In my ordinary life, I don’t like going to funeral places for the reasons that I don’t want to see the pain that the bereaved continue to struggle with on a daily basis.
Most times when I hear that someone has lost his or her life, two things will invade my mind; first that person must have had people depending on him or her for a living and second to that is the fact that he or she must have been someone’s hope, but what pains me a lot is the way people eat the little left in the name of funeral prayer for the departed soul to rest in eternal peace. Worse still, what beats my understanding is the possibility of the deceased getting a rest when his or her family is bitterly crying. Especially, when they are left with nothing to eat, and nobody is to pay school fees for the children of the deceased.
I have witnessed several funeral ceremonies and what did not miss my attention is the excessive manner in which the living continues to hurt the bereaved by eating, to empty the little left and when the funeral is over, nobody will come the next day to see the family of the deceased. Everyone would be busy going about their own businesses and not even a close relative would mind visiting the Late’s family.
This is a very bad culture, and it could be the reason as to why there is too much death in our world today.
People simply wish that other people die so that they eat the little left and this is why most times when someone is bedridden and in urgent need of assistance, nobody would even dare paying him a visit.
The patient would struggle hard while knocking at every door with a plea for financial support only to find that every door is being slammed before him and when he is completely gone, his people would buy a coffin and others with grave, and this would cost in today’s situation SSP 300,000 if it is less.
Maybe that person died because he had failed to settle a hospital bill less than SSP 50,000. This money would have gotten him back to his feet so as to continue with life’s struggle. However, this is not a big loss. The family of the deceased would sit down again to organize the funeral prayer of the deceased even when the deceased was so poor that he had left nothing for his children to inherit.
The financially able people in the family circle would contribute the money needed for a successful funeral so that people eat until there was enough left for dogs and other little animals. A successful funeral would need a fat bull which would cost SSP 200,000 or more and other ingredients plus soda and water, chairs and tents would make up to SSP 150,000 and when you sum up this money, that is SSP 700,000.
This money would only be eaten in one day and people would disappear. But when it is invested though it is not big enough to bring fat interest in return, it can make a big difference in putting food on the table for the children of the late as well as covering their school fees. But just imagine the poverty they are forced to bear when they lost their loved one and on top of that lost everything, they had with their loved one through eating.
This is a very shameful act, and this is why I hate funerals because it is no longer what it was made to be. I don’t mean that the government should bar the citizens from conducting funerals but what I simply mean is that we should adjust the way we conduct funerals.
Years back, funeral was a time dedicated to console the family of the departed, to empower them to be strong. It was to acknowledge that it is where all of us would go after this earthly life. It was also a time when relatives and friends paid their last respect to their fallen brother or sister, but it is no longer today what it used to be.
Most people in today’s world go to funerals to eat and nothing else while others go there to crack their political jokes to deceive people that they are better even when they have blood-stained hands.
We need to change the way we do our things as black people because if we continue with this culture, we need to know that we are contributing greatly to the death of our own brothers and sisters.
We need to understand the pain that people go through when they lose their loved one and the second loss brought about by people who eat everything in the family in the name of funeral prayer.
If you really love someone and you want him or her to rest in peace, don’t eat during his funeral prayer; buy food like, a sack of maize flour, at least, some liters of cooking oil, a bag of charcoal and at least some money if you can’t pay one of his children in school.
At least that person would be comfortable wherever he or she is and God would reward you for that but if you just go to funeral with a spoon in your pocket, you need to think of that family, especially where they earn their living and who will provide them with food since the breadwinner is gone, before you swallow that food.
May God bless us all.