The Funeral

by Alec Newell

 

The Church of St. John
photo by Kathy Skaggs

There was a funeral here Saturday.  There had been more foot traffic in the village than usual, then an odd tolling of the church bells; not the loud cacophony we usually hear on Sundays, but something shorter, more quiet.  What followed was the sound of muffled singing or chanting coming from the church. Later there was more bell ringing and the sound of many footsteps and quiet chatter outside the window.  I looked down to see perhaps 200 villagers dressed in somber clothing, all moving in the same direction along  the narrow street below, a coffin born aloft on their shoulders.  What I was witnessing looked like something I might expect to see in a movie, but never from my own upstairs window.  Before I could grab the camera, the vanguard of the procession bearing the coffin had reached the bottom of the street and had turned west toward the cemetery.  I was left holding the camera feeling a bit like a voyeur.  It is something very familiar to the people of the village, but an event that probably very few Americans ever get to see.

The next day I learned that the funeral had been for Andreas Lagos, a man in his nineties who had grown up here in Vourliotes and had died just the day before the funeral.  A notice of his death had been posted in the street less than twenty feet from our door, but not being fluent in Greek, we were not aware of its significance until later.

 




Funeral Notice for Andreas Lagos 

Bodies here are not embalmed, rather they are buried immediately after death and allowed to decompose in a grave for a period of five years, then the bones are exhumed.  They are carefully cleaned by members of the family then transferred to a special box that is then housed in an ossuary for as long as there are relatives alive to care for them.  At each point in the process there are rituals, services, and even special meals to commemorate passages of the dead.

An hour or so after the funeral procession had passed, Kathy was in the alley watering her plants when she was passed by three men returning from the cemetery, one of them carrying a pair of shovels.  It set me thinking about the cemetery and of the children we see playing in that same alley every evening, children we have been watching grow with each passing season, and of other familiar neighbors who have already begun to slip away in the short time we've been coming here.  These are the uncomplicated rhythms of village life, already so familiar to us in some ways and yet still so foreign to us in others.

To see more on local funerary customs visit:

http://mysamoshome.blogspot.gr/2013/06/the-cemetery_24.html

http://mysamoshome.blogspot.gr/2013/07/the-exumation.html