The speaker of "First Death in Nova Scotia" is very young, and has little context with which to understand the death of her cousin. Her family and community, however, are actively participating in a set of ritual activities surrounding death. They hold a wake, in which friends and family pay respects to the dead and watch over the remains of their loved one. They also leave flowers in the hands of the dead, and specifically choose a flower associated with funerals. These rituals contrast with the searching, lost attitude of the speaker—she lacks a way to experience death communally, but the adults in her life are initiating her into a set of communal rites and symbols used to put death in context and comfort the bereaved. The specific rituals Bishop discusses are influenced by the poem's setting—Nova Scotia in the early twentieth century—but each culture has its own rituals and routines for handling death.
The jazz funeral is a traditional gathering held in New Orleans, in which the dead are celebrated with brass bands, dancing, and second lining (a local tradition in which members of the public parade behind a marching band). As they dance and parade, the mourners and musicians bring the coffin of the deceased from the home or church to the cemetery for burial. The tradition is a product of the city's unique history, which has fused West African, European, and Caribbean cultures and religious practices over the course of centuries. Jazz funerals are not held for all deaths in New Orleans—rather, they tend to be held when the dead is a prominent person (particularly a musician), or, at times, when the deceased is a young person who has died prematurely. When the deceased is a particularly beloved figure, these events can draw enormous crowds, who gather for a send-off that combines grief and joy, with both somber and upbeat music marking these complex emotions.
While jazz funerals take place in North America, relatively close to the Nova Scotia of Bishop's poem, the sky burial is a traditional practice on the other side of the world. In Tibet and Mongolia (as well as, to a lesser extent, other surrounding countries) the sky burial is a way to commemorate the impermanence of the world and to aid in the transmigration of spirits. In this ritual, the body of the deceased is broken down and left on a mountaintop to decompose and be eaten by scavenging birds. The sky funeral is accompanied by varying degrees of elaborateness, sometimes taking place in a man-made mountaintop temple and other times on a simple rock designated for the occasion. Meanwhile, monks often chant and burn incense. Sky funerals are a practice of Vajrayana Buddhism, in which it is believed that spirits live on after a death, departing the body. Because the body is left empty, it should, according to this belief system, be repurposed to help other creatures in nature. At the same time, the practice stems from the practical difficulty of performing underground burials in these mountainous settings—as a result, the sky funeral and cremation are the most common ways to handle the dead.
In Ghana, meanwhile, coffins themselves are often treated as a way to acknowledge the interests, professions, and personalities of the deceased. While Bishop compares a coffin to a cake in "First Death in Nova Scotia," Ghanaian "fantasy coffins" might be made to resemble anything from an animal to an airplane. These coffins are made by a small group of specialized craftsmen in Accra, Ghana's capital. The practice stems from the belief system of the Ga people, who believe that the souls of the deceased live on in an afterlife. In order to ease this passage to the afterlife, Ga people have created artistic, personalized coffins and burial items for over 100 years. However, the practice became popular among Ghana's wider population beginning in the 1950s, when the artisan Kane Kwei began making elaborate fantasy coffins. Today, there are roughly ten workshops creating these coffins in Accra, run by individuals who trained under Kwei and who plan on passing the practice on to further generations. These coffins are valued as artistic objects outside of Ghana and have been collected internationally.
The traditions surrounding death in a given culture reflect unique external factors—religious belief systems and cosmologies, artistic traditions, and even climate and geography. In both subtle and explicit ways, the culture of the characters in "First Death in Nova Scotia" influences their funeral practices. The events described in the poem reflect the beliefs and concerns of middle-class, Protestant Canadians a century ago—everything from the cold climate of their home to the folklore of Jack Frost enters into the speaker's experience of death and funeral rites. However, the rituals described in the poem, much like the jazz funeral, sky funeral, and fantasy coffin, are ways to celebrate the life of the deceased while mourning their death, and to contextualize a death within a broader set of cultural beliefs and practices.
