This week’s essay is also available as an audio experience. You will hear me reading my essay.
The question of “Where do you want to be buried?” may be simple and straightforward to some but for those who are caught in a belonging limbo, it may befuddle.
My father did not leave any instructions. Should we bury him here in Canada or Italy? Should we bury him or cremate him? My mother remembered my father saying, “When I die, just put me in a hole.” So that means burial, right? With no instruction, my mother went back and forth between burial and cremation. When it was decided that it was going to be a burial, we (my brother, one of my sisters, and I) started considering cemeteries. The first one we looked at was municipally managed. It was truly depressing. Is this the best we can do? Doesn’t he deserve better? Then we looked at one that was close to where he would cycle to the beach—cycling was something he kept up until his mid-eighties. He loved the sea, having grown up in San Benedetto del Tronto, a small town on the Adriatic coast of Italy. And lastly, we visited a private Catholic cemetery. Catholic suits my non-religious catholic parents; tradition is tradition—it seems to be important at the end of life.
On a sunny day, with lots of people visiting their departed, the Catholic cemetery looked pretty good for a cemetery—well-looked after and busy. But when we brought our mother to look at it, she hated it. Of course, the sky was gray, and it was raining; everything looks depressing in Vancouver on a rainy day. Still, we had to decide, so we made an appointment and spent an hour and half discussing details with a not so nice (non-commissioned) staff person who was intent on getting out of the building at four thirty sharp. But there are so many details to decide and agree on! And this person spoke so fast, sometimes we couldn’t understand her. She was stressing us out. Shouldn’t she be more compassionate?! Still, we signed the papers and handed over a credit card.
The next morning my mother changed her mind: no burial, I hate that place!
Cremation it was after all. Oh my god, are they going to give us a refund?! More stress. They did. I’m not sure what happened to the directive “just put me in a hole.” The funeral home director warned us, “Ok, I’m happy to do whatever your mother wants but tell her after we cremate him, we can’t go back.” Ha, ha, ha. Sure. Yikes. You wanna tell that to Ma?
Where do you want to be buried?
Kamal Al-solaylee, the author of Return: Why we go back to where we come from (2021),1 begins his book with a question that was posed to him by his then partner. The question being “Where do you want to be buried?” His partner shares that he wants to be buried in Sana’a next to his grandparents. This from someone who was “born near Detroit to a Yemeni family and had spent most of this adult life in the United States.” His partner never felt connected to America. At that time Al-solaylee was sure of Toronto as his final resting place, but almost a decade later, he declares in his book, he is unsure how to answer the question.
As an Arabic looking person in Canada, Al-solaylee is constantly reminded that he is from somewhere else. While the media won’t let us forget, it is, I believe, our daily interactions that will have the largest impact. For me, it wasn’t how I looked, but how I sounded, and still sound, although through careful listening and study, I’ve since been able to minimize “first language interference.” My project when I immigrated to Canada at 16 was to blend in.2 I took in how people reacted when I pronounced certain words. I would often get asked, “Where are you from?” When I’d say from here, Vancouver, even 20 years later, it wasn’t a good enough answer. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve lived in a Canadian city or town (I’ve lived in Canada for 42 years now), you’re never from here. Because we moved around a bit, I never felt comfortable just saying I was from Italy—that was only part of the answer, but oftentimes it was the simplest answer, except I couldn’t answer the next question (“Where in Italy?”) because we moved around and no one place was home.
So, where do I want to be buried?
First, I would rather be cremated. I wouldn’t want my body left behind in a place where I never felt I belonged. It also doesn’t feel right to be taken to Italy because even though it represents my heritage, I’m uncertain that it is home, my ties to that country are now weak. Malta maybe? Nope, no ties there anymore.
In the end, it is not a country that comes to mind, but the sea. After all, the constantly moving sea—which has been present in all my moves—is the closest to the idea of home.
You could spread my ashes in the ocean. The Mediterranean Sea would be nice but the Pacific or the Atlantic will do too, or any other sea, whichever is closet to you.
Perhaps, I will take a cue from my father and not labour the question. There, I have decided for now.
Al-solaylee, K., 2021. Return: Why we go back to where we come from. 1st ed. HarperCollins, p.2.
I am technically not an immigrant; I was born in Toronto but left when I was one year old. See this post for the places I have lived in and travelled to.
#28: belonging and burials