Turning a personal drama into a public one

The president of Abkhazia, Sergey Bagapsh, recently noted that the tradition of placing the graves of car accident victims near highways is alien to the Abkhaz spirit, as it means turning the whole country into a cemetery. The president obviously meant that this tradition was “imported” from Georgia, to emphasize once more the existing differences between these two neighbouring and relatively similar cultures.
The forementioned tradition emerged in Georgia some 50 years ago. These grave monuments are often richly decorated, some people even construct pavilions there, hoping that relatives or passers-by will stop there to honour the memory of the deceased.
All cultures of the world have their own traditions of commemorating the dead. The tradition of building grave monuments and pavilions near the sites of tragic fatal accidents is specifically Georgian, even though it is common for Russian people to put wreaths near roads in similar circumstances.
The Georgian funeral culture tends to turn a personal drama into a public one. Here’s a good example: a bureaucrat accused of embezzlement was acquitted in court, as his lawyer proved that the money was spent on organizing the funeral of the bureaucrat’s mother – a decision probably incomprehensible for European people.Georgians do everything they can to organize a respectable wake for their deceased, even mortgaging their houses. The feast should be rich, no matter the social status of the family. However, according to tradition, if a child dies, no funeral feast is organized.
Georgian funeral rites, the old ones or, as in the case of burial-sites by roads, the new ones, are an integral part of the culture and they can reveal its very essence.Georgy Kalatozishvili, exclusively to VK