"Dead Yard" in Jamaica is not a cemetery?

 

Dead yard in Jamaica is no cemetary  

Published in “Linn County News” a Kansas weekly newspaper

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Brother Jones has been an Old Timey Missionary Baptist for 45 years, & Ordained Minister & Elder 30 years. Missionary in Jamaica 17 years

According to Jamaican culture by William Jackson “Dead yard is a kind of public wake to help the family and the communities come to grips with their grief. Friends, neighbors, and well-wishers come by every night for sound system music, dominoes, drink, smoke, and food; and they stay, very late into the night. The night before the funeral is the biggest dead yard celebration. Everybody shows up -- even all the taxi drivers who ply the road to town.”

Mr. Dixon an Anglican member and neighborly farmer dropped by the church to greet me with a hearty Jamaican “Wha’goin’ which in Standard English in Jamaica means “how is it going with you.” Upon leaving Mr. Dixon informs me he is on his way to the dead yard and walks down the hill saying the traditional patois valediction ‘a likka-more’ ( I will see you later). Then I realized he was speaking of the home of the deceased and not a cemetery. It is true at the dead yard there is a weeklong merriment and much time is spent drinking & singing in jubilation.

I have preached several thanksgiving services (funerals) in Jamaica hundreds attend men and women from different walks of life & religious practices that come to honor the life of the deceased. I’m supposed to calmly give a homily (a quiet sermon) but I like what the Apostle Paul said about preaching in 1Co 2:4 “And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom; but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” They honor the life of the deceased, and the Holy Ghost gives me the increase; then I preach unto them Jesus.

It is traditional at the graveyard before the casket is placed into the concrete tomb to open it for viewing one last time before it is interred. Gospel hymns are sung for an hour while the mason seals up the tomb and prayer commits the body to its final resting place.

I can remember as a kid something similar in my Kansas home the family did. When my Great-Uncle Charlie Manning died; grandma’s parlor became the dead room and my father and others sat up with his corpse around the clock. Many dropped in, family and friends, to bring food and pay respects to grandmother dear trying to be strong and hide her tears. When the day came for the funeral they interred his remains in the family plot. Today, that tradition is all but forgotten; they die today and nearly put away their remains on the morrow. I often ponder when the end-time comes Daniel sums it up best when he said “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” Daniel 12:2.  What will your dead body wake up too? 

Written on the eve of the Lord’s Day January 23 2011