What Are We Supposed to Say About the Dead?

When somebody died in Jamaica, there were things you did.

I remember Nine Night.

I remember the mattress being flipped or the bed being turned.

And I remember the rum.

Not just rum for the people who came.

A little drop for the dead.

I knew these were things you did when somebody died.

What I don't remember is anybody sitting me down and explaining why.

That's the funny thing about family rituals.

Sometimes you inherit the instruction long before you inherit the explanation.

And apparently, there were rules that went beyond what you did.

There were also things you said.

And perhaps more importantly, things you didn't say.

Which brings me to Miss Elda's funeral.

If you've been anywhere near Jamaican social media lately, there's a good chance you've seen the video.

At the September funeral of Fundora Elda Lindo in St Elizabeth, her longtime friend Gwendolyn McRae stood up to deliver the eulogy.

And then the eulogy stopped sounding like the kind of eulogy people were expecting.

McRae began speaking candidly about parts of her friend's life and family relationships.

Eventually, the microphone was cut.

The video hit the internet.

And Jamaica started reasoning.

Because, listen.

There are things everybody in the church might know.

Things everybody in the family might know.

Things people might whisper about in the parking lot afterward.

But apparently there are also things you're not supposed to say when somebody hands you the microphone.

McRae later stood by what she had done. Members of Elda's family have disputed parts of the story surrounding the eulogy, and I'm not interested in deciding who's right about a grieving family's private life.

What interests me is the question underneath all the commotion:

What are we actually supposed to say about the dead?

Because funerals have a strange social rule.

Someone dies and suddenly we begin editing.

We remember the good.

We tell the funny stories.

We soften certain edges.

Maybe that's kindness.

Maybe it's respect.

Maybe funerals simply aren't the place to settle old scores.

But a eulogy is also supposed to tell someone's story.

So what happens when the true story isn't tidy?

And who gets to decide which version survives?

The more I thought about Miss Elda's funeral, the more I thought about the rituals I grew up around.

Nine Night is probably the best-known.

Traditionally, mourning could involve several nights of gathering, with the ninth night carrying particular significance. Jamaican cultural researchers have documented singing, hymns, storytelling, riddles, games, dancing, food, coffee, cocoa tea and white rum as parts of wake traditions.

Which might sound strange if your idea of mourning is everybody sitting quietly and looking appropriately miserable.

But grief doesn't always look like silence.

Sometimes grief sings.

Sometimes it tells the same story for the fifth time.

Sometimes somebody laughs.

Sometimes the dominoes come out.

The gathering itself can be part of the grief.

Jamaican Nine Night developed through traditions carrying both African-derived beliefs and European Christian influences.

So people could sing Christian hymns and pray while also observing customs concerned with the spirit of the person who had died.

Different understandings of death didn't always replace one another.

Sometimes they lived in the same room.

This is the part I had to look up because I remembered what happened but not why.

That mattress being turned?

I didn't imagine it.

Traditional Jamaican death practices included rearranging furniture and turning or moving the deceased person's bed or mattress.

One explanation recorded for the custom is that changing the familiar arrangement helped prevent the spirit from returning to its old place.

The person was loved.

The person was remembered.

But at some point, the person also had to leave.

That changes how I think about Nine Night.

In some traditional understandings, the deceased was still socially present during that period.

People gathered. They sang. They ate. They told stories.

And eventually came the leave-taking.

One explanation recorded by Jamaican cultural researchers connects the nine nights with an African-derived belief that the spirit needed time to journey back to the ancestral homeland. Christian beliefs about the soul and heaven became intertwined with those traditions over generations.

Of course, not every Jamaican family understood these customs exactly the same way.

Some knew the meaning.

Some probably had another explanation.

Some did it because their mother did it.

And some children, like me, simply watched everybody else and learned:

This is what we do when somebody dies.

This may be the smallest ritual, but something about it gets me.

A little rum for the dead.

White rum has long appeared in documented Jamaican wake traditions, both as something shared among mourners and, in some practices, as a libation.

A little poured out.

Not for you.

For them.

Think about what that says.

You may have died.

But you're still being included.

We're drinking.

Here's yours.

We're gathering.

You're part of this too.

There's something remarkably direct about that.

The person hadn't yet completely disappeared from the social world.

Until eventually, they had to.

The mattress was turned.

The room was changed.

The ninth night came.

And the living had to continue living.

Which brings me back to that microphone.

The person leaves.

Their story doesn't.

And suddenly, the people who remain become its custodians.

One person remembers the wonderful mother.

Another remembers the difficult relationship.

Someone remembers the friend who would give you her last dollar.

Someone else remembers something completely different.

None of us exist as only one version of ourselves.

So which version belongs in the eulogy?

The nicest one?

The most honest one?

The one the deceased would have wanted?

The one the family can live with?

I don't know.

Maybe respect sometimes means leaving certain things unsaid.

Maybe honesty sometimes means refusing to pretend.

Maybe the funeral isn't the place.

Maybe, occasionally, somebody gets handed a microphone and decides that actually, today is exactly the place.

Jamaica will apparently continue reasoning about that one. 😂

But underneath that viral video is something much older than social media.

Humans have always had to figure out what to do when somebody who occupied space in our world suddenly isn't occupying it anymore.

So we create rituals.

We gather.

We sing.

We pray.

We laugh.

We cry.

We turn the mattress.

We pour a little rum.

We tell stories.

Different ways of saying:

You were here.

And eventually:

You aren't here anymore.

But there's one thing the rituals can't settle for us.

We still have to decide how to remember you.

We still have to decide which stories get told.

We gather.

We sing.

We pray.

We turn the mattress.

We pour a little rum.

And eventually, we tell the dead goodbye.

But the living still have to decide what to do with the story.

Until next time,
Tami
Founder and Curious Editor
Roots & Rhythms