When Death Stops Everything (And Why That's Sacred)
In the stillness of these mountains tonight, Gran, I'm learning that some cultures know how to honour the dead in ways we've forgotten.
Dear Gran,
It's a cold night in the mountains. The stars pierce through the cloudless sky like pinpricks of light, and the moon casts long shadows across the pig pens. There's an eerie stillness here, as if every living thing knows and is holding its breath in reverence.
I'm alone, Gran. My partner has been gone for a week now, staying in the village where his youngest brother's body was brought home from Kalimantan. His brother was only 19 when he passed away four days ago. Now he's here to go through the traditional Manggarai burial ceremonies before being laid to rest alongside his father and two other siblings. My partner can't return until after the ceremony on the third day, 'ceki telu' (ancestor three). This is the day they believe the person rises again.
In Manggarai culture, when someone dies, everything stops, not just for the family, but for the entire village. Building work ceases. Harvesting stops. No one works for three days. The immediate family must stay in the house where the deceased grew up, because they believe the person is still present, still with them.
My partner couldn't come home to check on me, even when one of our sows went into labour, even when our livelihood hung in the balance. He had to trust that whatever happened would happen, and that's simply how life goes.
When Love Looks Different Than You Expected
At first, Gran, I felt anger rise in my chest. How could he just disappear like that? This is our business, our life he's forgotten about. But then I remembered your voice: "My darling girl, love isn't always what we expect it to be."
He couldn't think beyond what tradition demanded. As the eldest son, with his father gone since he was fifteen, he carries the weight of everything. He was reliving not just this fresh grief, but the old grief too, becoming the father figure all over again.
So I slept in the pig pen for two nights as one of our sows gave birth, just as he would have done, until the newborn piglets were strong enough to survive. I tended to all 23 pigs and the 9 new arrivals. I kept our world turning while he honoured his.
And slowly, I understood: this wasn't abandonment. This was how grief works when an entire culture wraps itself around death instead of rushing past it.
Remember Grannie's funeral? That efficient 40-minute affair at the crematorium? Twenty minutes of readings, then off to the pub, then home. Done. Even yours, Gran, though I watched through a screen from half a world away, followed the same pattern. Quick, clean, move on.
Here, they sit together for days. They hold space for the dead. They believe presence continues beyond breath. And in 40 days, the ceremony 'hari kenaikan' (Indonesian translation: day of rising), this is the day they believe he rises to heaven. Everyone who attended the initial burial ceremony, 'leso mata' (Manggarai translation: afternoon dead), the day the person is buried, must return for another ceremony. Death isn't something to get over; it's something to honour fully.
When the Dead Won't Leave Until You Let Them
This isn't my first encounter with how Indonesians process death. Six years ago, a guest named Joey had a heart attack while snorkelling near Komodo Island. He was in his early fifties, probably doing something he loved, when he took his last breath.
My partner gave him CPR for over an hour as we raced back to Labuan Bajo. The crew kept trying to align their stories for the police, terrified of the questions that would come when a Westerner dies in Indonesian waters. I had to remind them: just tell your own truth. No one was to blame for a tragedy that fell on all of us.
After the hospital pronounced Joey dead and the police interviews were complete, our crew refused to work. They could feel Joey's presence on the boat, in the office. They were frightened, unsettled.
My Western mind rolled its eyes inwardly. We had guests booked, bosses breathing down my neck to get back to business. But watching their faces, feeling their fear, even I, the practical Englishwoman, could sense something lingering.
A week later, we held a traditional ceremony on the boat, anchored fifty meters from shore. I didn't understand the words, but when the pastor asked Joey to move on so the crew could continue their work, something shifted.
Schools of tiny fish began jumping around the boat, silver bodies flashing in the setting sunlight. Tears rolled down my cheeks, though I couldn't explain why. In that moment, Gran, I felt Joey leave. The crew returned to work the next day, at peace.
This was my first real encounter with how Indonesians honour the spiritual presence of death. Standing on that boat, crying at words I couldn't understand but feeling them in my bones, that was when my Western scepticism began to crack. When I started learning that presence doesn't end with breath, that ceremony has power beyond logic.
Nine years later, sitting alone in these mountains while my partner honours his brother through days of sacred ritual, I understand what that boat ceremony taught me: some truths can only be felt, never explained. Some love requires complete surrender to traditions that don't make sense to outsider minds but carry wisdom older than our understanding.
The stars are still bright overhead. The pig pens are quiet now, the newborns sleeping safely. Tomorrow, my partner will return, changed by grief and ceremony in ways I may never fully grasp. But tonight, in this stillness that holds both the living and the dead, I'm learning what it means to be truly present.
Not present in that forced, grateful way social media demands, but present in the way these mountains teach, breathing, witnessing, honouring what is sacred without needing to understand it all.
You taught me that, didn't you, Gran? In your quiet way, in how you stayed present right until your last letter. Sometimes the greatest gift we can give - to the living and the dead - is to simply stop everything and sit with mystery.
From the quiet of the mountains, where silence teaches the heart how to beat again.
