Faith Works 11-2-19

Faith Works 11-2-19

Jeff Gill

 

Memento mori

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"Memento mori" is an ancient phrase which is simply Latin for "reminders of death."

 

The philosophy of memento mori is why you see skulls on those old Pilgrim tombstones in Boston, or a display of bones in a medieval tomb. As my old late friend Father Tom Shonebarger would say, they call us to "meditate on our mortality."

 

All Souls is the day on the Christian calendar which falls on Nov. 2, following All Saints on Nov. 1 and I believe you may have noticed the eve of All Saints, or All Hallows, aka Hallowe'en. This time of year still calls us to celebrate the spooky, enjoy the creepy, and relax into the increasing darkness.

 

(Is this where I remind you all to set your clocks back an hour tonight? You're welcome.)

 

I'm not the first to point this out, I'm sure, but the growing "observance" of Hallowe'en with decorations of a ghoulish and horrific nature I think has a subtle parallel to our general loss of memento mori on an everyday basis.

 

In Granville, we still pass the (former) main cemetery as people enter and exit the village on a daily basis. The Old Colony Burying Ground from 1805 was a physical, unavoidable memento mori for everyone.

 

In Newark, the Sixth Street cemetery was much the same on the western, sunset edge of town; after 1850, those memorials, all but one, were relocated to the northeastern corner of the growing city, and Cedar Hill became a place you had to go on purpose to visit, not necessarily a spot you passed by everyday.

 

All over the county the nearby graveyards moved from just outside the church doors to the edge of downtown to . . . outside of town, set apart, farther away. Since the early 1900s, funeral homes became more the mortuary destination we think of now, not a residence for morticians who came and "laid out" the dead in your own front parlor. Death has steadily gotten farther and farther away.

 

I'll be blunt: I see, and touch, a great many more dead people than most of you. Outside of a medical person or funeral director, a parish pastor is more likely to contact and be around death than about anyone else. We can almost forget how accustomed to the presence of absence we are, until family comes into the room and sees a person they've loved now still and quiet in a casket. And then we remember.

 

But frankly, I don't need a memento mori, and I'm not a big Hallowe'en decorator, not because I think it's all intrinsically Satanic or evil, but because I think people are responding to a felt need, especially at this time of year when days grow short and life sinks out of sight across the landscape, to confront and deal with the reality of death.

 

In truth, every skittering dried leaf across the sidewalk is a reminder of death, a memento mori. The roadside dead animals, the news on TV, even the chill in the air calls it all to mind, as much as we might try to avoid thinking about leaving this life for what is to come. I just heard again something like nine of ten people think it's important to talk to their family members about what they want at the end of life, and less than two of ten have done so. You can see the hesitation right there, whether in advance directives, wills and testaments, or just telling someone where you'd like to have your ashes scattered.

 

So it becomes socially acceptable to plant in your lawn a row of skulls in October. Centuries ago, a skull might pop up along the side of the road on the way to school by the church after a heavy rain, and an older child would say "someone tell the gravediggers they need to go deeper!" Now you can put up tombstones by your driveway and drape black hangings on your windows, even if you haven't planned your own funeral and mourning clothes are a quaint piece of history.

 

The seasonal memento mori are getting packed away this weekend, and we turn to fighting darkness with light, with Christmas decorations starting to go up all month. The reminders, and the need, continue to be with us.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your "memento mori" at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.