Open Writing

It wasn’t the first time it had happened and chances are it will not be the last. And although it is a serious matter, I cannot honestly say that I did not find a certain humour in it.

An example was brought to my attention more than fifty years ago when I learned of a remarkable man whose ability to reach into peoples’ hearts and souls seemed unbounded. He was beloved by all to whom he ministered, and even more beloved for his lapses that in other ministers of religion would have been altogether inappropriate.

His capacity to inspire, shock, and amuse earned him the sobriquet, ‘The Swearing Elder.’ He was J Golden Kimball, a member of the Mormon Church’s Quorum of Seventy.

He was singularly blessed to blend his brilliant oration with an earthiness seldom found in the educated, whilst common in farming communities. His high language was never sullied by exaggeration or gratuitous hyperbole. Therefore, due to his honesty, simplicity, and strong religious convictions he was often asked to deliver the eulogy at funerals.

At one such service he was midway into an efflorescent valediction enfolding in eternal glory the dead man in the coffin beneath the pulpit when he saw the ‘deceased’ seated among the congregation and very much alive. Kimball’s bewildered response was, "If you are still alive, then who the Hell are we burying?"

Although burying the wrong person is less problematic than burying a non-deceased deceased, especially if the honouree recovers consciousness after the mourners have left the graveside, and the grave has been backfilled, a possibility that frightened Victorians to death. This fear, taphephobia, ensured that a variety of contraptions were manufactured to provide the unbegone bemourned a means of signalling his premature burial and his fervid desire to be untroglodyted.

Even the largest and loudest bell – activated by a handle inside the coffin close to a hand – could not summon assistance if ‘the captains and the kings’ had departed, the sexton’s work done, and the gravedigger to gone to the riverbank to sit beside the rippling water, unwrapping, and eating his outsized cheese sandwich.

In such dread circumstances, it would be fitting if someone had written:

"Ask not for whom the bell tolls,
Because no one apart
From you
Can hear it.
Therefore, it tolls for thee!"

A recent news item reminded me of Elder Kimball’s funerary flounder, and rekindled my interest in the Georgian and Victorian eras’ revival of the fear of being buried alive.

This event happened on the first day of November, the day known to Brazilians as Dia de Finados. The Day of the Dead is an annual festival when Brazilians remember loved ones that have died.

The night before Dia de Finados, relatives identified the body of bricklayer Ademir Jorge Goncalves, following a traffic accident in which he was killed. As is their custom, they arranged for the funeral to be held the following day, November first.

The manager of the funeral home, Natanael Honorato, referring to the commotion that erupted during the Mass for the Dead at the Goncalves funeral, said that he had not seen anything like it in ten years as an undertaker.

But what could make a ceremony proverbial for peace and grief turn into a madhouse, with some of the congregation trying to jump out of windows at the funeral parlour at what their eyes beheld, and from the rising tides of passion of terror that consumed them, as they too hastily concluded that the ghost of the man in the coffin had come to his own memorial service.

Seated in the front rows of the chapel, the Goncalves family became aware of a stir at the rear of the Chapel of Rest, and, as one, turned to see its cause. As they did, their eyes beheld what they took to be the phantom of him they had last seen dead at the mortuary, and that is when some family members decided it was worth trying to escape from the spectre and, perhaps, from the risk of condemnation for scores that were left unsettled.

Had they know then what they would shortly come to know, there would have been no terror, no panic, no fear of condign punishment, but delightful rejoicing that the kinsman they thought dead was alive, well, and conspicuous!

There had been a motor vehicle versus pedestrian the previous evening, and Ademir was known to have been in the area. But, instead of being on the fatal spot, he was safely tucked away in a bar close by, and remained there all night long enjoying a drink of tequila or two, or four, or more, hour by hour until dawn broke and it was time for home, and whatever was left of yesterday’s dinner.

He had not staggered far before he met some men with whom he worked. They told in grim and explicit detail what had befallen a vizinho the night before. Although tired and still not sober, he was sorry for a fellow tradesman and decided to pay his respects by attending the requiem.

When the very much alive bricklayer walked into the Funeraria Rainha das Colinas funeral home, interrupting the service to memorialise his life before committing his soul to God, he was just as astonished at the reaction he saw as were the reactors to see him they had come to bury.

The mystery of the boxed man was solved later that day when an out of town family came looking for their son who had not returned home after visiting friends in to village. When shown the deceased, they tearfully recognised him as their missing boy, and took him home to arrange for his burial.

So, if by some good fortune you are ever able to attend your own funeral, apart from shocking your family and pleasing your creditors, there is something else that you must do.

It will be obvious that you have been blessed to tarry in mortality and, therefore, above all else you do for the duration of your days, you must enjoy the gift, spend it exclusively on loving, and give gracious thanks that Somebody, somewhere, was close enough to hear your bell before it became a long-distance call that is unanswered.

Ronnie Bray © 2009 Copyright

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