I’ve been meaning to share a reflection for a while, but it has been a busy few weeks, and I decided to wait until our old mother duck died since I wanted to share a reflection on burial and its connection with children. And just the other day, she passed. Not in the way my family imagined, yet not unpredictable either.
Snow and Ice prevented us from going to a morning Low Mass so we ended up making the High Mass around lunchtime. This meant that we made it home several hours later than normal. What did we come home to? Our beloved duck being eaten by a couple of hawks! She did not die of old age like we hoped. She died by winter-hungry hawks. As I hinted above, this was not unpredictable. Our mother duck was a Pekin — bred for meat — and she was the first duck we ever got. Her sister died just last year. We had three or four ducks from our first batch almost five years ago. Two of the Pekins, who were both females lived through almost every imaginable event. The one that died last year survived multiple fox attacks, a broken leg, a hole in her foot webbing, and getting caught in some netting somehow and tearing up her face and bill. She somehow managed to die of old age (around 4) and lived a full, adventurous life. Her sister, the one that died the other day, lived through all the same stuff, but managed to live unscathed until the very end. By the time she got to almost five years old, she was limping and falling behind and basically neglected by the rest of the flock. She would also be seen stretching her wings out or simply laying down and not moving. We all knew it would be any day and we wanted her to be happy and free until she did die.
I knew she was vulnerable to hawk and fox attacks and what not, but figured she’d die before they got to her. That was not the case, as it turned out, but it was only by a couple of days. When we scared the hawks off (red-tailed hawks, by the way) and looked at her corpse she was found in her usual sitting position. For all I knew she was already dead. If the hawk killed her, she put up no fight and didn’t even move. There was no struggle and I doubt she even suffered much. Obviously being vicious killed would still be a great suffering, but she was so weak and out of it whatever severity it was did not last long. Anyhow, that’s how our duck died. She survived two moves and all manner of attacks. Last year, when the first of our mother pekins died the children insisted we had to bury her. When we got home from church, we had to bury this one, of course. And where did the children want her? Right next to the other pekin. So our two pekins are buried together — both at old age for a meat duck and both our beloved first pets, as it were.
I wanted to use this as an occasion to discuss the importance of burial, especially with children. Confrontation with death is a bit of a ghastly thing. It is terrible and people typically do not like to see a lifeless corpse — especially something or someone beloved. We’d almost rather not see it and just sear into our memory only the last good memory. Yet, we must endure it. We must suffer it. Death is a part of life and far from being normalized or desensitizing, people, especially children, need to be exposed to it. Not in a forced way or a violent or brutal way, but as it occasions throughout life. When a pet dies, when an elderly relative dies, or some other occasion of death. It is necessary to witness and confront it. Not because it brings joy. It brings with it finality — we can’t live in denial, and it also brings with it the sobering reality that we too will be dead some day.
For a child, it is necessary to understand this. For us, this understanding happens primarily through our farm animals. We’ve had to bury lots of things. The kids find a dead bird and want to bury it. We had to bury our first dog that ran into the road and got hit by a car; we had to bury these two ducks. The connection of death and burial go hand in hand. It brings closure to the relationship. We literally say that we lay someone to rest. It is true. We lay them to rest and we accept that they are resting. When that happens, we connect the finality of death with their absence from us. There will always be a hole for people and creatures we hold dear, but it does not consume us because the act of being involved in the burial helps give the grief a closure.
We don’t bury everything that dies on the farm, but it is important to bury the things that matter. In this case it was two ducks. We’ve also buried favorite feathers from chickens snatched away by foxes. There is mourning in the loss, but the burial is the closure that helps heal it. This is starkly contrasted from the practice nowadays to cremate everything and burn it. Cremation is ultimately a rejection of life because instead of honoring the body that bore a soul, it seeks to completely destroy it and turn it to dust so that it disappears from the earth. Good burial is the best way to honor the life that lived.
Even the life of a duck can be good and honorable, and instead of tossing it for the vultures, it demanded a certain respect — at least for the kids because it was family to them. It did have a more gruesome end than we hoped, but we buried the remains as they remained. We did not need to change any more states. It was buried as it was. And everyone was involved — from the toddler to the oldest. Everyone was there to connect the finality of death with the burial. There is an expectation and understanding that things die, and it helps prepare us for when it occurs — often when we least expect it. We can bear it easier when we keep it before us (memento mori, as the saying is), and when we participate in it. The closer we are to something the more necessary it is to participate in the burial of it.
For us this happened in a real way when my aunt unexpectedly died. The first close death on my side of the family that I was heavily involved in. She was very close to my wife and kids and I, and it was not an easy process. But I am at peace with it because I was heavily involved and participated in the process. She was also laid to rest in a cemetery fully intact as God intended. We know where she is and we wait for the coming resurrection at the end of time. There is peace in this orderly process. The kids were also there, and they were able to connect in a real way the absence of her with why she is absent. They saw her get laid to rest, and could look back fondly on her memory. They miss her and have occasioned to cry on that account, but there is also understanding and acceptance because they were part of the process.
Even with a simple duck, a creature that is almost as mischievous as a goose (a separate post on the goose another day), it is important to go through the process of death. It completes the cycle of life. We raised her from a chick — the older kids remember her splashing in the bathtub — and now we get to lay her to rest as a ripe old duck that brought small joy to our little family. We always had a trusty duck to see and delight in. She was happy as a clam (her favorite place to nap was in the dog water bowl). But is important to our nature to recall death and participate in its reality, and it is important to teach children to take care of the dead (it is a work of mercy in the Catholic Church) so they grow up caring for others from all phases of life. We teach them to love from beginning to end. They have a respect of life at all stages and the little bits of love shown to creatures and pets will extend outward to real people, even strangers, even enemies, when they get older. If they are raised to not be involved, to not care, to cremate and forget essentially, they will not have respect for people and they will add to the chaos of our society that does not respect life from beginning to end. In fact, for our culture, by and large, the end is for other people to handle and funeral homes to dispense with. It is a nicety to go to a service as opposed to a work that needs performed. Children have to be raised to respect all manner of life and to care from beginning, middle, and end. Aspects of life are very much like a vacuum. If the right things do not fill it, something else will, and you will not like the results. Children can only turn out well if they are well formed. Its a work that a parent has to do. If they dont, someone will, and usually the parent will not like the result, but the damage will have been done. This is a frequent issue in homes with kids in public schools. We make the sacrifices so we can avoid those problems, because we are going to form our children, not some stranger, and sometimes that means I must bury a duck.
I ended up writing a Christmas story to honor this Pekin that died on Gaudete Sunday. I hope to have it illustrated and published next year. It is a cute story about this duck and its life, and I hope that this short, rambling reflection offers some kernel of reflection on the value of life and the need for proper burial and how disordered our society is as it relates to death and burial these days.
Semper Volans (Always Flying) 