Voluntary service: “Aware of your own mortality but reflecting on life”

Death is part of life. And dying involves saying goodbye. But what happens when no one is there to pay their last respects to those who have passed on? Senior lecturer Dr. Denise Reitzenstein works in the History Department at the Institute of Ancient History. She is also part of the voluntary initiative Last Respects. Her aim is to give a worthy departure from this life to those who have no relatives. In the following interview, Reitzenstein talks about how this aspect of her voluntary service came into being, which memorial services have made a lasting impression on her and what she learns from her activities.

Enlarge

How did you get involved in this form of voluntary service?

Denise Reitzenstein: My family has close ties to the St. Ludwig parish close to the University. Here, two elderly parishioners whom I knew personally died in 2016. For me, this was the first time for a long time that I was directly confronted with the issue of death. In one of the two cases, that also involved accompanying someone through the process of dying.

A year later my grandfather died. He lived in Lower Saxony. We had had regular phone calls, but you couldn’t say that we were in really close contact. When his condition deteriorated, I only heard about it because search engines find me on the Internet because of my role at LMU. This brought home to me how, even in my own family, it is so easy for someone to grow infirm in their old age and to suddenly find that no one is there by their side.

Pastoral minister Susanne Bauer at the St. Ludwig parish then launched the Last Respects initiative in 2018. My own experience meant that I was very open to this issue, and to going to memorial services when someone is buried by the state alone and no longer has any relatives.

No two funeral services are alike

Does your voluntary work involve other activities beside Last Respects?

Since Susanne Bauer set up this group, I have focused exclusively on Last Respects, i.e. on accompanying memorial servicess in prayer. It is increasingly common to find people dying with no relatives, and for pastoral workers like her to be the only ones in attendance at memorial services. This gave rise to the idea of establishing a group of volunteers who could at least attend as mourners in such situations.

Incidentally, the organization was initially handled by the parish office at St. Ludwig’s. Today, the Catholic funeral service is responsible. Depending on availability, they contact us and we let them know when and at which cemeteries we can or would like to be present.

What is your experience of these personal farewells?

To begin with, I was mostly just nervous. It was a completely new situation for me. And as a protestant Christian, I was not familiar with the order of memorial service at Catholic funerals. But my uncertainty settled down over time. The first time I paid my “Last Respects” was with two experienced women from the parish – women from whom I was able to learn a lot.

I have since realized that no two memorial services are the same. In many cases, I don’t know until the last minute whether a few relatives might turn up after all. Again and again, people turn up unexpectedly: sometimes neighbors or friends, sometimes relatives who have traveled a long way.

In one case, for example, a sister of the deceased came from Croatia with her son. They had traveled through the night and arrived late. In this situation, I provided ad-hoc translation into English and tried to explain things as they happened. It was a very intense encounter – precisely because mourning, language barriers and geographical distance all came together.

What happens in a typical Last Respects encounter?

Usually, I am there with a celebrant and, in many cases, with a sacristan too. That lends a certain structure to the proceeding, even though each funeral is arranged differently. We usually know very little about the person who has died – often just the name, life data and occasionally their profession or marital status. That is the basis on which the memorial service is then arranged.

I personally see my ministry as a silent one. I am there to pray, and I stay in the background, especially when relatives are present. That said, there are situations where it is important to reach out to people. I recall one young woman who arrived late to her godmother’s memorial service and was really falling apart. We got talking after the service. And at that moment, the only thing that mattered was simply being there. Such encounters are very intimate and deeply moving.

Are there individual situations that stick out in your memory?

The names themselves often fade over time. I have a hard enough time remembering the names of the living! I have attended about 30 to 40 memorial services since 2018. It is the little details that tend to stay in my mind, such as birth cohorts or special circumstances.

It leaves an especially profound impression when young people are affected. I remember one woman who had died who was a few years younger than I am. At times like those, you become aware of your own mortality. In the case of the very elderly, it often seems understandable that no one comes any more. But when younger people are buried with no one to be there, you can’t help asking yourself what life circumstances led to this.

Do you have a “favorite cemetery” in Munich?

Actually, I really like going to the Alter Nordfriedhof, in part because I live nearby. It is a very peaceful, inviting place, almost like an oasis of green in the heart of the city.

Through my voluntary work, these places have taken on a new importance for me. You become much more consciously aware that we all end up there, that our mortal remains too will remain somewhere or other. At the same time, cemeteries are also places of tranquility for me. I like spending time there.

A Look at Historical Fates

Are there parallels between your voluntary service and your work as a historian?

Not directly, perhaps. But this work has sharpened my perceptions. In Ancient history, you are often dealing with sepulchral monuments or texts that speak of death and mourning. But you often just see them soberly, as sources of information.

My voluntary work gives me a keener awareness of the emotions and individual stories behind these artefacts. In pre-modern societies, death was much more present in everyday life. Today, that is far less so. And this distance is also reflected in academic papers. I think we sometimes forget that these sources are not just “material”, but they are linked to human experiences.

What do your colleagues think of your voluntary activities?

To be honest, I don’t really talk about it a lot. When it does get mentioned, most people react very positively. Occasionally there are people who have problems with the subject of death and who try to avoid it. And sometimes a certain distance to the church also has a part to play.

For me personally, this voluntary work reveals an aspect of the church that often remains largely hidden from view: very quiet, very personal work that is done with great dedication and dignity.

Are there things in your voluntary work that surprise you?

It is the encounters that repeatedly surprise me. You meet all kinds of different people who are organizing or attending funerals or burials. Many of them are deeply devoted to what they do.

For example, I once met a young trainee pastoral minister who, before the funeral, had gone to great lengths to try to locate people who had known the deceased. In the end, some neighbors did indeed attend the funeral. It was a deeply moving situation. Such experiences show how much dedication is often at work unseen and in the background. That was something I wouldn’t have expected.

Has this work changed your perception of life and death?

It certainly has, yes. It prompts me to regularly address fundamental questions: What is really worthwhile? What remains in the end?

Especially when you are surrounded by academia, you quickly slip into a routine of pressure to publish, lecture tours and the acquisition of third-party funding. But you do so without even asking fundamental questions about the meaning of life. Last Respects repeatedly interrupts this routine. The few moments I spend doing this work – often just 15 or 20 minutes at a time – create a kind of counterweight. They make me aware of my own mortality and help me reflect on my own life.

At the same time, this is not just a personal experience for me. It is a social duty. At least in this one regard we are all the same: Birth and death unite us as humans. I believe it is important for us as a democratic society to look after our dying and our dead – regardless or whether someone does or does not have any relatives.