Four weeks ago today we were able to lay my Daddy in his final resting place. He passed on Valentine’s Day, but we had to wait 2 months and 2 days before we could have his funeral and place him where he wished to be. Those 2 months and 2 days were the most challenging and uncomfortable of my life and not exclusively because I had to come to terms with the loss of my beloved and treasured father. It wasn’t until the funeral that I understood how profoundly important being able to mark his passing, celebrate his life and go through the ritual of outwardly recognising this together with others who were a part of his life was. Prolonging the ritual of marking his death and the change that this signified in his life and the lives of those he left behind was somehow an unexplainable and confusing no man’s land that made it very hard to understand and know what to do with the suspended grief it presented. The timing of his passing unfortunately contributed to the disjointed nature of events (a global pandemic has somewhat thrown many timetables off) and yet in many ways it forced only the most crucial elements of this ritual rite to be represented due to the restrictions in place. This experience however got me intrigued as to how much we have disconnected from understanding the importance of ritual and rites of passage in our lives and how this disconnection and overlooking of ceremonial significance in modern life is one of the unconscious rejections of tradition that contributes to our sense of displacement.
When my eldest daughter Nikkie turned 2, I was not going to have any kind of significant celebration to mark the event. Her first birthday had been a grand affair with so many people attending her birthday party, and I decided that it was not really that important to make such a fuss for her second birthday. I would get a card, a few gifts, sing happy birthday and have a nice dinner and that would be that. My Dad was not pleased to hear my idea at all. I tried to reason with him that she didn’t really understand the concept of her birthday and therefore it would do no harm to let this one go past in a low key way. He insisted that when it came to birthdays it was imperative to actively mark and acknowledge the transition that one was making; it was required in order to be able to reflect on what had passed in the preceding year for both the child (and adult) and their parents if they were still around to give gratitude for being able to make it for another year of life. In my irreverence of death and the achievement of clocking up another year even at such a tender age, I didn’t really understand where he was coming from. Nevertheless the plans I had became embellished to include a significant cake and coming together of people who were connected in the support and taking care of Nikkie and so it was. From that birthday onwards my dad made a point of Nikkie’s (and her sister Nialah when she came along) birthdays being a moment of pause and recognition. Cake, gifts that were of significance to the girls and even if there were not many people - he always made the time to be there and make an appropriately important memory with every passing year. (I am now left with one hell of a legacy to live up to in that respect, but I will miss most his wisdom and input on honouring the points of merit of the preceding year.)
I ask you what your relationship is with your own birthday? Is it something you dread and shy away from because the thought of getting another year older makes you sad or concerned about being closer to death and you lament what has a shorter period of time in which to be fulfilled? Or are you all there for the love of a birthday? I know of people who sit at either side of the fence with this one. Does the need to achieve and collect and accumulate things direct us away from the gratitude of what we have been fortunate to continue to receive even if it had not been all that we may have hoped for or intended and does that indeed undermine the achievement and miracle of attaining another year which we must remember is in no way promised for us. By distancing ourselves from the humanity of the fact that despite the progress we have made as a human race in living longer and in the main healthier physical lives, attaining another birthday is in fact a hugely underrated gift. Are we missing the gravity of this annual rite?
What about the other Rites of Passage that mark the movement out of a stage of life and forward into another. These may be linked with religious changes that occur in our life, but my thoughts are more connected with the acknowledgment of how we leave behind part of who we used to be and move forward into the next stage of who we are becoming. These rites signal not only to the person that is passing through but to those around her that from this time onward they will no longer be who they were to you. The collective witnessing and acknowledgment makes us all responsible to support this transition. It is a sign post of a physical, factual and psychological shift in all the lives connected with this event. Birth, puberty, maturity, marriage, death change social status, responsibilities, interactions and most importantly identities. How often is the shift about the celebration - here I think about weddings in particular where so much emphasis is placed on the outward performance - the dress, how much money the table decorations cost and the honeymoon (well in a non covid celebration ;) ) that the meaning of what it marks can get absorbed.
Young people moving into puberty and therefore early adulthood often coincides with religious ceremonies - bar and bat mitzvahs and confirmations which again may take centre stage over what this time means for the young person and parents who are required to find new ways to navigate their connections with each other. To find how make a space for understanding the evolving identities and discoveries that will be made independently and together as the young person prepares to understand their own identity in the world with less direct influence from their parents, and their parents are to feel into a space of respect of this transition and trust that their guidance has adequately equipped their precious young person enough to let them on the way. Yet how much is about the money that is required for the occasion?
Consumerism I feel has tilted towards consumption and away from human connection. We are more concerned with how these moments look - the aesthetic over the emotional and psychological transitions that need to happen and be collectively acknowledged and supported. Making sure we get pictures for the gram and facebook and of course visual memories are wonderful, but is that the most important thing? We are led away from the work we need to do to prepare ourselves to embrace the change and we find that we are clingling or lost by what follows in the shadow of the party. Frustrated and somehow blindsided by the mundernarty of marriage, the heartbreak of a blossoming young person, the stunning ongoing effects of grief continue to hangover time and again because we have forgotten what it is we are supposed to be doing with these occasions, the ritualistic Rite of Passage has been successfully eroded by the pound note. Modern living one, humanness nil.
Well it isn’t always like this, and it doesn’t have to be either. I invite you to embrace the challenges and treasures that come with actively participating in the rites of passage that come across your path. Taking a conscious and deliberate effort to decide to engage with the emotional transition and maturity that these rite offer to you. By bringing that conscious attention you invite and also give permission to others to do the very same.