Tag Archives: death

You shouldn’t walk across a grave

Background: The informant was a boy scout and eventually became an Eagle scout. He remembers a game he used to play with his fellow scouts that involved a superstition about graves and respect for the dead.

TR: The superstition that you shouldn’t walk across a grave. It is bad luck to walk across a grave. The scout troup would meet at a Methodist church and the meetings would be at night. We would play capture the flag a lot and across the property and graveyard in the dark and it would be spooky. I was hesitant to play, because you’re just not supposed to, disturb the dead, particularly at night. It’s all tied to respect for the dead. Back then when you are just trying to scare one another, it added another element, and it’s a long standing superstition that you don’t walk across graveyards, or play capture the flag and run. That seems even worse.

Me: If this is widely held, did you know of the superstition when you were doing it?

TR: Well yeah, it was well known that you aren’t supposed to do it and you’re walking across a body, a dead body.

TR: We thought about it, and had various levels of investment in the superstition, but I was not particularly invested. Some might have been more worried about incurring the wrath of a ghost or receive bad luck, but I didn’t think much of it. The idea of displeased ghosts became more believable playing at night than it would be playing during the day.

Me: Was it more believable at night?

TR: Definitely.

Me: If it was more believable, why did you do it?

TR: The fun of the game weighed in heavily, but the hesitation came from it being disrespectful. It is widely known that it is disrespectful.

Context of the performance: This was told to me over a Zoom call.

Thoughts: The informant considers this superstition just widely known–it’s not officially codified. It takes a sentiment, being respectful of the dead, and turns it into a superstition using an object–the gravestone representing the person it’s placed for. It also reveals children’s thought processes surrounding death, where the fun of the game outweighed any feeling of disrespect. The superstition and “spooky” nature added an element of fun to the game as the informant and his friends tried to scare each other, perhaps signifying young children’s non-confrontation of the taboo; they use the superstition to make the fun scary, but don’t think about the taboo of death that is incongruous with childhood.

Día de Los Muertos

CONTEXT/BACKGROUND:
The interlocutor (MP) grew up in Oaxaca, Mexico before immigrating to the US in his early twenties.

DESCRIPTION: (told in person)
(MP): “In Mexico, Día de Los Muertos is a famous holiday that celebrates your dead relatives. It’s on November 1st and 2nd, which technically makes it Los Días de Los Muertos but you and most people living here [in the United States] call it by the singular version.

Catholics families set up the ofrenda, the….the altar with pictures of their dead relatives they want to remember. It’s supposed to be in the house, kinda private, and they put stuff like comida y bebidas y floras (food, drinks, and flowers)… on it as like, an offering to them. Lots of panaderias (bakeries) and other merchants also sell those sugar skulls… los calaveras y pan de muerto (bread of the dead). For the ofrenda. It’s so that the souls of their loved ones can come visit them during these days, y’know?

They’ll also go to the graveyard and clean up their family’s graves and put offerings on that too. It’s a lot of prayer and celebration, since it’s supposed to be happy and all. I know big festivals and parades happen all over Mexico to celebrate too. In Oaxaca, we went to the one that happens at the Zocalo (Oaxaca City’s main square) and saw all the people dressed in costumes with the masks and the dancing and singing. It’s very family-oriented and a lot of fun.

FINAL THOUGHTS/OBSERVATIONS:
Having celebrated Día de Los Muertos before, I was already quite familiar with some of the traditions the interlocutor mentioned. Despite this, it was still eye-opening to hear about the holiday from someone who actually grew up in the culture from which the holiday.

Traditions commemorating the death of loved ones are prevalent in most, if not all cultures; however, I think that Mexico’s celebration of Los Días de Los Muertos is unique because it celebrates death as a positive thing rather than something that means grief, loss, and pain. I think it’s amazing to hear about the humor, joy, and happiness that surrounds death in this tradition.

Dark Humor in the ICU (“Celestial Transfer”)

Informant Context:

Stella is a traveling ICU (intensive care unit) nurse who currently work in Atlanta, Georgia.

Transcript:

STELLA: I feel like people in the ICU especially have like, really dark humor. Um… like, dark kind of like—twisted humor? And I think like, you kind of like, have to be that way. Like, it’s like, it’s kind of the saying of like, “If you’re not laughing you’re crying?” Like, the things that we see are so tragic that like, we kind of just have to like, make light of them? And it’s not ’cause like, we’re like, making fun of people is just like… “Wow, the situation is like, so bad… like, this is just ridiculous that I’m watching this” kind of thing. Um…

INTERVIEWER: Can you give an example of… maybe a joke that you’ve heard or something people frequently make fun of in the ICU?

STELLA: Um… like, I don’t… like [laughs]… if a… like, it’s like—this is like, so bad. I don’t—like, I kinda don’t, like, feel super comfortable like, saying… like, like—so I’ve heard people say like, um… you know, like—oh, like, so-and-so made like, a “celestial transfer”. And so, it’s kind of like—kind of like a jokey way of saying like… if the patient died… and it’s like, instead of transferring them to the floor or like, discharging them from the hospital they were like, transferred to the sky. You know what I mean?

INTERVIEWER: Right, right. 

STELLA: Like, to heaven. And so it’s like, “Oh… like, you know, so-and-so… you know, had a ‘celestial transfer’”, and everyone’s like, “Oh, yeah”. Um… but yeah… I mean, I don’t know. I feel like it’s… it’s not something that anyone outside of that profession would understand nor think is funny [laughs]. 

Informant Commentary

Stella displayed some apprehension, even guilt, when sharing this particular joke. She feared that those outside her folk group would characterize the humor of medical professionals in the ICU as “heartless”, in her words. For her, the meaning of the humor lies in replacing pain with levity. She went on to describe this folk practice as an absolute necessity to cope with the constant displays of suffering which surround this folk group.

Analysis:

Certain experiences and responsibilities breed jokes which are not considered humorous or even relevant to people without the same experiences and responsibilities. In the case of this specific joke, the experiences and responsibilities shared by those within the folk group are ones closely associated with death, particularly death within a hospital setting. This is why the joke directly references hospital terminology (“transfer”). In addition, references to the word “celestial”, or the movement of a patient from the “terrestrial” to the “celestial” suggests that even within this example of so-called dark humor, there is an implicit hope of peace for their shared patient.  

Tying Sheets to Keep Patients Alive

The informant worked as a nurse in South Carolina for almost a decade. Here, she recounts a way the nurses would try to ward off death from patients on their death beds.

T:  The first one I can think about is in nursing. When, um, I know this sounds terrible, but in nursing when a patient who would not be doing well, who would be passing away, and dying, the nurses would go into their rooms and tie sheets to the corners of their bed. And supposedly that would keep them from dying until, at least– and keep them hanging on supposedly– so they wouldn’t die until later. At least until they were gone. So they wouldn’t die while they were there. 

L: In the room with them?

T: Until the next shift, yeah. 

L: Wait, is this a thing you did in the South or a thing you did in LA? 

T: The South. I didn’t hear about it much here in LA. 

L: It’s like, “Don’t die on my shift, please!”

T: Yeah, they would do it all the time. I would go in and find the corners tied to the bedsheets and I would have to reprimand them. Because families would come in and want to know why there would be, um– and mostly it was the nursing assistants. It wouldn’t be the nurses. And you know, I hate to say it, but, you know, the nursing assistants wouldn’t want to have to deal with the extra work and everything. So I would have to go reprimand the nursing assistants cause the families would come in like, “Why are the corners tied on the end of mama’s bed sheet?” 

L: Wait, so how–? So they would tie a bed sheet to, like, the post? 

T: No, no. You know how you have the top sheet and you have the fitted sheet? The top sheet, the corners on the sides, the corners on the ends. Where the corners are, they would tie a knot in all four corners. Supposedly that would keep the patient hanging on. 

L: Oh, so they’d tie the sheet to itself? 

T: No, no. All four corners, you know how when you take the sheet out of where its tucked in– you know how it hangs down before it’s tucked in? They would take that long sheet out and then they would tie a knot in it, in that corner and the knot would hang down. And a knot would hang down on the other corner, a knot would hang down on another corner. And all four corners would have a knot hanging on it.

 And I would come in, and the family would come in and I’d be like, “Oh my God! They did it again!” It would make me so mad. And I would be like, trying to explain, “you have to understand, our nursing assistants have different beliefs. And they’re just trying to keep mama here as long as possible. And we understand we’re just trying to make her comfortable”. And it would be hospice patients too! People we were trying to make comfortable and let go. You know? And here they come, trying to look like they’re trying to hang onto them. Like, “No! Don’t do that!”

L: Do you remember if this was, like, a white person thing? Or like a black person thing? Or like a both?

T: It mostly was a black person thing, to be honest. So, um, there was a lot of education there. Especially on our hospice unit when I was involved with, um, being in charge of the hospice patients. I really had to do a lot of education and make sure the girls were not doing that. And have to really, really, “y’all can not do that with these patients”. That’s totally the opposite of what our goal is here. You could almost explain it like, “Oh, we’re just trying to make mama hang in there,” but it was really difficult on the hospice unit. 

Thoughts:

The reason I asked the informant if this tradition was a white or black thing is because neighborhoods in the Deep South of the United States are still very much segregated based on race. While whites and blacks from the Deep South do share a unifying cultural identity, there are many differences and nuisances that distinctively the two. So I thought it important to know which community this this tradition came from.

Later, the informant agreed with me that this tradition would seem sweet on any other unit that the hospice unit. This tradition runs counter-intuitive to the purpose of a hospice unit.

Opening Windows to Let the Soul Out

The informant worked as a nurse in South Carolina and in Southern California for almost two decades. Here she recounts a cross-cultural tradition that nurses perform after a patient has passed.

T: As far as nursing goes, we would have nurses who would, uh, come in the room. We would have nurses come in, and even nurses here in California I would have some, and um, I don’t know if it was regional or not, cause I would have a lot of nurses that were travelers and a lot of nurses that were from all over the country. You know, cause we have– cause California has so many nurses from so many different places. And you know, how you say, there’s no Californian born in California. But, um, we would have nurses once the patient had died and the family seen the patient, and sometimes even before that, they would open, if they could, they would open the windows in the room.

L: Oh! So their soul could get out?

T: Yeah. So that was another superstition as far as nursing goes. Nurses would, uh, tend to do when they weren’t superstitious in any other way. Nurses tend to be very scientific and clinical–that kinda stuff. But that was a nursing thing that nurses would do, not just the nursing assistants. 

L: Do you remember if that was from any specific nationality or culture? Or did it sort of catch on with everyone? 

T: It crossed a lot of barriers, I think. I know they did it in the South a lot. When I was in the South, I mean, it was very a Southern thing. But when I came here (To Los Angeles) I noticed that a lot of different– cause there are a lot of different cultures here– I noticed a lot of cultures did that. It wasn’t just a Southern thing. Yeah, a lot of different cultures did that. And a lot of different religious cultures seemed to do it. Like, letting the soul be free and not trapped. That kind of thing. 

Thoughts:

It’s interesting how the informant says that this tradition is not only seen on opposite sides of the United States, but is also crosses ethnic boundaries as well. This leads me to wonder if the origins of opening the window for someone’s soul to leave may be polygenetic, or if it is a tradition that is passed down from nurse to nurse in the United States and has slowly worked its way across the country.