couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her there alone, so I told them that I was taking her home. The hospital was reluctant to agree, so I found myself saying that it was for religious reasons although I did not truthfully know what I was going to do when we got home. My other daughters received the dead body of their sibling with the openness and acceptance of the very young, but friends were still calling for news of the birth and when a neighbour dropped by with something she had knitted for the baby I realized that I could not stay there. I was inspired to call the Buddhist Society for advice and they suggested that I go to a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of London. I phoned the abbot and he invited us to go and stay with them.
When we arrived I was invited to place my baby at the feet of a statue of the Buddha in the meditation room. I laid her down among all these summer flowers freshly picked from the garden and I knew I had come to the right place. We arrived from this awful hospital situation to this peaceful place which is called Amaravati, meaning ‘Deathless Realm’.
That night meditation practice continued as normal with all the monks and nuns and ordinary people chanting with my baby lying at the feet of the Buddha in front of them. I spent most of the first night there in vigil there with my baby. I felt totally destroyed. My child was born and now it was dead. I knew that I needed to go beyond this tremendous pain of letting go of her but I had no idea how I was going to do it. Early the next morning I came down to discover that someone had placed a tiny Buddha and a poem on her heart.
The daily round of meditation continued around us until the day of her funeral, when I organized a dinner for everyone at the temple and invited a few of her friends. There was a special meditation and a huge meal and then we carried her to the crematorium. I did not want black cars and coffins, just a simple drape over the tiny cot which had been made before she was born. Many of the monks and nuns from the community came with us and we all stood around in a circle. Many people asked to hold her and said some words, some poems and words from the Buddha. There was nothing so difficult as putting her into fire, but the support of the temple community made it bearable.
Many of the nuns thanked me for the great teaching they had received and some of the younger nuns left the order to marry and have children themselves, inspired by the closeness of death to realize what they wanted. Many had never seen a dead body and they asked me if they could touch her. It all gave meaning and purpose to my daughter’s short life. She had already become a teacher. Everybody was learning from the experience of her death. One woman was inspired to plant some bulbs for her son who had died in similar circumstances 25 years before and others mourned their own dead children for the first time.
She was very powerful. From the first moments I felt myself being led by her. I am sure that she led me to the temple because I cannot rationally remember how I made any of those decisions. I just knew we needed to be in a quiet place together. She took me there and brought me to learn a lot about truth and life and death. All along some deep part of me recognized that she did not belong to me, but that as her mother I should be with her on her journey to the very last minute. From the first moment when I knew that she was not going to make it I knew that nothing else mattered but this. I was changed on many levels. I am more reassured that there is more to life and death than what the eye can see and what science can prove.
In a similar way the mourning which erupted on the death of Princess Diana became a powerful catharsis as thousands of people went on spontaneous pilgrimage to Kensington Palace and other places linked with Diana’s memory. Many people were surprised by the intensity of their grief, which they expressed in the most religious and archetypal ways. Flowers, candles, incense, banners, icons, paintings, gifts and offerings transformed the park around Kensington Palace into a massive universal shrine far removed from late twentieth-century London. It became simultaneously a Hindu pilgrimage, a Mexican shrine, a Catholic vigil, an Irish wake and a pagan ritual.
In this atmosphere of communal mourning many were able, sometimes for the first time, to grieve for private losses of their own. Our natural processes of mourning can be interrupted for many reasons but if we do not fully grieve for the dead a part of us holds on to them. With her death Princess Diana performed her final act of service for the community. She triggered a healing release of grief which soothed the troubled hearts of thousands of people as well as helping them to finally let go of the souls of the long dead.
Among Buddhists the onus is on the mourners to forget about their own anguish and to help the dead rise up and move on into the great light through meditations and showering love onto the deceased. This was especially important in cases of sudden death, which causes such a great shock to the soul that it can become trapped in the moment of death and unable to move on towards the natural processes of rebirth. Soygal Rinpoche urges us to ‘imagine rays of light emanating from the Buddhas or divine beings pouring down all their compassion and blessings. Imagine this light streaming down onto the dead person, purifying them totally from the confusion and pain of their death, granting them profound and lasting peace.’ After death the mind of the soul is intensely clairvoyant and can pick up the tiniest thought and emotion. Loving thoughts are like a silken cord to which they can cling as they move through the first phase after death.
Grief is an active, not a passive, process. If we are given the space for our grieving then our hearts can begin to heal. Our natural ability to integrate our loss can begin to work its magic. There comes a time when we need to stop grieving and release our attachment to those we love. The dead need us to let go.
Just recently, as work on this book drew to a close, we were told about a man who had been suffering from a recurring dream ever since his eight-year-old daughter had died when she had been knocked over by a car. She had been a vibrant, popular child and the whole school had come to the funeral. In the dream the man would see his daughter on a hill surrounded by thousands of other children holding candles. All of them were alight except for his daughter’s. He could not understand why it was that his daughter’s candle was never alight. Then one night she came to the front of the crowd and he asked her why. She said to him, ‘I keep lighting it, Daddy, but your tears keep making it go out.’
CELEBRATION OF THE DEAD
The instinct to praise the dead is natural and ancient and one of the most important elements of any funeral service is the opportunity to celebrate the achievements and the character of the one who had died. Among the Egyptians the act of praising and lifting the atmosphere after death was part of releasing the soul of the dead to a higher place. In Ireland and elsewhere the lamentations to the dead told of their great deeds in life; their sense of humour and successes, good looks and kind hearts were praised in long rolling rhythmic phrases. Throughout the world dancing and singing is common at funerals as an expression of the belief that the soul really is moving on to another dimension. Despite the sadness and grief of death, wakes and fiestas release the weight of mourning and change the atmosphere from one of loss into one of celebration.
The Buddha himself exhorted his followers to celebrate rather than mourn his passing: ‘It is not appropriate to grieve in an hour of joy. You all weep, but is there any real cause for grief? We should look upon a sage as a person escaped from a burning mansion. My time has come, my work is done. My teachings shall last for generations so do not be disturbed.’ Releasing his disciples from grief, he encouraged them to celebrate death as the moment when knowledge dispels ignorance and the spirit is released to peace.
The natural instinct to praise and honour the dead at funerals, wakes and memorials pours a positive energy onto their memory and sheds light onto their souls. By praising the spirit we help the souls of the dead to seek their own liberation, safe in the knowledge that they were well loved and had fulfilled their promise in life.
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