the futility of jiriki

two weeks ago my Grandmother died and last thursday i found myself standing over her coffin with my mother, in the viewing room of the funeral parlour, hours before her funeral. i'd seen her a month prior to this, as she lay in a hospital bed, scared and confused, the life slowly draining away from her, quite visible to see by the change in her physical appearance.
in the last ten years or so of her life she had shown all the natural signs of old age - chiefly through her physical frailty and incapacity, yet she'd always displayed a sense of strong will and independence. seeing her vulnerability then, came as a shock. i guess my main feeling at that point was one of complete and utter helplessness, of which we'll come to in a minute.
stood over her corpse, i found myself questioning the value in dressing her up like that - a little make-up, a favourite turqoise dress, it somehow felt dishonest. however, i think it may have been some comfort to my mother, who more than any of us felt the pain of seeing her physical deteriation.

sat through the funeral i felt perhaps as if i could grieve for the first time. nonetheless, it set off all kinds of questions inside me, mainly concerning this issue of helplessness, some of which i'll try now to lay out...

i think these questions were amplified during the ceremony by a sense of disparity felt between my own religious tradition and that of my mothers' and sisters'. although the words spoken by the priest were very moving and resonated to an extent despite this disparity, i found myself with a nagging sense of what was left unsaid rather than what wasn't. my Grandmother wasn't particularly religious and therefore there's no need to state where she's headed for according to most Christian thought. similarly, where she might be headed according to Buddhist thought is no less comforting, the only difference (one of temporality), providing scant comfort.
and this is what causes the biggest feeling of helplessness inside me. for a long time now i've come to question not so much the efficiency of petitionary prayer (although that as well) but it's value and purport. the desire to petition a Buddha or God for my Grandmother's salvation or favourable rebirth - is it really a desire to find comfort through asserting some kind of imagined control over the situation for myself? If a Buddha is infinite in wisdom and compassion and i lack even small compassion and wisdom, then what makes me think i have a right to suggest to them a course of action to take? the very thought of such an act makes me uncomfortable as it feels like an actively willed denial of the way things are and will be.

none the less, i did find myself wanting to do precisely this petitioning after seeing her in hospital. and i still haven't and i don't think i will. all i can do is continue to thank her for giving me this last teaching on impermanence and the futility of jiriki, and say the nembutsu in gratitude for Amida's practice which ensures that one day we will meet again in the Pure Land.

namu amida butsu