An Opportunity for Rebirth

I really like the notion of rebirth in Dana Gioia's "Planting a Sequoia." We are given this image of a child burying the father and giving him a chance at a new life, the next life. I read it a bit differently the second and third time than I did the first. I initially thought that the ways of the father were being honored by the burial ritual. As I reread, it occurs to me that their ritual is different than what may have been accepted. "Defying the practical custom of our fathers" (line 12). This leads me to believe that everything following that statement is in direct opposition to what custom would demand of the situation.

The relation of the burial to the image of planting a tree is a symbol to me of a different aspect of life. The young sapling or seed planted at birth would be dormant until it begins to grow and continues to grow beyond the end of a person's natural life. Death, at the opposite end of the spectrum from birth, is also represented by the insertion of life into the ground, dormant life that will grow and change into something new, a sort of fertilizer for the earth that allows life to continue. This may seem a very atheistic perspective, but I intend it to be the opposite, to represent the cycles of life in their many forms, both here and in the hereafter.

Perhaps the inclusion of the hair and a piece of the birth cord in burial allow the deceased the begin anew, to pass from this state into a state of rebirth. The "secret of your birth" is a statement that continues to puzzle me. Does the hair and cord allow a person to possess the secret to their birth? How does this relate to Sicilian tradition?