A funeral for a little one

Today I attended a funeral for a little girl who was only 9 days old. I almost missed it, actually. I was leaving my apartment and noticed some people at St. George’s with flowers. They weren’t the “typical” funeral flowers though – they were all white and instead of being tied with a purple ribbon, they had a pink one. The woman holding the flowers wasn’t wearing black and the young boy she was with had on a brown dress uniform for his primary school. I brushed them off as guests for a baptism or some special school mass.

I came out into Independence Square and knew something was going on. Four traffic wardens were at each of the corners of the square and as I came into it I heard the unmistakable chant of a church procession coming up Triq Repubblika. I stayed where I was, abandoning my former plans and waited. Sure enough, After the procession of 2 candle bearers and a cross bearer came 13 priests. Following them was a man in a navy suit carrying a very small, white coffin in his arms. He cradled the coffin as if he were cradling the baby. There was a woman standing next to him wearing a camel colored long coat and matching slacks and then behind them was Bertu, though noticeably absent in my eyes were the crew of men he usually uses for pall bearers. Following the couple were about 200+ mourners.

I watched the procession go by and then went back into St. George’s Square via the back street so I wouldn’t interrupt the procession. I went up to my room, got rid of my backpack, and grabbed some money for the offering plate. Inside St. George’s the church was packed – standing room only which is quite a feat in the large space. The only spot I could find to stand was behind a bunch of columns obstructing my view from just about everything.

I couldn’t help but notice that there were more people wearing that tan/camel color rather than the typical black. I also noticed that all of the flower offerings were either white or a combination of white and pink. There were also more students – maybe 25 or so - like the one I saw at the beginning and I wondered if the couple had an older daughter and perhaps these were her classmates. The kids in the brown school uniforms looked to be about 10 – 12 years old.

The man from the church who had come around with the collection plate also came around during the mass to hand out the prayer cards so there was no procession to the front to see the coffin. The mass went quickly – only an hour for the entire thing. On the way out, the mother and father together carried the coffin in their arms to the applause of the congregation. Though the applause sounded robust due to the size of the church and the number of people in it, I couldn’t help but notice it was almost perfunctory for most people. The woman in front of me put her phone in the crook of her arm so she could clap but I noticed she only brought her hands together 2 or 3 times, as if her heart wasn’t really into something so jovial.
Out in the square, people lingered for awhile, some approaching the father and mother to give their condolences. Because it’s a 45 minute walk to the cemetery from St. George’s there was no walking procession afterward and only a few cars followed the hearse as it left.

I found myself feeling relieved that they were going to the Rabat cemetery, where it wouldn’t matter if the child had yet to be baptized in order to be buried there.
I couldn’t help but notice that the mother had about 2 inches of outgrowth on the color in her hair. I remembered that it’s “frowned upon” to color your hair when you’re pregnant and how most moms can’t wait to get it taken care of once their baby is finally born. On this mother though it just made me think about what this last week had been like for them and the stress that couple had endured. The little girl died only yesterday and so I wondered if her parents had been prepared for it. Was she born prematurely? Had she been in the hospital the entire nine days? Or was it sudden and unexpected? And of course I thought of my own experiences with friends and family who had such a loss. It made me sad in a way that none of the other funerals had – though I will admit that they all did. I’m not made of stone. And then I thought about “good deaths” and “bad deaths” and how despite it being a “bad death” to lose her too soon her funeral was as well attended as any of the others I went to. Good or bad, the people of Gozo come out in droves to pay their respects and support the members of their community, whether they know them or not. What a refreshing, healing thought.