A bereavement ritual is one that is built on a desire for connection. We all search for a symbolic union with the loved one. Rituals not only help us stay connected, they give us comfort, and, most importantly, provide meaning.

Although the subject of death is a painful one, a funeral planning and survival guide can be a useful handy guide for a family to prepare for an eventuality.   The Desai Family Foundation has provided such an online resource on Last Rites that helps you to deal with death and loss in a detailed and comprehensive manner. Entrepreneur Samir Desai, the person behind the venture admits that family circumstances in his own life prompted him to think on how we prepare ourselves for death. “It is a topic of taboo in our community, and so often we are totally unprepared for it. When we are so far away from India, we lack the knowledge and the resources that will help us through a difficult time when we lose a loved one.” Desai decided an informational and thoughtful resource guide on the Last Rites in various communities might help navigate the many practical as well as emotional issues that come up during this period. The result is the resource guide by the Desai Family Foundation that supports education and health programs for women and children in India and the United States. The book can be ordered through request and can be accessed online also. As Samir Desai admits “The resource guide is the culmination of many volunteers and institutions who worked hard and provided information”.

The Foundation hopes that the guide can offer an opportunity for meaningful closure – free of pain, among loved ones, with our affairs in order and spiritual calm attained. More often, most of us discover that our families or community has minimal training in providing end-of-life planning. The guide covers religious rites from Patels to the Zoroastrians, Jains, Dawoodi Bohras, Indian Christians, Syrian Christians, Sikh and Islam. Desai says that the group worked with houses of worship from various religions, religious and community leaders, hospitals, and funeral homes and their associations. It researched online and checked out available written sources and solicited inputs from local community leaders like Ramesh Advani and Rakesh Kamdar to contribute to sections of this guide.

The Guide offers explanations of the significance of these rituals. For instance according to Hindu traditions, the last samskara in the journey of a life body is the ritual disposal of the material body after death, either by cremation or by burial. This is a final offering, as the samskara is named. Cremation and burial are both known from the time of the Rigveda, and both are widely practiced in Hinduism today. The rites highlight the religion’s belief that death is a continuing experience in the long course toward liberation, while the self in process remains indestructible. Topics such as these are also discussed in the manual.

He hopes that hospitals and nursing homes, in their effort to adopt multicultural processes for last rituals, will access this information on how Indo-Americans need to be cared for during their last days if death should occur at their institutions. The Guide covers funeral homes, questions to ask, organ body and tissue donation options. The guide also covers topics like what to do to move a body back to India if so required and legal issues.

Desai hopes that the scope and expansion of this project will extend to other States as the information is only for Massachusetts and is willing to collaborate with individuals or groups who may be interested. Later in the year he is planning to host a seminar on the subject at Burlington and elaborate on the guide resources.

For more information please click on http://www.desaifamilyfoundation.org/last_rituals.html or send an email to info@desaifoundation.org

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