Alleen met ons rou. Oor rituele

Alleen met ons rou... 

Toe ek die onderstaande berig lees oor O’Rourke se boek waarin sy vertel oor haar hewige routyd na die dood van haar ma, tref veral die laaste paragraaf my.

Vandag, as ons rou oor ‘n persoon wat ons liefgehad het en gesterf het, is mense dikwels alleen. Niemand merk eintlik ander se verlies nie. En dit terwyl 'n routyd van die mees ontstellende ervarings kan wees, soos ook blyk uit die boekbespreking hier onder.

Soms wil mense ook hul rou verberg. Dit is amper ‘n skande, soos die berig dit stel, dat ‘n mens ‘n verlies gehad het – iets waaroor ‘n mens nie praat nie en wat weggesteek moet word.

In my jonger dae was dit anders. Toe het mense swart gedra en hulle verlies ten toon gestel. Hulle het hul gevoelens uitgeleef. Dit is eintlik ook deur die gemeenskap van hulle verwag. Weduwees moes vir ses maande of ‘n jaar wys dat hulle treur deur swart te dra.

Maar ek het mettertyd ervaar en beleef hoe mense begin dink het dit is verspot. Vandag is die dra van swart klere ‘n gebruik wat net so vreemd vir ons is as wat dit is om te dink aan Bybelse tekste waarin mense hulle rou uitdruk deur met hul hande op hul bors te slaan, hulle klere te skeur, of waar mense hul berou toon deur sak en as te dra of as op hulle te strooi.

Dit was destyds belangrike handelinge waardeur mense hul gevoelens kon lug en hul emosies kon verwerk.

Rituele, noem ‘n mens dit ook. Deur rituele word ‘n mens gehelp om kritieke oorgangstye tydens jou lewensreis te verwerk. Doop, geloofsbelydenis, mondigwording, huwelik, sakramente en ook begrafnisse is almal voorbeelde van sulke rituele. Begrafnisse het ook al ‘n hele klomp rituele: die diens, blomme, sang, foto’s, herinneringe, draers. Elke element speel ‘n rol om mense te help om hul verdriet te wys en te leer hanteer.

‘n Mens het ook in jou persoonlike lewe rituele. Dit kan wees om droefheid te hanteer, maar kan ook bly en vreugdevolle rituele wees. Die kerslig en ete by ‘n romantiese aand kan ‘n hele ritueel word om ‘n spesiale oomblik te vier. Dit kan ook eenvoudig ‘n gebed voor ete wees. Hierdie rituele anker ‘n mens se lewe. Dit gee stabiliteit.

Rituele kan ‘n belangrike rol speel om verlies aan die dood te hanteer. O-Rourke se manier was om haar boek te skryf. Ander wil as uitstrooi (soos in die Big Lobowski). Nog ander bou ‘n gedenktuin, of rig ‘n bankie langs die see op.

Die dieper ding is: rou moet verwerk word. Niemand kan op ‘n onmenslike manier oorgelaat word om op hul eie deur verdriet oorweldig te word. Dit is die teken van ‘n baie siek en eensaam maatskappy waarin mense voel hulle kan nie meer wys hoe verskriklik die dood van hul geliefdes vir hulle is nie.

Miskien is die wegsteek van rou die gevolge van die sterk emosies wat by mense loskom in ‘n tyd van verlies. Rou is nie maklik nie. Dit kan selfs ‘n mens verdierlik, soos dit woede, opstand, haat, verwerping, verwyte en allerhande negatiewe dinge in mense se lewens losruk. Rou is nie, soos mense dikwels stigtelik dink nie,  veredelends nie.

Juis daarom moet mense ‘n veilige ruimte kry waar hulle kan wys hoe hulle rou hulle lewe omverwerp, hulle destruktief laat optree, hulle onmenslik laat optree, hulle stukkend maak. Juis om op die manier deur hulle rou te werk en hulle menslikheid te herwin.

Die verliese in ‘n mens se lewens is van die slegste tye wat ‘n mens kan belewe. Om daardeur te rou, ook saam met ander, is lewensbelangrik. Wanneer mense rou, en hulle wys dit, skep dit die kans vir ander om by hulle te wees. Dit is hierdie uitreik na hulle wat rou, wat die genesing aanhelp. Niemand verdien dit om alleen te wees in tye van verdriet.     

Tales of Lives Extinguished All Too Soon

Published: April 12, 2011

Meghan O’Rourke is a talented young poet and critic, and her new book, “The Long Goodbye,” is a chronicle of her experience during and after her mother’s two-year battle with colorectal cancer. Her mother, Barbara Kelly O’Rourke, died too young, at 55. This book is a coming to grips with the fact that, as the author writes, “the Person Who Loved Me Most in the World was about to be dead.” 306 pages. Riverhead Books. $25.95.

 “The Long Goodbye” is a poet’s book, for sure. It’s a sustained howl of pain, an unmediated wallow, and it may be too ripe and intense for some. It sometimes was for me. Ms. O’Rourke grieves as if no one had grieved before her, and in part this illustrates her book’s point. Nothing prepares you — not literature, not anything — for your own scalding emotions.

She’s aware of how she comes off. “My grief was not ennobling me,” she writes. “It made me at times vulnerable and self-absorbed, needy and standoffish, knotted up inside, even punitive.” But there’s bravery in her naked declarations.

This is a poet’s book too, in the urgent clarity of its observations. Birds chirp with “a pagan intensity.” The rasp in her mother’s throat sounds like “little aliens trying to claw up and out.” Hospital nurses are described this way: “They were a sorority, eager, optimistic, burned out.” About our flickering lives, she says: “We were ants in a sugar bowl, and one day the bowl would empty.”

Like Mr. Goldman, Ms. O’Rourke seeks a cauterizing solace in other bodies, in sex. “A black wind whipped through me,” she writes, “a wind of need.” She says, “What I wanted was to be demolished.”

There is not much humor, or lightness of any kind, in “The Long Goodbye.” But what little is here is memorable. When the members of her family scatter their mother’s ashes, a wind kicks up, and there’s a communal awareness of the scene in “The Big Lebowski” in which a man’s ashes blow back onto the people scattering them.

Here, when the same thing happens, the movie’s title is turned into a verb. “You Big Lebowski’d me!” one of Ms. O’Rourke’s brothers yells. “I am covered.” Later the same brother is crying, and the father asks if he is O.K. “I’m fine,” he says. “I just have Mom in my eyes.”

The critic in Ms. O’Rourke brings an argument to bear in these pages — the idea that, as a society, we may have been wrong to abandon the public rituals of mourning, like the wearing of black, the beating of chests.

We’re now left alone with our grief, Ms. O’Rourke’s book tells us, as does Mr. Goldman’s, as if it were shameful, as if it were taboo.

Vir die illustrasies, sien:

http://hubpages.com/slide/FashionHistoryMourningDressBlackClothingWornDuringBereavement/4714586