After Death Rituals

Dear Mrs Jayasala,

Kudos to you for presenting such a wonderful snippet to us with practical thinking. Your words are music to people like me who have sinned not performing yearly rituals due to the forefathers. I have not studied or understood Veda enough to comment whether death rituals are mentioned by them or not. However, I read a lot of books where the learned Maharishis strongly suggest performing them. Knowing fully well I am no one to question their wisdom, I was cursing myself for not performing these rituals after my father's death. Living in foreign country creates its own problems in finding a priest to perform the rituals which is difficult even though it is not impossible. I was performing all of them until I was in India. Someday, hopefully I will be able to perform them in river Ganges in Varanasi. Your words in this snippet gave me peace.

Even now, I perform them in Govindapuram but I feel guilty for not being present in that place. I also make sure I feed elders in an old age home regularly in memory of my father. My father died on Vinayaga Chathurthi day and hence I perform archana to Lord Ganesha on that day in the Ganesh Temple he was visiting everyday.

My wife is the only child to my father in law and he died in September 2013. I flew to India to perform his last rites. I found out that most arrangements are done on a contract basis with fixed amount being paid to perform all day events. There is no way to find out how much of that is spent for actual rituals and dhana as opposed to money making mission. At least to handle this group of people, we need to learn those rituals in detail to question them.

Viswa



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Last August my mom passed away and they cremated her the next day even before I could reach india,(August 15 and i was there on 17) owing to aadi amman kaapu in our street. my dad was suffering from liver cirrosis and I was not made aware that he is in his tertiary stage. we performed the rituals of my mother and my sister had done the last rites for my mother. for the 13 day ritual we had called a priest and he charged a lot of money and he also said he would bring in a sumangali and we have to give her all the daniyams ,fruits and veggies, saree, bangles, and a gold coin! This is done to send away my mom happily(?). we did everything but refused the gold coin as in our custm we never do this and there was a debate later that doing this you are sending the real mahalakshmi of the house and so on. priests try to capitalise the ignorance of people and throw in their version if they know you are not aware of these practices. Two weeks later my Father too paased away and this time though my husband was with me I did the last rites and then we had problems of when to have the 13th day rituals. we did it on the 7th day arranged by my sisters husband and there are still talks that it is not right and we did not even mourn for the said period for the time.

I am so confused by all of this. every time I ask my close relatives as to what should be done that the departed souls are at peace, every one come up with their own theory and mostly it's based on convenience. This is very ambiguous and no one knows what is right way. I will be going back this august for the first year anniversary and perform the rituals. Again few say you have perform it on the same date of their demise or some say their thithi. If you do "thithi" you have to continue every year and if you miss one year something bad will happen!!

Thinking of all this is just distressing! After reading your post it has helped me take a decision. I will perform whatever is suggested and ignore all the comments. I know my parents were the best human beings and loved by everyone around them. So assured they will remain happy due to their karma's I am going do whatever seems fiiting in honor of their memory.

Lastly, all these rituals and everyone's version only diverts the attention from the departed and aggravates the pain and guilt!

Thank you for this post!

 

Am I the only one differing in views here ??

I completely agree there is no established scientific reasons behind these rituals (well in that case we don't have scientific reasons behind most rituals be it marriage or child birth or threading ceremony ... ignoring those one off "forwarded mails" that proclaim having discovered a reason behind every ritual)

I very recently lost my Dad and we performed all the rituals to the tee. No we did not "outsource" it to the blackmailing "vadhyar" out there. We siblings came togethere and took up various tasks ourselves (like cooking / catering, buying, arranging stuff etc) Fortunately our family vadhyar is a far cry from being a black mailing vadhyar. The reason is not only his personality but also the kind of working relationship we have with him. I have to dwell here a little bit on the relationship we "established" with our family priest. My father always treated him as a family member and not a "vendor". He was informed of our plan to buy a new house not when it was time for "Gruhapravesham" but when the down payment was made. The vadhyar "mami" knew about an upcoming new arrival in the family much earlier than we started discussing the "seemantham" ceremony. In fact when our vadhyar was hospitalized for some health hazards, my father was the first to reach there and share a bit of his "financial burden" during the time.

Coming back to the unfortunate event itself, the first thing my mother asked out of her children was to ensure the "final farewell" was done with the same due diligence with which our father had brought us up. Needless to say, all of us cared for our father during his life. Not once my brother would have uttered a careless, disrespectful word with my father even when he was physically exhausted in the end. However, my mother stressed that this was our last chance to show our love and care by ensuring everything was performed as prescribed in the "rule book".

I look at the ritual itself as senseless from outside but if one looks deeper, he can realise it is a way of "dealing with the grief" and allowing the living ones to contemplate on the "higher purpose" of our life than getting entangled with the daily chores.

To me it gives a deep sense of satiscation of carrying out my duty as a daughter both during his life and on his death. This is un parelleled to all the wealth I could have created by all those monies I could have saved on vadhyars and dhanams etc etc.. (my personal view only)

 

Very well written to awaken the long lost common sense within.

AD rituals in this AD has the roots from the BC and time to think of the real purpose and the right way to give the final farewell.

 

Thank you for your comforting words!! As an NRI, not being able to be with them in their last years is something hard to deal with. Atleast I am thankful to god that I was with my dad for the last two weeks and did what I could as a daughter. Now I can feel their presence within me. After all we are part of them and I am the remnant of them. Not a single day passes without appreciating the little things they did for me, which did not seem a big deal back then...what was considered as a part of their duty is felt and understood as their ultimate unconditional love!!!

Exactly as you said, I do not want to perform the rituals for the fear of preventing mishaps to my family. Its not my motive and against principles, but I sincerely want to perform the rituals to keep my parent's soul to remain at peace and perform my duty as a daughter!!

I know from the bottom of my heart, anything good happens I owe it to my parents and if something bad happens I will only hold myself responsible!!

Yes , sons/daughter should do their duty to parents when they are alive (later on however we want to it will not be possible) and not be worried much about rituals later on!!

Thank you so much once again for this topic, I am grateful to be able to share my feelings!!

 

Nothing more to add on the draggled hearse of trenchant discussions here. You bring out the best in everyone by providing an interactive platform for social opinions with your articles.

Loved reading everyone's write-up.