Comments on 78 Notes to Self: A Tarot Journal: The Terminator

Everything is a learning experience, 'tis true, bu...

2006-07-28T01:18:00.000-04:00

Everything is a learning experience, 'tis true, but some things you just can't and probably shouldn't try to "pretty up." I was shocked to see how far removed we've become from death in our culture when my grandmother gave me my great-grandmother's scrapbook and there were photos of a dead child lying in a cot in someone's front room, flowers all around, a traditional "wake." Wakes were at home. Photos weren't as commonplace as they are today, so it may have been the only photo the family had of the child. I've read that the flowers in abundance helped to mask the odor of decomposition, especially during summer months. That was some stark imagery there. A photo in a scrapbook...of death. How does one gloss over the loss of a child? Do you say the child has merely "changed?" No, the child is gone, and a part of you dies with them, also a "death" more in the "changed" sense than literal since you still breathe.

You're right, Carol. Death isn't sexy. There are other cards for transformative experiences...Judgement/Aeon comes to mind here. Death occupies that place where things just stop.

I've always agreed with you about the death card. ...

2006-07-27T15:21:00.000-04:00

I've always agreed with you about the death card. Some things are final. Sometimes something dies and it may be replaced with something else (or it may not), but it's not a transition into something else. It's a death and then there's something else--or not.

What kind of service do we give people if we ignore that painful events will happen in their lives? Sitting with them in their grief is far more caring than pretending it's a transition into something better.

Once a friend said to me, "Everything always turns out fine in the end." I just said, "No, it doesn't. Sometimes things turn out badly and that's the way it ends." Death isn't sexy like the Devil. It's just final.

I think a lot of what used to serve as touchpoints...

2006-07-22T02:53:00.000-04:00

I think a lot of what used to serve as touchpoints for us in the whole death thing are now replaced by others who take the process out of our hands. Nursing homes, hospitals, morgues, funeral homes, etc. all provide services that remove us from what used to be a very intimate process. Some traditions still do hands-on preparation for burial, but the larger majority of us "make arrangements." I wonder if that doesn't short-circuit the grief process somehow or prolong it or something. And combine that with everyone telling the bereaved, "Chin up, your loved one would want you to be happy, not sad, there, there...you still have a life to live" essentially rushing the mourner through his/her grief because *they* are not comfortable sitting with sorrow too long, well, it just doesn't seem healthy to me. And we also tell ourselves we're being stupid, silly, foolish, or self-indulgent when we find ourselves grieving other "deaths" in our lives, losses that don't require a funeral, per se, but which nonetheless seem to require a period of mourning. The Death card seems to show up when we're trying to avoid that and need to face up to the loss, feel it, spend time with it, so we can move on.

So yeah, you know...if elephants know to do it, you know, handle the bones of the deceased and caress them before laying them to rest, what you are doing in that lab would be at least as solemn as well. It's when we detach for efficiency's sake that we put aside our humanness and lose something precious in the process.

Oh so true, Sophia!Life is all about beginnings an...

2006-07-22T01:11:00.000-04:00

Oh so true, Sophia!

Life is all about beginnings and endings, including the biggest ones, birth and death. In this culture we are okay with birth, for the most part, but suck at doing death. We don't want to face it, we don't want to deal. So we don't. I've been drawing some of the same conclusions reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying that have through tarot. Cool. Also in the physical anthro lab I'm teaching this summer I handle human bones M-Th. Very sobering. If I let it be - it becomes a very spiritual thing.