To Honor the Dead

The second day of the Easter season, it is tradition in Georgia to honor those who have passed away. Georgians do this by physically going to the cemetaries in huge numbers to have a picnic and conduct toasts in celebration of those who have passed away.

Today I went with Luarsab’s family to the cemetary. The parking lot felt like the bazaar: cars slowly trying to edge their way through crowds of people carrying bags of food and drink, policeman shifting their weight nonchalantly from one leg to the other as they attempted to direct traffic, an entirely new duty of the revised Saakashvili police force.

This cemetary is new this century, the little square plots bordered with concrete, many of them containing a small table and benches for the picnics of visiting relatives. Many of the grave stones have a lazer-engraved image of the deceased on the stone face, giving an eerie reminder of how the person looked in life.

We found the burial sight of Suliko’s husband, Luarsab’s grandfather, where we laid out a tablecloth, meat, cheese, bread, and wine. As we said toasts to the Departed, we poured half our glasses on the grave, indiscriminate in soaking the other grave accoutrements such as flowers, candles, and red-dyed hardboiled eggs.

A man came begging, we gave him some coins and a few pieces of chicken. Another women followed and I suddenly noticed the large number of Gypsies working through the crowds collecting alms.

A somewhat obnoxious trio of Armenian style musicians wandered from one supra to another, playing favorite and not so favorite tunes on the Duduki, drum, and lute. Luarsab never ceased exclaiming in disgust what bad taste this new tradition was, on a day when families were trying to grieve and celebrate their dead.

After some time at the graveyard, we gradually dispersed, people wandering away lost in private thoughts. Suliko was married to her husband fifty years she told me, as we sat on the concrete wall together. As she quietly sniffled, two of her great grand-daughters, Elene and Lizzi, pushed past every few seconds in their never ceasing game of tag. Suliko said, ‘slowly, slowly, girls!’ The younger adults bellowed out to the girls to stop their frantic running back and forth... and I marveled at the unconscious persistency of the young girls to remind us adults that despite the fate of death that awaits each of us, life is here now and should be played!