Remembering Those Who Walked This World
by Sally McLean, Victoria, Australia
Screenwriter/Producer, Aged 30
2002 was a very hard year for me. In the space of 12 months, I lost 4 people who had all had a positive and enduring impact on my life, my perception of who I was and what I could achieve.
Yes, a couple were heading into their twilight years, but none of them were expected to pass when they did, and the shockwaves continued to reverberate around me for what seemed like an eternity.
I would just feel able to come out and face the world again, when another would go. It was the closest thing to a nervous breakdown that I've experienced, and I knew that I had to do something to keep my own sanity and health intact.
During the latter part of last year, I was working on a script that dealt with the customs of my ancestors, the Celts (of the Scots/Irish variety). It was through the researching of their attitude to death, and the traditions they had built up around it, that I finally found my solace.
I found the attitude of the Celts refreshing. They didn't see death as an end, merely as a transition. Those who had died, were not to be mourned, for they had merely 'passed on'. The Celts believed in The Land of Many Colours, The Land of Youth, but also in reincarnation, and so death was just another stage in our existance.
They also believed that you could talk to the dead. That your family and friends could choose to remain with you as protectors, guides. And that you should honour their lives by remembering them with respect, kindness, warmth and laughter. The dead weren't gone - they were merely not here.
Some of the Celtic traditions continue today - such as the Irish wake - but I believe that the aspect of seating the deceased at the head of the table and treating them as the guest of honour during this festivity is no longer practiced, due to modern sensibilities of what is 'proper' when dealing with a dead body (And I'm sure Health and Safety would be onto them in a flash). But it clearly illustrates how the Celts viewed death and the dead.
The biggest Celtic festival of the Dead - now known as Halloween - was the Celtic New Year Festival. It was a time of great festivity, a time to remember those who had passed - both in the recent past, as well as the ancestors, to honour their memories and achievements and to look forward to the future through divination and spell-casting. We get the traditions of bobbing for apples and 'trick or treating' from this festival. It was also a time when friends and family could return to this world and spend time with the living. Usually places were set at the dinner table for those who had gone in the last year, so they would have somewhere to sit and be part of the family. The dead ruled the world on the Celtic New Year, and the living welcomed them with open arms.
So, last October 31st, I set up a picnic rug in the back yard. I set places for myself and 4 places for those who had gone in the last year. I worked on my script, wrote letters to those I hold dear and just spent time quietly thinking. Did the departed four come and sit beside me? Whisper suggestions for the screenplay? Prompt me to say what needed to be said in those letters to others? Who knows. What I do know is that I found a great sense of calm and connectedness from those four hours in my garden, eating my dinner with the shades of those once physically here. I cried a little, laughed a little and found a strength in myself that I'd forgotten I had.
My grandmother once said, after coming out of a three day coma, that death was nothing to be frightened of. She described a white light, voices of those she once knew, and a great sense of calm, happiness and peace. A voice told her to go back, as it wasn't time yet. And so she did. She died peacefully three months later.
When my grandfather was dying, he described to my mother, who was sitting by his deathbed, a white light and people standing in the room. He was initially frightened and confused, but then he smiled and said 'It's alright, I know them'. He blessed my mother, then he died.
Death is a mystery that humans are both facinated and repulsed by. And, yes, it causes pain for those of us left behind. But if we remember that we are all connected, that those now departed are only a heartbeat away, and that, ultimately, death is but a transition, then we have nothing to fear - for ourselves or those now gone.
Copyright © Australian Museum, 2009