The Exumation

 

Barbara Tzanenis and her husband Vagelis own a little store just steps from the house that I will usually pass several times during a single day.  It is a handy place to pick up fruit, vegetables, cheese, wine, yogurt, soap, or olive oil.  As often as not, I find things to purchase there as an excuse for a short visit or to ask about some curious custom or unfamiliar observance that I have just encountered.
 Yesterday word came to us that the customary 5 yr. burial period had just elapsed for Vagelis’ parents, who had died within 6 mo. of each other; and it was now time for their bones to exhumed and transferred to the ossuary.  Would we like to see it?  We had no cultural touchstone for this experience, did not know what to expect, and in light of our own cultural taboos, had strong reservations at the prospect of attending.  What should we wear, how should we act, what kind of ceremony will they have, etc. etc.?  Dimitris told us, “Just wear what you’ve got on.  I’m going up to the cemetery to put flowers on my Grandmother’s grave.  Follow us up there and just be yourselves.”

 

By the time we arrived, the heavy work had already been done. There were two spades, a forked agricultural pick ax in the back of Vagelis’ puckup truck.  There were also and four or five black plastic garbage bags which I later learned, held what remained of the coffins.  Vagelis and another man were sitting in the shade of a fig tree, mopping sweat from their faces.  Marble slabs from the dismantled crypts were stacked off to the side, the graves had been filled back in, and the nicely made polished metal box, that would hold the combined bones of Vagelis’ parents, was sitting on the marble crypt of a neighboring gravesite.

There was some conversation between Dimitris and Vagelis that was conducted entirely in Greek, but nothing more.   No ceremony, no mourners, nothing, just Vagelis and a helper or “crow,” whose profession it is to assist family members in rendering this service for a relative who has passed on.  The bones, as is the custom here, had been washed in a solution of vinegar and water and were lying in a basket, drying in the shade of the building that would soon be their next resting place.  The cemetery plots would be returned for the communal use of the village, and the process would continue as it has for generations.

 

“Removing what’s left of the clothes,” we were later told, “is the hardest part.  They still hold so many memories.”  

photo by Newell