Death



Death is the cessation of life in a living being, whether through natural means or through killing. It is the natural part of all living beings.

There are various beliefs concerning death that are held by humans. There are those who believe that living beings simply cease to exist upon death, while there are those who believe in an afterlife where the living being's soul and/or spirit goes to. In Christianity, for example, there is the belief of heaven for the righteous and the faithful and of hell for the unbelieving and the wicked. Rituals for the deceased vary from one culture to another, with the most common being the funeral which allows the friends and family of the deceased to express and share their griefs with one another and to bid farewell and even a safe journey to the preferred afterlife to the deceased.

In mainstream media
In the episode "Squeaky", Smurfette learns to deal with the death of her pet mouse Squeaky after he heroically helped save Papa Smurf's laboratory from being burned up in a fire. At first Smurfette takes it very hard as the Smurfs give the mouse a proper burial, and she decides to run away because she did not want to face the possibility of seeing any of her fellow Smurfs passing away. After she was rescued, though, Smurfette learns that she must accept death as inevitable and live on while cherishing the memory of her pet.

In the episode "Clumsy Luck", it was presumed that Clumsy perished when one of the meteors in a meteor shower crashed into his house when it fell upon the Smurf Village. The Smurfs all mourned for his passing, only to find out that Clumsy had escaped that fate by leaving the village earlier on and then returned to visit the village once more before isolating himself again due to his perceived carrying of a "bad luck" curse when he broke Vanity's mirror by accident.

In the episode "The Tear Of A Smurf", the Smurfs believe that Jokey and Grouchy were both gone forever when they couldn't find a trace of them and mourned for their passing, only to find out that they were safe and sound being held prisoner by Chlorhydris' daughter Priscilla, who only wanted the tears of a Smurf to complete the formula that would change her back to her normal beautiful self to break the curse placed on her by her mother.

Perhaps the earliest dealing with death was the story that took place in both the comic books and the cartoon show, "Smurphony In 'C'", where Harmony accidentally caused his fellow Smurfs to fall into a deep sleep that they can never be awakened from when he played the shazala-kazoo before them. The destruction of the magical musical instrument, however, was what caused them to be awakened.

Empath: The Luckiest Smurf stories
In the Smurfs' belief system in the EMPATH: The Luckiest Smurf story series, they believe that all good and faithful Smurfs will be rewarded with entrance into a place called "the smurfy hereafter", which turns out to be called Elysium, a place that resembles typical Judeo-Christian descriptions of heaven. The other afterlife destination is Tartarus for the wicked. The Pool Of Souls serves as a sort of purgatory for spirits that are not deemed worthy of either place. The Smurfs usually treat the death of their fellow Smurfs as well as other living beings with a funeral and private prayers to Mother Nature for guidance and comfort.

In the story series, Papa Smurf and his little Smurfs all dealt with the death of Papa Smurf's fellow Smurfs, including his wife Lillithina, when an unknown disease took their lives, leaving the children as orphans. Eventually with Papa Smurf becoming the de facto village leader and father figure, he and his little Smurfs all bonded together and became a family that grew in their relationship with each other as they helped run an entire village together. Empath would come to know the existence of his mother sometime after his 150th birthday and would mourn her loss along with Smurfette.

In Psychelia, death is referred to as the "day of ascension", when they believe the spirit of the Psyche passes from his or her body and potentially joins with the spirits of the Great Ancestors.