It may be strange, but my grandfather died between the 1st and 2nd of November 2000. He, who had always been full of life and joy, had been confined to his bed for two months, weakened by a very aggressive cancer. Not even two intensive surgeries had been able to remove it completely. The doctors had always told us not to lose hope, and I had deluded myself into thinking that his recovery was truly possible.
I was sixteen years old and I didn’t know the true meaning of death. Death had seemed like a distant or fantastical concept, something to be read about in a mystery novel or seen in a movie, but reality is different from fantasy. Especially when it comes to the people we love.
That night, death took my grandfather in his sleep and, although we had been expecting it for a while, knowing never stops the pain. When he stopped breathing, the only people in the room were my grandmother and her sister, Caterina, who had volunteered to take shifts with my parents and my maternal uncle and to relieve my grandmother of some of her daily responsibilities. It was she who noticed that my grandfather was finally free from pain.
When I heard the landline phone at home ring, I immediately understood from my mother’s voice that the inevitable had happened. We quickly got dressed and went to my grandparents’ house, which was in a seven-story condominium not far from ours.
I didn’t cry on the way. There was still something unreal about the event. But when my grandmother greeted us in tears and led us into the bedroom, where I saw my grandfather’s waxen and motionless face with my own eyes, I was undeniably confronted with the reality of death.
As my mother sobbed, I felt almost paralyzed. Suddenly, Aunt Caterina put her arm around my shoulders and whispered softly, “You’ll see, your grandfather will be at peace now. But you have to help me do something.”
I looked at her, perplexed. What was there to be done?
“We have to cover all the mirrors in the house.”
I thought she had gone mad as she took me by the arm and slowly led me into the hallway. Dazed and with my heart pounding, I followed her into a small storage room. She grabbed some large dark blue dish towels and a sheet.
There were three mirrors in my house. One mirror in my grandparents’ bedroom, one in the corridor, and a rather large and antique one in the dining room that had been passed down through three generations.
(Image courtesy of Viviana De Cecco – November 2000)
When we entered the bedroom, Aunt Caterina asked me to help her tuck the edges of the cloth into the upper corners of the frame so that it was completely covered.
It was this way that I discovered one of the funeral customs that are still deeply rooted in Sardinia, in all of southern Italy and in various cultures around the world. There are traditions so old that no one knows exactly when and where they originated. Covering the mirrors when a person dies is a custom that has its roots in the mists of time.
Aunt Caterina explained to me that covering the mirror with a cloth prevents the soul of a deceased person from being frightened by seeing its own reflection. In addition, to prevent the departing soul from getting lost, it is appropriate to close all the windows, draw the curtains, leave some lights on and leave the door open to facilitate its journey to the afterlife.
The mirror is often seen as a portal between our earthly world and another dimension, and the wandering soul of the deceased, drawn by the glow of its reflective surface, may become trapped there forever. Instead of leaving its mortal remains, it could potentially drag the souls of all the living people reflected in the same mirror and haunt the house of the deceased for all eternity.
I remembered all the times when, as a child, my grandfather would sit me on his lap before a family celebration and make funny faces in the dining room mirror to make me laugh. He was always ready with a joke, and the thought of not seeing his smile again tore at my heart. Seeing those mirrors covered with those big dark cloths, the typical color of mourning, felt like a sign of the end. They reminded me of those abandoned houses where life had faded and happiness has been lost forever.
These dark beliefs are much more prevalent in the inland rural areas than in the cities. That’s why my aunt’s words, coming from a rural village where certain superstitions about the dead are never underestimated, touched me deeply. Even though those ideas may seem quite incredible and ludicrous, there was something both frightening and reassuring about that belief. It was comforting to think that my grandfather’s death wouldn’t be the end, and that we had helped usher in the beginning of his journey to perhaps a better place.
(Image courtesy of Viviana De Cecco – November 2000)
Even today, I feel torn between rational skepticism and doubt that there may be some truth in these ancient beliefs. Perhaps our ancestors were much wiser than us modern people.
The Greeks and Romans were among the first to seek glimpses of the future in reflective surfaces. Who hasn’t broken a mirror and heard: “Now you’ll have seven years of bad luck”? The Romans believed that a person’s life was divided into seven-year cycles. Breaking a mirror would bring bad luck simply because it represented the souls of the living. Likewise, for the Egyptians, mirrors weren’t just for cosmetic purposes among the wealthier classes, but they also had funerary significance. It was believed that their radiance was linked to the sun god Ra and was a symbol of vital regeneration, which is why they were often depicted in the reliefs of the tombs of high dignitaries.
While doing some research on the internet, I discovered that this belief is also widespread in the Jewish religion. In the sacred text called the Talmud, there’s a phrase that several writers have quoted in their novels that refers to the human relationship with mirrors: “We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.” This phrase makes me think that a mirror shows us our physical reflection on one side, but also reveals the nuances of our gaze, where all the feelings that lie beneath our exterior are hidden.
When we look at ourselves, we often say that we have a lively gaze. Where does this vitality come from? What can we call it? Is it the soul that we see? What is hidden within us that the mirror cannot really show us?
When a mirror reflects a dead person, there is no gaze to interpret and no movements to reproduce. Think of the vampire, who has no reflection in the mirror precisely because he is dead. Or consider exorcism practices, which sometimes use mirrors to chase demons out of the possessed.
So how do we know what is beyond the reflection of a lifeless body? I believe that superstitions are created to find the answer people have been seeking for centuries in their search for the meaning of life and, above all, its end.
Now it seems to me that this ritual is a demonstration of the living’s love for their loved ones, a testament to their desire to protect them. No one can know for sure what really happens the moment they depart this world, just as no one can know if there is emptiness or light.
What is certain is that, on that night when I returned home with my parents, I looked in the mirror in my room and wondered if my beloved grandfather, who had always been a guiding presence in my childhood, had found peace.
When my Aunt Caterina died three years later, there was no need to cover the mirrors. She died of pneumonia in the hospital, in that sterile environment where death seems even sadder. Everything happened slower with her. I had time to say goodbye to her and to hear that she had no regrets. She had been happy and was going in peace.
At that moment, standing at her bedside with my relatives, I began to believe in the soul. I believed it could be found in the looks of those who are with us, in their words and in all those gestures through which every human being communicates with his fellow human beings.
