By: Sarah Patris – Family Advisor
What are farewell rituals for?
Make a symbolic gesture after a loss as painful as the death of a loved one is essential to help us realize what just happened and allow our mind to integrate that a change has taken place. It is the first courageous step towards a mourning journey that has already begun. The opposite of denial is the acceptance of what is.
Rituals take advantage of a suspended time where the ordinary is reorganized.
While time tends to slip through our hands, a ritual is a moment of pause where we are brought into contact with the principle of the sacred and a quest for meaning.
This moment becomes a space for sharing. Faced with the fragility of existence, it is also a privileged space of welcome and support where we can express our emotions and our vulnerability in the security offered by a group.
Following this moment created together, everyone is transformed. There is a passage from Before to After. We can say that the function of the ritual is to organize a transition.
Nature, cradle of the moment
Rituals in nature allow us to cut ourselves off from our hyper-stimulating daily life by finding a presence in ourselves, carried by the soothing force of nature, its silence, and its simplicity.
- 1. Choose a quiet space, in a place where you feel good energies, away from places of ordinary life.
- 2. Involve the natural elements that will accompany you: earth, water, fire, air, a tree, a large rock.
- 3. Create an altar with these collected items. This can be done in the moment with what is available around you or thought about beforehand.
Basically, any space can become a place of ritual if it is peaceful and away from the hustle and bustle.
The intention and the sincerity of the heart guide the ritual.
- 1. Be available to yourself and listen to your needs.
- 2. Take time to center and ground yourself. Invite everyone to breathe and connect to the place that welcomes you.
- 3. If it helps, take off your shoes to feel even more connected to the ground that supports you.
- 4. Remember to switch off your phone.
- 5. Summon memories that will speak to everyone, strong symbols illustrated by selected objects.
- 6. Why not burn incense, candles, and even spray your loved one's perfume in the air?
- 7. Promote actions that engage participation.
- 8. State your intention, why you are gathered today, then start your tribute. This can take the form of songs, dance steps, silence, reading, writing a final farewell, preparing a fire, a collective bathing that looks like a baptism.
Once the ceremony is over, thank the place, the people present and announce this celebration as closed. You are going to have to leave this space-time because now is the real goodbye. It is important to mark the end. Mourning can then continue its long and winding path.
Scattering of ashes in nature
Turn back to dust and join the elements.
It is now time to choose a place of dispersion: the ocean, a river, a fountain, a forest, a field, a flower garden, a vegetable patch, at the foot of a tree, everything is possible.
If you want an accessible location to scatter the ashes, the Jardin des Mémoires located in Laval offers you a place to gather in the heart of nature opened all year round.
The ashes can also be integrated into a soluble urn or ephemeral urn. Made of sea salt, compressed sand, cotton fibers or wood, return ashes to sea or land.
The most poetic one is certainly the ice urn, which you can watch gently drift away from the shore, if water is your element.
Made entirely of ice, the urn is designed to be placed on the surface of the water and then disappear slowly and entirely. According to a rigorous process, the ashes of the deceased are incorporated into the ice receptacle. It is unequivocally the most ecological of water-soluble urns.
Finally, the ashes could also be mixed with the soil of a botanical urn where a shrub takes root to be planted on private land, so that each spring your most beautiful memories will bloom again with it.
Isn't it extraordinary to imagine returning humbly to the earth, becoming a beautiful and large tree or a delicate flower, and then continuing to live, in another form. To quote Boucar Diouf on Radio-Canada's Ohdio app: "give back to these trees what belongs to these trees. »
Rituals in nature, from the ceremony to the burial, make sense without imposing a religious belief on our loved ones. By integrating neutral symbols, they offer the necessary space for everyone to appropriate this moment of stopping, of self-presence and of transition. To learn more about the different rituals available to you or to coordinate a final tribute to the great outdoors, contact a Memoria advisors. It will be our pleasure to answer your questions and guide you towards a ceremony that suits you.