Written by my little sister Joan Humphrey of Alaska
Dear Dawn & Tom,
Tom, I thought you would be especially interested in a funeral I went to on Friday night. It was for my former neighbor—an Alaska Native man, age 67. They do things a bit differently than we do. First off, Henry died early Monday morning in the hospital. He had been in for 2 weeks with congestive heart failure and a failing kidney (he had the other one removed due to cancer 4-5 years ago). He and his family made the decision not to treat him or try to prolong his life but just to keep him comfortable.
Hospital visit. I went to see him several times, and he was aware of everything except when he was drugged up because of the pain in his back and hips. Dawn, it made me wonder if the CA had metastasized to his bones, but they never did tests to find out. Anyway, the first thing that was really different in the hospital is that when someone is dying (I assume, an exception made for the Native culture, as I’d never heard of it before), there are no rules for visiting hours. People just come and go whenever they want to and it is just like a revolving door. Someone is with them ALL the time. His wife Velma told me they only give people a private room when they are dying.
A little background. Henry and Velma, after 30+ years of marriage, got divorced about 5 years ago because he had a drinking problem that she could no longer deal with. He had stayed in Fairbanks, and she had moved to Anchorage. As soon as she knew he was sick, she came and stayed with him every night in the hospital except one when their son and Henry’s brother stayed with him. He knew he was dying, but he said he could not “go anywhere” unless Velma married him again, and he had to wait until his sister got there too. Well, both of those things happened, I think on the same day, and they got re-married again in the hospital room on July 27.
Later I told Velma how they wanted you to pay back a month’s social security because Ralph died on Feb. 28 instead or March 1. She said that must be why, in his lucid moments, he kept looking at the calendar and saying he had to get his next SS check, even though I doubt that he knew that rule. He died on Aug 1.
Native traditions. Anyway, they do have the person embalmed, but they do everything else themselves, even dressing them in their traditional dress. The coffin is totally open, so you see their entire body, feet and all. The men get together and build the coffin, and after the varnish is dried, the women line it with satin. They do a beautiful job, and it does not even look homemade—talk about being buried in a pine box….
The men also dig the grave by hand. All week long the people bring food, and they eat 2 meals together each day—noon and 6 PM. They started out at the Episcopal Church and then moved it to the Tribal Hall after it was available. That’s where the funeral and later the potlatch were held too. The Tribal Hall is a huge log structure. After 4-5 days of feasting and visiting, they have a viewing.
The viewing and funeral. Sometimes the viewing is the day before and sometimes just before the funeral. In this case it was one hour before the funeral. The funeral started right on time at 1 PM, and the first thing they did was have the pallbearers come up and each one put one screw in the lid (I don’t know where they had kept the lid up to that time), passing the Makita screwdriver around.
Then they moved the coffin into the aisle and turned it, so I think his feet were toward the priest. After the funeral they turned it again the opposite way to leave the church, so I’m assuming the feet went out first. Tom, you would know the proper protocol on that, but I just made assumptions as I could not see for sure. I only realized at the gravesite that there was a cross on the lid toward his head.
The funeral was 1 ½ hours long complete with communion for the whole congregation of probably 200+ people. David and Jonathan (Joan’s young grandsons) got their first taste of wine at Harry’s funeral, as the Episcopal way is to actually take a sip. I think they each took a “gulp.” When they got back to their seats Jonathan said, “Mommy, what WAS that?” Lori answered that it was wine, and he said, “Well, I don’t like wine,” and David said, “That was yucky.” I don’t think Lori knew beforehand that it was wine either. I dipped my wafer because I had been to the Presbyterian Church and knew that’s how they did it.
They had people share memories of Harry, sang several hymns, and had lots of other music. They had a program printed up but did not follow it except occasionally. He was a veteran, so they had his fellow Native Alaska veterans participate also. At one point, his brother, who was giving the commands to the other veterans, told them to turn the wrong way and they all hesitated for a moment and then turned the correct way. He realized his mistake, acknowledged it, and everyone laughed—that was at the first of the service, but I just forgot to mention it until now.
After the service was done, his daughter Connie carried a beautiful homemade wooden cross, probably 8 feet tall, with his name, birth, and death dates, etc. on a metal plaque down the aisle ahead of the coffin. The people were standing, so she almost bashed a couple of them in the head in the front row.
They noticed in time and motioned/helped her to hold it a little higher. The cross later became the headstone with the lower 1/3rd of the cross being buried in the ground. Then the pallbearers followed Connie out of the building and loaded Henry into the back of a waiting and newly washed red pickup truck that had a dent in the tailgate. His son, David, rode in the back of the pickup with Henry, holding the cross all the way to the cemetery.
*This article will continue next week with the burial and potlatch, traditions of the Natives in Alaska.
