Television Tuesday – I Am Not Morbid, Honest!!!!!

I haven’t really watched much TV this week which will account for the film section of this weeks selection being missing but I think you will either love my other two picks or be ringing for the straight jacket for me so on we go…

Television

This was shown a couple of weeks ago but I recorded it and only just got round to watching it…

I find programmes like this fascinating because it raises a really interesting dilemma, how long before the sacred becomes purely archaeology? We think of graveyards as sacred spaces, places we lay our loved ones to rest believing they will be left there but with ever growing populations of both the living and the dead more and more we see and hear of graveyards being renovated. In a recent conversation in a Facebook group I am part of between a few other people it was mentioned that they had been approached with the request to add new burials to old family graves, not their own families but to add a stranger in the same space as long gone ancestors.

And in cases like this programme the long dead are removed for re-interment at another location to allow for the expansion of the living, for progress but should they have had the right to rest their for eternity?  I am unsure in my own feelings about these things, part of me says if respectfully done then what is the harm but the other says we how long before there are still living relatives that might be affected? I have done parts of my family tree and have parts that reach back to the 1500’s, how would I feel if one day I set off to find their last resting place and instead found a car park? It is also an issue with us living longer now that the time periods discussed in this may very well be covered by only a few generations, as you know my grandma passed away this year age 90 but she frequently talked of her own grandmother who was born in 1866, now while this may seem a distant memory she is not. My grandma shared her stories, her photo is in an album under my desk (it is too precious to me to risk exposing it to sunlight) my grandma’s younger brother remembers her though his memories are vague, so will we reach a point where we have to actually sign a contract for the length of time a grave is protected for? More questions than answers and I really am not sure how we deal with this but it is certainly something that will be harder to ignore as time passes.

Youtube

Ahhh, those crazy Victorians but I have to confess to a fascination with not only rituals but also this channel…

I have always been fascinated by the rituals that go along side burials, be it the contents of a pyramid buried along side a Pharaoh or the Victorian trend for Memento Mori photography, and the hair jewellery and growing trend for jewellery made from ashes is something that is intriguing. As cremation becomes a more practical solution for many it then does raise the issue of what to do with the ashes, this past weekend my mum, daughter and one of my sister went to spread my grandmas ashes but for other families they want a place they can go to or do they maybe they all want a pendant or a ring…

Or maybe a keyring and I actually like the options with this because there are all those funeral flowers, but actually I think maybe the drying and powdering of flowers might be a nice way to remember a wedding rather than a death…

I think at some point probably because of the horrors of the two World Wars our relationship with natural death became changed, we became far more judgemental about how people deal with grief and seem to expect people to deal with it and get over it within months regardless of the relationship with the deceased.  I have heard of grieving parents who had to quit jobs to nurse ill children been given notice six weeks after their child’s death that they need to be going back out to work now. I know people who will not talk about death as if that will stop it eve happening to anyone they know.

As the saying goes there are only to things in life that are guaranteed death and taxes, I do think that things like these examples of jewellery are a good way to start dialogue and maybe when people talk more about death and the realities of loss then life might just start to be treated with more respect again.