Frequent readers of my blog will know by now that I am not a touchy feely kind of person, I don’t like to share my problems, I like to compartmentalise, put on a brave face and deal with things in my own time. One of the many things that I have hidden deep down is the pain I will always feel at suffering from miscarriages. These children that began a life in me but were never given a chance to live it are always there in the back of my mind, what would they have been like? What colour would their hair have been? Would they have been like H-Bomb or completely different?
In the UK we have no real way of dealing with miscarriages and still-births, the parents, or in most cases the mothers are left to deal with their own grief, left to cope with the feeling of emptiness that comes. I am lucky, after suffering from my first miscarriage I immediately fell pregnant with H, this was a blessing. Instead of thinking what could have been I was busy puking my guts up and planning for the arrival of my son. Since then I can’t feel too down about the ones that weren’t meant to be as I already have my world, but sometimes, when I see somebody with the same due date as one of the lost babies the pain rushes back to slap away picture perfect life.
Understanding all of this it is easy to see why the Indonesian Toraja Tribes burial customs impressed me so much. The Toraja Tribe seem to have a different kind of respect for death that we do. They see the funeral as being the most important event of a persons life. They believe that the ancestors have spirits and that the spirits can be harmful or protective depending on how they died. If the person died in a natural way then it will be an easy journey for them to Puya, the land of the dead. If the person died as a result of an accident, childbirth or suicide then it is not such an easy journey. The Toraja throw a big party at a persons funeral and they throw a feast for whole villages. As a result of this the deceased can sometimes spend months and even years under their families houses while the family save the money for their funerals. During this time they are not referred to as dead, but sick. They are then placed into a grave that is carved into a cliff face or in a coffin that is suspended on the side of a mountain.
If a child dies before it has developed any teeth then the child will be buried in a burial tree. The child’s mother wraps the baby in cloth and makes a hole in the burial tree, the baby is placed inside and the hole is sealed allowing the tree to grow on around the child. It must be a living tree and it is believed by the Toraja that the tree absorbs the child and the child’s life continues on through the tree. I like the sentiment attached to this ritual. The mother believes that her child has helped to sustain the tree and his life flows through the tree. I can imagine it would be nice to spend time sitting at the base of the tree feeling a connection to these tiny loved ones that have passed on.
I think I might have to add this onto my bucket list, to visit a burial tree.
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