What are the spiritual, physical and even social significance of bathing a dead body before he or she is mummified or buried? Where did the custom originate from? Did it come from Ancient Egypt where most Judeo-Christian values that are in much practice in the world today took their roots? Or could it be just one among the many difficult- to- understand and sometimes laughable things that are done pertaining to the dead in much of the world today especially in Christian Africa?
Let us begin from the beginning: how come my thought went go to an issue such as this at all? What must have motivated or triggered a weird idea like this? Well, I am, by training and practice, a lay thinker, or to put it more grandly, a philosopher, a semi one, to be more humble. It is my duty or office to think or wonder about certain things for or on behalf of man or society. In that office, it is my lot to sometime pooh-pooh some ideas; to laugh to scorn some of what I consider foolishness or human stupidity. A man like me called Heraclitus of Ephesus in Ancient Greece was once so appalled by what he considered the stupidity of mankind that he decided to leave the human society of his day and dwell alone in the mountains!
Come to think about this issue of bathing a dead body, who was the man or woman who first thought of it? Why did he or she consider it necessary or imperative? Was he or she near a dead person who smelt horribly? Who will possibly smell the bodily scent of a dead person? If the thought of that person was grander, was the idea meant to prepare him or her for life in the hereafter?
This piece was motivated by the visit of my 86- year old mother. Whenever I have an encounter, no matter how brief it is with her, the subject of her possible death and the manner or protocol of her burial inevitably creeps in. what seems to occupy her thoughts most of the time is about her departure from this ethereal life. About the clothes they need to wear her. The other day, my eldest child and daughter gave her a gift of a wrapper. She told me that that expensive and dearly beloved wrapper is one of those that should go with her! Knowing where she is coming from and how much premium my people place on the hereafter and the things that should go on the journey with the departed, I was too afraid to mention even jokingly to her that ‘’Mama, why do you not say it should be given to a person you dearly love instead? Who told you they wear wrapper there where you are going to?’’ I know how sad and disappointed she will be if I tell her this. She will think I will not faithfully execute her desires and command when she eventually leaves.
She even talks about the exact spot she should be buried in. There was a time in the past that she told me she will like to be buried in a spot next to where her mother, my maternal grandmother was buried. Now she has changed her mind. Although she and my late grandmother are from the same village, she has now realized that that her wish is next to impossibility because doing so will cause a civil war. Her husband’s people will go to war to have her body buried in her husband’s place!
My mother tells me about the number of cows and goats I, as the first born son, should ensure is given to her father’s people, to her husband’s people, to her age mates, to her Catholic mother’s group and a variety of other mourners. Why are all these important to her when she will not be here again to see what will be done or not done?
Could it be our upbringing, the values implanted in us to accept certain things unquestionably? If it is not upbringing that a child should respect the wishes of her mother especially when it relates to her death wishes unquestionably, why does she think that I share in those her values and will see to all the implementation of her wishes? I think about all these and laugh to myself. Why do we humans bother ourselves so much about matters which we have little or no power to control? Why, in the first place, do we do certain things that look laughable and extremely ridiculous?
Why bathe a dead body that is no longer alive to mix with people and so wish to smell good for his own self esteem and for the sake of others also? Why do we use some millions and thousands to buy casket to bury the dead? Why not donate the money meant for that to charity? Is an expensive casket meant it for the good of that dead or is it charity for termites who will be the eventual consumer of that item? What role does our vanity play when we think about death and some of the ceremonies surrounding it?
Is washing the dead not a part of this vanity? If not, let some tell me the biological, the spiritual necessity and any other possible reasons why we must bother ourselves about such an act.
