RACHEL KONIECZNY
AND DIANA McELFRESH
News Assignment Editor and Assistant News Editor
“How can you really know America if America is the only place you know?”
That is the question Michael Leming, international author on death and dying, asked during his first presentation in the Walsh Science Center Monday evening.
Leming delivered two talks, one on Monday titled “Funerals: Cross-Cultural and Religious Traditions (Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and Islam), and the second on Tuesday evening titled “Bereavement and Loss: A Process of Caring.”
Bonaventure’s Disability Committee and Diversity Action Committee sponsored the lectures.
The first presentation focused on life and living, as opposed to death and dying, according to Leming.
“If you look for similarities, you will discover that there are no differences,” Leming said of similar tasks in differing cultures, such as taking off shoes indoors to keep the outside dirt from reaching the inside.
Leming’s first talk began with a five-minute video on the lives of students while they studied abroad in Thailand. He then discussed funerals for Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. In Thailand, Leming said that all burial processes include cremations. All possessions of the dead are burned, said Leming.
The presentation included a review of a Christian burial process and an account of a Muslim burial, which involves embalming, according to Leming.
Leming said cemeteries are fascinating because of their engenderment, where men are often on one side and women on the other. He also said a funeral is a time to reassemble life.
Leming concluded his talk by answering questions regarding current funeral and burial processes.
In his second presentation on Tuesday evening, Leming discussed the sociological process of bereaving the death of a family member or loved one.
“Remember death. Remember that you will die,” said Leming at the beginning of his presentation. “Because when you remember that you’ll die and you make peace with that, you can now live fully.”
He dispelled the popular myth that ‘time heals all wounds.’
“Time does not heal; I miss my father every day,” said Leming.
In his speech, Leming listed off various ways in which people grieve, types of unexpected death that lead to the most suffering for remaining family members, types of loss that aren’t socially recognized, deaths that aren’t socially recognized, stages of grief and abnormal signs of grief.
Leming included personal examples of dealing with death and showed the ways in which both he and people he is close with cope with death in his presentation.
When speaking of deaths that aren’t socially recognized, Leming discussed his daughter’s miscarriage and the profound effect it had on his family, though many people would not see a miscarriage as a death.
“The Buddha was right,” said Leming on the process of grieving, “All life is suffering.”
koniecrc14@bonaventure.edu
mcelfrdh14@bonaventure.edu
