Page 20 - SMCK Magazine - Issue #01

Jewellery for
the Bodiless
By Loukia Richards
When my grandmother’s brother died, the old women who la- mented over his coffin pointed out that he had never been married.
“You should place a wedding wreath on his head,” they said, “he looks so beautiful that he will seduce young people to follow him to Hades if he’s buried uncrowned.” I gave a village boy a dime to buy me a polyester wedding wreath from a nearby shop and told him to keep the change.
In the Christian Orthodox tradition, the bride and groom are crowned with wreaths made of silver (in days past) or plastic (no- wadays) at their wedding. Those who die
unmarried are crowned at their funerals with a wedding wreath resembling a bloo- ming lemon tree branch—a symbol of ferti- lity.
The boy came back with the wreath, licking his ice cream happily. We placed the wreath carefully on my uncle’s head.
He’d had 95 years of an astonishing life that I still envy him for.
Indeed! He looked beautiful lying inside a wooden coffin filled with his glasses, wal- king stick, and books. Mourners in Greece still bury their dear ones with their favorite objects.
No young man or woman died in town in 1996, the year following my uncle’s death.
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Crowned