I wonder if I am alone in this, but I find a lot of the rituals we go through when people die to be really bizarre. Well, I mean, I know I am not alone, but as with many things I feel like I am alone because you rarely if ever hear anyone speak about it or just blurt out “That’s weird.”
I fully appreciate that all of these rituals are for the living, and not actually for the dead, and that most of them are probably attributed to religious beliefs (another set of rituals I don’t get), but I just find it strange. Why coffins? Why bury people? Why do we continue to embalm people when we could just burn them? Why do we have to show off the corpse at a viewing or put them on display lying in state?
I have it in my will that whoever gets screwed and has to deal with cleaning up my messes after I am dead can basically do whatever they want with my corpse as long as I am eventually cremated, but then I don’t really care what they do with the remains if anything. I mean if they want to send me off to a medical school and dissect me, whatever. And I have no wishes regarding funerals or any of the other crap. Do whatever they want, I’m dead.
The whole thing is just strange to me.
TaMara (HFG)
My plan: https://greenburialcouncil.org/home/what-is-green-burial/
As for the rest, it is whatever the living need. Some people need to spend that time together at a viewing to grieve together. But I’m with you, no need for embalming, even with a viewing within a day or two.
ant
I told my husband that I wanted to be cremated, and then the ashes used as fertilizer in soil that needed it. I said I want the soil tested before the ashes were applied.
I do not want to be in an urn.
maeve
I love old cemetaries – I love the headstones, But I don’t want that and neither do/did my parents. (I’m 60 and my Mom is in her 80s and my Dad passed fairly recently lest you think I’m a youngster).
For my Dad, he was cremated, then several months later we had a gathering on the Oregon coast – we drew tributes in the sand and his put his ashes in the ocean. Not all his ashes – portions of them went elsewhere.
And yet I still love old cemetaries – see findagrave.com
Major Major Major Major
I don’t think it’s surprising that we have weird rituals around something as momentous as death. And the rituals we do have make about as much sense as anything else.
I don’t really care what happens to my body. Just that there is a public piece of physical commemoration (tombstone/plaque), and they scoop out as many transplantable organs as they can first.
Wapiti
There is value in figuring out what to do with your corpse, figuring out how to do it, then spelling it out in detail for whoever gets stuck with the task. So that they don’t have to figure it out quickly when they’d rather be sobbing over you.
JanieM
I wrote a blog post a week ago at Obsidian Wings about plans for a conservation (and green) burial ground being put together by the land trust I belong to. The post also includes a couple of book suggestions on end of life issues and planning.
Time Travelin'
You are not alone in that. I’ve thought the same for many years.
encephalopath
Liquefaction, alkaline hydrolysis, that’s the way to go. Way less energy consumption involved compared to cremation.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dissolve-the-dead-controversy-swirls-around-liquid-cremation/
Chetan Murthy
John, you’re spot-on. I remember reading about
https://www.wired.com/2016/10/inside-machine-will-turn-corpse-compost/
as well as “alkaline hydrolysis”: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/dissolving_the_dead
I guess I should do something to make my wishes clear, too. I’d want to be turned into fertilizer by the most efficient method possible. No embalming, no cremation (why waste all the nitrogen?)
Tom Q
Actually, I found out (when my wife died several years back) that cremation has become considerably more popular over recent years, and it’s putting a lot of funeral homes out of business. Apparently embalming was where the real money was in the funeral business. At least here in NYC, funeral businesses operate on ad hoc basis — renting out spaces for wakes rather than maintaining full-time funeral homes, because it’s just not a lucrative business with cremation dominating.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I find open casket funerals the weirdest of all. I love memorial services with everybody sharing fond stories of the deceased, even laughing through the tears. But when the dead person is there up front right in the middle of things… ugh. I definitely do not want.
Even more bizarre is that some people take pictures of the dead person in the casket. (shudder).
Personally I’d go with organ donation followed by cremation.
Roger Moore
I assume for most people the viewing is a way of helping the survivors to accept that their loved one is really dead and to give them one last chance to say goodbye. Some of the embalming stuff is a way of making the body more presentable for the viewing.
Lying in state is like that but on a grander scale. Historically, it also had the practical, if somewhat ghoulish, function of heading off impersonators. Especially if somebody important died young, there was always a real risk of an impersonator claiming the death had been faked and they were the genuine article. Showing off the body to as many people as possible was a way of guaranteeing there were lots of witnesses to them being truly dead. Since it at first happened only to important people, allowing somebody less important to lie in state became a way of honoring them.
RKern
A lot of it is uniquely American (though we’ve exported our death culture along with the rest of it) and dates more specifically to the Civil War.
https://theconversation.com/how-lincolns-embrace-of-embalming-birthed-the-american-funeral-industry-86196
The Dangerman
Oh, there is some seriously weird shit in other cultures; “Westerners” can’t really hold a match to what happens in other places. But, to each their own custom, I don’t care.
I think it was caught in 1 by Tamara (I should read, but I’m busy) where your body basically disappears in some cool (well, probably warm after a while) enzymes. The dead basically disappear and become plant food. Far superior to cremation.
As for caskets, I can’t think of a Family member that hasn’t been cremated in my lifetime, so I can’t speak to what’s up there.
Adam L Silverman
Don’t worry Cole, the front pagers have all discussed this and we’re going with the economy priced receptacle…
hilts
Cole,
To each his own. When my time is up, I’ve opted to go with the combination New Orleans / Vikings funeral.
azlib
I always liked the idea of the Tibetan Sky Burial where they chop you up and leave your remains for the vultures. Seems like a nice bit of recycling.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: ha, I was thinking of this same scene.
The Dangerman
One more thing about cremation; a little over a year ago, I was the one responsible for distributing my Uncle’s ashes in his specified location. OK, technically, it wasn’t legal (it was in a National Park), but it’s what he wanted so it’s what I did.
It was actually one of the coolest experiences I’ve had in public (OK, I was deep in the woods alone, but you know what I mean) in recent memory. It was quite a hike and quite a story … let’s just say, it was really, really cool (there is quite a story but I’m not sure how much I should share). So, the process is for the living, no doubt.
Old Dan and Little Ann
My young spawn has been to 3 funerals in 6 months. Including yesterday. I think I needed 20 years to see that total.
Chetan Murthy
@azlib: https://www.independent.co.uk/node/6669506
It seems India’s Parsis also do the Sky Burial thing. And there aren’t enough vultures to keep up with the demand. Feh. We’re a terrible affliction on the planet.
Adam L Silverman
@hilts: You’re going to burn the Superdome down?
Roger Moore
I think some of the stuff about elaborate caskets and embalming was because there was a common belief that people would be bodily resurrected on Judgment Day, so the condition of your body mattered. It seems like an odd thing to believe. If God can resurrect you- and presumably cure whatever disease or injury killed you- and he will judge you based on your behavior in life, why should he care what condition your body is in? But the belief that we will be bodily resurrected is a huge reason why burial remained so much more popular than cremation for so long.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
IMO, it’s also a remnant of the not-so-olden days when people died at home, so you would have the laying out of the corpse in the living room and people visiting while you waited for the carpenter to make a coffin. That’s why it’s called a funeral “home” — it’s supposed to be your home-away-from-home to continue the tradition.
And I say that if you don’t have at least one funny story to tell after the wake/viewing/visitation/whatever, then you have a very dull family. ?
Narya
Tomorrow is the 35th anniversary of my sister’s death. She was cremated in the country she died and only her ashes came back. Parents weren’t going to have a funeral or anything (we’re atheists) but then did. It was horrible, of course, but also tremendously important, it turned out. It served as a marker that something important had happened.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
One thing I think many of us don’t understand is how hard it is to burn a body to ash. It takes a lot of heat, and it’s awfully wasteful. I myself think we should take a page from the Zoroastrians and build the towers they have for the dead. It’s flat on top, with iron rods crisscrossing each other. They leave the bodies up there, and let the weather and the buzzards do their things, and before long, there’s nothing left but bones, and they fall through the gaps between the rods. Quick, easy and clean. I think that’s what I’d like to have done to me, but I don’t think there are any towers of silence, as they’re called, in America. Sad!
Millard Filmore
Here is my favorite, from the movie “Foxes” (1980):
‘Jeanie [Jodie Foster, thinking about her friend Annie, who died a few days back]: Back in the heavy stoned days, when we used to stay up and talk a lot, Annie and me, we were talking about dying, how it feels and all. I said I’d never get buried. I couldn’t stand them shoveling dirt in my face. Like, I know I’d be dead, but I still might have this strong compulsion to breathe, okay? But Annie, she said she wanted to be buried right in the ground under a pear tree. Really. Not in a box or anything. She said she wanted the roots going right through her, and each year, we’d come along, take a pear, and go “Hey, Annie’s tasting good this year, huh?” ‘
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080756/quotes/?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
Well, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the deceased probably wanted to have an open casket funeral for their family and relatives to say goodbye one last time and didn’t wish to be cremated.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
After my dad died, we were looking at urns on the funeral home’s website and I kept urging my mom to get the “doublewide” receptacle so we could keep them together later on. For some reason, she refused. ?
(It’s not actually called a “doublewide” urn, of course, but calling it that made us all laugh in the moment.)
Adam L Silverman
@Old Dan and Little Ann: I’ve been to four weddings. I’ve been to over a dozen funerals. And the first one was before I was ten.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, anyone who wants to donate their body to science after they die has to specify that on their organ donor card. I’m not sure your family can make the decision on your behalf.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: It’s only a doublewide earn if it’s prefab and can be moved on wheels.
Millard Filmore
@Chetan Murthy:
There was a news story on NPR a few months ago. The dead cattle in India were dragged to an open field and left for the vultures. Then the vulture population crashed and the cattle bodies piled up. The problem was that a drug to help the cattle was put into their feed, but was quick death for the vultures that ate them.
https://www.nature.com/news/cattle-drug-threatens-thousands-of-vultures-1.19839
SiubhanDuinne
My dad used to get unsolicited phone calls from funeral homes all the time trying to sell him a burial plot/headstone/perpetual care. He was unfailingly polite and gracious to them, but always ended up closing out the conversation with “our family prefers cremation.”
One night when I was there the phone rang and he listened as usual to the spiel. Then — he looked at me frantically, and it was clear he couldn’t retrieve the word or phrase he wanted — he said very clearly and deliberately to the caller:
Family catchphrase from that moment, and unto the third generation. I snort with laughter every time I think of it.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
When my grandfather died earlier this year we didn’t have that problem. The funeral home we used was set up so that he was in an adjacent room (a long foyer with furniture on either side really, with the casket sitting in a small alcove at the end) to where everyone would sit and listen to whoever was speaking
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
The house where I grew up had originally had two doors on the front. When I lived there, one had been closed over, but the patch was poorly done and it was obvious there had been a second front door before. When I asked about it, I was told it was common at the time it was built for houses to have a “corpse door” that was only used for removing bodies from the house. I guess it was considered bad luck for the corpse to go out the regular door, so they had a special one for just that. IIRC, it was also standard practice to take the corpse out of the house feet first rather than head first, which is why we describe somebody who stays in a position until they die as “leaving feet first”.
trnc
That line gave me the heebie jeebies the first time I read it. Actually, it still does.
Mnemosyne
@Narya:
My dad didn’t want a church funeral, so we had a memorial picnic instead. We rented a pavilion in a really nice local park for a few hours and had food and beer/wine. At the very end, a friend of my brother’s who is a Jesuit said a prayer, and that was it. It gave his family and friends some time to hang out together and I think he would have liked it. As they say, the funeral is for the living, so I don’t see any reason why atheists shouldn’t have a gathering to remember their loved one and tell funny stories about them.
Emma
@SiubhanDuinne: I am SO adopting that! With accreditation, of course.
hilts
@Adam L Silverman:
Not exactly. I find the practices of a funeral procession accompanied by a brass band and burning the corpse and grave offerings on a pyre equally appealing so why not combine the two into one ceremony? After all, it is my funeral.
oldgold
All cultures have rites of passage associated with death.
These rites of passage are not for the benefit of the decedent, but the surviving family/community. They are essential.
That expressed, I would agree that the typical rite of passage associated with death in our culture needs rethinking.
More importantly, our thinking/rituals immediately before death, need a big overhaul. They threaten to bankrupt us.
namekarB
@Chetan Murthy: Buried under the compost pile?
Brachiator
Early on, humans decided to bury their dead so that scavengers would not eat them. Maybe they thought the dead would come back. This is also why humans often put food and household items in the grave, so that the dead would have things in the next world or when they came back.
Embalming is obviously used to preserve for a time.
In India, some groups put the bodies in towers and let vultures and birds of prey consume them.
In some countries, people pull dead ancestors out of Graves and tombs, have ceremonies for them, and bring them up to date with what has been going on.
There are other animals who also appear to mourn their dead. Was there a recent story about a whale who carried her dead child on her back for a while?
ETA. Some of my family own a funeral home and have been in the business for generations. They bury the dead, and help the living with their grief.
joel hanes
Almost synchronicity:
Obsidian Wings had a thread about this topic just a week ago.
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2018/08/cemeteries-revisited.html
namekarB
Soylent Green
James E Powell
@hilts:
The Vikings definitely knew how to do cremation right.
Major Major Major Major
@SiubhanDuinne: that’s a great one.
Fair Economist
@Chetan Murthy: To be precise, the vulture shortage is from the general population in India crowding out the wild animals the vultures need to survive on. There are not very many Parsis.
The fundamental problem for the California Condor is similar – there isn’t much for such a large scavenger to eat in Socal. I once idly calculated that coverting a substatial fraction of the population of Socal to Zoriastrianism would provide the food source to genuinely save the species.
A few months ago I glimpsed a large bird landing in the creekbed near my house. It looked much too large to be a hawk and had rounded wingtips more like a vulture than a raptor. I was excited at the thought that perhaps it was a condor but did not want to disturb it tromping around in the bushes where it landed.
Chetan Murthy
@namekarB: Sure, that’d be fine. Or (@Millard Filmore) like Annie, buried under a fruit tree sapling.
Adam L Silverman
@trnc:
M. Bouffant
Doesn’t most of the stuff we find weird have to do w/ the preservation, disposal & whatnot of the corpse? I’m not saying just throw grampa out w/ the rest of the medical waste*, & we probably don’t want to see rotting corpses everywhere, but the fetishization of the allegedly now-empty husk is beyond me. A memorial/celebration/wake is a good idea, but I certainly don’t give a crap about the dignity of decomposing flesh, even if you were the swellest of humans.
*Probably exactly what will happen to me, as I’m donating my late self to the U.C.L.A. Med School; & I can’t imagine a leg or whatever will be treated w/ too much respect once it’s dissected.
Adam L Silverman
@hilts: I think I’m tracking now: you’re going to have an entire jazz band immolated when you die as an offering to Odin.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
It’s bad form to die, something we all do?
Some cultures are just weird. And ours is among them.
hitchhiker
The body in the coffin IS weird. The practice of staging the body in the coffin in a grand public place so that strangers and friends alike can “pay respects” is — in this instance — both true respect for a life given to public service and a poke in the eye to Trump.
Let him see the breadth and depth of respect for McCain while every tv he turns to has talking heads discussing the odds that he’ll be indicted. The ultimate instance of highlighting the contrast is what this is. I want to think it will shame some foolish senators into doing the right thing, but there’s almost no chance of that. I hope they spend the next two weeks cringing at the spectacle of their own cowardice.
Here’s a complete list of everybody whose body was set out the way McCain’s will be.
https://www.aoc.gov/nations-stage/lying-state-honor
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Somewhere, I have a really terrific nonfiction book called Vampires, Burial, and Death that explains why just about every human culture has some kind of myth about revenant spirits, which Europeans now usually call vampires (though zombies are now more popular than when the book was written). The author gets very graphic about exactly how decomposition works, because any unusual decomposition wpuld have signalled to the suspicious townspeople that this corpse was the revenant that was causing problems. There’s also a decent overview of different forms of body disposal around the world and what differences would make people suspect a revenant.
Adam L Silverman
@joel hanes: Written by @JanieM: from comment #6.
joel hanes
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
I’ve spent a lifetime collecting the particular unlikely set of complex molecules I currently inhabit.
I’d like them to be useful to other living things, to bolster the circle of life.
It seems a shame use a bunch of energy to break them all down to simple low-energy molecules.
Bound nitrogen is precious, and should be conserved.
Even worse to send any of the potassium or phosphorus compounds up the stack of some crematorium.
Or as Ken Weaver (once of The Fugs) put it:
Ken Weaver (of The Fugs)
joel hanes
@Adam L Silverman:
Yeah, I should read threads before commenting.
Gustopher
I have informed my friends and family of my intent — just don’t claim the body.
I’ve lived my life with a modest amount of irresponsibility, failing to do the required things, and just plain screwing up. I would like my death to be the final capstone on a life of that.
Actually, I would like my death to be quick and humorous for all who witness or hear about it. I want people to try to suppress a smile when they hear of my bizarre and awkward demise. The real life equivalent of “Gordon Ramsey’s Dwarf Porn Double Found Dead In Badger Den” — something that brings joys to everyone who hears of it. (Every word of that from the fourth on makes it better).
But the dealing with the body… listen I can’t be bothered to file taxes most years, so just leave my corpse as a ward of the state. They’ll figure out something.
joel hanes
AAAAAAAGH! NO EDIT BUTTON FOR POSTED COMMENTS!
Mnemosyne
@Fair Economist:
I’m pretty sure our local black bear and mountain lion population would not agree with you there. ? Remember, the condor population was almost wiped out by pesticide exposure, not a lack of habitat or food.
frosty
@Mnemosyne: Re doublewide. My parents wanted their ashes commingled and scattered in the Chesapeake Bay. Found a funeral home that would do the commingling and put the ashes in 3 biodegradeable bags, then found an outfit in Annapolis to take us out. My brother, sister, and I did the honors. The only thing I wish I’d done differently was research it in advance so I could have told my mom how it was all worked out.
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
Not so much that it’s bad form to die as it is that we want to treat corpses a differently as possible from living people so none of the misfortune that caused the deceased to die will rub off on the people around them. Given the prevalence of death by communicable disease back then, it wasn’t entirely unreasonable to treat death as something contagious and have a bunch of superstitions about how to keep it from spreading.
Quaker in a Basement
Twain’s rules for funeral etiquette:
Do not criticize the person in whose honor the entertainment is given.
Make no remarks about his equipment. If the handles are plated, it is best to seem to not observe it.
If the odor of the flowers is too oppressive for your comfort, remember that they were not brought there for you, and that the person for whom they were brought suffers no inconvenience from their presence.
Listen, with as intense an expression of attention as you can command, to the official statement of the character and history of the person in whose honor the entertainment is given; and if these statistics should seem to fail to tally with the facts, in places, do not nudge your neighbor, or press your foot upon his toes, or manifest, by any other sign, your awareness that taffy is being distributed.
If the official hopes expressed concerning the person in whose honor the entertainment is given are known by you to be oversized, let it pass — do not interrupt.
At the moving passages, be moved — but only according to the degree of your intimacy with the parties giving the entertainment, or with the party in whose honor the entertainment is given. Where a blood relation sobs, an intimate friend should choke up, a distant acquaintance should sigh, a stranger should merely fumble sympathetically with his handkerchief. Where the occasion is military, the emotions should be graded according to military rank, the highest officer present taking precedence in emotional violence, and the rest modifying their feelings according to their position in the service.
Do not bring your dog.
Adam L Silverman
@joel hanes: It happens to all of us.
NotMax
Also cannot comprehend making a whole megillah out of it.
Things live. Things die. End of story.
joel hanes
It takes a writer like Sir Terry Pratchett to make Death a sympathetic and beloved character in fiction.
I’m older; I can see that there will come a time in not too many years when it will seem right and natural to be greeted
IT’S TIME
Until then, I aten’t dead yet.
Ruckus
@M. Bouffant:
Actually I’ve been in a med school cadaver lab and the students do take the person on the table seriously. The student I was with knew the person’s name and general history. I don’t know how common that is but it was obvious that while they cut them up they did respect the concept of the person lying there.
Suzanne
@Gustopher:
That is how I feel about “two wetsuits and a dildo”.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: You want us to render your skin into parchment and inscribe the Book of Esther on it?
Kinky!
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@RKern: thanks, this explains a lot.
I’m going with the green burial that makes you part of a reef ball so that coral can grow on you. Living coral builds on dead coral but we’re destroying the world’s coral reefs so quickly that everything we can do to help coral reefs continue where they can is only a small part of what we owe this planet.
Ruckus
@M. Bouffant:
We donated my father’s brain to the UCLA Alzheimer’s study. If that helps in the least to find a cure or at least a band aid for that disease…. It was one of the easiest decisions I ever made.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@Adam L Silverman: 4 weddings and a dozen funerals. I love that movie!
Viva BrisVegas
We bury people so that we don’t have to watch then rot away (also the smell).
If we watched them rot away it would be much harder to convince the rubes that we will all rise from the grave fresh as daisies and get on with living in paradise.
Remember that the Catholic church has only been permitting cremations to its followers since 1963. Most Protestant churches allowed it after WWI. Orthodox churches mostly forbid it, except in extreme circumstances.
It is much harder to imagine a pile of ashes getting it together for the resurrection.
Jay
“Human remains could still be seen at Waterloo a year after the battle. A company was contracted to collect the visible bones and grind them up for fertilizer. Other Napoleonic battlefields were also reportedly scoured for this purpose. In November 1822 a British paper reported:
It is estimated that more than a million of bushels of human and inhuman bones were imported last year from the continent of Europe into the port of Hull. The neighbourhood of Leipsic, Austerlitz, Waterloo, and of all the places where, during the late bloody war, the principal battles were fought, have been swept alike of the bones of the hero and of the horse which he rode. Thus collected from every quarter, they have been shipped to the port of Hull, and thence forwarded to the Yorkshire bone grinders, who have erected steam-engines and powerful machinery, for the purpose of reducing them to a granulary state. In this condition they are sent chiefly to Doncaster, one of the largest agricultural markets in that part of the country, and are there sold to the farmers to manure their lands. The oily substance, gradually evolving as the bone calcines, makes a more substantial manure than almost any other substance, particularly human bones. It is now ascertained beyond a doubt, by actual experiment upon an extensive scale, that a dead soldier is a most valuable article of commerce; and, for ought known to the contrary, the good farmers of Yorkshire are, in a great measure, indebted to the bones of their children for their daily bread. It is certainly a singular fact, that Great Britain should have sent out such multitudes of soldiers to fight the battles of this country upon the continent of Europe, and should then import their bones as an article of commerce to fatten her soil! (10)
https://militaryhistorynow.com/2018/08/21/bringing-out-the-dead-who-cleared-the-corpses-from-napoleonic-war-battlefields/
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
OK, hadn’t thought about it in that way but given my age, I should have. Most of the vaccines that we know of and are used today came along after I was born. I still remember standing in a bank lobby with the entire family to get the first polio vaccine. There was a line around the block. Everyone in my class had all the then childhood diseases and some even had polio. We discussed this at our 50th reunion last year.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Maybe made into a set of tasteful dinner napkins instead.
Can attest it is washable.
;)
MobiusKlein
Today I went on the second memorial hike for a friend who died from cancer. Makes as much sense as anything else.
oldgold
Long ago I worked at a cemetery. One day we were directed to exhume a body that had been buried for about a decade. We learned the old school yard jingle had it about tight.
Don’t ever laugh
As a Hearse goes by
For you may be the next to die
They wrap you up
In a big white sheet
From your head down to your feet
They put you in a big black box
And cover you up with dirt and rocks
And all goes well
For about a week
And then your coffin begins to leak
And the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
The worms play pinochle on your snout
They eat your eyes, they eat your nose
They eat the jelly between your toes
Mary G
My mom and dad bought two plots in the county cemetery for $100 each in the early 60s. It was way out in the boonies full of orange groves and deer would come down at night and eat all the flowers. Now, if course, it’s surrounded by subdivisions.
When my mom died I had her cremated and called the cemetery to have them buried next to my dad and found out they charge $500 for it. She would come back from the dead to yell at me if I spent that kind of money, so she’s still in the bookcase. Eventually they will be my executor’s problem, along with mine.
oldgold
A long time ago, I worked at a cemetery. One day I was assigned the task of exhuming a body that had been buried for a decade or so.
What I found was that the old school-yard jingle had it about right.
Dont ever laugh
As a Hearse goes by
For you may be the next to die
They wrap you up
In a big white sheet
From your head down to your feet
They put you in a big black box
And cover you up with dirt and rocks
And all goes well
For about a week
And then your coffin begins to leak
And the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
The worms play pinochle on your snout
They eat your eyes, they eat your noes
They eat the jelly between your toes
Brachiator
@M. Bouffant:
The shape I’m in, I could donate my body to science fiction.
— Rodney Dangerfield
joel hanes
In 1948, English satirist Evelyn Waugh spent some time in Los Angeles, and had much the same reaction as Cole to the American death rituals of the time. He wrote _The_Loved_One_, which those of you who are sufficiently depraved and cynical may enjoy.
https://www.amazon.com/Loved-One-Evelyn-Waugh/dp/031621647X
Then, of course, there are Jessica Mitford’s _The_American_Way_Of_Death_ (1963) and _The_American_Way_Of_Death_Revisited_ (200)
https://www.amazon.com/Jessica-Mitford/e/B000AR9PSQ
As a romantic young person, I more or less wallowed in Peter S. Beagle’s _A_Fine_And_Private_Place_.
I haven’t read it since.
M. Bouffant
@Ruckus: I s’pose the medical waste does get burned, so it’s really little different than cremation. I didn’t think the med students would be mocking my remains, ‘though I don’t mind a hoot or two (or even a guffaw) at my expense once I’m deceased.
M. Bouffant
@Ruckus: My mother left herself to U.C.L.A. (Extra-convenient as she died at a U.C.L.A. hospital.) Did you get the allegedly plantable tree sapling in a plastic tube w/ the thank-you letter?
M. Bouffant
@Jay: The cycle of life (& death) commodified.
Geeno
My only rule is don’t show up at a memorial service and start bitching about your issues with the deceased to the mourners. That includes online memorial type threads. Just let that shit slide for a couple days. THEN, especially if the “mourners” are over-working it – as often happens with politicians’ deaths, you can come back and light those arse-holes up
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator:
Rodney’s headstone says “There goes the neighborhood”.
He’s buried at Westwood Memorial Park.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Rodney’s final resting place.
Mnemosyne
@Viva BrisVegas:
Actually, as I and others noted above, there are cultures and religions that allow their dead to rot at least semi-publicly and then collect the bones to build altars.
There are also the reliquaries in France (and probably other European countries I’m forgetting) that are built out of the bones of the exhumed dead.
Our current squeamishness about rotting corpses is very new, historically speaking. For many centuries, Christians were quite comfortable with rotting corpses and skeletons, and having them near at hand didn’t seem to lessen too many peoples’ faith.
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Westwood Memorial Park is a nice little cemetery for movie fans. Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, and Billy Wilder are all buried very close to one another.
And I didn’t even mention its most famous resident.
Amir Khalid
Off-topic (sorry about that) request:
Firefox crashed and I had to refresh it. Does anyone know how to put Google search back on the toolbar?
M. Bouffant
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Who isn’t?
B.B.A.
I just want “Stop, traveler, and piss” on my tombstone. I take it most BJers, should they outlive me, will oblige.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne:
Giant swaths of the population not dying of infectious disease is also relatively new, historically speaking. Plague and lots of other diseases remain active and transmittable in corpses, at least for some period of time. So I’d prefer that we stick to less, uh, exposed methods.
Ruckus
@M. Bouffant:
A thank you, that’s it. That’s OK though, gifts on the occasion of a death is not a ritual that I follow.
I’m wondering if the cost of a full on funeral is the, or a part of the reason for many more cremations. It ain’t cheap to buy a plot, a casket and all the fixings. Several thousands if I’m not mistaken.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
FireFox preferences/settings and set google as the search engine.
joel hanes
@Mnemosyne:
quite comfortable with … corpses
Infectious diseases and flying insects make this a bad idea, especially in close quarters.
Other grave rituals have also turned out to be poor ideas: see, for example, the Wikipedia entry on kuru.
Amir Khalid
@Amir Khalid:
Never mind. I figured it out.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Right-click on the toolbar.
Click ‘Customize.’
Drag the search thingy to where you want it.
Click ‘Exit Customize’ at the bottom of the customization offerings.
You can confirm Google is your default search engine (or set/reset it as such) by clicking Tools — Options and then click Search in the tab which opens up.
Geeno
Well,if I weren’t being cremated (my intention, but you can’t control peeps when you’re dead), and were I to have a traditional grave, I would think that having a urinal that directed flow away from my head should be part of my actual tombstone.
Yes – as a matter of fact – I HAVE discussed this with my spouse.
The added expense of the urinal makes me feel certain of cremation and subsequent dispersal.
joel hanes
@Ruckus:
several tens of thousands is not unusual, and extravagant taste in caskets or tomstones can add at least one more zero
When my ex passed, the simplest available cremation where I live was, IIRC, $1100.
That’s no casket, no service, no burial plot, least expensive “urn”. As she wished:
the last thing I was ever able to do for her.
Raising her grandchildren as my own kids I did for me.
joel hanes
@Suzanne:
According to the rituals of my childhood, I owe you a Coke.
prostratedragon
Remains of the married actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee are commingled in an urn inscribed, “In this thing together.”
JAFD
I have ‘organ donor’ listed on my driver’s license, and have told my friends to give what’s left to a medical school or ‘to science’.
Should there be anything left afterwards, please have them cremated, take the ashes to Liverpool, and pour them into the river.
That way, I know, there will always be Mersey on my soul.
Suzanne
@joel hanes: Can I have iced tea instead? I gave up soda a few years back, but I still need a constant caffeine infusion. It’s my one real vice.
patrick II
My father was first generation Irish, they also had the casket at home in the living room. When his Uncle John passed away the party in his honor was so good they stood his casket up in a corner, put a drink of the best Irish whiskey in his hand and had him join in.
We’re Irish, so it’s ok.
joel hanes
@Suzanne:
Of course.
Put some nice tea on an Amazon wishlist, send the Amazon username to the concatenation of
joe
l554
@comc
ast.
net
and it’ll be on it’s way in a trice.
Of course, the internet being what it is, that may be too forward.
In that case, please accept this lovely virtual glass of iced tea,
in the traditional tall glass with narrow bright-colored stripes,
condensation dewing the sides, with a long spoon and lemon and sugar on the side.
https://keep.com/fiesta-bands-giant-iced-tea-glass-striped-tumbler-anchor-hocking/p/BFi-pWmAAmK/
opiejeanne
I wrote about the rituals of death in the Ozarks in a book I’m writing. Until recently old farmers in the area kept a few nice walnut boards in the rafters of their barns, to be made into coffins for their death but it used to be for their children and wife too. Neighbors and family came to the house , the men to help make the coffin, the women to wash and dress the body and to scrub the house from top to bottom.They turned pictures of the deceased to the wall or covered them with dark cloth, mirrors were covered with a dark cloth too, until after the funeral.
Women brought food to the house to feed these workers as well as the surviving family. The body was placed in the coffin, usually in the parlor, and someone sat with the body all night, usually people did it in shifts of two.
After the coffin was built and the men were fed they went off to the graveyard to dig the grave, but they left it unfinished, maybe one shovelful still in the grave, until just before the burial so that Death wouldn’t get comfortable and decide to visit longer. The burial was almost always the next day.
The people are mostly descendants of English colonists who came in the 1600s and their children and grandchildren migrated from Philadelphia and New Jersey down through Virginia to North Carolina, then west to Missouri in the early 1800s. There are a few Irish families but they’re not as common.
We visited the area and about 350 people lived there, mostly older people, and I was related to all but one. The 2010 census shows about 250 living there now.
John Revolta
Well, when I die, I want to buried in my home town, Chicago, so I can still vote.
opiejeanne
@prostratedragon: There’s a memorial plaque in the big cemetery in Independence, MO for Tommy LaSorda. Yes, the guy from the LA Dodgers. I was there for my favorite aunt’s funeral, so I didn’t have time to ask about it but I do have questions.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
@joel hanes:
I’m mostly pushing back on the notion that there’s something specific to religion or to Christianity about not wanting to see the effects of death. Germ theory absolutely changed a lot of the rituals, which is why it’s silly to blame those changes on religion. Embalming is actually a safety measure from the pre-antibiotic days, but now it’s regarded as a ritual.
brisket
Maori funerals (tangi) are far preferable to Anglo ones in my experience. The last one I went to was my father-in-law’s.
The body lies in state in the marae (a communal meeting place) for several days. Pictures of the deceased’s deceased ancestors, going back several generations, will be placed on the wall above them.
Relatives from all over will be sleeping in the marae. There’s a rule that the deceased can’t be left alone, someone must be by their side at all times. Yes, I found this difficult for a few moments, but it passes.
People will arrive, greet the body, talk to him/her. When they feel like it, they’ll give a speech — perhaps addressing the deceased themselves, perhaps the assembled relatives. It’s a time for honest celebration. If someone genuinely thought the dead person was an a-hole, they’ll say so. Or something like: “We used to be good friends, until he became an alcoholic.” No need to tiptoe around things.
After a few days the body is taken to be buried, a relatively brief part of the whole ritual.
This is all time-consuming and sometimes difficult, but it’s good. People have time to find the words they want to share, rather than having to think of something and deliver it within the confines of an hour-long service where they’re weeping to much to talk. There is time to come to terms with the body of your relative or friend — with the reality that it is both them and not-them. There’s time to make sense of a transitional state, rather than someone being there one day and gone, disappeared, the next. It’s a very socially important occasion. It’s left me with a real dissatisfaction with the standard Pakeha (Anglo) way of doing death.
trnc
@Adam L Silverman: Indeed. That one gave me a nice little shudder the first time I read it, when I was 12 or so.
John Cole
@hilts:
Does this mean you will spend eternity not winning a Superbowl?
Ohio Mom
I am skipping ahead (not reading the thread first). The most important “death ritual” is to have one’s affairs in order.
It is a lot of complicated work to close an estate, make it easy on that person by having the necessary paperwork. Also, if one’s wishes aren’t clear, there is potential for a lot of ill-feeling among the survivors.
It’s a kindness that will be appreciated by the people who will miss you most.
satby
I wonder how much of this current discomfort with the rituals surrounding death is due to how removed a lot of people in our our society are from the final illness and death of their family members. Most people now die in hospitals or hospice settings. In home hospice is becoming more of a thing, but lots of family members find that hard to cope with. Death is messy, cleaning the body is required unless the family wants to say goodbye to their loved one while that person lies in a puddle of pee (or poop).
Of course as an Irish-American if you grow up with the culture you grow up with funerals as a normal event and start attending as a baby, because death is a part of life. The wake and funeral are to celebrate and commemorate the person who died, and to support and acknowledge the bereavement of their family. I’ve been to fancy casket funerals, plain box ones, ones with urns, and ones where only a portrait of the deceased was there for the honors. Life is fleeting even if it’s the life of someone who lived to be 106, like my great-grandfather. The point of the rituals in all cultures (other than the hygienic ones) is to say “this person lived, was loved, this life had an impact” even if only on the immediate family.
I’m agnostic, but I think that whatever way it’s done, marking the passing of a life needs to happen.
LAC
@Wapiti: Stop making sense here…
Just One More Canuck
My nephew passed away recently, and at the funeral, the pastor took the opportunity to condemn all of us who didn’t believe exactly what he believed to hell. I sat there wondering how this was supposed to provide comfort to anyone
ChicagoPat
I want a Tibetan Sky Burial:
ChicagoPat
Sorry, Forgot the link
donnah
My parents purchased burial plots many years ago, but then decided to donate their bodies to the medical school at a local university. My father died several years ago and his remains were taken from Hospice directly to the medical school. My mother had a lovely memorial service at our church and everyone who could make it came and talked, hugged, cried, and laughed. It was a very comforting experience.
Months later, after the science, dad’s ashes were interred at the University Memorial garden, where we can visit a beautiful wooded walkway, with the names of donors engraved on bricks. It’s less imposing than a graveyard, and it’s maintained nicely year round.
Later in the year, the university held a special memorial event for the families whose loved ones were donors. There were hundreds of people and the guest speakers included religious leaders, university staff, and most importantly, interns and medical students. As they described their gratitude for those who donate, they became very emotional and said that during their experience with the cadavers, they are all very respectful and even thank them. We were all very moved by their gratitude and dedication.
After the presentation, we were taken by tram to the garden, each of us was given a long stem rose, and we had time to walk around the garden to pay our respects.
A very positive experience, helpful to those beyond our own family.
wvng
I thing burials in frontier communities and small family plots are pretty cool. Wonderful places to visit and share history. But giant cemetaries, no thanks. Just ash me and take a vacation to some cool place with my ashes to set them free.
Ohio Mom
@James E Powell: My uncle long said he wanted a New York City version of a Viking funeral, which he imagined would be his ashes in a folded-newspaper boat sent down a storm sewer.
His children, nieces and nephew did the closest we could come up with, his ashes in a handmade cardboard boat launched into the Hudson. My brother built the boat and found a park where we could climb over a fence, acramble down some rocks and get to the shore.
It took the boat quite a while to sink — it was obvious the ride/current wasn’t going to send it too far afloat.
Then we went out to eat. It was a pleasant afternoon and remains a favorite memory.
Ohio Mom
Tide/current
My kingdom for an edit function!
schrodingers_cat
If you think American death rituals are bizarre you must not have been to an upper caste (preferably Brahmin) Hindu funeral. It is a mix of the ridiculous and the sublime.
The Moar You Know
I always wanted, and still do, to be dynamited (use a lot, I want to be blown to vapor) in the middle of a salt flat in the desert.
Can’t find anyone who will help me out with that request. I’ll probably just be cremated. My specific request is that the ashes of my dogs be cremated with me. I’d like the company. If my wife predeceases me, her as well. Her, me, the doggies all in the retort together. Ashes in the ocean afterwards, we don’t have kids, so that will be the end of all that.
JaneE
My instructions are take anything from my corpse that is still usable. Considering my medical conditions, that may well be nothing by the time I finally end. Cremate the rest in the cheapest legal way possible. Dump the ashes where ever it is cheapest and legal. Legal part is to cover the living, I won’t really care. If I wind up stuffed and mounted on the side of the road, I wouldn’t really care either, but the living sure would.
Uncle Omar
I think Ed Abbey had it right…he had the living embodiment of GW Hayduke and a couple of other friends take the corpse out into the desert, dig a deep hole, chuck the body in, and fill the hole while drinking and bull-shitting the whole time. I have several bottles of primo whisky and whiskey saved up for my grave-diggers.
Aardvark Cheeselog
@The Dangerman: Parenthetically, just who exactly the fuck does The Man think he is, to be making rules about this? It’s a few pounds of ashes, and has all the environmental impact of dumping the contents of a cold charcoal grill. I mean, if 1000s of people decided to dump Dad’s ashes in one particular spot year after year, there could be some problems in some places, but at the fucking beach? Or at a random spot on the Appalachian Trail?