Farewell matters

What does the Farewell Group do?

We are a self-organised group that focuses upon everything relating to the event of death. We are not involved in hospice-type care prior to death or in any kind of long-term bereavement therapy for relatives or friends after death.

When somebody dies and the body is brought to us, one part of our team washes and prepares it for the cool box. Whatever the family or friends of the person have indicated – how the body is to be clothed, how long it is to be kept in the cool box, the decorations in the viewing room, whether it is to be cremated or buried etc. – we help them implement. If the family wants the preparation and viewing to happen in the home, we help by bringing one of our cool boxes there and, if necessary, by renting generators to maintain a constant power supply.

We have forms (which are also available online) that people can fill in at any time with their last wishes concerning their funeral arrangements, but many do not do this. One of the members of the team will present different options if people don’t know what the deceased wanted.

The Auroville burial and cremation ground is at Adventure. We transport the body there, if this is not taken care of by family and friends, and make the final arrangements for cremation or burial. The family of Juanita, who died in the U.S. some time ago, is coming in December. A tree has already been planted and there will be a ceremony, to which Aurovilians are invited, when they place her ashes near it. These are the kinds of things we also facilitate.

The BCC has budgeted Rs.30,000 for each event, but sometimes it costs more. We get no separate budget for maintaining the facilities at Adventure, so now we include in the cost of a burial or cremation a certain amount for cleaning and maintaining the site.

Is every farewell event different?

Yes. There is no set way of doing things; each event is very different. We are simply there to support people in whatever they want.

Of course, we have our preferences. The burial section at Adventure has become very personalized. That wasn’t how we had thought things would unfold, but we understand that there can be a need for it. Now we have also created a small hillock where people who don’t want a gravestone can bury the ashes anonymously.

But you can’t make a rule about this, or anything else concerning death. You can’t say to a grieving family that you cannot do it in a certain way. For example, you might think that everybody should be buried in Adventure, but I know all my greenbelt neighbours will want to be buried in the forest they have planted.

Mother has written or spoken so much about death. Is there a general consciousness concerning what Mother said about death? Or is the attitude to death still very varied in Auroville?

I think it is still very varied. Those who want to keep the body for a few days have probably read what Mother said in the Agenda. Regarding the local people, sometimes there is a dispute between the Aurovilian part of the family and the part that is still living in the village about how to handle things around death. I remember speaking to a senior Tamil Aurovilian about it. He said for his parents’ generation they have to do it the way they want it, but for the next generation it will be different.

Do you think it would be useful to have what Mother said about death made more public?

My own view is that there is a moment when a person becomes open to this. In my own case, it wasn’t until someone near to me died that I started to look at it. However, it is important when you start looking that the information is there. This is why we have put together a shelf of books at the Laboratory of Evolution on the topic of death and dying. It’s also about grieving and hospice work as well as what Mother said. These are good resources for those who want to know more about the topic.

How did you become involved with farewell matters?

When Sydo died in 2004, he was the second person in my life who I been very close to who was murdered, so it set off an alarm bell in my being that I had to look a little bit in this direction.

After Sydo’s death, I was recommended to see Barbara, an Auroville healer. We became friends and we started to talk with others about death in terms of the collective rather than of our personal issues. We wanted to have a material base in the community that was more supportive of the process around death.

Mother tells us that a certain atmosphere, of quiet, silence, is important so we were trying to figure out how to create those conditions.

We decided to fix up a room in the Health Centre, the old operating room, which could be used for viewing the deceased. Albert, who was then one of the managers of the Health Centre, was very supportive. He had already bought a cool box which allowed us to keep the body for some days, but, more than this, I became aware that he was someone who had inner knowledge about the passage of death and could support it.

But then he had an accident which led, after some time, to his passing. We knew that without him it would only be a question of time before we had to move out, so we started thinking about having a permanent facility. In the meantime, we looked around for temporary places. We finally found a place at Auroshilpam that would accept the project on a temporary basis for one year.

Then we started working on a project for a farewell facility. We began asking Aurovilians what kind of facility they wanted, and what we kept hearing was that it should be somewhere in the centre of Auroville and in nature.

So in 2009, a few of us started tramping around the cashew topes behind Arka, near where the new Health Centre, Santé, was going to be built.

In fact, we first thought the new farewell facility would be small and adjacent to the new Health Centre, but Helmut, who designed the new Centre, advised us to make our own independent facility.

Dorle joined the team as architect, and she helped us get site permission for a lovely site on the edge of Mahalakshmi Park. We worked with her for one year to clarify what we wanted, and she came up with a concept, for which the original estimate was around 35 lakhs.

By the end of 2013 it looked as if we had enough money, and on 5th December we had the foundation event. However, after six months it became evident that it was going to cost much more than the original estimate, something like double, in fact, and that we would have to begin fundraising again. It was a difficult time, but now the work is almost finished. It will be opened as soon as the landscaping is completed.

Where did the funding come from?

The Dutch foundation, Aurofonds, has been very supportive. The Government of India helped with the purchase of equipment, and several Aurovilians and units also donated. No money came through the FAMC or BCC, although we had a lot of moral support.

How has the new facility helped you improve the farewell process?

Now we can really create our own atmosphere. The new facility is facing the park, so many people can sit all day in a large covered space and look out on these peaceful surroundings. Also, now we have a much bigger viewing room: in the old Health Centre there was not enough space, and if there were two bodies at the same time, as actually happened, we simply had to put a curtain in between.

The viewing room is an open free space that can be arranged in different ways, and if the family wants to do the decoration they go ahead. If nobody comes forward, then we do something ourselves.

We also have a preparation room and a rest room where a family member or friend of the bereaved can stay overnight. Several Auroville artists have also donated beautiful items to us, like golden pillows, pottery and a beautiful stained-glass window, to make it feel more special.

All in all, I’m sure that the material aspect of farewell matters is in place for at least the next few decades. But we definitely need to expand our team for the future work.

At the opening of the new facility, we will answer questions about our work and explain how people can fill in the forms concerning their last wishes. But we also hope it will be an energy-gathering occasion and that people will come forward to help us in our work.

Has your view of death been changed through your involvement with this work?

Mother and Sri Aurobindo are my gurus, so when I read what they say about death, I believe it. But, still, I had to have my own experiences to really make it ‘mine’. Sydo’s death and this work

provided me with that experience and helped me better understand some of the things that they were saying. But even now when I reread something they have said, something new will pop out. It is an evolving understanding.

This work has also given me a kind of confidence. In the past year, my uncle went into a coma. Everybody in my family was freaking out; nobody knew what was going on or what to do. I said, talk to him, he is there. So then those who sat by his bedside spoke with him, my sister and brother-in-law put music on a tape and that was played to him, and I wrote a letter that was read out to him. This was really healing for my family because here was something they could do rather than just sit there.

I could suggest this because I am more familiar now with death. Often I make time to sit in the viewing room. This is also a kind of research as it’s interesting to observe that the atmosphere can be very different from one person to another.

I feel comfortable now. But in terms of truly understanding death, for me it is an ongoing process.