Death: Never Done Grieving

Abstract

This paper deals with the psychological trauma caused by death and how Hindu culture responds to that trauma. Every culture has a grieving mechanism to ease the pain and suffering brought on by death. In this paper, the author presents his personal experience with death of his parents and his best friend’s families who died of COVID-19. To cope with the loss that death involves, all cultures have some kind of death ceremonies—some are more elaborate than others. Hindu death ceremonies are rooted in texts that guide the grieving one through various steps to keep the bereaved family members preoccupied with ritualistic activities that give them no time to think about the loss. The preta karma is one of the Hindu samskāras related to death that this paper goes into detail to argue that it is designed to ease the bereavement process, a coping mechanism invented before Western psychotherapy came into practice in the nineteenth century.