Funerals

"You can dodge the draft through bribes,
 you can be rescued from captivity,
 but from under the damp Mother Earth, there is no exit,
 no exit, not even a whispering... "

 As mentioned before, death in old age was considered a natural and necessary event.
 In some cases, it was awaited and called for by the elderly, who were embarrassed to continue to live.
 "I am spending somebody's time, and they are looking for me in the other world," - said Julia Fedosimova from the village Lobanihi.
 Ivan Afanasievich Neustupov of Druzhinina village, feeling the approach of the end, fashioned a coffin out of the whole trunk by himself.
 The coffin stood on the roof of the shed for almost a year. From the outside, it looked somewhat eerie.
 But in the popular perception of death, there is a strange, at first glance, combination of respect for mystery and calmness.
 To die with dignity in old age meant the same as to live your life well.
 Death was feared only by the weak in spirit; people in the prime of life died harder, as also people who were lacking something in life, and so on.
 To die without pain and suffering and not cause many troubles for the loved ones seemed to an average person as the greatest and the most recent blessing.
 As in the Christening, the Christian rite of the funeral here merged with the ancient customs of forgiveness and burial.
 Communion, anointing, and parental blessing are supplemented by request to forgive all offences and an oral testament of personal property (clothing, professional and musical instruments, ornaments).
 In the Russian peasant family, the deceased was washed, and clothed in clean, sometimes very expensive clothes under any circumstances.
 A dead person was put on the bench, head in the red corner, sheltered in white canvas (shroud), hands folded on the chest, a white handkerchief in the right hand.
 The funeral being had to be done on the third day, especially revered dead were carried by men instead of using the hearse to a cemetery.
 Tears and lamentations accompanied all this. In the Russian North existed professional wailers as professional storytellers.
 Often they are also regarded as a fortune-teller and healers.
 Many of them, possessing a true artistic talent, created their chants, complementing and developing the traditional imagery of folk funeral poetry.
 The death of an old man was not considered a cause for grief; laments and wails, in this case, were more formal. A hired wailer could instantly be transformed, break crying with some trivial remark and continue screaming again.
 Another thing was when lamenting about their close relatives or when death was premature.
 Then a traditional form took a personal, emotional, sometimes deeply tragic hue.
 Funerals always were finished with memorial feasts for which unique commemorative dishes and meals were prepared.
 The funeral feast is attended by all family members and participants of the funeral.
 Family and friends also paid respects on the ninth day after death and the fortieth day.
 People visit the cemeteries on the Parent Saturday - a day of remembrance of fighters killed during the Kulikovo battle.
 Also, every spring, the graves of relatives were put in order.
 The current fashion of fencing graves was utterly alien to our predecessors; they fenced all the cemetery, not individual graves.