Modern Day Death Rituals

       Last week I touched on an essay by Patricia Goldey that discussed the traditions that take place in Portugal when someone dies. These rituals served as past and present traditions. This week I researched based on a website I had found called SPN Funeral Plans LDA. This website lays out the steps that one would take when a loved one dies.

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       It begins by distinguishing between an at home death and one that occurs in a hospital. When someone dies at home, if they have been recently seen by a doctor then that doctor would need to be notified and would come to remove the body. If the deceased had not been seen by a doctor then the police would need to be informed and they would come to remove the body from the home. In either case, unless foul play was suggested, the body would be taken to the Tanatorio, or the funeral parlour.

       Once the body is taken to the funeral parlour and the next of kin is notified (assuming they didn't already know) the family begins discussing funeral arrangements with the Tanatorio. They would meet with the director and fill out a Contract that establishes what is to happen to the body. The decision must be made between burial and cremation. Several questions would be asked at this point because if the ashes were to be tossed into the wind or buried, they would require two different types of urns. After a burial process is decided upon either the family or the Tanatorio would arrange the funeral service.

       Other details involved in the planning of the service include the cancellation of the deceased's passport, arranging for flowers or monetary donations, organizing a niche in the cemetery for the body to be placed into, and arranging for the payment to be received by the funeral parlour. The Tanatorio handles the arranging of the niche and can handle the ordering of flower arrangements. The family is required to handle monetary donations and making sure the parlour receives its payment.

       Once the funeral is arranged and taken care of the family is responsible for notifying the appropriate organizations and individuals of the death. These people require death certificates to be sent to them and these certificates must be signed by a judge. Death certificates can be obtained at the Civil Registry which is found at the Court Building. If any additional death certificates, beyond those that are originally allowed, are needed then the family must request them from the Civil Registry again.


       This website was useful in understanding the steps that are taken in Portugal today when someone dies and a funeral needs to be planned. The SPN Funeral Plans LDA is a company that was formed by a group of professionals. This website is clearly a promotional tool to help expand their business. Funeral plans can be applied for on the website and there is a hot line number to instantly connect you to a someone from the business. Despite the propaganda that this site uses, I felt like it was a worthwhile site to include in my research because it is a first hand source into what the funerary practices of Portugal are today. The fact that its a professional group of people who developed the site also made it seem more credible in my opinion.


Picture 1 - SPN Funeral Plans LDA header image from website http://www.spnfuneralplans.com/media/images/spn-header2.jpg

Source - SPN Funeral Plans LDA. "Death Procedures." SPN Funeral Plans LDA. http://www.spnfuneralplans-portugal.com/deathprocedures.html (accessed 9-27-13).

Patricia Goldey is a LIfesaver

        This week's research has led to many interesting and thought provoking discoveries. Patricia Goldey's essay "The Good Death: Personal Salvation and Community Identity" has been a lifesaver in regards to learning about Portuguese death rituals. The essay has so much information that I've decided to break it up into different posts, today focusing on two of her main points.

THE GOOD DEATH
      
         The first section of Goldey's essay covers a topic that she deems "The Good Death". This is something that I believe most religions and cultures share but Goldey goes into detail about the Portuguese idea of what constitutes a good death. She begins by pointing out that it is really a medieval type of notion but that it is one that is still employed in today's mind of thought.

         In Portugal, a good death involves resisting temptation towards despair and pride while also being repentant for sins that have been committed. It also means that dying at home, with good warning, is ideal because it allows people to prepare for the end with the traditional ceremonial aspects of doing a public accounting. This accounting, according to Goldey, includes forgiving one's enemies, blessing your friends and family, and paying off any debts. By organizing the end of one's life, spiritually and practically, one is allowing for a good death to occur. Family, children, and friends all play a role in the end of a person's life and in the creation of a good death as well.

         Goldey then portrays what constitutes the opposite of a good death for reasons of comparison. People who die as a result of an accident are especially mourned for they are not given a chance to prepare themselves for death. It is also seen to be a horrible for someone to die away from their family and their village, or even in today's times, from Portugal. These people, whether dying or dead, are brought back to their home village at all costs for burial. This used to mean that if they were away from their hometown they would be carted back in a procession, but today it can also mean that terminal hospital patients are taken back to their homes or people who are abroad are brought back to their village for burial from overseas.

         This section of Patricia Goldey's essay clearly shows that cultural traditions like the idea of a good death are still very much prominent in Portugal today, much as they were in the past. Death to the Portuguese can be seen as a good happenstance if everything is in order and there is forewarning, or it can be a sudden and tragic accident that is mourned more passionately.


DEATH RITUALS

         This section of the essay was a fountain of information, most that was helpful in establishing what changes have occurred throughout the history of Portuguese death traditions, which is a part of my project that I am most interested in. This section laid out the complete ritual that the Portuguese follow when a person dies, beginning with announcing the death and ending with grieving times. It also shows that difference between adult death rituals and those that take place when children die.

         Church bells toll in Portugal when someone dies. Traditionally they would toll from the time of death until the grave was closed as a reminder to pray for the soul. This has changed over time, and today the bell only rings out from when the body is moved from the house to the church. When a man dies there are an uneven number of tolls and when a women dies the bell rings an even number of times. When someone dies in their home the burial usually takes place the next day with the interim night spent in a wake at the house. During the wake, neighbors and visitors come, bringing food because cooking by the kin of the dead is to be avoided in order for them to spend more time mourning. The night is spent in ritual prayer, with crying, eating, drinking, and story telling also taking place.

         The next morning, the funeral procession began. The village Procurador, someone who acted as a church warden, led the way to the church with a large crucifix. He is followed by another head of household who carries the church's banner. The coffin, carried by six men including the President of the Parish/Village Council, comes behind these two men. One man from each household then follows the coffin; these men are trailed by the priest and the women. None of the immediate family members attend the funeral at the church because crying is not allowed during the service and they cannot be trusted to not weep. Children, as during the wake, are not allowed to take part in this ritual.

 

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         As the procession begins, the doors and windows of the house are flung open and women begin to wail. This will last until mass begins at the church. Historically, wailers were used in every funeral but today they are less common. This is a result of mixed opinions; there are those who feel wailing is disruptive and too distressing to the family while others think it is a proper and fitting tribute to the dead. Wailers were often paid in food and close female relatives sometimes took part in this tradition, though not always.

         During the funeral mass the coffin is left at the back of the church. After the service the procession then walks in the same order to the cemetery for the burial. The wailing begins again after mass, and traditionally lasted until sunset of that day. When leaving the church, poor people who were wailing outside were given small gifts by the relatives of the dead. People who attended the funeral were also given a gift of food after the services. After burial, the mattress and bedding of the dead were burnt as well.

         The dead were always brought to the parish church by means of funeral procession. When someone from an outlying village passed on, the procession would follow sacramental paths that led to the parish church and had stops along the way that were marked by crosses. This stops were a place for resting and praying for the dead.

         Goldey continues her essay by pointing out that despite the fact that the funeral is over and the dead is buried, the ritual of death is still taking place. Every Sunday in Portugal after mass, anybody who has lost someone in the last year travels to their graveside to pray and remember them. Every evening the church bell rings out for "Trindades", or an evening Angelus, which is a call for more prayer that helps to keep remembering the dead a part of each day. She also discusses mourning periods and customs at this point. Black is the traditional mourning color in Portugal, as in many places, and the grieving time differs based on one's relationship with the dead. A parent can grieve from 7 to 10 years while an in-law may only grieve for 2 to 3. When a husband dies the widow typically stays in mourning for the rest of her life and many older widows keep up the habit of wearing the "avental de costas". This is a black, rough woven, woolen apron style shawl that is worn over the head.

         Children's deaths are treated very much differently than that of an adult and Patricia Goldey makes sure to show these differences. When a child dies there is no formal mourning or mourning period. There is a funeral mass said but only immediate family members are required to attend; this is different because when an adult dies at least one person from each village household attends the service. Children who die outside the womb are buried in the cemetery but those who are still born are treated even differently still. Stillborns are traditionally not interred in the cemetery; instead they are buried in the floor of the "corte" (the court, probably a basement) below the house. This practice of burying stillborn children under the house is not as prominent today. Yet the thing that struck me most about this tradition was the fact that the afterbirth was customarily buried under the corte. To me this seemed as though the stillborn children were not even considered kids. They were relegated to a spot that could be forgotten and not commemorated. This seems very odd to me; I am used to stillborn children being mourned as much as other children who die, as though they are already children who were lost before they could be known.


FINDINGS

          Patricia Goldey's essay so far has given me a lot of useful information for my project. I know that this was a long post and that it's a lot to process but this is also some of the most important research to my overall subject. I learned about the Portuguese ideal of a good death and the rituals that take place when someone dies, at home or abroad, whether that person is an adult or a child. I hope to continue to find information that is this useful in my other sources but Goldey was definitely a lifesaving beginning point.




Picture 1 - a Good Friday Funeral Procession taking place in Braga, Portugal in 2010. Picture found at  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Good_Friday_Funeral_Procession_2010_(9).JPG

Sources
Chapter 1 Goldey, Patricia. "The Good Death: Personal Salvation and Community Identity." Death in Portugal: Studies in Portuguese Anthropology and Modern History, edited by Rui Feijo, Herminio Martins, and Joao de Pina-Cabral, 1-16. Oxford: JASO, 1983.

Topic and Source Searching, As Well As Some Headaches

The topic I decided to research this semester is death and dying in Portugal. My research question is "How do the Portuguese observe rituals of death, historically and in present times, and how have these customs changed throughout history". My plan of attack for this project was to focus on the history of death rituals and especially on how they have changed over time. Not only did I want to focus my research on Portugal but I wanted to expand it to include Portuguese colonies to better understand how rituals would have been influenced by outside forces, or how being away from the homeland affected the customs of death. I really want to be able to organize my research into a sort of timeline presentation by the end of this project, that way to better show of the changes that took place and to focus not only on present day traditions but also the past.
All of these ideas sounded great when I was first developing my project idea. Even the first few steps of researching went well. So far I have found several articles, websites, and a couple books with information regarding death customs in Portugal. Yet when it came to looking at Portuguese colonies, the information was a bit harder to find. Many of the sources are also catering to a specific religion, although they are still about Portugal's customs. I came across my sources using the library database, mostly Jstor, and searching Google. I also perused Kent Library and Mobius online catalogues to find some useful books. The most difficult part about finding anything was trying to form keywords to search. Some combinations worked, while others provided no usable sources. This was frustrating and resulted in some headaches but when I would finally find a good source, all the frustration was worth it.
So far this week I have not been able to jump to far into the material. I had to wait for my books that I ordered from Mobius to get to campus; they finally did Friday and I am going to start reading through them in the next day or two. I have browsed back through some of the websites I found on my first initial day of source looking and found them to be useful for the present death rituals in Portugal. One website, Cardinal Funeral Homes Ltd. (http://www.cardinalfuneralhomes.com/services/etiquette.aspx), has information on the proper etiquette to use during a funeral and if you scroll down in the box there is a section entitled "Portuguese Visitation and Funeral Traditions" that instructs you on what to do during a funeral in Portugal. Another site, Angloinfo, Death and Dying in Portugal (http://portugal.angloinfo.com/healthcare/death-dying/), describes the steps to take when reporting the death of a loved one and the process that comes after the death. Both of these sites have helpful information about the rituals that are in place in Portugal today when it comes to death and dying and will be useful when I go to compare these traditions to those of the past.