Death of a child

Are there worse things than the death of a child?  That's what I was asking myself earlier this week.  I can think of a handful of worse things, but the death of a child is pretty damn horrific.

I attended the wake of a young toddler a few days ago. The child was a relative of a co-worker; I had never met the child before.

The weight of the sorrow, the sadness and horror of it all is overwhelming.  As a parent, this is your worst nightmare, you turn your back and your child is gone.  There are few words to describe how sad it was.  The tiny coffin is heartbreaking.

My friend was doing as best as you can, but the child's mother looked like hell.

I think it's safe to say that hell on earth is losing your child so young.  It must sound like an exaggeration, but I don't think so.  I don't want to describe more of what I saw, more of the pain - it's a little like child birth, you want to distance yourself from the pain and forget as soon as possible (for self protection).

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So I can certainly imagine why the idea of sealing families was so appealing to early mormons, and continues to bring people to the LDS church today.  When you've experienced a loss so enormous, so unimaginable, a person might do anything to feel better.  You do anything to believe that death can be cheated.

My friend's family is not mormon, and there is no way I would bring this up at such a hellish time (I hope that goes without saying).

Yet I believe there is a strong, human impulse to comfort, to say that the loved one is in a better place, that we will be with them again.  And who am I to get in the way of that?  I have no answers.

For my non mormon readers, Joseph Smith said he had a vision of his brother Alvin*, and he encouraged him to start performing baptisms and sealing ordinances by proxy.  This would get around the religious questions of the time - what would happen to someone who died before they heard of mormonism, or who wasn't "saved".  All of a sudden, it didn't matter if your loved one wasn't mormon or around to be mormon, you could still be with them in the afterlife.  Of course, there are all sorts of caveats, but for such loss, it makes sense that families would do anything to dull the pain.

Some of the caveats were that the baptism needs to be performed with people here on earth, who have physical bodies.  Mormonism has a unique emphasis (to my mind) on the physical body.  It has to be done in the mormon temple, where only the most worthy mormons can enter.  The baptized, deceased person (in the mormon version of purgatory) would then be free to accept the baptism, and then eventually be married (by proxy) and be in heaven with their family.  The exact details are confusing, and can cause hours of debate with some circles of mormons (I could link to faithful mormon discussions here, but choose not to).  But the point of all this is the ability to feel some slight comfort in the face of such sadness and grief.

This is simply what I was thinking about, after watching such a loss from the outside earlier this week.

*I found this article on the mormon curtain that discusses Alvin's death. The article is about 2/3rds down the page by Steve Benson.  I haven't checked the references, so please take this with a grain of salt.  It certainly seems very plausible to me that at Alvin's funeral, the minister did not give comfort to Joseph Smith's family and that later, the idea of baptism by proxy was more attractive.

#7 in my advice for mormon leadership series

Some of you might be wondering why I even care what the mormon church does or says about anything. And you would probably be right since I haven't considered myself mormon for 15 years.

**Any believing mormons/LDS will no doubt find this post offensive and should stop reading now**

I was thinking the other day about how pervasive American mass media is about weddings. There are magazines devoted to weddings and receptions. There are conventions with wedding planners, hair stylists, florists, pastry chefs, photographers, etc. It is an enormous, billion dollar industry.

Whether or not it's empowering for women - the vast majority of little girls will be sucked into this culture. Bridal gowns are costumes for halloween. Music videos are filled with weddings and wedding imagery (Think a simple kind of life with Gwen Stefani). Many successful movies (Father of the Bride, both versions) are based around this pie in the sky wedding fantasy that many women have. In an episode of the sitcom Friends a few years ago, one of the characters brings out a binder filled with clips and cutouts for her wedding she had come up with at the age of 10. I saw a children's cartoon (Little Bear) with a fake wedding with an aisle the other day. These fantasies all have aisles and brides in gowns and veils. It's literally everywhere.

So - with this tremendous pressure on mormon women to marry and to marry a mormon, what kind of planning does a mormon woman get to do for her actual wedding ceremony? Nothing. She actually has no idea what the ceremony will be like. No one, not her mother, teachers or friends are allowed to talk about what happens. There is no beautiful strapless white gown in her future as she walks down the aisle.

There is no aisle.

In popular culture - people can choose to do lots of things. They can exchange vows in front of immediate family or just a justice of the peace. Getting married outdoors, on a beach, on a baseball diamond is trendy. She can wear pants. While a gay couple can't get married legally, there are plenty of gay weddings. In the end, who cares what a couple decides to do? It's what the couple wants. A mormon woman has no idea what she is in for.

As an adult, I've read more about the mormon ceremony - it's published lots of places on the net and in books. Of course it's seen as horribly offensive to active mormons - who feel the ceremony is sacred and should never be shown to outsiders. (Never mind the fact that it is directly lifted from the Masonic rituals). Many might argue that I should respect others' beliefs - yet this is one part that I find hard to respect. The sacred part of the ceremony should not be the knowledge of the ceremony itself - but the spiritual reaction. AND at this point - when anyone who looked could easily find what happens - why does the secrecy matter? What purpose does it serve?

I agree that some of the wedding culture (like prom culture) is just plain sexist and bullshit. Some women spend so much time planning for their weddings that actually being married seems like an afterthought. Others become depressed after the wedding is over in a "what now" type funk. And yes, at one point the wedding and dowry were an exchange of property (women) from their fathers to their husbands. Weddings and marriage have not always had a glorious tolerant history.

Yet Utah LDS/mormon leadership is (as usual) completely out of touch with popular culture. This isn't surprising since most of them are over 90, white, male and rarely leave Utah.

There is no cultural comparison for a mormon woman to look forward to her wedding ceremony.

I'm not suggesting that I would have stayed mormon if I had actually been able to look forward to my wedding. There are so many reasons why I left - this wasn't even a blip on my radar.

All I'm suggesting is - how can a wedding or marriage be an ideal for a young woman if she doesn't even know what she's in for? It's not an attractive prospect. It's terrifying. Not only does she not know what she's in for, she has to remain pure and chaste in order to get to that pinnacle. Again - she has to sacrifice, possibly lie to herself and others about something in which she is completely in the dark about what happens there.

I cannot imagine how I would have reacted at my wedding in the temple when I saw the men putting on green aprons and chef hats. Then - I would put on a veil - covering my face! Because there is a definite separation there of what the men do and what the women do.

Sure, the leadership does a phenomenal job of indoctrinating children into going to the temple. "I love to see the temple" is a common primary (young children) song - or "My body is a temple". Songs like this are sung by little mormons (as young as three) all the time. They never sing about how going to the temple requires 10% of your income to the mormon church. I guess that's not as important.

It's simply not fair to keep women (and men) out of the process. I'm sure by keeping everything secret that people don't think about how wacky everything really is. It's a method of control and manipulation. There's no question the mormon/LDS church is moving towards a more non-descript, not as separate religious order. If so, this ceremony will have to go - or at least, the secrecy will have to go.