LOSS of life brings untold pain to those grieving.
The prying eyes of the public fed by incentive journalists not guided by any moral codes make the whole grieving process akin to a feeding frenzy. Like vultures squabbling for scraps, they shred into the private and personal lives of the grieving families, detailing all. Nothing is sacred.
The families, like a lifeless carcass, are left bare, exposed to its skeletal state.
I dare say Zimbabweans, for whatever reason, thought it amusing to poke fun at the family of Michelle “Moana” Amuli, who died in a tragic car crash with three others, Genius Ginimbi Kadungure, Limumba Karim and Alichia Adams. All her family business is out there. Maybe we, as a nation, have become desensitised; maybe we are trying to alleviate some of our everyday horrors and the stresses of a failing state and an economy in the doldrums.
Making jokes in a painful situation tends to ease our discomfort. We even have a name for it. We call it “comic relief.” Humour distances us from intimacy – from the atrocity that we are allowing to happen before our eyes, or even participating in. If we can make a joke, we can push down the nauseous feeling that rises within us… we can distract ourselves from the repulsiveness of human suffering.
Loss of a loved one brings out the worst in people. Perhaps we mourn loss in the strangest of ways. Some parents exhibit anger and channel or direct it to the wrong people.
Fighting over a corpse is not new. Personally, I went through a very horrific and painful experience when I lost my wife. The problem with some of our Zimbabwean people (if I could just address those and yes, I will) is that they always want to apportion blame for death to someone else. There is a strongly held belief that no one just dies, there has to be a witch or a devil who cut short the life of their loved one.
Sickness or accidents are caused by some force and as such, the one blamed is always accused of wanting to do something sinister even with the deceased’s remains. Hence the tussles and tag of wars that then ensue for possession and control of the dead body.
Family relations are strained; some broken beyond repair as a result of this sad process, which is still a mystery and in my view a sad phenomenon which has set its roots in our people. The question is how do we move on? How do we unteach and free ourselves from such a barbaric and insensitive practice?
In all honesty, some people forget that you are grieving and would rather compound your agony. Though they grieve too, they mistakenly think that by increasing your pain by obfuscating and making a simple but sad event such as a funeral more difficult, their pain will be transferred to the one they blame for the death or loss of a loved one. Sad as they are funerals. They should never be used as battlegrounds to score points or settle scores.
The damage caused by such squabbles has unseen and untold psychological and mental scars that may never fully heal.
We must, if we can, allow those that mourn to do so without the tabloids sensationalising family feuds.It is in my view unethical and immoral.
It will take time for our people to grow out of the practice of fighting for possession of corpses and control of funeral proceedings. In the end, what really matters is that the dead are buried and allowed to rest.
Whether that be in peace or not, well that’s a topic for another day.
Written by Brilliant Pongo.
