Family eschatology: helping the departed to rest in peace

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 8, 1995 by Rosemary Radford Ruether

When I was a kid in parochial schools, the nuns often spoke about the "happy death" as the ultimate hope for good Catholics. The image they conjured up was of two stark alternatives. One was of the person who died "reconciled to the church," receiving the last rites from a priest, surrounded by a prayerful family, whose soul would wing its way to heaven with perhaps only a brief stay in purgatory. The opposite was the person run down by a car who had failed to make his or her yearly confession and Easter duty and whose soul was on its way to perdition. We were exhorted to make sure we would end in the first camp and not the second. At the age of 8 or 9, both options seemed impossibly remote.

But the images have stuck with me, along with various odd phrases connected with Catholic tradition about death. One of these is the prayer for the "repose of the soul" after death. The phrase conjures up images of an afterlife that are far earlier than Christianity. Instead of the official locations of souls in heaven, hell or purgatory, all in distant places, this phrase suggests restless and unhappy souls flitting around the habitations of their living relatives, unable to find closure of the unresolved conflicts of their life.

What one might call "local" or "family" eschatology is perhaps the most widespread and persistent view of the dead in human culture, even today. The dead are not far away but remain close to their relatives and former places of habitation. Those who died with unresolved frustrations and angers remain unhappy ghosts haunting their families until suitable expiation allows them to rest. In Korean shamanism, such expiration occurs in the han-puri ceremony, which exorcises the angry frustration, han, of unhappy ghosts.

I have been thinking of these Catholic and other folk traditions about death in the past year in the wake of my sister's death. My sister died angry and vengeful and has left behind two younger sisters who are burdened with unresolved sadness. How to lay her to rest?

Without going into too many details about my oldest sister's life and death, let me say that she was for most of her life a determined individualist who loved to have a good time. She carved out her own distinctive way of life, living in a houseboat in California for the last 30 years of her life, surrounded by flowers, water, cats, musical instruments and various small boats. She loved to travel, to sing, to swim and to play about in beautiful places. She was what almost everyone who knew her superficially would call "good fun."

But there was another side to my sister's personality - a possessiveness about "things," a sense that she had been a bit shortchanged by life and a suspicion that others were conspiring against her. This suspicion grew into persistent paranoia in her last years. There was also in my sister an intolerance of any kind of puritanism that had its good and bad sides. Its good side was a rebelliousness against oppressive pietism, a determination to be a free spirit and to enjoy a life without guilt. The bad side was a tendency to deceive in matters of health, particularly where her sweet tooth was involved. Unfortunately, diabetes runs in our family. My mother's view of sugar as being close to sin originated in her nursing a mother with this disease. My sister spent her lifetime evading my mother, sneaking sweets under her pillow, long after Mother had died.

In her 50s my sister became diabetic, but these lifelong habits and patterns of thought were not conducive to adopting a disciplined lifestyle. She dieted fitfully, then enjoyed chocolates and tried to compensate with an extra dose of insulin. Lesions developed on her arms and feet that did not heal, the telltale sign of diabetic imbalance. Living on a houseboat at the end of a long dock with boats, cats, loose nails and a none-too-careful mode of housekeeping did not help to clear up such infections. When her concerned sisters suggested any modification of this style of life, a wall of adamant refusal arose. We were holier-than-thou puritans, perhaps even conspiring to put her in a nursing home and "get her money."

Since we wanted to do none of these things, but only to keep her healthy and alive, we grew mostly silent, but her paranoid suspicion remained. At this juncture a strange acquaintance entered my sister's life who reinforced her suspicions. Indeed, we and others were trying to steal her furniture and musical instruments and she should put her trust in this other person.

When my sister died, we discovered that she had signed away all her possessions to this acquaintance, cutting her sisters, nephews and nieces from her will. Since my sister was not rich, this was no great monetary loss. What was lost was the opportunity to have a good relationship with my sister in her dying. We were not told of her true state of health, when she was sick, when she entered the hospital.

After my sister's death, this acquaintance made herself the custodian not only of my sister's estate but of her memory. She insisted that there was to be no funeral. My sister had not wanted one. She wanted to have her ashes scattered at sea. At first these ashes were not available. Then the acquaintance told us that she had scattered the ashes in the water herself because she didn't want to have us present. More insults and injuries followed, the details of which I will spare the reader. We, the family, were left with a bitter taste in our mouths. One had the sense not only of an angry ghost, but one that had delegated an executor to carry on this anger after death.