes, so after that's finished,the family will take the body
and then the kind of traditionalform of body disposal into.
That has been sky burials,where vultures eventually eat
(12:22):
the body Usually.
I only had an opportunity tosee a sky burial once, but the
family brought the body up tothe top of the mountain along
with monks who went up.
They blessed the body and thenthe Buddhist monks actually had
to leave immediately because itwas very bad karma for them to
see this and there's a specialritualized practitioner who
actually begins to slice up thebody in different ways.
(12:46):
At the Sky Barrel that Iwitnessed, I had not planned to
see one.
We were just visiting themonastery and the family saw
myself and a couple of myfriends that were there and I
think was surprised to see abunch of random white people in
the middle of Tibet and saidthat they were about to do this
and that if we wanted to standkind of on the outskirts so we
(13:07):
were pretty far back, wecouldn't see any details that
they were okay with that and Iremember, as we were watching it
, all these vultures.
There's a big hill and thevultures of course know what is
about to happen.
They're getting filled withanticipation and they're all on
the hill and the sun comes outand the vultures all kind of
open their wings and Iunderstand biologically it's
(13:28):
because they're trying to heattheir bodies up.
It's like they're trying to getwarm.
But it did look like this verybeautiful moment of the vultures
thanking the family fordonating the body to them.
Um, so there was a in maybeabout 60 or 70 vultures on the
hill.
All it's just their wingsspread directly, facing directly
towards the family.
Claire (13:46):
Whoa, what a sight.
Natasha (13:48):
Yeah, so, and then, but yeah so, then the bone cutter
will kind of slice off bits ofthe flesh to try to get the
vultures excited and then kindof steps back and lets the
vultures devour the body.
And then kind of steps back andlets the vultures devour the
body, and then one thing I wasactually very unprepared for
(14:10):
when I saw this was just how Ihad no idea how fast vultures
can eat a body.
I think it was about threeminutes and all that was left
was bones.
And then he sucks back in andhas a large mallet where he
actually breaks the bones up andmixes them with butter and a
little barley flour and thenfeeds them to tinier birds.
So within the course ofprobably about 20 minutes the
(14:32):
body's entirely gone.
Claire (14:33):
That's incredible.
I honestly thought that wouldhave been hours, if not days.
Natasha (14:37):
Yeah, wow.
And this is not the only kindof like.
This is the most famous form ofbiodisposal in Tibet.
Really important people arecremated, but there's not always
enough trees to do thateverywhere, and most Tibetan
Buddhists believe that by givingyour body back to the vultures
in this way, it's actually akind of final act of generosity
that earns good karma foryourself and good karma for your
(15:00):
family.
Claire (15:00):
Yeah, I remember talking to somebody who worked nearby
in a national prey center.
There's a vulture project goingon trying to help them.
I think it might've been inIndia where they have, like is
it Temple of Silence orsomething?
They have a certain kind ofdeath ritual.
Natasha (15:13):
Yeah, towers of Science .
It's the Parsi community, sothey were originally the only
living Zoroastrians alive today.
Claire (15:19):
Ah, okay, they were having trouble because people
were starting to take medicationa lot more.
Oh, fascinating I think it wasDiclofenac specifically was
killing the vultures when theywere eating the bodies, so they
were having to reintroduce morevultures.
It was amazing I can't rememberexactly what it was, but the
knock-on effect of this onemedication affecting the
vultures, which then I think itwas less food for the carnivores
(15:40):
that were roaming around, butit was amazing the effect on all
the different creatures thatwere involved in it.
That's fascinating.
Yeah, it is such a fascinatingarea because, like I said, it's
so different from anything wehave here.
It's, I mean, for some people itwould seem quite horrific
because we just don't even seebodies at all, let alone any
kind of separating the parts forvultures.
Yeah, was there any part of itto you?
(16:02):
That was really shocking,because obviously you know how,
how these cultures work.
But was it?
Is it hard to watch?
Or was there anything that wasso different that it was just
like, actually this is quitedifficult to see yeah, I think
for myself personally, theseeing the sky burial became
difficult.
Natasha (16:16):
I do remember there's one part where this like there's
intestines just go flying inred, like it's kind of it's
almost funny.
It's not obviously it's notfunny, but I think that kind of
was his moment, like oh, this isreal, like yeah, what am?
I watching yes and um, at onepoint I did I started to get a
little sick to my stomach and II did have to turn my back, but
I remember I could still hearthe vultures breaking open the
(16:37):
bone marrow, like the bones toget the marrow inside.
That's a very distinctive soundand, and you know know, I kept
thinking to myself, like youknow, I think I wasn't before
then.
I wasn't entirely certain aboutmind body dualism.
Is there a soul that's separatefrom the body?
And in that moment I was likethere is a soul separate from
the body and that person is nolonger in that body, and that
(16:58):
being very arresting, you mightsay.
Claire (17:01):
Would a whole family go to something like that?
Is that something children areintroduced to, or is that just
an adult thing?
Natasha (17:06):
I'm not entirely certain.
The one that we were at, therewere no children and it was a, I
would say, middle-aged woman.
Just by again, we're kind offar away, but just by looking at
color of the hair and kind ofthe shape of the body from where
we were, I think they wouldprobably keep most children away
from that.
But I do remember the familywas really not crying at all.
(17:30):
I think on one hand you couldsay that for them that this was
this incredible gift that theywere giving to the vultures and
they knew that this was kind ofgiving good karma.
There's also some Tibetanpopular stories that say if you
start crying over the death of aloved one, that the loved one
in the bardo will startexperiencing rains of blood and
pus for all of your tears ohgosh, you should not cry for the
deceased loved one.
This actually is where we seealso in Sikh cultures have very
(17:51):
similar stories, not exactly thesame, but that if you do cry
overly much once the kind ofmourning period is over, if you
keep crying you are going toactually negatively hurt your
loved one in the afterlife or inthe kind of next rebirth.
Claire (18:04):
Gosh, that really does dictate your grieving, doesn't
it?
Because you wouldn't obviouslywant to do that to somebody.
It's so different.
It's really interesting.
But I also want to see yourCOVID research and what came out
of that.
So, yeah, tell us.
What was it around it that madeyou think, rather than just
being interested in this andthis is fast, because some
people have been fascinated bywhat COVID was doing but also
(18:28):
you wanted to keep going further, to do research on it and then
a book on it.
So what was it about that thatmade you think?
Actually, there's just like somuch here and why does it need
doing?
Why do people need to knowabout?
Natasha (18:37):
this.
I started by doing interviews,just cold emailing.
At first I thought I'd just beemailing religious professionals
, so priests and imams andrabbis and pastors, and I
started emailing them to ask howwere the funeral rituals that
they were doing changing becauseof COVID-19.
What immediately beganhappening was they said well,
you really should talk to thishospice doctor who I've been
(19:00):
working with to kind of helpmake sure that any Episcopalians
who die in hospice have thelast, you know, final prayer,
the last rites, done for them.
And then through that it kindof became clear that this wasn't
just something concerningreligious professionals.
This was actually concerning awhole community of people, the
whole.
There were dozens ofindividuals involved in every
(19:22):
single death happening withCOVID-19 that were all being
affected by the pandemic.
So it kind of exploded out.
And what I found, as a scholar,really interesting was, as I
began doing more and moreinterviews, all these things
that I had learned about as agraduate student, like all these
theories, like Durkheim'stheories of communities and
(19:42):
Hayden White's theories ofnarrative and emplotment, all
these like very high leveltheoretical ideas I got to
really see on the ground, got tosee them how they're being used
or just how people wereembodying these kinds of
theoretical ideas just in theireveryday life.
And I had this realization thatthis was actually a very
important moment to help toprovide this like tiny little
microcosm to think about howreligion works in society and
(20:08):
how the experience of grief canactually change and transform
the way that we think aboutreligious identities and
religious communities, and thatif I didn't document this very
dramatic period, that that datacould be lost, because even
right now, you know 2024, we are, you know we're all, everyone's
in this rush to go back tonormal, or we are, have been in
(20:28):
this rush to go back to normal,and we're almost trying to
forget that COVID-19 happened.
And so it's important toremember it, to kind of document
that exact little period and tosee how, to kind of test
theories to see does religionwork this way and how does the
idea of trauma inform, then theidea of a traumatic death inform
, our religious communities?
Claire (20:49):
And what sort of things have you been learning from that
?
How does it affect them?
Natasha (20:57):
I think COVID-19 provided an important
opportunity for a lot of peopleto re-evaluate what a community
and what a ritual meant to them,and sometimes they had the
support of their religiouscommunities in doing this, and a
lot of times they didn't.
Here in America, I think therewere a lot of religious
communities who didn't want toaccept that COVID-19 was
happening, but also didn't wantto change the way things had
always been done, didn't want toquestion why do we need this
(21:17):
particular ritual?
Or to talk about why thisparticular ritual continues to
be important and useful, and soI do think COVID-19 provided
this kind of this importantopportunity to evaluate and to
make these changes and to thinkabout what would we want a
religious community to look like?
Claire (21:33):
Yeah, I guess at that time obviously a lot of
religious communities were shutdown so they couldn't meet.
I mean, I never thought we'dsee a day when the churches were
shut down across England, letalone across the world at any
kind of meeting like that, thereligious stuff all being shut
down or not being allowed tomeet.
What was the impact of thatacross a nation when it came to
things like COVID and death andmourning and funeral rituals?
Natasha (21:55):
I think there was this real, this incredible shift to
the virtual kind of virtualspace that we've all experienced
, and I think that for a lot ofreligious leaders, while they
all said that you know,obviously virtual participation
is often not as fulfilling asin-person participation that
this was really important, butthey actually said that we never
(22:17):
would have made this jump asquickly as we would have without
the pandemic kind of forcing usto.
This is something that is goingto remain a part of our church
community in some capacity inthe years to come, and so I
think there are good things thatcame out of this, some people
pushing communities to enterinto virtual spaces.
(22:38):
This also benefited those whoare disabled or homebound or
otherwise unable to safelyattend church services and
church meetings, and so I don'twant to say that the move to
virtual religious practices isnecessarily always bad, but in
when my interviews, when I spokewith people who lost their
funds to COVID-19, by and largeeveryone found the virtual
(23:00):
funeral unfulfilling, and mostof them seem to be haunted by
the funerals that theyenvisioned for their loved ones,
for their parents andgrandparents, and that they
could not have.
Claire (23:11):
Yeah, very difficult.
I think and, like you said, insome ways again people now can
attend funerals from across theworld that they could never have
got to physically because ofthat, because we had to do a lot
of virtual stuff with funerals.
It's definitely not the same,and the restriction on the
numbers at funerals and thingswould have been horrible for
people.
But I guess a lot of things.
I was just thinking about allthe people who don't get to say
goodbye, Because obviously thereare always people who haven't
(23:32):
said goodbye to relatives.
You know there'll be peoplelistening now that didn't get to
say goodbye to a relative.
They died in hospital, nothingto do with COVID, they didn't
get there in time, they weren'tthere at the right time.
That's always a situation thathappens which is incredibly hard
to deal with, Do you think?
Natasha (23:52):
it's different or does especially.
I talk about this idea I callthe liturgy of death, which is
the idea that we have an idea ofhow a death is supposed to
proceed and we kind of have amental map of what our loved
one's deaths are going to looklike and oftentimes, as you
point out, it doesn't happen.
People are not able to get tothe hospital in time, or people
or someone has a traumatic deathfar away from their family.
(24:14):
But even when that doesn'thappen, we're still able to do
to follow up with the otheraspects of it, the other
community building aspects, theyou know, friends and family are
still able to come visit youafterwards.
You are able to.
Even if you couldn't be thereat the moment of death, if you
couldn't be there at the funeral, you are still.
Everyone in your society stillwill acknowledge that you are a
(24:35):
mourner, that you are now inthis new stage, also due to
individuals that might have lessrisk tolerance for COVID-19,
people were really unable to getthat kind of social support and
(24:56):
unable to be sociallyrecognized as mourners.
They also weren't able to besocially recognized as mourners
because at least here in America, 50% of the country didn't
think the pandemic was happeningand if you said my loved one
died of COVID-19, a lot ofpeople I interviewed when they
would tell their friends andfamily my loved one died of
COVID-19, they would kind of getquestioned and being like well,
(25:21):
did they have diabetes, werethey overweight, like what other
issues were there?
And I think that's probably avery human response.
People don't want to understandtheir own mortality.
You want to find some kind ofreason why so and so die, but
that you would be protected inthat capacity.
But the reality is COVID-19 waswhat one of the doctors I
interviewed called a Russianroulette disease.
(25:42):
You had no idea who would liveand who would die from it and
that there were certain thingsthat made it more likely.
But at the end of the day thedoctor said I've seen perfectly
healthy people get put onventilators and die who had no
reason to.
And for those people Iinterviewed who had to kind of
endure this questioning, itreally devalued their loved
one's death.
It made it feel like it wassomehow like an acceptable death
(26:06):
to have.
It was okay that their lovedone died from COVID-19, or at
least it was understandable.
I think it's really hard togrieve in that environment.
No one wants to be told thatyour loved one's death is an
acceptable death that we'regoing to put up with because we
all want to go to a bar afterdinner.
Claire (26:21):
Do you think that it's had a lasting impact?
Do you think that there's beensomething from this that will
just keep impacting?
Natasha (26:28):
I think there will be no-transcript friends group and
(27:03):
I found that to be thatcontinues to be remain as active
as ever.
Claire (27:23):
And so I think that for a lot of people, covid-19 grief
is still very real, even if oursociety doesn't want to talk
about it.
You know, if someone else diedof something, you wouldn't
necessarily say, well, were theyobese?
Did they have lung issues?
But with COVID, peopleobviously feel like they have
that freedom to do that andthat's really difficult.
It's like a disenfranchisedgrief isn't it.
It's something you feel youcan't really grieve to the full
extent.
Is that sort of what'shappening in the COVID groups
(27:45):
you're talking about?
Is it the lasting effect oftalking about that?
Or is it that people are stilldying of COVID and you've got
new people coming with that sortof grief.
Natasha (27:53):
I think people are still dying of COVID-19, but
because now I think people stillhave COVID-19, but we're able
to have the types of funeralspeople wanted to have.
My period of field work wentfrom January 2021 until August
2021.
So a very specific six monthperiod, because people are now
(28:13):
able to have the gatheringsafterwards to have the kind of
social recognition.
I think there is a lot greaterrecognition of COVID-19 grief or
that there's less of this typeof questioning and there's kind
of more societal and socialsupport.
I think what the COVID-19epidemic really proved was that
we can't really grieve inisolation and that grief in
(28:34):
isolation just is incrediblypainful and leads to unfulfilled
grief.
One thing I always say to mystudents is that there's this
one scientific principle thattalks about to understand what
an organism needs to survive,and you need to find all those
places with the organism wherewe only see what things have to
be in place that needs tosurvive.
And you need to find all thoseplaces with the organism where,
like where we only see, like,what things have to be in place
(28:54):
that organism to thrive.
So you could talk about thiswith, like earthworms.
You can talk about this with,like different types of fish,
that they need certain you knowwater and they need certain
amounts of types of food.
With humans, the only thing that, like human communities, are
diverse across the planet.
The only thing humancommunities really need to
survive is other humans.
You never see a human living bythemselves, completely without
(29:17):
any other human around them orany kind of framework.
We see that with languagedevelopment, we see that with
social development and I thinkwe see that with grief that
humans need each other to grieve, to recognize their grief, to
help guide their grief, but alsoto share their grief, and I
think, because during thepandemic people couldn't do that
(29:37):
, their grief really becamehalted.
So, even though we still havepeople die to COVID-19 today and
it is still incredibly painful,I think the fact that you can
have that shared griefafterwards makes the experience
different than in the 2020 and2021 period of the pandemic.
Claire (29:52):
And I guess those that went through it in the pandemic.
It could bring up stuff nowwhen you're seeing people who
are having loved ones die ofCOVID-19 and they're getting all
that freedom.
I think if that was me, there'dbe another level maybe of grief
or anger or frustration or likean unfairness that you missed
out on that, and so you couldalmost be grieving again for
what you missed out on aroundthe ritual and around the
(30:14):
community and seeing otherpeople and so, yeah, that must
be really difficult.
I don't think people thinkabout it in this level much.
So I think it's a reallyinteresting thing to look at and
to tap into, because you'resort of only aware of what
you're aware of in your vicinityand what happened with COVID.
We don't really hear much aboutwhat happened individually in
different countries, especiallywhen it comes to things like
death and funerals and howpeople were doing it.
(30:36):
Have these other communitiesthat you've been looking at,
whether it's you know HinduBuddhism?
Have they?
Have they gone back to thefuneral rituals they were doing
before?
Has it changed anything abouthow they do things or have they
gone fully back to how thingswere pre-pandemic?
Natasha (30:49):
They've largely gone back to how they were
pre-pandemic, although I knowthat with some of the Buddhist
communities that I look atbefore, if you had a loved one
die in a Buddhist community, youwould need to get some Buddhist
monk or some Buddhistindividual to chant sutras, to
chant various texts for them.
It used to be you'd have to goand fly to the country where
(31:14):
your loved one died and get amonk there.
But I do know that a lot of theBuddhist temples at least here
in Austin, texas, where we havea small but sizable Asian
American population that theyare starting to offer that they
will chant virtually for yourloved one in China if they die
and you can't get back, or theywill chant virtually for your
loved one in Hong Kong orMalaysia are the three that I'm
(31:34):
thinking of right now.
I think that's something thatis this type of innovation that
I think will continue to remainin religious communities.
Another innovation that I'vebeen seeing is and this has been
happening for a while is thingslike the virtual puja in
Hinduism, so having certaindevotional rituals that you can
do online and can do virtually,and I think that this has
(31:56):
generally a very good thing formost people who want to
participate in a kind ofreligious practice but might not
be near their community.
But one thing I do talk aboutin the book that I think is also
concerning is these virtualcommunities are allowing people
to self-segregate even more.
There is something verydangerous about the idea of
continuing to reinforce yourbubbles and to become more and
(32:20):
more into only a kind of liberalreligious community or only a
very conservative religiouscommunity.
Claire (32:24):
It's just really interesting how something like a
worldwide pandemic can makefunerals and other rituals that
go more virtual.
Because if you'd have suggestedthat pre-pandemic you know most
communities would be like, well, no, no way, why would we want
to do virtual?
That's crazy.
But it's just one illnessspreading across the world has
just changed how we do things.
Are there things about theseother funeral rituals you've
(32:46):
seen in any religion orcommunity that you think that
seems to be really helpful orvaluable to grief, or it's
something that maybe we shouldadopt more kind of in the
western world, I think one.
Natasha (32:58):
One thing that I think really kind of came through for
a lot of the individualinterviewed was that kind of
really respecting the role thatritual can have, not as a
reflection of grief, but as athing that shapes grief itself.
So when I talk with my students, we talk about how a reflection
of grief, but as a thing thatshapes grief itself.
So, when I talk with mystudents, we talk about how, a
lot of times, the study ofreligion in the West oftentimes
(33:19):
says you have a belief first andyou express that belief with a
ritual, and this is largelybecause we have kind of
Protestant Christian foundationsto our culture that say that
belief is primary.
The reality, though, is thatfor most religious traditions
around the world, belief ispretty much secondary to ritual
practice, and that often, ritualcan help shape our beliefs, and
(33:41):
so I talked about this a littlebit in my chapter, looking at
just kind of ritual as aphenomenon.
During the pandemic, oneBuddhist nun I spoke to said
that she had a parishioner or akind of congregant whose husband
died, and she kept saying I'mnot sad, I don't feel sad, but
she obviously the Buddhist nunsaid well, but she's been
(34:04):
married for 40 years.
It was very, very strange.
So I started telling her tocome in and do more rituals and
come in and you know here's akey to the temple Come in and do
different types of sutra,chanting for your husband in our
memorial hall and that actuallymade her experience, the grief
that allowed her to give herthis kind of out.
And some of the Muslim leadersthat I interviewed here in
(34:35):
America talked about how evenhaving these important being
able to do these importantfoundational Muslim death
rituals, like washing the bodyand kind of wrapping the body,
actually were importantopportunities for people to
actually feel their like, tohave the expression of their
grief, to feel like their griefhad a purpose.
And so I think that a lot oftimes we don't really honor
ritual as the thing that lets usgrieve.
(34:55):
Ritual doesn't have to expressour grief, but it can be that
thing that tells us you're now amourner and you've now lost
your father, your grandfather,your mother, your child and
you've entered into a differentstate.
I think that can be a reallyimportant tool.
Claire (35:10):
In England it's very much.
You can kind of choose what youwant to do.
In some ways there's a lovelyfreedom in that because you
could honour the person howeveryou wanted to, and I've done
interviews with funeralcelebrants who have done them in
circus tents and all differentplaces have honoured the person
that was alive, which is greatif you've got the creativity in
that moment to think of thesethings.
But on the other side of things, I think when someone dies, a
(35:31):
lot of us don't know what that'sgoing to look like.
That's quite scary, it'sconfusing.
Do they want to be cremated?
Do they want to be buried?
They seem to be the only twooptions that people have on
their minds.
So there's like we've got topick one.
What do you want?
What do they want?
And then beyond that, it's likewell, do I want to be in a
church, no-transcript service?
(36:02):
But that might not feel verygenuine to them because they
don't have any kind of religiousbeliefs.
So the whole thing is a littlebit disjointed.
We sort of have some ritualsleft over from a religious
country when we were a bit moreChristian, and then, unless
you're in a religious communityin which case you would know
roughly what it looks like,because you'll see it happening.
I don't think people know muchabout it and I think that's such
a shame because, like you said,there is no space really for
(36:25):
having that ritual.
If you knew this is what wasgoing to happen, the body was
going to be in the house for aday, let's say, or there was
going to be an open casket.
You'd have time to mourn, you'dbe wearing black or you'd rip
your clothes or you'd put ash onyour face, whatever it is.
If you had something specificand I can really see how that
would shape your grief and helpyou through and allow you that
space to mourn.
But here we just hide it away.
(36:48):
It's like, oh, someone's died.
Quick, get the funeraldirectors in, move them away.
Do you want to see them or not?
Probably not, okay, that's fine, let's have a quick service.
And it's just like, where isthe space to really allow that
grief to kind of feature?
So I definitely don't thinkwe've done ourselves any favors
by getting rid of any of therituals we might have had in the
past where people would wearblack or something just to show
they were mourning.
I think that would be a reallyhealthy thing to see other
(37:10):
people mourning, because thenwhen you go through it, you know
what it looks like.
Or also, if you're mourning,you know I'm not alone in this.
Someone else is mourning overthere.
Yeah, there's so much to itwe've lost.
I don't know if that'ssomething that will come back at
any point, or I don't know,maybe we're we're too far.
Is it similar in America, orhave you got more of a diverse
range of how people do it?
Natasha (37:29):
I think it is similar in America.
I think especially, um, youknow America a couple years ago.
We has hit the very bigstatistic that now most
Americans do not identify asbelonging to a religious
institution.
Honestly, I tell my studentsthat doesn't mean they're not
religious, it just means what itmeans to be religious has now
changed and that is less of akind of institutional,
(37:50):
hierarchical kind of focus tothat.
And so I do think that that issomething very prevalent here in
America, and one of the funeraldirectors I interviewed talked
about even before the pandemic.
He said that before thepandemic, the most difficult
clients that he worked with,most difficult families he
worked with, were people whodidn't have religious identity
(38:11):
and didn't really know what theywanted.
Because he's like I can't makethese decisions for you and I
can't tell you what's going tofeel significant in that moment.
Only you can do those things.
But, as you said, these peoplehad never really thought about
what would a funeral look likeand what would a funeral look
like that looks significant.
A very famous scholar ofreligion talks about ritual as
(38:32):
the assertion of difference.
A very famous scholar ofreligion talks about ritual as
the assertion of difference,meaning that rituals feel useful
and feel important when theyare very obviously different
than ordinary time.
So in Judaism you sit shiva forsix days and you sit and you
aren't allowed to leave thehouse, and I think that that's
actually really important.
You are doing something verydifferent than your regular time
(38:53):
.
You're doing something veryunique and special, and I think
having that set apart time is soimportant for grief and so
important for rituals to beeffective.
Claire (39:02):
What do you think all these other religions, or do you
know what they think of howwe're doing it over here, making
it shorter and shorter and sortof cleaning it and putting it
away?
Do they have an opinion on that?
Natasha (39:12):
Not that I know of.
So we always say religiousstudies is unfortunately
generally a lot of Westernersstudying not Westerners, and
there hasn't really developedthe idea of not Westerners.
So like Chinese scholars orIndian scholars coming back to
America to study us.
I think whenever we get to thatpoint, I think we'll be in a
really great place becauseobviously, as you point out,
(39:34):
they would notice things in ourown culture that we might not
see just because that we're partof it.
So but I do know that you knowmost of the people that I
interviewed who are.
You know, I interviewed onlyAmericans, but of course,
america is one of the mostculturally and religiously
diverse countries in the world,and so the people that I were
interviewing who were part ofsecond and third generation
(39:55):
immigrant communities so SikhAmericans or Buddhist Americans
they would talk about how one ofthe major things that would
decide what funeral home theywere going to is just how
familiar they were with theirrituals and that these rituals
were very precious.
These were some of the mostunchanging rituals that they
would.
One person I interviewed saidlike it's so important to me as
(40:16):
a Muslim, even though I don'tattend mosque every Friday, that
I have a Muslim funeral for myfather.
But this is central toeverything.
I need it to be.
Claire (40:24):
Yeah, it must be fascinating for funeral
directors in our countries whenthey come across these other
religions and how they do thingsand watching how they do it
differently.
Since you started studying allthis, has this shaped what you
want for for your funeral?
Do you know what you want thatto look like?
Natasha (40:35):
in terms of my funeral, I know I just want a really big
party.
I'm polish, irish catholic, soI think on both sides, you know,
you get a big, big wake, kindof a big crazy whiskey field
party.
I've thought about my bodydisposal.
So at texas state university wehave what's called an
anthropological forensicresearch facility, which is a
very fancy way.
It's kind of colloquiallycalled the body farm.
So I know I want my body to bedisposed of there, so I will be
(40:59):
eaten by vultures there.
Claire (41:00):
I thought you were going to say sky burial.
Natasha (41:02):
I can't do a sky burial but I can do this.
The only way to have your bodyeaten, at least in America
legally, is by doing one ofthese body farms.
There are two places in Americayou do open air cremations that
often then the vultures come toeat the kind of charred remains
afterwards.
But there's nowhere to do a skyburial here in America.
And this actually was an issuewhen I interviewed.
(41:23):
You mentioned the Parsis andthe Towers of Silence.
I interviewed the Parsicommunity in Houston and the man
who ran that said that COVID-19actually you know it made it
harder to get to ship goodsacross the world.
But one of the things that madeit harder to ship was bodies,
because a lot of the Parsis inHouston, if they died, would pay
to have their bodies shipped toIndia where you can do the
(41:45):
towers of silence.
And this became a problembecause some of the bodies got
delayed in transit along the waythere.
Claire (41:52):
Shipping bodies.
I need to find someone to talkabout that.
How does that work?
Yeah, oh, that's reallyinteresting.
I'm always fascinated by peoplewho work in the funeral
industry.
I know some people think it's abit morbid when you talk about
it, but I think there's a lot ofvalue in thinking ahead for
these things.
Do you think it can be helpfulin some way to sort of think
about these things, either forourselves or, you know, asking
those we love what would theylike?
Do you think that's a goodthing?
Natasha (42:12):
Very important to talk about this and to begin
envisioning what type of funeralyou want, but also begin
envisioning your loved one'sfunerals, not only so that you
know their wishes, but also sothat you can begin thinking
about the fact that you or yourloved ones will die.
One of the people I interviewedwas a death doula an end of
life specialist doula an end oflife specialist and she talked
(42:40):
about how, when the familydoesn't know what someone's
final wishes are for theirbiodisposal or for their rituals
surrounding it, that actuallycan cause more pain for them
that having that moment.
There can be great comfort inknowing that you are fulfilling
what your loved one wanted atthe very end.
Claire (42:53):
Yeah, one of our guests said a while back that she
thought the funerals were forthe living, not the dead.
Natasha (42:57):
Yes.
Claire (42:58):
And I've often thought about that.
And I was actually chatting tosomebody this week.
They were talking about someonewho a friend of a friend who'd
had a pure cremation.
So they'd been sent off forcremation and the ashes get sent
to you and that's pretty mucheverything.
And she said I was likeliterally I wouldn't do that for
my husband, like even if thatwas what he wanted, I'm the one
grieving, I'm going to have someform of gathering Afterwards.
(43:20):
I just couldn't do it.
I can totally see thetemptation and I can see why
people would want to, because Iguess you just don't want to go
out into a funeral and see loadsof people and you know when
you're at that raw grief stage,I totally get it.
But I do see the importance ofwhy people should do it and the
gift it probably gives you andothers to allow that space for
(43:41):
grief.
So it's something I woulddefinitely make myself do.
I do worry that we can even geteven quicker with death and make
it something that clean andsort of clinical, and I'd
probably say, if people haveregrets about doing that at some
stage to have a gathering lateron, I don't think it
necessarily matters when it is.
If you've had one of those andthought, oh gosh, I missed out,
or you know, have a gathering orremembrance thing for somebody.
(44:01):
It can be done at any stage,just like grief comes up at any
stage.
So thank you for everythingwe've been talking about and we
could go on talking for agesabout loads of this stuff but
what I want to ask as the lastquestion is what kind of tool
this is.
So we've talked about theimportance of death rituals and
how they can shape our grief andall the benefits they can bring
and the different ways peoplecan do them.
So if these are a useful toolthat help people through loss or
(44:23):
help them in their grief oreven prepare for it, if I went
to the shed to pick out thattool, what kind of tool would
represent this area?
Natasha (44:30):
so in thinking about rituals, I kind of think like a
rake, like one of really big,when you have to rake leaves,
and those ones that are likereally big fan outspread, and I
think that that can be a reallyimportant symbol for thinking
about rituals and thinking aboutthe way that they rituals can
serve to bring people togetherand can kind of unite various
strands of identity, unitedifferent focal points of one's
(44:53):
life.
I think that ritual can justserve to bring people together
at moments of crisis in the waythat when you're kind of raking
with all those big, wide rakes,you can bring all those leaves
together.
Claire (45:05):
A rake, and one of those ones that fans out a bit, which
means I can differentiate itfrom the previous rake that I
had, which is a more traditionalwooden one, in my mind, another
very useful tool for my shed.
If you want to find out moreabout Natasha, you can check out
the links in the show notes formore on her and where to find
her book.
Thank you so much for thisconversation, natasha.
It's fascinating to chat topeople who are in such different
(45:26):
areas of study and interest.
Ritual is so important when itcomes to saying goodbye and it
reminds me of the conversationwe had in Lost 41.
Lost without a body with LisaKolb Ruland.
The body of Lisa's husband wasnever found and she said one of
the hardest things was not beingable to have the rituals and
the traditions of a funeral.
These are things we often don'trealise we're taking for
(45:47):
granted when someone dies, andit reminds us that even in these
moments when life feels at itsworst, there are still things to
be grateful for.
If you want to find out moreabout me and Chris and our
experience with infertility andchildlessness, or the podcast or
Herman's and loads more, popover to www.
the silentwh y.
com.
Thanks for listening to TheSilent Why.
If you've got a subject you'dlike me to chat to an expert on,
(46:09):
please get in touch via oursocial media or the website or
the email the silentwh y@ gmail.
com and let's chat.
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