Ancestress

Honouring our mothers

I am in the middle of arranging my mother’s funeral. There are odd requests of having to find the name of the original person who purchased the lair in 1900, which required much detective work. There’s death certificates and flower choices, does the church hall have an urn and how many gluten-free vegetarian sandwiches do we need.

How many people carry the coffin - can I do it? What hymns, what’s the weather, what colour of flowers - all the usual stuff. And among it all I’m happy to know that these things were all my mums wishes.

This is my mother’s choices within her faith. A church lead by a priest who knew her well and met her passion for social justice. I’m glad he knew her well - her dark sense of humour, turning up to meetings that sprouted great grassroots projects.

My question is how will I honour my mother? An inspiration is in Björk’s tribute to her own mother.

My ancestress’ clock is ticking
Her once vibrant rebellion is fading
I am her hope keeper
Assure hope is there
At at all times

- björk

Björk salutes her late mother Hildur Rúna Hauksdóttir on her new song “Ancestress,” the third pre-release track from her upcoming album Fossora. In the Andrew Thomas Huang-directed video, Björk, in a flowing red dress and black, beak-like headpiece, walks amid mountains and caves in tandem with dancers and musicians playing gongs and violins.

Björk’s son Sindri Eldon sings on the track, which she says represents her mother’s “story seen from my point of view” and was written just after her funeral. “It is written in chronological order. The first verse is my childhood and so on. Only recently did I discover that this song is probably somehow inspired by an Icelandic song, ‘Grafskrift,’ which is somehow a very direct and patriarchial account of someone’s life. I probably wanted to approach this in a more feminine way — her biological and emotional story, not her professions, partners or dates of birth and death.”

Björk goes on to explain why she hasn’t been able to attend funerals for 20 years, “as something in them rubbed me the wrong way. Possibly a big part of it is after having lived a life of thousand concerts, I probably have too strong ideas on how a ritual should be, what kinda sound, musical structure [and] words. It took me all this time to discover that for me all funerals should be outside. Probably what was offending me most was how can one set off the spirit in such a claustrophobic environment as a church? When the soul sets off, it needs to be outside so there is room for how enormous it becomes when it merges with the elements.” (Click here for source)

I particularly like this thought of the soul needing to be outside - and in my previous post I shared about helping sing my mothers soul home

How might you like to honour your mother, or how have you?