Communication with the dead

“ Years pass away, and the sound of his footsteps is at the door again, and his voice is heard in the dwelling. But of the dead there comes no news; from the grave no voice, from the separate state no message. With our desire to speak once more to the departed, and to hear them speak, we feel that they must have an intense desire to speak to us. We wonder why they do not break the silence. ”

“ It is brought into requisition to develop the sciences, to detect crime, and in short to mingle in all the interests of life.
In the first place, what are we talking about, when we touch the question of the living hearing from the dead? It is a saying, that "dead men tell no tales." ”

“ Bury the Dead, bury the Dead, Out of our sight! But there are other Dead That will not buried be, That walk about in glaring day With noiseless tread. And stalk at night; Unburied Dead, unburied Dead, Ever in sight. Dear friendships snapt in twain. Sweet confidence betrayed, Old hopes forsworn, old loves worn out, Vows pledged in vain. There is no flight, Ye living, unrelenting Dead, Out of your sight. ”

“ We turn away conversation from that subject as though it were a painful one; we let the dead bury their dead, their memory die out in us with the sound of the funeral knell, seeming to forget that a friendship which can end even with death can never have been a true one. ”

“ Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,
And turn with profound gesture vague and slow,
As who would pray good for the world, but know
Their benediction empty as they bless.
They say that the Dead die not, but remain
Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth. ”

“ It was a beautiful and tender suggestion, and if the dead could really send back a message to the waiting ones, how much of death’s mystery could be cleared away. But aching hearts and the longings of yearning souls have failed to bring back even a whispered message from the land beyond the shadow line. The dead cannot talk to us any more than the living can talk to the dead. ”

“ Even persons with whom I have never occupied myself, if they come to die, invade my memory: one would say that none can become my companion if he has not passed through the tomb, which leads me to think that I am a dead man. ”

“ Beloved till life can charm no more, And mourn'd till pity's self be dead. Another cause that perpetuates the memory of the deceased in the country is that the grave is more immediately in sight of the survivors. ”

“ They shook off something evil when they died, but in passing through it they must somehow have understood more. Sorrow [Pg 105] dimmed the eyes even of the hardest swearer of the Army. And the dead now constrain us to a new human tenderness, they empower us to touch more delicately and to understand more deeply—to love more. Pity for us if we do not now live differently because of the dead! ”

“ They, the mourners, might now meet in safety to talk together over the dead—suffer together among the graves of common memories, sadly tracing, reverently marking with epitaphs appropriate the tombs which held the dead days of their youth. ”

“ The silence of the dead is one of the most impressive and affecting things connected with the separate state of the soul. We hear the voice of a dying friend, in some last wish, or charge, or prayer, or farewell, or in some exclamation of joy or hope; and though years are multiplied over the dead, that voice returns no more in any moment of day or night, of joy or sorrow, of labor or rest, in life or in death. ”

“ Behind us lies the whole long grim past, a huge grave, with countless gravestones—the silent city of the dead which holds all that has been ever dear to the heart, all youth with their glad faces and forms, all glances of love, all divine moments. And all the dead compel all the living to conflict that the living may be controlled by life and not by death. From their graves the dead direct their deadliest shafts at the heart, at the living, to drag them down into the embrace of death. But something stirs in man that cannot be wounded, cannot be buried—man’s will. ”

“ No one comes back to tell us of his experience; no warning, nor comfort, nor counsel, ever reaches our ears. Whatever our trouble, or our joy may be, our need or prosperity; however long and painful the absence of the departed may have been; however lonely we may feel, wishing for some word of remembrance and love; and though we visit the grave day by day, and call on the name of the departed, and use every art of endearment to pierce the veil between us,—there is the same determined, cold, lasting silence. "To go down into silence" is a scriptural phrase for the state of the dead. ”

“ The dead, how beautiful is the memory of the dead, what a holy thing it is in the human heart, what a chastening influence it has upon human life, how it subdues all the harshness that grows up within us in the daily intercourse with the world, how it melts our hardness and softens our pride, kindles our deepest love, and waking our brightest aspirations in the camp and by the wayside, in solitude or among our comrades, think sadly and speak lovingly of the dead. ”

“ And of the touching piety of the living toward the dead? There is no joyful occasion where the dead are not called to our remembrance, and their blessing and the blessing of heaven invoked. In joy and in sorrow, we think of our dead always. ”

“ And if such was really the intention of the ceremony, it is obvious that it was better effected by compelling the young communicants, as we may call them, to die and rise from the dead in their own persons than by obliging them to assist as mere passive spectators at a dramatic performance of death and resurrection. ”

“ Deceived by the lies of the poets, who proclaimed eternal friendship and love, I did not want to see that which my indulgent reader observes from the windows of his dwelling—how friends, relatives, mother and wife, in apparent despair and in tears, follow their dead to the cemetery, and after a lapse of some time return from there. No one buries himself together with the dead, no one asks the dead to make room in the coffin, and if the grief-stricken wife exclaims, in an outburst of tears, “Oh, bury me together with him!” ”

“ Simple association of thoughts causes the remains of a dead kinsman or friend to be treated with respect and tenderness; in the same way, the horror of death attaching to anything connected with the dead, and the religious idea that the soul outlives the body, and continues in a ghostly way to retain a connection with its old habitation of clay, have led to the respectful disposal of the corpse among most nations. ”

“ We passed a huge coffin—borne by a dozen men with every gentleness, not to disturb the dead one's rest—preceded, not followed, by mourners, two of whom were carrying a paper sedan chair, which would be burnt, and so, rendered invisible, would be sent to the invisible world to bear the dead man's spirit with becoming dignity. All day we were in the mountains travelling up the bed of a creek with mountains on both sides of us. ”

“ At first blush—to use a common and sensible expression—there seems no respectable keeping, between the art of burying the dead, and that of feasting the living. Depositing those, whom we love, in their graves, is certainly the very last relish for an appetite. ”

“ I thought of the graves more hopeless fur than them that entomb the dead,—the graves where lay the livin' dead. Dead souls bound to still breathin' bodies, dead hopes, ambitions, dead dreams of usefulness and respectability, happiness, dead purity, faith, honor, dead, all dead, all bound to the still breathin' body, by the festerin', putrid death-robes of helplessness and despair. ”

“ When a man has just died and been buried, his surviving relatives lay some of his weapons and ornaments, together with presents of food, upon his grave, no doubt for the use of the ghost; but some of these things they afterwards remove and bring back to the village, probably considering, with justice, that they will be more useful to the living than to the dead. But offerings to the dead may be presented to them at other places than their tombs. ”

“ Funeral and mourning customs of the Tami.
But if they do not gratify the desire for vengeance of the blood-thirsty ghost, they are at great pains to testify their respect for him in all other ways. The whole village takes part in the mourning and lamentation for a death. The women dance death dances, the men lend a hand in the preparations for the burial. All festivities are stopped: the drums are silent. ”

“ Nothing equals the care which they take in the burial of their dead. As soon as a native has breathed his last, the neighbours are informed, and immediately all the women come to weep about the corpse. ”

“ The burial-grounds were regarded with awe and fear, for sometimes a restless ghost would break bounds and spread sickness among the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. Within their sacred precincts stood altars or stages for offerings to the gods, and any living man who entered them did so at his peril. For the same reason no one would set foot in a house where a dead man or woman had been buried. Hence in nearly every village half the houses stood empty and deserted, falling into decay, tenanted only by ghosts. The living had constantly before their eyes the mansions of the dead. ”

“ The desire is almost universal, that, when summoned to lie down in the grave, the dead may never be disturbed, by the hand of man—that our remains may return quietly to dust—unobserved by mortal eye. There is no part of this humiliating process, that is not painful and revolting to the beholder. Of this the ancients had the same impression. Cremation and embalming set corruption and the worm at defiance. ”

“ Even these no one could save from being consumed by flesh-devouring flames, lying alone on the funeral pyre in the cemetery whither the dead are followed by weeping friends, and when their extremities had been shrivelled, from being at last devoured by the jackals: much less can any others escape this fate. So tell us, wise man, what mean you by embracing that corpse? ”

“ Now let me advise all who would comfort people in a new bereavement to talk to them, very freely, all they can, in this way of the dead. They will engage in it with interest, they will talk of their own recollections of the dead, and listen to yours, though they become sometimes pleasant, sometimes even laughable. ”

“ All quarrels must be forgotten in the presence of death. Enemies who meet at a funeral are bound by etiquette, if not by feeling, to salute each other with quiet gravity.
Whilst the body of the dead remains in the house, no visitor must expect to see the members of the bereaved family, and no offence may be taken if admission is refused to the nearest friends. ”

“ The dead must bury their dead. And, thus pondering from personal to general thoughts, the turmoil of his feelings gradually calmed, and a restful melancholy, vague and tender, filled the aching void in his heart. ”

“ In making remarks at funerals, which I have often been called upon to do, I have taken the liberty of speaking plainly my feelings with regard to the dead. And I will say here, when I see a man or a woman, a true and faithful Latter-day Saint pass away, I do not feel in my heart to mourn. Why should we mourn for the woman whose remains lie before us? ”

“ Not so; it is notorious that there are people who recognize no such theory but who nevertheless deposit offerings with the dead. Affectionate fancy or symbolism, a horror of the association of death leading the survivors to get rid of anything that even suggests the dreadful thought, a desire to abandon the dead man’s property, an idea that the hovering ghost may take pleasure in or make use of the gifts left for him, all these are or may be efficient motives. ”

“ Their customs at the death and burial of their friends show how much they fear the dead, and especially their souls or ghosts. The dying are often dressed in their graveclothes—that is to say, in their best garments—a little while before death. ”

“ It speaks to us with archaic simplicity from those grave-stones upon which the dead, as though still accessible to the sounds of the human voice and able to understand the words of the living, are addressed with the customary words of greeting.21 Sometimes the dead man himself is provided with a similar greeting which he is supposed to address to the passers-by22—between him, confined to his grave, and the others who still walk about in the daylight a dialogue takes place.23 The dead man is not entirely cut off from the affairs of the upper world. ”

“ The soul of the dead was believed not to abandon the corpse definitely for two days after the death. In the interval it was thought to haunt the house, watching the conduct of the survivors, and ready to act as a friend or a foe according as the mourners behaved towards the deceased and his remains. Hence, to keep the ghost in good humour it was customary to offer him food, in the shape of breadfruit paste and other dainties, which were wrapped up in leaves, hung on the edge of the coffin, and frequently renewed. ”

“ Communications were occasionally made by the dead to the living: they mourned over their duties neglected and their errors committed; many of their mortal feelings, passions, and propensities, seemed to survive; and they sometimes sought to repair, through the instrumentality of the living, the injuries they had formerly inflicted. In short, death was merely a transition from one condition of life to another; but in this latter state, although we do not see them condemned to undergo any torments, we perceive that they are not happy. ”

“ It is right and proper always to look upon the dead. Let your face be brought near to theirs, and address them. Let the dead know that their absence is regretted by their friends, and that they grieve for their death. Let the dead know, too, how their surviving friends intend to live. ”