tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/funeral-industry-38850/articles
Funeral industry – The Conversation
2022-07-27T11:59:25Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/185352
2022-07-27T11:59:25Z
2022-07-27T11:59:25Z
Pushing ‘closure’ after trauma can be harmful to people grieving – here’s what you can do instead
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476141/original/file-20220726-37535-e3n2p2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C5139%2C2400&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People need time and space to grieve at their own pace.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/rear-view-of-silhouette-woman-looking-through-royalty-free-image/1141652626?adppopup=true">John Encarnado/EyeEm/Getty Immages</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>From the breakup of a relationship to losing a loved one, people are often told to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1536504211427869">find “closure</a>” after traumatic things happen.</p>
<p>But what is closure? And should it really be the goal for individuals seeking relief or healing, even in these traumatic times of <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/topics/covid-19-82431">global pandemic</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/topics/ukraine-invasion-2022-117045">war in Ukraine</a> and <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/series/uvalde-texas-school-shooting/">mass shootings</a> in the U.S.?</p>
<p>Closure is an elusive concept. There is no agreed-upon definition for what closure means or how one is supposed to find it. Although there are numerous interpretations of closure, it usually relates to some type of ending to a difficult experience. </p>
<p>As a grief expert and author of “<a href="https://tupress.temple.edu/book/0806">Closure: The Rush to End Grief and What It Costs Us</a>,” I have learned that the language of closure can often create confusion and false hope for those experiencing loss. Individuals who are grieving feel more supported when they are allowed time to learn to live with their loss and not pushed to find closure.</p>
<h2>Why did closure become popular?</h2>
<p>Closure is entrenched in popular culture not because it is a well-defined, understood concept that people need, but rather because the idea of closure can be used to sell products, services and even political agendas.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195183559.001.0001">The funeral industry</a> started using closure as an important selling point after it was <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/115611/the-american-way-of-death-revisited-by-jessica-mitford/">criticized harshly in the 1960s</a> for charging too much for funerals. To justify their high prices, funeral homes began claiming that their services helped with grief too. Closure eventually became a neat package to explain those services.</p>
<p>In the 1990s, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40220137">death penalty advocates</a> used the concept of closure to reshape their political discourse. Arguing that the death penalty would bring closure for victims’ family members was an attempt to appeal to a broader audience. However, research continues to show that <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/death-penalty-bring-closure-victims-family">executions do not bring closure</a>. </p>
<p>Still today, journalists, politicians, businesses and other professionals use the rhetoric of closure to appeal to people’s emotions related to trauma and loss.</p>
<h2>So what is the problem with closure?</h2>
<p>It is not the mere presence of closure as a concept that is a problem. The concern comes when people believe closure must be found in order to move forward. </p>
<p>Closure represents a set of expectations for responding after bad things happen. If people believe they need closure in order to heal but cannot find it, they may feel something is wrong with them. Because so many others may tell those grieving they need closure, they often feel a pressure to either end grief or hide it. This pressure can lead to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02682621.2014.902610">further isolation</a>.</p>
<p>Privately, many people may resent the idea of closure because they do not want to forget their loved ones or have their grief minimized. I hear this frustration from people I interview. </p>
<p>Closure frequently becomes a one-word description of what individuals are supposed to find at the end of the grieving process. The concept of closure taps into a desire to have things ordered and simple, but <a href="https://youtu.be/w0rCfXSdYPE">experiences with grief and loss</a> are often longer-term and complex. </p>
<h2>If not closure, then what?</h2>
<p>As a <a href="http://www.nancyberns.com">grief researcher and public speaker</a>, I engage with many different groups of people seeking help in their grief journeys or looking for ways to better support others. I’ve listened to hundreds of people who share their experiences with loss. And I learn time and again that people do not need closure to heal. </p>
<p>They can carry grief and joy together. They can carry grief as part of their love for many years. As part of my research, I interviewed a woman I will call Christina. </p>
<p>Just before her 16th birthday, Christina’s mom and four siblings were killed in a car accident. Over 30 years later, Christina said that people continue to expect her to just “be over it” and to find closure. But she does not want to forget her mother and siblings. She is not seeking closure to their deaths. She has a lot of joy in her life, including her children and grandchildren. But her mom and siblings who died are also part of who she is.</p>
<p>Both privately – and as a community – individuals can <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195074567.001.0001">learn to live with loss</a>. The types of loss and trauma people experience vary greatly. There is not just one way to grieve, and there is no time schedule. Furthermore, the history of any community contains a range of experiences and emotions, which might include <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01441/full">collective trauma</a> from events such as mass shootings, natural disasters or war. The complexity of loss reflects the complexity of relationships and experiences in life.</p>
<p>Rather than expecting yourself and others to find closure, I would suggest creating space to grieve and to remember trauma or loss as needed. Here are a few suggestions to get started:</p>
<p>• Know people can carry complicated emotions together. Embrace a full range of emotions. The goal does not need to be “being happy” all the time for you or others.</p>
<p>• Improve listening skills and know you can help others without trying to fix them. Be present and acknowledge loss through listening. </p>
<p>• Realize that people vary greatly in their <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02682621.2013.812828">experiences with loss</a> and the way they grieve. Don’t compare people’s grief and loss. </p>
<p>• Bear witness to pain and trauma of others in order to acknowledge their loss. </p>
<p>• Provide individual and community-level <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-remembering-matters-for-healing-94565">opportunities for remembering</a>. Give yourself and others freedom to carry memories.</p>
<p>Healing does not mean rushing to forget and silencing those who hurt. I believe that by providing space and time to grieve, communities and families can honor lives lost, acknowledge trauma and learn what pain people continue to carry.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185352/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nancy Berns does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
An expert on grief says give people space and time to come to terms with loss and don’t expect them to need – or want – ‘closure.’
Nancy Berns, Professor of Sociology, Drake University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/160699
2021-05-24T21:15:52Z
2021-05-24T21:15:52Z
From body snatchers to dodgy marketers: the dirty history of funeral schemes
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402093/original/file-20210521-19-1olxieh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5568%2C2842&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frank Middendorf/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Funeral schemes come in various forms but work on the same basic idea. They promise a guaranteed payout upon death to cover funeral expenses.</p>
<p>The idea of a scheme to provide for a funeral is not new. In 18th century Britain a thriving system of “burial clubs” emerged to assist the poor and working classes to save for a funeral. These clubs were spurred by fears of a “pauper’s funeral” and one’s body being stolen and sold for medical experimentation. But with such schemes came financial fraud — and in some cases far worse crimes. </p>
<p>Fears of body snatchers may be a thing of the past, but concerns of “funeral poverty” remain. So does the potential for fraud and exploitation in such schemes. </p>
<p>A notable case study in Australia is Youpla, previously known as the Aboriginal Community Benefit Fund, which the Australian Financial Complaints Authority <a href="https://financialrights.org.au/victorian-aboriginal-legal-service-and-financial-rights-legal-centre-win-afca-cases-against-funeral-insurer-youpla/">found</a> to have engaged in false and misleading conduct by marketing itself as an Indigenous self-help fund to vulnerable consumers. </p>
<p>Even when schemes don’t stoop so low, consumer advocacy group Choice <a href="https://www.choice.com.au/money/insurance/life/articles/funeral-insurance">has warned</a> the cost of these schemes can often outstrip the benefits.</p>
<h2>Rise of the body snatchers</h2>
<p>In the 18th century and before, those whose family or friends could not afford to pay for a funeral or burial plot faced the posthumous indignity of a “pauper’s burial”, a low-cost disposal in a shallow, unmarked, mass grave.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402044/original/file-20210521-23-lswk91.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Robert Louis Stevenson's short story 'The Body Snatcher', published in 1884, featured characters were based on real-life criminals." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402044/original/file-20210521-23-lswk91.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402044/original/file-20210521-23-lswk91.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402044/original/file-20210521-23-lswk91.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402044/original/file-20210521-23-lswk91.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402044/original/file-20210521-23-lswk91.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402044/original/file-20210521-23-lswk91.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402044/original/file-20210521-23-lswk91.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story ‘The Body Snatcher’, published in 1884, featured characters were based on real-life criminals.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/26073/lot/47/">www.bonhams.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>The social imperative to avoid such a shameful burial was amplified by developments in medical science and pressure to relax centuries-old <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4582158/">prohibitions against dissecting</a> human subjects.</p>
<p>In 1752 the British parliament passed the Murder Act, allowing anatomists to dissect the bodies of criminals convicted of murder. But demand for bodies far exceeded supply, leading to a thriving black market for dead bodies. Shallow and unguarded pauper graves were obvious targets for “body snatchers”.</p>
<p>This fear of being dug and up and sold for anatomical dissection spurred the creation of clubs to fund a decent burial. </p>
<h2>Forming burial clubs</h2>
<p>Burial clubs worked on the principle of contributing a small regular sum each week or month, guaranteeing members (or their families) a certain payout upon death. </p>
<p>By the beginning of the 19th century there were about 7,200 registered burial clubs in Britain. They had about 650,000 members, out of a population of about 10.5 million. This suggests about a quarter of all families were covered. </p>
<p>But whenever money is involved, the prospect of financial mismanagement and fraud arises. In 1817, for example, the House of Commons heard evidence about burial clubs meeting in the local public houses and entrusting their subscription money to the publican, who then misspent it.</p>
<p>More alarming were reports of cases where parents registered their infant children in a club — or multiple clubs — then killed them to claim money. In 1848 weekly magazine <a href="http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/23rd-september-1848/13/suppression-of-burial-clubs">The Spectator</a> reported that “burial clubs act as a popular incentive to infanticide” and it had become “a more profitable trade to breed sucking children than pigs or poultry”. </p>
<p>As the 19th century progressed, more formal governance regimes were imposed on burial clubs, including a ban against insuring children under six. In addition, the responsibility for caring for the deceased shifted from the family at home to paying an undertaker, and later funeral director. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-ancient-cultures-teach-us-about-grief-mourning-and-continuity-of-life-86199">What ancient cultures teach us about grief, mourning and continuity of life</a>
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<h2>Modern funeral insurance schemes</h2>
<p>With the changes associated with a paid professional intermediary handling most of the activities related to a funeral, funeral insurance schemes have endured. </p>
<p>Modern schemes appeal to those at risk of “funeral poverty”. They work on the same principle of paying a set premium in instalments for a guaranteed payout on death to fund a funeral. </p>
<p>The Australian Securities and Investments Commission <a href="https://asic.gov.au/about-asic/news-centre/find-a-media-release/2015-releases/15-315mr-asic-report-on-funeral-insurance-highlights-increasing-premiums-and-high-cancellation-rates/">reported in 2015</a> on data it obtained from nine of the 12 providers of direct funeral insurance in Australia at the time. Those nine insurers had 437,274 funeral insurance policies covering 743,421 lives. The previous financial year they had taken close to $315 million in premiums, and paid out $103 million. </p>
<p>The report highlighted problems with cost, design, marketing and sales of funeral insurance. In particular, it noted the high rate of policy cancellations; about 35% of those cancellations were initiated by insurers for non-payment of premiums. A higher proportion of Indigenous consumers had policies cancelled, “losing the value of premiums already paid”. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/do-we-really-need-funeral-insurance-94406">Do we really need funeral insurance?</a>
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<h2>Preying on Indigenous customers</h2>
<p>The case of Youpla, previously marketed as the Aboriginal Community Benefit Fund (ACBF), is a particularly egregious example of a funeral scheme preying on vulnerable Indigenous customers. </p>
<p>In 2018 the <a href="https://financialservices.royalcommission.gov.au/Documents/interim-report/interim-report-volume-2.pdf">royal commission</a> into the banking and financial services industry looked at ACBF as a case study of wider issues relating to the marketing of funeral insurance schemes to vulnerable consumers.</p>
<p>Commissioner Kenneth Hayne said in his <a href="https://financialservices.royalcommission.gov.au/Pages/reports.html#final">final report</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, especially those living regionally or remotely, may have been particularly likely to be sold funeral insurance policies in circumstances where those policies held little value for them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the past nine months the <a href="https://www.afca.org.au/what-to-expect/search-published-decisions">Australian Financial Complaints Authority</a> has ruled in eight cases that ACBF/Youpla engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct, directing the company to refund complainants’ contributions.</p>
<p>In one of those cases, an Indigenous woman signed up to the company believing it was a not-for-profit community organisation offering a form of savings plan for her funeral and those of her four children. She paid the company $7,117 over 11 years, which she lost when ACBF cancelled her policy for non-payment of premiums.</p>
<p>In another, a woman ended up paying $11,595 for a promised $10,000 payout.</p>
<h2>Exploiting funeral poverty</h2>
<p>In 1852 Charles Dickens <a href="https://archive.org/details/householdwords06dick/page/240/mode/2up">wrote that</a> burial clubs had “cheated and wronged the poor, most cruelly”. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/charles-dickens-newly-discovered-documents-reveal-truth-about-his-death-and-burial-130079">Charles Dickens: newly discovered documents reveal truth about his death and burial</a>
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<p>That’s still a risk today, with modern funeral schemes almost exclusively offered by for-profit entities looking to make money. They are not “savings products”. They may not stoop so low as Youpla in their shady marketing tactics but they may still exploit fear of the poor and vulnerable of not being able provide a decent funeral.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160699/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In the 1700s ‘burial clubs’ emerged in response to fears of funeral poverty. These schemes persist today — along with marketing targeting the poor and vulnerable.
Lee Moerman, Professor, University of Wollongong
Sandra van der Laan, Professor of Accounting, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/143070
2020-09-15T11:49:57Z
2020-09-15T11:49:57Z
When someone dies, what happens to the body?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357962/original/file-20200914-24-jc0twd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=383%2C225%2C4551%2C3250&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">When a life ends, those who remain deal with the body.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/funeral-home-director-chris-fontana-and-apprentice-news-photo/1212133109">Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Upwards of <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm">2.8 million people die</a> every year in the United States. As a funeral director who heads a university mortuary science program, I can tell you that while each individual’s life experiences are unique, what happens to a body after death follows a broadly predictable chain of events.</p>
<p>In general, it depends on three things: where you die, how you die and what you or your family decide on for funeral arrangements and final disposition.</p>
<h2>In death’s immediate aftermath</h2>
<p>Death can happen anywhere: at home; in a hospital, nursing or palliative care facility; or at the scene of an accident, homicide or suicide.</p>
<p>A medical examiner or coroner must investigate whenever a person dies unexpectedly while not under a doctor’s care. Based on the circumstances of the death, they determine whether an autopsy is needed. If so, the body travels to a county morgue or a funeral home, where a pathologist conducts a detailed internal and external examination of the body as well as toxicology tests.</p>
<p>Once the body can be released, some states allow for families to handle the body themselves, but most people employ a funeral director. The body is placed on a stretcher, covered and transferred from the place of death – sometimes via hearse, but more commonly these days a minivan carries it to the funeral home. </p>
<p>State law determines who has the authority to make funeral arrangements and decisions about the remains. In some states, you can choose during your lifetime how you’d like your body treated when you die. In most cases, however, decisions fall on surviving family or someone you appointed before your death.</p>
<h2>Preparing the body for viewing</h2>
<p>In a 2020 consumer survey conducted by the National Funeral Directors Association, 39.4% of respondents reported feeling it’s very important to have the <a href="https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/press-kits/2018/jsm/jsm-presentation-pop-projections.pdf">body or cremated remains present</a> at a funeral or memorial service.</p>
<p>To prepare for that, the funeral home will usually ask whether the body is to be embalmed. This process sanitizes the body, temporarily preserves it for viewing and services, and restores a natural, peaceful appearance. Embalming is typically required for a public viewing and in certain other circumstances, including if the person died of a communicable disease or if the cremation or burial is to be delayed for more than a few days.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357964/original/file-20200914-18-5u75p6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two funeral home staff stand behind a mortuary table" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357964/original/file-20200914-18-5u75p6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357964/original/file-20200914-18-5u75p6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357964/original/file-20200914-18-5u75p6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357964/original/file-20200914-18-5u75p6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357964/original/file-20200914-18-5u75p6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357964/original/file-20200914-18-5u75p6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357964/original/file-20200914-18-5u75p6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A funeral home director and an intern stand by a mortuary table.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/funeral-director-alexandra-burke-and-intern-vincent-news-photo/1248738963">John Moore/Getty Images News via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>When the funeral director begins the embalming process, he places the body on a special porcelain or stainless steel table that looks much like what you’d find in an operating room. He washes the body with soap and water and positions it with the hands crossed over the abdomen, as you’d see them appear in a casket. He closes the eyes and mouth.</p>
<p>Next the funeral director makes a small incision near the clavicle, to access the jugular vein and carotid artery. He inserts forceps into the jugular vein to allow blood to drain out, while at the same time injecting embalming solution into the carotid artery via a small tube connected to the embalming machine. For every 50 to 75 pounds of body weight, it takes about a gallon of embalming solution, largely made up of formaldehyde. The funeral director then removes excess fluids and gases from the abdominal and thoracic cavities using an instrument called a trocar. It works much like the suction tube you’ve experienced at the dentist.</p>
<p>Next the funeral director sutures any incisions. He grooms the hair and nails and again washes the body and dries it with towels. If the body is emaciated or dehydrated, he can inject a solution via hypodermic needle to plump facial features. If trauma or disease has altered the appearance of the deceased, the embalmer can use wax, adhesive and plaster to recreate natural form. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357966/original/file-20200914-20-ys77cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A funeral home worker handles cosmetics used to makeup the deceased." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357966/original/file-20200914-20-ys77cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357966/original/file-20200914-20-ys77cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357966/original/file-20200914-20-ys77cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357966/original/file-20200914-20-ys77cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357966/original/file-20200914-20-ys77cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357966/original/file-20200914-20-ys77cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357966/original/file-20200914-20-ys77cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A funeral director prepares to apply makeup to a man who died of COVID-19.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/jeffrey-rhodes-funeral-home-director-applies-makeup-for-man-news-photo/1228017197">Octavio Jones/ Getty Images North America via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lastly, the funeral director dresses the deceased and applies cosmetics. If the clothing provided does not fit, he can cut it and tuck it in somewhere that doesn’t show. Some funeral homes use an airbrush to apply cosmetics; others use specialized mortuary cosmetics or just regular makeup you might find at a store.</p>
<h2>Toward a final resting place</h2>
<p>If the deceased is to be cremated without a public viewing, many funeral homes require a member of the family to identify him or her. Once the death certificate and any other necessary authorizations are complete, the funeral home transports the deceased in a chosen container to a crematory. This could be onsite or at a third-party provider.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357967/original/file-20200914-14-b2zisf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Man reaches into cremator with a long-handled tool." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357967/original/file-20200914-14-b2zisf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357967/original/file-20200914-14-b2zisf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357967/original/file-20200914-14-b2zisf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357967/original/file-20200914-14-b2zisf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357967/original/file-20200914-14-b2zisf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357967/original/file-20200914-14-b2zisf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357967/original/file-20200914-14-b2zisf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">More people in the U.S. are now cremated than embalmed and buried.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/maryland-cremation-services-cremation-operator-edward-pugh-news-photo/1225638524">Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cremations are performed individually. Still in the container, the deceased is placed in the cremator, which produces very high heat that reduces the remains to bone fragments. The operator removes any metal objects, like implants, fillings and parts of the casket or cremation container, and then pulverizes the bone fragments. He then places the processed remains in the selected container or urn. Some families choose to keep the cremated remains, while others bury them, place them in a niche or scatter them.</p>
<p>The year 2015 was the first year that the <a href="https://nfda.org/news/in-the-news/nfda-news/id/5223/2020-cremation-burial-projects-cremation-rate-of-87-by-2040">cremation rate exceeded the casketed burial rate</a> in the U.S., and the industry expects that trend to continue.</p>
<p>When earth burial is chosen, the casket is usually placed in a concrete outer burial container before being lowered into the grave. Caskets can also be entombed in above-ground crypts inside buildings called mausoleums. Usually a grave or crypt has a headstone of some kind that bears the name and other details about the decedent.</p>
<p>Some cemeteries have spaces dedicated to environmentally conscious “green” burials in which an unembalmed body can be buried in a biodegradable container. Other forms of final disposition are less common. As an alternative to cremation, the chemical process of alkaline hydrolysis can reduce remains to bone fragments. Composting involves placing the deceased in a vessel with organic materials like wood chips and straw to allow microbes to naturally break down the body.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>I’ve seen many changes over the course of my funeral service career, spanning more than 20 years so far. For decades, funeral directors were predominantly male, but now mortuary school enrollment nationwide is roughly 65% female. Cremation has become more popular. More people pre-plan their own funerals. Many Americans do not have a religious affiliation and therefore opt for a less formal service.</p>
<p>Saying goodbye is important for those who remain, and I have witnessed too many families foregoing a ceremony and later regretting it. A dignified and meaningful farewell and the occasion to share memories and comfort each other <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26555297">honors the life of the deceased and facilitates healing</a> for family and friends.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143070/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Evely is affiliated with Volunteer with National Funeral Directors Association, Michigan Funeral Directors Association, American Board of Funeral Service Education and International Conference of Funeral Service Examining Boards.</span></em></p>
A funeral director explains how the bodies of the deceased are prepared for burial or cremation in the United States.
Mark Evely, Program Director and Assistant Professor of Mortuary Science, Wayne State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/136655
2020-04-24T12:22:44Z
2020-04-24T12:22:44Z
Mass graves for coronavirus victims shouldn’t come as a shock – it’s how the poor have been buried for centuries
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329587/original/file-20200421-82672-9j0lht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C4%2C2868%2C1905&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Workers wearing personal protective equipment bury bodies in a trench on Hart Island in New York.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Virus-Outbreak-New-York/b223d9e3c93e442a980116ea1f335d86/12/0">John Minchillo/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The coronavirus is not only controlling how we live, but increasingly what happens after we die. </p>
<p>In early April, New York City’s Council Health Committee chair Mark Levine generated buzz after tweeting that the city was <a href="https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/nyc-to-start-temporary-burials-for-covid-19-victims-likely-in-trenches-in-nyc-parks-levine/2361777/">considering temporary burials in local parks</a> for victims of COVID-19. News outlets and social media users eagerly circulated his tweets, which seemed to be an ominous sign of the disease’s toll. </p>
<p>Although city officials assured residents that such temporary burials had not yet taken place, aerial footage of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-hart-island/new-york-city-hires-laborers-to-bury-dead-in-hart-island-potters-field-amid-coronavirus-surge-idUSKCN21R398">workers in protective gear interring bodies on Hart Island</a>, the city’s “<a href="https://grammarist.com/idiom/potters-field/">potter’s field</a>,” seemed to confirm that the epidemic was overwhelming both our health care and our death care industries.</p>
<p>For people who expect a “proper” send-off when they die, the images were shocking, but for <a href="https://www.naco.org/articles/undertakers-last-resort-indigent-burials-rise-denting-county-budgets">thousands of poor Americans, the prospect of burial in such a grave is a growing reality</a>. It also is nothing new.</p>
<h2>Cost of dying</h2>
<p>Burial on Hart Island has been the <a href="https://www.hartisland.net/history">fate of indigent New Yorkers for years</a>. The city purchased the island in 1868 and performed its first burial there the following year. With approximately <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/the-transformation-of-hart-island">1,000,000 individuals interred there since</a>, the island off the Bronx is one of the nation’s largest potter’s fields, but it certainly is not the only one.</p>
<p>Programs exist throughout the country to handle the indigent dead, a category that includes unidentified bodies or deceased individuals whose families cannot or will not claim their bodies. These programs <a href="https://safepassageurns.com/blogs/blog/states-and-counties-that-provide-government-assistance-for-funeral-costs">vary by state and, in many cases, by county</a>. Most allow for an extended period of time for family to claim the remains, then rely on various methods for disposing of the bodies left behind.</p>
<p>Chicago inters remains in plots <a href="https://www.catholiccemeterieschicago.org/About/Indigent_Burials">donated by the Catholic Archdiocese</a> at Mount Olivet cemetery. San Francisco contracts with a cemetery in nearby Oakland <a href="https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2004/12/13/unclaimed-dead-get-burial-at-sea/">to dispose of cremated remains at sea</a>.</p>
<p>Costs for handling these remains can range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per body, <a href="https://www.governing.com/topics/finance/gov-funeral-assistance-cost.html">creating a financial burden</a> for some cities and counties. Often, cremation is the preferred method of disposal because of <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/community-hub/funeral-planning/2020/03/24/cremation-pros-and-cons/5065222002/">its lower cost</a>, but in some cases, <a href="https://www.naco.org/articles/undertakers-last-resort-indigent-burials-rise-denting-county-budgets">counties donate the dead to medical science</a>, which is free.</p>
<h2>Rich and fulfilling death</h2>
<p>As a <a href="https://history.case.edu/faculty/vicki-daniel/">historian of death in America</a>, I have seen how socioeconomic standing has dramatically shaped the final disposition of the dead throughout time, especially after the rise of the funeral industry following the Civil War. By the end of the 19th century, the more affluent could afford to be embalmed, laid out in a casket, transported to a cemetery, and put to rest in a marked plot, <a href="https://ia802800.us.archive.org/31/items/funeralmanagemen00dowdrich/funeralmanagemen00dowdrich.pdf">all which might cost around US$100</a> – around $3,000 in today’s dollars.</p>
<p>But those without means have long relied on the community to properly dispose of their remains. In rural communities, where most residents knew one another, the poor might at least hope to receive an unmarked plot in the local churchyard – the primary burial site until <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/03/our-first-public-parks-the-forgotten-history-of-cemeteries/71818/">the establishment of public burying grounds</a> in the 19th century. </p>
<p>In cities, however, the indigent dead often became the responsibility of municipal departments, such as the board of health. As better wages drew laborers to urban areas in the late 19th century, officials worked to address perceived problems stemming from industrialization and rapid population growth: poverty, vice, crime and disease. Those who died in public hospitals, poorhouses, workhouses, orphanages or prisons were usually buried by the city with little ceremony. Bodies were placed in simple coffins and carted straight to the public burial grounds with minimal funeral service. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329588/original/file-20200421-82707-1uqu5il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329588/original/file-20200421-82707-1uqu5il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329588/original/file-20200421-82707-1uqu5il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329588/original/file-20200421-82707-1uqu5il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329588/original/file-20200421-82707-1uqu5il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329588/original/file-20200421-82707-1uqu5il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329588/original/file-20200421-82707-1uqu5il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A grave marking the entrance to New York’s Hart Island cemetery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Virus-Outbreak-New-York/6421ebcadd2d4859828a3c32c256be9f/72/0">Seth Wenig/AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sadly, burial in a potter’s field also sometimes rendered the poor more vulnerable in death than they had been in life. In an era before willed body donation programs, medical schools throughout the country often <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17226823">targeted the poor</a> – as well as criminals and African Americans – for the dissecting lab. Medical students or professional grave robbers disinterred remains under the cover of night, sometimes with <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Traffic_of_Dead_Bodies/yf5ZDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1">the explicit permission of bribed public officials or cemetery employees</a>. What’s more, the practice of grave robbing eventually became <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1845037">legally sanctioned through the passage of anatomy acts</a>, whereby states like Massachusetts and Michigan permitted medical students to dissect unclaimed bodies from poorhouses.</p>
<p>Even without the threat of dissection, the potter’s field – named after the biblical, clay-rich burial ground the high priests of Jerusalem bought with Judas’ 30 pieces of silver – was a place of stigma. As a result, many communities did what they could to protect their own from such a fate. For example, black churches, such as Baltimore’s African Methodist Episcopal Church, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=4X_WDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT141&lpg=PT141&dq=Baltimore+African+Methodist+Episcopal+Church+burial+grounds&source=bl&ots=Tsyh8GtDlc&sig=ACfU3U0ItSE_xlad9jEieHGT2jCkZ38JHg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjI4dGBgvzoAhXAl3IEHUZzD0gQ6AEwBXoECAsQAQ#v=onepage&q=Baltimore%20African%20Methodist%20Episcopal%20Church%20burial%20grounds&f=false">founded burial grounds for the city’s enslaved and free residents</a>. Similarly, African American benevolent societies in the 19th and 20th centuries often paid funeral and burial costs for their members. </p>
<h2>Permanently parked</h2>
<p>Likewise, New York’s <a href="https://www.hebrewfreeburial.org/">Jewish community had burial societies</a> and immigrant aid societies that provided similar services, assuring individuals remained part of their community, even in death. </p>
<p>Such practices were difficult to uphold during periods of crisis. For example, during deadly outbreaks of yellow fever and cholera in the 19th century, New York officials – fearing that the dead were contagious – hastily <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/12/new-york-city-burials-parks-coronavirus-plague">interred bodies in local parks</a>. In such instances, corpses were placed in large trenches with little ceremony or intimate care. Similarly, when the flu overwhelmed Philadelphia in 1918, bodies were <a href="https://www.phillyvoice.com/1918-philadelphia-was-grippe-misery-and-suffering/">buried in mass graves</a> all around the city. Such graves were also common after mass fatality events, like <a href="https://nursingclio.org/2015/12/02/public-health-and-the-dead-at-johnstown/">the 1889 Johnstown Flood</a>, especially before DNA testing allowed for the identification of unknown remains.</p>
<p>Recent angst about Hart Island allows us to consider why these mass burials trouble us. They serve not only as reminders of our own mortality, but also the fragility of our death rituals in times of crisis. We all hope that our deaths will be good deaths, surrounded by loved ones, but COVID-19 kills people in isolation and limits our rituals. Yet, this is already a reality for many Americans.</p>
<p>Indigent burials have been <a href="https://www.naco.org/articles/undertakers-last-resort-indigent-burials-rise-denting-county-budgets">on the rise for years</a> due to both <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/the-rising-cost-of-dying-1986-2017.htm">the increase in funeral costs</a> and the widening gap between rich and poor, now further exacerbated by the pandemic’s economic effects. We will likely see an increase in the number of people for whom such burial remains a real possibility even after the pandemic resides. </p>
<p>[<em>You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-help">Read The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136655/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vicki Daniel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
From burial sites targeted by grave robbers to disposing of ashes at sea, the job of disposing of the unclaimed dead has a rich history. Sadly, it still goes on today and is on the rise.
Vicki Daniel, Teaching Fellow and Instructor of History, Case Western Reserve University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/135180
2020-04-07T11:46:26Z
2020-04-07T11:46:26Z
Coronavirus is showing us how we’ve failed to manage the logistics of death
<p>We need to talk about dead bodies. Specifically the dead bodies being produced by COVID-19. </p>
<p>This is different from saying <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/opinion/covid-end-of-life.html">we need to talk about death and dying</a> (which we also need to do). I mean instead that we should focus our minds on what the human corpse means in this new pandemic reality.</p>
<p>Consider the number of dead bodies in the world before coronavirus. Based on <a href="https://www.who.int/healthinfo/mortality_data/en/">global mortality statistics</a>, approximately 56,842,500 humans died over the course of 2019. That’s roughly 155,732 people a day. </p>
<p>In the US, approximately 2,898,060 people died that year, which means about 7,939 a day. In the UK, the death rate for 2019 was 620,268, averaging 1,700 people a day.</p>
<p>It is easy to gloss over these statistics, since most of us never really think about millions of dead bodies. But what these numbers illustrate is that dead bodies are an everyday constant, we just don’t pay attention to them unless our job directly involves the dead. </p>
<p>So dead bodies are completely normal -– until suddenly they’re not. Until a novel virus sweeps the globe and produces a dead body count with life altering repercussions. </p>
<p>In order to manage and cope with the millions of dead bodies produced every year, different countries create what I call a “national death infrastructure” or NDI. The various parts of this infrastructure range from the local (a neighbourhood cemetery) to the global (systems in place for international repatriation). But crucially, the National Death Infrastructure is largely invisible to most of our lives. </p>
<p>Now COVID-19 is making NDIs visible. Indeed, the coronavirus pandemic is relentlessly demonstrating what happens when NDIs are not prepared for an unplanned spike in human mortality. We have seen thousands of coffins unattended in Italy, temporary emergency morgues in New York, and Spanish officials storing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/23/spain-distributes-650000-testing-kits-as-coronavirus-deaths-rise-steeply">dead bodies at an ice rink</a>.</p>
<p>Disturbing as many people find these news stories, everything happening to manage COVID-19 corpses is from various “mass fatality” and “disaster victim identification” playbooks. I know this because, as director of the <a href="http://bath.ac.uk/cdas">Centre for Death and Society</a> at the University of Bath, I’ve participated in consultations on governmental postmortem preparedness. </p>
<p>What’s different, of course, is that most people already oblivious to the NDI are wholly unprepared to see dead bodies rapidly produced in multiple countries, at the same time, and reported hourly on the news. </p>
<p>Imagine though, if details were broadcast for a year on how every one of the around 56 million people across the planet died – how they died and in what circumstances. Seeing this kind of detail in death might help people realise how important the infrastructure dealing with dead bodies really is, and why it needs to be financially supported by national governments.</p>
<p>Because right now, huge numbers of families <a href="https://nyti.ms/2WOg2ls">cannot mourn their dead</a> in the ways they expect to. We have seen this situation before with AIDS-related deaths, where next-of-kin were told a funeral was unsafe because HIV caused the death. </p>
<p>As I explain in my new book, <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/contributors/john-troyer">Technologies of the Human Corpse</a>, none of this was correct but that didn’t stop it from being said. And now COVID-19 flips the situation on its head. Funerals are currently not safe because living family members could spread COVID-19 by interacting with fellow mourners. The human corpse, this time, <a href="https://www.aaptuk.org/media/news/2020/03/23/considerations-related-to-the-safe-handling-of-bodies-of-deceased-persons-with-suspected-or-confirmed-covid19">isn’t the viral issue</a>. So the kind of funerals many of us are used to will have to wait. </p>
<h2>Body count</h2>
<p>And even for the kind of services that are now taking place, funeral directors in the US and the UK are <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-causes-crisis-in-funeral-sector-when-the-body-bags-run-out-we-will-close-warns-uk-funeral-director/">running out</a> of personal protective equipment (PPE) and body bags.</p>
<p>This is a bigger issue in cities like London and New York, but it will quickly affect small places too. Funeral industry workers are the essential frontline staff that both the living and the dead critically need right now, and like their colleagues in medicine and pathology, they are putting their lives at risk to ensure the national death infrastructure operates. </p>
<p>The current situation is not sustainable and governments will need to move quickly to manage the ever increasing numbers of dead bodies and make sure the funeral industry front line has the supplies it needs. They will also need to be prepared for a public backlash if they fail to do so. </p>
<p>Right now we all seem to be suffering from what I call “virological determinism” – we are blaming everything on a virus, when in fact blame lies with human <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/mar/29/uk-strategy-to-address-pandemic-threat-not-properly-implemented">failure to adequately follow</a> existing public health pandemic response and preparedness planning. Failure which has created a situation where for weeks and months to come we will be confronted by mounting mortality statistics and dead bodies. More dead bodies than most national death infrastructures can manage.</p>
<p>So we need to talk about dead bodies and we need to do it now. And we should never forget that the COVID-19 dead bodies are mounting up because humans failed to effectively anticipate what new viruses almost always do – create human corpses.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135180/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Troyer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Too may countries are drastically unprepared for the coming weeks and months.
John Troyer, Director, Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/94406
2018-04-05T05:15:33Z
2018-04-05T05:15:33Z
Do we really need funeral insurance?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213336/original/file-20180405-189798-r60fqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Funeral insurance is a financial product and not really any different from life insurance.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>TV advertisements for funeral insurance often warn of the huge financial impost created for families when you die. They argue the only way to protect your loved ones is to take out insurance. However, what these ads don’t tell you is that funeral insurance is a financial product and not really any different from life insurance, except the cover is usually for a much lower amount. </p>
<p>This means the benefit paid upon your death is a cash amount, without any restrictions on whether it is used for your funeral or not.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/life-after-death-americans-are-embracing-new-ways-to-leave-their-remains-85657">Life after death: Americans are embracing new ways to leave their remains</a>
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<p>Despite more consumer-friendly funeral insurance products entering the market in recent years, <a href="https://www.realinsurance.com.au/lp/funeral?ppc=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw75HWBRAwEiwAdzefxJykxp-xaqpDvcSlqEuuQ2RMvr021ByAf-U7Rr93qdd8XrMh4PKpSxoC1HQQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds">most policies have stepped premiums</a> which increase as you get older. Funeral insurance sellers are also still engaged in aggressive selling techniques, such as offering a gift card for buying a policy.</p>
<p>These fundamental problems <a href="http://asic.gov.au/regulatory-resources/find-a-document/reports/rep-454-funeral-insurance-a-snapshot/">lead to high policy lapse rates</a>. That is, consumers take out a policy and then cancel or the policy is cancelled by the insurer for non-payment of premiums. While this is not unusual, the very high lapse rates make selling funeral insurance very lucrative for insurance companies.</p>
<p>In 2014 the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) <a href="http://asic.gov.au/regulatory-resources/find-a-document/reports/rep-454-funeral-insurance-a-snapshot/">reported</a> there were nearly three quarters of a million Australians covered by funeral insurance with an average benefit amount of A$8,859. <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/business/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/310140/Its_Your_Funeral_Report.pdf">Given the findings of a 2017 report</a> suggesting average cost of a moderate “full service” funeral is around A$6,000, it appears many Australians are over-insuring.</p>
<h2>Expensive premiums</h2>
<p>Since most funeral insurance is sold with stepped premiums, many consumers on fixed incomes (pensioners and retirees) find the premiums difficult to service as they increase over the longer term. <a href="http://www.cpsa.org.au/files/The%20$140000%20funeral%20pitfalls%20of%20funeral%20insurance%20March%202011.pdf">A study by the Combined Pensioners and Superannuants Association in 2011</a> found that if you took out a policy at 50, you could end up paying more than A$140,000 in premiums for a A$6,000 benefit under some policies if you lived until you were 80. </p>
<p>The average annual premiums quadruples for consumers aged over 50, rising from A$336 for those aged 50–54 to A$1,344 for those aged 80–84, the 2014 ASIC report found. With ever <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/life-expectancy-death/deaths-in-australia/contents/life-expectancy">increasing life expectancies</a>, you can be sure that for most funeral insurance premiums people will likely end up paying many times more than any benefit paid. </p>
<p>A staggering 80% of policies are <a href="http://asic.gov.au/regulatory-resources/find-a-document/reports/rep-454-funeral-insurance-a-snapshot/">cancelled each year</a>, 55% occurring within the first year. This is because many consumers do not understand important policy features and are concerned about their purchase after a period of time, having reflected on the details and benefits of the policy. </p>
<h2>Paying for your funeral</h2>
<p>Paying for a funeral can be a financial hardship and there are options to pay for it.</p>
<p>One option is a direct committal that takes care of only the disposal and documentation requirements required for a funeral. Many funeral directors and online providers offer this budget option <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/business/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/310140/Its_Your_Funeral_Report.pdf">for as little as A$1,200</a>, but more likely around A$1,800 in a large city such as Sydney or Melbourne. </p>
<p>You can then entrust your relatives, or your executor (if this is indicated in your will), to celebrate your life in any way you wish, a memorial without the expense.</p>
<p>You could also buy a pre-need or prepaid funeral. This product is rigorously <a href="http://www.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au/ftw/Consumers/Buying_services/Funerals/Contributory_and_pre_paid_funerals.pagelink%20to%20example%20of%20regulations">regulated by state consumer laws.</a> It gives you some control as you know exactly what you are buying (such as ceremony, coffin, disposal). The only downfall is that your funeral is “locked-in” to a particular provider and <a href="http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/other-industries/australias-1-billion-funeral-industry-taking-advantage-of-people-at-their-most-vulnerable/news-story/2abcfe8f664377a35fe29ea292c98ed1">stories of aggressive upselling to relatives</a> have been reported.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/breathing-new-life-into-the-funeral-business-62789">Breathing new life into the funeral business</a>
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<p>In Australia, your loved ones or executor are able to access your funds in your bank or even superannuation accounts to pay for a funeral. If you are on a government benefit, your partner may receive a bereavement payment to contribute toward funeral expenses. Many funeral operators will also allow your relatives to pay for your funeral by instalments. </p>
<p>Funeral bonds <a href="https://www.moneysmart.gov.au/life-events-and-you/over-55s/paying-for-your-funeral">are also financial products</a> and depending on the amount you invest in bonds, you are likely to limit any financial legacy resulting from your funeral for relatives and loved ones. However, funeral bonds also carry the same risks as other bonds.</p>
<p>Funeral insurance providers attempt to sell peace of mind to consumers. However, that peace of mind can become a financial burden as you age and premiums increase. It also may not even be used for that send off that you had imagined.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94406/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
It seems many Australians are over-insuring when it comes to funerals.
Sandra van der Laan, Professor of Accounting, University of Sydney
Lee Moerman, Associate Professor, University of Wollongong
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/87981
2017-11-22T20:09:05Z
2017-11-22T20:09:05Z
Who will bury Charles Manson?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195931/original/file-20171122-6035-1qdnthm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A tangle of rules govern what to do when a California inmate dies.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Charles Manson, the wild-eyed cult leader <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/how-beatles-inspired-charles-manson-commit-his-1969-murders-716938">who claimed inspiration</a> for an apocalyptic race war from the Beatles’ “White Album,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/obituaries/charles-manson-dead.html">died</a> in Kern County, California, on Nov. 19 at the age of 83. </p>
<p>Journalist Joan Didion wrote that for many of her friends in Los Angeles, “the 60s ended abruptly on Aug. 9, 1969,” the day of the <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/charles-manson-dead-at-83-w458873">Tate-LaBianca murders</a>, in which Manson and his “family” killed seven people, including pregnant actor Sharon Tate.</p>
<p>While the cultural impact of Charles Manson’s life and horrific actions will not soon be forgotten, the pressing concern right now is how we’ll choose to acknowledge his death. More specifically, what will happen to his remains?</p>
<p>It’s a question that often comes up when a notorious criminal dies. Osama bin Laden, for example, was buried at sea, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/02/bin.laden.burial.at.sea/index.html">reportedly in part</a> so that a grave wouldn’t become a shrine for terrorists. </p>
<p>It turns out, however, that the answer is more complicated that it would appear at first glance, particularly when the death happens in a prison in California. I study funeral and cemetery law and also happen to be a licensed funeral director in California, yet I’m still surprised by the inconsistency in the state’s law governing death. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195935/original/file-20171122-6039-152rlhb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195935/original/file-20171122-6039-152rlhb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195935/original/file-20171122-6039-152rlhb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195935/original/file-20171122-6039-152rlhb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195935/original/file-20171122-6039-152rlhb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195935/original/file-20171122-6039-152rlhb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195935/original/file-20171122-6039-152rlhb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The body of actress Sharon Tate is taken from her rented house on Cielo Drive in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Aug. 9, 1969. Tate, who was eight months pregnant, was among those found murdered by Manson and his followers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
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<h2>When a person dies in California</h2>
<p>When a person dies in California – regardless of where he or she lived – the state’s <a href="http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=HSC&division=7.&title=&part=1.&chapter=3.&article=">health and safety code</a> determines who has “the right to control the disposition of the remains of a deceased person, the location and conditions of interment and arrangements for funeral goods and services to be provided.” </p>
<p><a href="http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=HSC&division=7.&title=&part=1.&chapter=3.&article=">California law</a> grants that right to the following persons, in order of priority: a person appointed by the decedent, spouse, adult children, parents, adult siblings and other adults in the “next degrees of kinship.” </p>
<p>If a family member steps up, then the expense of the funeral and burial or cremation will be paid for by the decedent’s estate, if he or she left property. If the decedent died without property, then the family member bears the cost or could apply for an indigent assistance program like the one <a href="http://www.kernsheriff.com/documents/coroner/County_Cremation.pdf">offered in Kern County</a>, where Manson died.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195936/original/file-20171122-6016-1kbg04q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195936/original/file-20171122-6016-1kbg04q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195936/original/file-20171122-6016-1kbg04q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195936/original/file-20171122-6016-1kbg04q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195936/original/file-20171122-6016-1kbg04q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195936/original/file-20171122-6016-1kbg04q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195936/original/file-20171122-6016-1kbg04q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">It’s possible that Manson’s body will end up on a hard, cold slab in a medical school.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Martha Irvine</span></span>
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<h2>Calling all cadavers</h2>
<p>When a person dies in the state without any assets, which is almost certainly true of Manson, another law kicks in. </p>
<p>In those case, the <a href="http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=HSC&division=7.&title=&part=1.&chapter=4.&article=">state has the right</a> to send them to a medical school, chiropractic school or a mortuary science program to be used for scientific or educational purposes.</p>
<p>The majority of states have <a href="https://wfulawpolicyjournaldotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/culler_invisible_dead.pdf">statutes similar to this one</a>. When medical schools <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4582158/">began using cadavers</a> to teach future doctors in the 1700s, they had difficulty obtaining a sufficient supply of dead bodies from willing donors. As a result, grave robbery became a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/15/nyregion/new-york-mass-graves-hart-island.html">significant problem</a> in both the United States and Europe. Medical students were often tasked with obtaining cadavers on their own and would dig up fresh graves. </p>
<p>In response, the states began creating statutes in the mid-1800s that gave bodies that would otherwise be buried at public expense to medical schools. The idea was that supplying cadavers legally would destroy the incentive to commit grave robbery. That turned out to be correct, but as a result most states still have laws like the one in California, which can come as a shock. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195937/original/file-20171122-6039-1cj2an4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195937/original/file-20171122-6039-1cj2an4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195937/original/file-20171122-6039-1cj2an4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195937/original/file-20171122-6039-1cj2an4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195937/original/file-20171122-6039-1cj2an4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195937/original/file-20171122-6039-1cj2an4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195937/original/file-20171122-6039-1cj2an4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">When inmates like those at Corcoran State Prison die, conflicting laws kick in that govern what happens to their remains.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ben Margot</span></span>
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<h2>When inmates die</h2>
<p>Manson died in a hospital while in the custody of the California Department of Corrections. A couple of specific laws apply to inmate deaths, and surprisingly those laws contradict each other and the general rules.</p>
<p>A Department of Corrections regulation states that every inmate <a href="https://govt.westlaw.com/calregs/Document/I009B5F10F2BD11E3AD09E1D84304E27A?viewType=FullText&originationContext=documenttoc&transitionType=CategoryPageItem&contextData=(sc.Default)">must annually identify</a> his or her next of kin on a form called “Notification in Case of Inmate Death.” </p>
<p>Assuming that Manson had one or more living family members and identified them on the notification form, then the department must attempt to notify the listed individual(s) in person, if practical, and, if not, by telephone and offer “consolation.” After 10 days, a body is deemed “<a href="http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=5061.&lawCode=PEN">unclaimed</a>.”</p>
<p>The rule, however, is inconsistent with the law regarding the rights of the next of kin to make decisions about disposition because it suggests that only the kin named on the notification form has rights.</p>
<p>The Department of Corrections has not indicated whether Manson actually completed this form or who his next of kin may be. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/obituaries/charles-manson-dead.html">According to The New York Times</a>, Manson was married twice. Both marriages ended in divorce. He was believed to have fathered at least two children, but The New York Times describes the subject of his descendants as one “which rumor and urban legend have long coalesced.” </p>
<p>The New York Daily News reported that the only self-identified descendant of Manson is 41-year-old <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/charles-manson-grandson-hopes-give-proper-burial-article-1.3647218">Jason Freeman</a>, the son of Charles Manson Jr., who committed suicide in 1993. Freeman <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/charles-manson-grandson-hopes-give-proper-burial-article-1.3647218">told the newspaper</a> that he was “going to move towards having a proper burial.”</p>
<p>It’s not clear, however, whether Manson, who had never met Freeman in person, listed him on his notification form. They reportedly had some telephone contact. </p>
<p>If Manson’s remains are not claimed by Freeman or another family member, then what will happen to his body? Although California law and the Department of Corrections regulation state that it should be made available for scientific study, <a href="http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=PEN&division=&title=7.&part=3.&chapter=2.&article=">a different California statute</a> requires unclaimed inmate remains to be buried or cremated.</p>
<p>Because of all this inconsistency, it’s unclear whether the law intended to give the family members of deceased inmates fewer rights than everyone else.</p>
<h2>Anonymous grave or anatomy lab</h2>
<p>Manson’s remains were last known to be in the possession of the Kern County coroner, according to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-charles-manson-body-20171120-story.html">the Los Angeles Times</a>. </p>
<p>Even if Freeman was named in Manson’s notification form and claims him in a timely manner, he may still encounter some difficulty in obtaining a typical funeral and burial for his notorious grandfather. </p>
<p>After Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers believed to have committed the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, was killed by police, his uncle managed to locate a funeral home willing to handle the remains – amid picketing by the families of his victims – but had a <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/tanya-d-marsh/burying-tamerlan-tsarnaev_b_3215892.html">very difficult time finding a cemetery</a> willing to bury the remains. Eventually, Tsarnaev’s remains were removed from Massachusetts in the middle of the night and <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tsarnaev-burial-saga_b_3249151.html">interred in a Muslim cemetery</a> in Virginia.</p>
<p>So what does this all mean for Charles Manson? If Freeman can claim possession of the body, it’ll be up to him to find a funeral home willing to handle the mass murderer’s remains and potentially a graveyard or crematory willing to take them. If no other kin comes to light, an anonymous box of Manson’s remains may find a home at the communal crypt at <a href="http://www.bakersfield.com/news/county-pays-burial-costs-for-people-who-can-t-afford/article_36026592-ad33-5cb2-9e89-8186f9cac16d.html">Union Cemetery in Bakersfield</a>. </p>
<p>Alternatively, it’s very possible that medical students in California may find a familiar-looking cadaver in gross anatomy lab next semester.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tanya D. Marsh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
If no one claims the remains of cult leader and killer Charles Manson, it’s unclear what will happen to his body. Will it find an anonymous California grave or face dissection in an anatomy lab?
Tanya D. Marsh, Professor of Law, Wake Forest University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86199
2017-11-01T18:41:22Z
2017-11-01T18:41:22Z
What ancient cultures teach us about grief, mourning and continuity of life
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192842/original/file-20171101-19894-tr4qsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Day of the dead at a Mexican cemetery. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADay_of_the_dead_at_mexican_cemetery_4.jpg">© Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons, via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At this time of the year, <a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/day-%20%20of%20%20-the-dead-%20%20in%20%20-the-usa/9780813548579">Mexican and Mexican-American communities</a> observe <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/days-%20%20of%20%20-death-days-%20%20of%20%20-life/9780231136891">“Día de los Muertos” (the Day of the Dead)</a>, a three-day celebration that welcomes the dead temporarily back into families. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192850/original/file-20171101-19850-1a2eow3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192850/original/file-20171101-19850-1a2eow3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192850/original/file-20171101-19850-1a2eow3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192850/original/file-20171101-19850-1a2eow3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192850/original/file-20171101-19850-1a2eow3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192850/original/file-20171101-19850-1a2eow3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192850/original/file-20171101-19850-1a2eow3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Altar to the dead in Yucatán, Mexico.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Wojcik</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Festivities begin on the evening of Oct. 31 and culminate on Nov. 2. Spirits of the departed are believed to be able to reenter the world of the living for a few brief moments during these days. Altars are created in homes, where photographs and other personal items evocative of the dead are placed. Offerings to the deceased include flowers, incense, images of saints, crucifixes and favorite foods. Family members gather in cemeteries to dine not just among the dead but with them. Similar traditions exist in different cultures with different origins.</p>
<p>As scholars of <a href="https://nyupress.org/books/9780814793480/">death</a> and <a href="http://folklore.uoregon.edu/files/2013/08/Wojcik-Pres-Rock.pdf">mourning rituals</a>, we believe that Día de los Muertos traditions are most likely connected to feasts observed by the ancient Aztecs. Today, they honor the memory of the dead and celebrate the continuity of generations through loving reunion with those who came before. </p>
<p>As Western societies, particularly the United States, move away <a href="https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/death/fond-farewells">from the direct experience of a mourner</a>, the rites and customs of other cultures offer valuable lessons.</p>
<h2>Loss of rituals</h2>
<p>Funerals were handled in the home well into the 20th century in the U.S. and throughout Europe. Sometimes, stylized and elaborate public <a href="http://www.deathreference.com/A-Bi/Ars-Moriendi.html">deathbed rituals</a> were organized by the dying person in advance of the death event itself. As French historian <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/4744/the-hour-of-our-death-by-philipe-aries-translated-from-the-french-by-helen-weaver/9780394751566/">Philippe Ariès</a> writes, throughout much of the Western world, such death rituals declined during the 18th and 19th centuries. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192847/original/file-20171101-19883-1c007wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192847/original/file-20171101-19883-1c007wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192847/original/file-20171101-19883-1c007wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192847/original/file-20171101-19883-1c007wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192847/original/file-20171101-19883-1c007wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192847/original/file-20171101-19883-1c007wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192847/original/file-20171101-19883-1c007wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The modern funeral industry.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/success?src=AsyxxvFFRQzph6vjBqJznw-2-68">Coffin image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What emerged instead was a greater fear of death and the dead body. Medical advances extended control over death as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-lincolns-embrace-of-embalming-birthed-the-american-funeral-industry-86196">funeral industry took over</a> management of the dead. Increasingly, death became hidden from public view. No longer familiar, death became threatening and horrific. </p>
<p>Today, as various <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/western-attitudes-toward-death">scholars</a> and <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/book-template.aspx?aid=4294981525&cid=15147&lastpage=4&currentpage=1">morticians</a> have observed, many in American culture lack the explicit mourning rituals that help people deal with loss.</p>
<h2>Traditions in ancient cultures</h2>
<p>In contrast, the mourning traditions of earlier cultures prescribed precise patterns of behavior that facilitated the public expression of grief and provided support for the bereaved. In addition, they emphasized continued maintenance of personal bonds with the dead.</p>
<p><a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/western-attitudes-toward-death">As Ariès explains</a>, during the Middle Ages in Europe, the death event was a public ritual. It involved specific preparations, the presence of family, friends and neighbors, as well as music, food, drinks and games. The social aspect of these customs kept death public and “tame” through the enactment of familiar ceremonies that comforted mourners.</p>
<p>Grief was expressed in an open and unrestrained way that was cathartic and communally shared, very much in contrast with the modern emphasis on controlling one’s emotions and keeping grief private. </p>
<p>In various cultures the outpouring of emotion was not only required but <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/anthropology/social-and-cultural-anthropology/celebrations-death-anthropology-mortuary-ritual-2nd-edition?format=PB&isbn=9780521423755">performed ceremonially</a>, in the form of ritualized weeping accompanied by wailing and shrieking. For example, traditions of the “death wail,” which allowed people to cry their grief aloud, have been documented among the ancient Celts. They exist today among various indigenous peoples of Africa, South America, Asia and <a href="http://sounds.bl.uk/World-and-traditional-music/Ethnographic-wax-cylinders/025M-C0080X1104XX-0100V0#_">Australia</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RMdt3rAfmgo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Song for the dead sung by two women from the Manobo-Dulangan tribe in Mindanao, Philippines.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a similar way, the traditional Irish and Scottish practices of “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04wvgpc">keening</a>,” or loudly wailing for the dead, were vocal expressions of mourning. These emotional forms of sorrow were a powerful way to give voice to the impact of individual loss on the wider community. Mourning was shared and public.</p>
<p>In fact, since antiquity and throughout parts of Europe until recently, professional female mourners were often hired to perform highly emotive <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Dangerous-Voices-Womens-Laments-and-Greek-Literature/Holst-Warhaft/p/book/9780415121651">laments at funerals</a>. </p>
<p>Such customs functioned within a larger mourning tradition to separate the deceased from the world of the living and symbolize the transition to the afterlife. </p>
<h2>Rituals of celebration</h2>
<p>Mourning rituals also celebrated the dead through carnival-like revelry. Among the ancient <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100254050">Greeks</a> and <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300217278/death-ancient-rome">Romans</a>, for example, the deceased were honored with lavish feasts and funeral games. </p>
<p>Such practices continue today in many cultures. In Ethiopia, members of the Dorze ethnic community sing and dance before, during and after funerary rites in communal ceremonies meant to defeat death and avenge the deceased. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YOpDr8yQC4w?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>In not too distant Tanzania, the burial traditions of the Nyakyusa people initially focus on wailing but then include feasts. They also require that participants <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02561751.1939.9676088">dance and flirt at the funeral</a>, confronting death with an affirmation of life.</p>
<p>Similar assertions of life in the midst of death are expressed in the example of the traditional Irish “<a href="https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/the-truth-about-the-irish-wake-lewd-songs-pranks-were-part-of-the-tradition-174087771-237533321">merry wake</a>,” a mixture of <a href="http://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/2011/0715/646810-radio-documentary-house-strictly-private-irish-wake/">mourning and celebration</a> that honors the deceased. The African-American <a href="http://www.neworleansonline.com/neworleans/multicultural/multiculturaltraditions/jazzfuneral.html">“jazz funeral”</a> processions in New Orleans also combine sadness and festivity, as the solemn parade for the deceased transforms into dance, music and a party-like atmosphere.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EG6KH905cGU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>These lively funerals are expressions of sorrow and laughter, communal catharsis and commemoration that honor the life of the departed. </p>
<h2>A way to deal with grief</h2>
<p>Grief and celebration seem like strange bedfellows at first glance, but both are emotions that overflow. The ritual practices that surround death and mourning as <a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo3637677.html">rites of passage</a> help individuals and their communities make sense of loss through a renewed focus on continuity. </p>
<p>By doing things in a culturally defined way – by performing the same acts as ancestors have done – ritual participants engage in venerated traditions to connect with something enduring and eternal. Rituals make boundaries between life and death, the <a href="http://www.hmhco.com/shop/books/The-Sacred-and-the-Profane/9780156792011">sacred and the profane</a>, memory and experience, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Ritual-Process-Structure-and-Anti-Structure/Turner-Abrahams-Harris/p/book/9780202011905">permeable</a>. The dead seem less far away and less forgotten. Death itself becomes more natural and familiar.</p>
<p>Funerary festivities such as Day of the Dead create space for this type of contemplation. As we reminisce over our own losses, that is something we could consider.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86199/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Many in the Western world lack the explicit mourning rituals that help people deal with loss. On Day of the Dead, two scholars describe ancient mourning practices.
Daniel Wojcik, Professor, English and Folklore Studies, University of Oregon
Robert Dobler, Lecturer of Folklore, Indiana University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86196
2017-10-31T02:16:52Z
2017-10-31T02:16:52Z
How Lincoln’s embrace of embalming birthed the American funeral industry
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192344/original/file-20171029-13315-3ggso9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An illustrated depiction of a scene of Lincoln lying in state.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14782342695/">Internet Archive Book Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you died 200 years ago in America, your family would wash and dress your body and place it in a bed surrounded by candles to dampen the smell of decomposition. </p>
<p>Your immediate family and friends would visit your house over the course of the next week, few needing to travel very far, paying their respects at your bedside. Before the body’s putrefaction advanced too far, the local carpenter would make a simple pine casket, and everyone would gather at the cemetery (or your own backyard, if you were a landowner) for a few words before <a href="http://walkingwithancestors.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-history-of-funeral-practices-in.html">returning you to the earth</a>. </p>
<p>You would be interred without any preservative chemicals, without being cosmetized with touch-ups like skin dyes, mouth formers or eye caps. No headstone, flowers or any of the other items we relate to a modern funeral. In essence, your demise would be respectful but without pomp. </p>
<p>Things <a href="https://theconversation.com/life-after-death-americans-are-embracing-new-ways-to-leave-their-remains-85657">have changed pretty substantially</a> since America’s early days as funeral rites have moved out of the house and into the funeral home. How did we get here and how do American traditions compare with typical practices in other countries? </p>
<p>In doing research for “Memory Picture,” an interactive website I’m building that explains the pros and cons of our interment options, I’ve discovered many intriguing details about how we memorialize death. One of the most fascinating is how the founding of the modern funeral industry can essentially be traced back to President Abraham Lincoln and his embrace of embalming. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192346/original/file-20171029-13311-1nu5e6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192346/original/file-20171029-13311-1nu5e6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192346/original/file-20171029-13311-1nu5e6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192346/original/file-20171029-13311-1nu5e6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192346/original/file-20171029-13311-1nu5e6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192346/original/file-20171029-13311-1nu5e6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192346/original/file-20171029-13311-1nu5e6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A surgeon embalms a soldier’s body during the Civil War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Embalming’s beginning</h2>
<p>The simple home funeral described above was the standard since the founding of the Republic, but the U.S. Civil War upended this tradition.</p>
<p>During the war, most bodies were left where they fell, decomposing in fields and trenches all over the South, or rolled into mass graves. Some wealthy northern families were willing to pay to have the bodies of deceased soldiers returned to them. But before the invention of refrigeration, this <a href="https://connecticuthistory.org/death-and-mourning-in-the-civil-war-era/">often became a mess</a>, as the heat and humidity would cause the body to decompose in a matter of a couple of days. </p>
<p>Updating an ancient preservation technique to solve this problem led to a seismic change in how we mourn the dead in America. Ancient Egyptian embalmings removed all internal organs and blood, leaving the body cavity to be filled with natural materials.</p>
<p>In 1838, the Frenchman <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Nicolas_Gannal">Jean Gannal</a> published “Histoire des Embaumements,” describing a process that kept the body more or less intact but replaced the body’s blood with a preservative – a technique now known as “arterial embalming.” The book was translated into English in 1840 and quickly became popular in America.</p>
<p>Catching wind of these medical advances, opportunistic Americans began performing rudimentary embalmings on the corpses of northern soldiers to preserve them for the train ride home. The most common technique involved replacing the body’s blood with arsenic and mercury (embalming eventually evolved to using variants of formaldehyde, which is still considered a carcinogen).</p>
<p>Results improved, but not on a grand scale. These were “field embalmings,” performed by nonprofessionals in makeshift tents set up next to the battlefield. Results were unpredictable, with issues involving circulation, length of preservation and overall consistency. <a href="https://americacomesalive.com/2010/08/03/wars-drive-advances/">It is estimated</a> that of the 600,000 that died in the war, 40,000 were embalmed. </p>
<p>Business was doing so well that the War Department was <a href="https://www.fredericknewspost.com/blogs/blogs_collection/guardian_of_the_artifacts/embalming-in-the-civil-war/article_6016b866-8b3c-555a-9220-0541a01a436f.html">forced to issue</a> General Order 39 to ensure only properly licensed embalmers could offer their services to mourners. But the technique was limited to the war – to make embalming part of a traditional American funeral would require Abraham Lincoln, who you might say was an early adopter. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192343/original/file-20171029-13378-pkzbh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192343/original/file-20171029-13378-pkzbh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192343/original/file-20171029-13378-pkzbh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192343/original/file-20171029-13378-pkzbh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192343/original/file-20171029-13378-pkzbh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192343/original/file-20171029-13378-pkzbh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192343/original/file-20171029-13378-pkzbh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Crowds greet Lincoln’s body in 1865 as it’s carried through Buffalo, New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lincoln-Funeral-Cortege-Buffalo-and-Erie-County-Public-Library-Buffalo-NY.jpg">Buffalo Public Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Lincoln’s ‘lifelike’ death</h2>
<p>Many prominent Civil War officers were embalmed, including the first casualty of the war, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_E._Ellsworth">Colonel Elmer Elsworth</a>, who was laid in state in the East Room of the White House at Lincoln’s request. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192543/original/file-20171031-18683-z45v7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192543/original/file-20171031-18683-z45v7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192543/original/file-20171031-18683-z45v7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192543/original/file-20171031-18683-z45v7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192543/original/file-20171031-18683-z45v7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192543/original/file-20171031-18683-z45v7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=653&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192543/original/file-20171031-18683-z45v7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=653&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192543/original/file-20171031-18683-z45v7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=653&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This image is an unknown artist’s conception of what Lincoln’s face looked like lying in state in New York’s City Hall based on an actual photograph taken by J. Gurney at the time of his death in 1865.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.lincolncollection.org/collection/creator-author/item/?cs=J&creator=J.+Gurney+%26+Son&item=45021">The Lincoln Collection</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Upon the death of Lincoln’s 11-year-old son Willie in 1862, <a href="http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/education/williedeath.htm">he had the boy’s body embalmed</a>. When the president was assassinated three years later, the same doctor embalmed Lincoln in preparation for a “funeral train” that paraded his body back to his final resting place in Springfield, Illinois. Nothing like this had happened for any president previously, or since, and the funeral procession left an indelible effect on those who attended it. Most visitors waited in line for hours to parade by Lincoln’s open casket, usually set up in a State House or rotunda after being unloaded from the train. </p>
<p>Lincoln’s appearance early in the trip was apparently so lifelike that mourners often reached out to touch his face, but the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/17/the-grand-yet-ghoulish-odyssey-of-abraham-lincolns-corpse/?utm_term=.6c8c4749fe95">quality of the preservation faded</a> over the length of the three-week journey. William Cullen Bryant, editor of The New York Evening Post, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/17/the-grand-yet-ghoulish-odyssey-of-abraham-lincolns-corpse/?utm_term=.7afcb1f10d7a">remarked</a> that after a lengthy viewing in Manhattan, “the genial, kindly face of Abraham Lincoln” became “a ghastly shadow.”</p>
<p>This was the first time most Americans saw an embalmed body, and it quickly became a national sensation. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192353/original/file-20171029-13309-edbqy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192353/original/file-20171029-13309-edbqy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192353/original/file-20171029-13309-edbqy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192353/original/file-20171029-13309-edbqy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192353/original/file-20171029-13309-edbqy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192353/original/file-20171029-13309-edbqy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192353/original/file-20171029-13309-edbqy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mortuary science students simulate cleaning the fingernails of a peer standing in for a corpse. Death, once a family affair, is now handled by professionals.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/John Hayes</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Death becomes professionalized</h2>
<p>The public was painfully aware of death, with an average life expectancy of around 45 years (almost <a href="http://passionforthepast.blogspot.com/2011/08/average-life-expectancy-myth.html">entirely</a> due to an <a href="https://eh.net/encyclopedia/fertility-and-mortality-in-the-united-states/">infant mortality rate</a> higher than anywhere on Earth today). Seeing a corpse that exhibited lifelike color and less rigid features made a strong impression. </p>
<p>While we do not have statistics on the increase in embalmings during this time, there is ample <a href="https://connecticuthistory.org/death-and-mourning-in-the-civil-war-era/">evidence</a> that the Civil War had a profound effect on how Americans treated death. Victorian mourning traditions <a href="https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Mourning_During_the_Civil_War">gave way</a> to funeral homes and hearses. Local carpenters and taxi services began offering funerary services, and undertakers earned “certificates of training” from <a href="https://americacomesalive.com/2010/08/03/wars-drive-advances/">embalming fluid salesmen</a>. Eventually, every American could be embalmed, as most are today. </p>
<p></p><hr><p></p>
<p><iframe id="2X6hK" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/2X6hK/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p></p><hr><p></p>
<p>There was one potent caveat: Families could no longer bury their own. More was needed than the assistance of friends and family to inter a corpse. Death was becoming professionalized, its mechanisms increasingly out of the hands of typical Americans. And as a result, the cost of burying the dead soared. The median cost of a funeral and burial, including a vault to enclose the casket, <a href="http://www.nfda.org/news/media-center/nfda-news-releases/id/840/nfda-releases-results-of-2015-member-general-price-list-survey">reached US$8,508</a> in 2014, up from about $2,700 three decades ago. </p>
<p>Thus was born the American funeral industry, with embalming as its cornerstone, as families ceded control of their loved ones’ bodies to a funeral director. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192350/original/file-20171029-13367-7azapw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192350/original/file-20171029-13367-7azapw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192350/original/file-20171029-13367-7azapw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192350/original/file-20171029-13367-7azapw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192350/original/file-20171029-13367-7azapw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192350/original/file-20171029-13367-7azapw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192350/original/file-20171029-13367-7azapw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Countries in Europe are struggling to deal with overcrowding in cemeteries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">pxl.store/Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Differences with other cultures</h2>
<p>When people talk of a “traditional” American funeral today, they usually refer to a cosmetized, embalmed body, presented in a viewing before being interred in a cemetery. </p>
<p>This unique approach to interment is unlike death rites anywhere else in the world, and no other country in the world embalms their dead at a rate even approaching that of the U.S. Funeral tradition involves the intersection of culture, law and religion, a recipe that makes for very different outcomes across the globe. </p>
<p>In Japan, <a href="https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/10/daily-chart-16">nearly everyone is cremated</a>. The cultural traditions bound to the ceremony, which include family members <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_funeral">passing cremated bone remains to each other using chopsticks</a>, predate the Civil War. </p>
<p>In Germany, where cremations are also <a href="https://www.angloinfo.com/how-to/germany/healthcare/death-dying">increasingly popular</a>, the law requires that bodies be interred in the ground – even cremated remains –including the purchase of a coffin and a land plot. This has led to “<a href="https://www.german-way.com/history-and-culture/germany/the-german-way-of-death-funerals/">corpse tourism</a>,” in which cremation is outsourced to a neighboring country and the body shipped back to Germany.</p>
<p>Other European countries struggle to deal with limited land resources for burial, with countries such as Greece requiring that <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2011/02/rentagrave.html">graves are “recycled”</a> every three years. </p>
<p>In Tunisia, as with all majority Muslim countries, nearly everyone is interred in the ground within 24 hours, in a cloth shroud and without chemical embalming. This is in accordance with Islamic scripture. It also bears close resemblance to the original interment of Americans before the Civil War. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192351/original/file-20171029-13309-1usxia3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192351/original/file-20171029-13309-1usxia3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192351/original/file-20171029-13309-1usxia3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192351/original/file-20171029-13309-1usxia3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192351/original/file-20171029-13309-1usxia3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192351/original/file-20171029-13309-1usxia3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192351/original/file-20171029-13309-1usxia3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It’s never too soon to prepare for your final resting place.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Martin Christopher Parker/Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Time to make plans</h2>
<p>While American funerals are typically more expensive than in other countries, U.S. citizens <a href="https://theconversation.com/life-after-death-americans-are-embracing-new-ways-to-leave-their-remains-85657">enjoy many more options</a> – and can even choose a simple Muslim-style interment. The key thing is to plan ahead by thinking critically about how you want yourself or your loved ones interred. </p>
<p>If you were to die today, chances are you would meet your demise at the hospital. Your family would be asked if they had an “advanced directive” regarding “disposition of remains.” In the absence of clear guidelines, your next of kin would most likely sign away the rights to your body to a local funeral parlor that will encourage them to have the body embalmed for a viewing and burial. </p>
<p>You would be interred with the blood and organs of your body replaced with carcinogenic preservative liquids, heavily cosmetized to hide the signs of the the embalming surgery that rendered you this way. Your embalmed body would be placed in an airtight casket, itself placed inside a concrete vault in the ground.</p>
<p>And you may wish for it to be that way. But if you prefer anything else, you must make your wishes known. To say “I don’t care, I’ll be dead” places an undue burden on your family, which is already mourning your loss.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86196/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Walsh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Dying in America 200 years ago was a simply family affair, devoid of pomp. The US Civil War and Abraham Lincoln’s embrace of embalming changed everything.
Brian Walsh, Assistant Professor of Communications, Elon University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85657
2017-10-27T10:21:14Z
2017-10-27T10:21:14Z
Life after death: Americans are embracing new ways to leave their remains
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192140/original/file-20171026-13298-1evqmha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Green burials' that use biodegradable coffins or lessen the environmental impact in other ways are on the rise. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Michael Hill</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What do you want to happen to your remains after you die? </p>
<p>For the past century, most Americans have accepted a limited set of options without question. And discussions of death and funeral plans <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/05/what-good-is-thinking-about-death/394151/">have been taboo</a>.</p>
<p>That is changing. As a scholar of funeral and cemetery law, I’ve discovered that Americans are becoming more willing to have a conversation about their own mortality and what comes next and embrace new funeral and burial practices. </p>
<p>Baby boomers are insisting upon more control over their funeral and disposition so that their choices after death match their values in life. And businesses are following suit, offering new ways to memorialize and dispose of the dead.</p>
<p>While some options such as <a href="http://www.talkdeath.com/but-why-cant-i-have-a-tibetan-sky-burial/">Tibetan sky burial</a> – leaving human remains to be picked clean by vultures – and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQJOs8rm6xM">“Viking” burial via flaming boat</a> – familiar to “Game of Thrones” fans – remain off limits in the U.S., laws are changing to allow a growing variety of practices.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/reSR6jTZCc8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The funeral pyre hasn’t yet received approval for use in the U.S.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘The American Way of Death’</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192138/original/file-20171026-13311-dk00tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192138/original/file-20171026-13311-dk00tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192138/original/file-20171026-13311-dk00tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192138/original/file-20171026-13311-dk00tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192138/original/file-20171026-13311-dk00tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192138/original/file-20171026-13311-dk00tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192138/original/file-20171026-13311-dk00tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192138/original/file-20171026-13311-dk00tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Author, journalist and civil rights activist Jessica Mitford is shown during an interview at the Boston Public Garden in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1979.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Liss</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1963, English journalist and activist <a href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160721-how-jessica-mitford-changed-our-ideas-about-death">Jessica Mitford</a> published “<a href="https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/death/fond-farewells">The American Way of Death</a>,” in which she described the leading method of disposing of human remains in the United States, still in use today. </p>
<p>She wrote that human remains are temporarily preserved by replacing blood with a formaldehyde-based embalming fluid shortly after death, placed in a decorative wood or metal casket, displayed to family and friends at the funeral home and buried within a concrete or steel vault in a grave, perpetually dedicated and marked with a tombstone. </p>
<p>Mitford called this “absolutely weird” and argued that it had been invented by the American funeral industry, which emerged at the turn of the 20th century. As she <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1963/06/the-undertakers-racket/305318/">wrote in The Atlantic</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Foreigners are astonished to learn that almost all Americans are embalmed and publicly displayed after death. The practice is unheard of outside the United States and Canada.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nearly all Americans who died from the 1930s, when embalming became well-established, through the 1990s were disposed of in this manner. </p>
<p>And it’s neither cheap or good for the environment. The <a href="http://www.nfda.org/news/media-center/nfda-news-releases/id/840/nfda-releases-results-of-2015-member-general-price-list-survey">median cost of a funeral and burial</a>, including a vault to enclose the casket, was US$8,508 in 2014. Including the cost of the burial plot, the fee for opening and closing the grave and the tombstone easily brings the total cost to $11,000 or more. </p>
<p>This method also consumes a great deal of natural resources. Each year, <a href="http://www.talkdeath.com/environmental-impact-funerals-infographic/">we bury</a> 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde-based embalming fluid, 115 million tons of steel, 2.3 billion tons of concrete and enough wood to build 4.6 million single-family homes.</p>
<p>Mitford’s book <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1996/07/24/arts/jessica-mitford-incisive-critic-american-ways-britishupbringing-dies-78.html">influenced generations of Americans</a>, beginning with the baby boomers, to question this type of funeral and burial. As a result, demand for alternatives such as home funerals and green burials have increased significantly. The most common reasons cited are a desire to connect with and honor their loved ones in a more meaningful way, and interest in lower-cost, less environmentally damaging choices.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192137/original/file-20171026-13331-1oyles2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192137/original/file-20171026-13331-1oyles2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192137/original/file-20171026-13331-1oyles2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192137/original/file-20171026-13331-1oyles2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192137/original/file-20171026-13331-1oyles2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192137/original/file-20171026-13331-1oyles2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192137/original/file-20171026-13331-1oyles2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Traditional funerals are becoming less common as more Americans look for cheaper, greener options.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alzbeta/Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The rise of cremation</h2>
<p>The most radical change to how Americans handle their remains has been the rising popularity of cremation by fire. Cremation is less expensive than burial and, although it consumes fossil fuels, is widely perceived to be better for the environment than burial in a casket and vault. </p>
<p>Although cremation became legal in a handful of states in the 1870s and 1880s, its usage in the U.S. remained in single digits for another century. After steadily rising since the 1980s, cremation was the disposition method of choice for <a href="https://www.deathcarestudies.com/2017/09/cremation-rate-update/">nearly half</a> of all deaths in the U.S. in 2015. Cremation is most popular in urban areas, where the cost of burial can be quite high, in states with a lot of people born in other ones and among those who do not identify with a particular religious faith. </p>
<p>Residents of western states like Nevada, Washington and Oregon opt for cremation the most, with rates as high as 76 percent. Mississippi, Alabama and Kentucky have the lowest rates, at less than a quarter of all burials. The National Funeral Directors Association <a href="https://www.deathcarestudies.com/2017/09/cremation-rate-update/">projects</a> that by 2030 the nationwide cremation rate will reach 71 percent. </p>
<p>Cremation’s dramatic rise is part of a huge shift in American funerary practices away from burial and the ritual of embalming the dead, which is not required by law in any state but which most funeral homes require in order to have a visitation. In 2017, a survey of the personal preferences of Americans aged 40 and over <a href="http://www.nfda.org/news/media-center/nfda-news-releases/id/2419/nfda-consumer-survey-funeral-planning-not-a-priority-for-americans">found</a> that more than half preferred cremation. <a href="https://www.deathcarestudies.com/2017/10/gleaned-from-the-2017-nfda-consumer-awareness-and-preferences-survey-part-1-funeral-consumers-need-education/">Only 14 percent</a> of those respondents said they would like to have a full funeral service with viewing and visitation prior to cremation, down from 27 percent as recently as 2015. </p>
<p>Part of the reason for that shift is cost. In 2014, the <a href="http://www.nfda.org/news/media-center/nfda-news-releases/id/840/nfda-releases-results-of-2015-member-general-price-list-survey">median cost of a funeral with viewing and cremation</a> was $6,078. In contrast, a “direct cremation,” which does not include embalming or a viewing, <a href="https://funerals.org/?consumers=cremation-explained-answers-frequently-asked-questions">can typically be purchased for $700 to $1,200</a>. </p>
<p>Cremated remains can be buried in a cemetery or stored in an urn on the mantle, but businesses also offer a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/13-ways-to-use-your-ashes-to-become-something-awesome-2016-6?r=UK&IR=T/#-3">bewildering range of options</a> for incorporating ashes into objects like glass paperweights, jewelry and even vinyl records.</p>
<p>And while <a href="https://www.deathcarestudies.com/2017/10/gleaned-from-the-2017-nfda-consumer-awareness-and-preferences-survey-part-1-funeral-consumers-need-education/">40 percent of respondents</a> to the 2017 survey associate a cremation with a memorial service, Americans are increasingly holding those services at religious institutions and nontraditional locations like parks, museums and even at home. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192136/original/file-20171026-13378-6p9ybu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192136/original/file-20171026-13378-6p9ybu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192136/original/file-20171026-13378-6p9ybu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192136/original/file-20171026-13378-6p9ybu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192136/original/file-20171026-13378-6p9ybu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192136/original/file-20171026-13378-6p9ybu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192136/original/file-20171026-13378-6p9ybu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As the number of cremations has soared, so too has the variety of urns. This one sold at a mall in Glendale, California, features a Dodgers baseball theme.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Going green</h2>
<p>Another trend is finding greener alternatives to both the traditional burial and cremation. </p>
<p>The 2017 survey found that 54 percent of respondents were interested in green options. Compare this with a <a href="https://www.aarp.org/money/estate-planning/info-2007/funeral_survey.html">2007 survey of those aged 50 or higher</a> by AARP which found that only 21 percent were interested in a more environmentally friendly burial. </p>
<p>One example of this is a new method of disposing of human remains called <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/business/flameless-cremation.html">alkaline hydrolysis</a>, which involves using water and a salt-based solution to dissolve human remains. Often referred as “water cremation,” it’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbQTACCNgcg">preferred by many as a greener alternative</a> to cremation by fire, which consumes fossil fuels. Most funeral homes that offer both methods of cremation charge the same price.</p>
<p>The alkaline hydrolysis process results in a sterile liquid and bone fragments that are reduced to “ash” and returned to the family. Although most Americans are unfamiliar with the process, funeral directors that have adopted it generally report that families prefer it to cremation by fire. <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/eco-friendly-californians-can-have-dead-bodies-liquefied-burial-method-689055">California recently became the 15th state</a> to legalize it.</p>
<h2>Going home</h2>
<p>A rising number of families are also interested in so-called “<a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-surprising-satisfactions-of-a-home-funeral-53172008/">home funerals</a>,” in which the remains are cleaned and prepared for disposition at home by the family, religious community or friends. Home funerals are followed by cremation, or burial in a family cemetery, a traditional cemetery or a green cemetery.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192134/original/file-20171026-13309-ctqjdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192134/original/file-20171026-13309-ctqjdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192134/original/file-20171026-13309-ctqjdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192134/original/file-20171026-13309-ctqjdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192134/original/file-20171026-13309-ctqjdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192134/original/file-20171026-13309-ctqjdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192134/original/file-20171026-13309-ctqjdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192134/original/file-20171026-13309-ctqjdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">More Americans are being buried in natural burial grounds, such as this one in Rhinebeck, New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Michael Hill</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Assisted by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/fashion/baby-boomers-are-drawn-to-green-and-eco-friendly-funerals.html?_r=0">funeral directors</a> or educated by <a href="http://homefuneralalliance.org/">home funeral guides</a>, families that choose home funerals are returning to a set of practices that <a href="https://funerals.org/product/final-rights-reclaiming-the-american-way-of-death/">predate the modern funeral industry.</a> </p>
<p>Proponents say that caring for remains at home is a better way of honoring the relationship between the living and the dead. Home funerals are also seen as more environmentally friendly since remains are temporarily preserved through the use of dry ice rather than formaldehyde-based embalming fluid. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://greenburialcouncil.org/">Green Burial Council</a> says rejecting embalming is one way to go green. Another is to choose to have remains interred or cremated in a fabric shroud or biodegradable casket rather than a casket made from nonsustainable hardwoods or metal. The council promotes standards for green funeral products and certifies green funeral homes and burial grounds. More than 300 providers are currently certified in 41 states and six Canadian provinces. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="http://sleepyhollowcemetery.org/burial-options/natural-burial-grounds/">Sleepy Hollow Cemetery,</a> the historic New York cemetery made famous by Washington Irving, is a certified “hybrid” cemetery because it has reserved a portion of its grounds for green burials: no embalming, no vaults and no caskets unless they are biodegradable – the body often goes straight into the ground with just a simple wrapping.</p>
<p>Clearly Americans are pushing the “traditional” boundaries of how to memorialize their loved ones and dispose of their remains. While I wouldn’t hold out hope that Americans will be able to choose Viking- or Tibetan-style burials anytime soon, you never know.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85657/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tanya D. Marsh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Although ‘Game of Thrones’ -style funeral pyres are still out of bounds, Americans are increasingly turning to cheaper, greener and more meaningful ways to dispose of their loved ones’ bodies.
Tanya D. Marsh, Professor of Law, Wake Forest University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/83616
2017-09-12T13:36:14Z
2017-09-12T13:36:14Z
The dead and dying have been ignored by politicians for too long
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185648/original/file-20170912-19546-2fxrov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An issue ignored.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/misty-graveyard-550119640?src=dokHff1voo2KTK7LKE_jsA-1-0">Shutterstock/Hurworth</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Death is a difficult subject. We don’t like to think about it, talk about it, plan for it or campaign about it. Widely acknowledged to be as inevitable as taxes, it is tax, not death, which gets all the political attention. </p>
<p>In the UK, policy and services associated with death, dying and bereavement have been allowed to drift for decades. This is partly down to the country’s <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/overviewoftheukpopulation/july2017">ageing population</a> – many members of different generations have no firsthand experience of death. They have not had to deal with its emotional, social, practical and financial consequences – unlike those who remember wartime Britain, for example. </p>
<p>This knowledge gap translates into a serious lack of support for those who are dying or bereaved. There simply has not been the high pressure demand to force change.</p>
<p>A newly published brief, <a href="http://www.bath.ac.uk/publications/death-dying-and-devolution/">Death, Dying and Devolution</a>, from the Institute for Policy Research, shows there is much to do. Improvements are urgently required to ensure sustainable burial and cremation provision, to better support older bereaved people and carers, to conserve historic cemeteries, and to properly fund children’s’ palliative care.</p>
<p>The review also demonstrates the need for systematic data generation to understand trends across nations and regions – to encourage practical improvements which are underpinned by robust evidence and analysis.</p>
<p>Over 500,000 people <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths">die in the UK</a> every year. This number is predicted to rise by around 15-20% in the next two decades. With at least four people estimated to be affected by every death, the number of living people feeling the impact every year will rise to over 3m.</p>
<p>If trends continue, around half of these 600,000 or so deaths will occur in hospitals, and a quarter in care homes. Both kinds of establishment are already <a href="https://theconversation.com/tripadvisor-helps-us-choose-hotels-and-restaurants-so-why-not-where-we-end-our-days-81529">showing strain</a> when it comes to providing high quality, accessible end of life care. </p>
<p>At the same time, the number of children surviving childbirth and living with life threatening and life limiting conditions continues to rise. This is a situation which necessitates well resourced end-of-life care and support for their families. </p>
<p>The brief highlights <a href="http://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/uk-ill-prepared-for-death-and-dying-warns-ipr-policy-brief/">more worrying statistics</a>: a further 1m people are providing care for someone with terminal illness, but only one in six employers have policies in place to support them. After a death, 58% of people bereaved of a partner report lower levels of household or disposable income. Around one in ten deaths results in claims to the state for financial support for the funeral.</p>
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<p>Given the number of people affected, it seems astonishing that the neglect of public policy towards death has been allowed to continue. One thing is for sure – when it comes to raising the profile of death as a public policy issue, there is a real need for those who are dying and bereaved to be given opportunity to speak in an area that is not combative, and to be supported by others petitioning on their behalf. </p>
<p>It can be challenging to campaign on matters of death. After all, the dead cannot speak, and those who are dying or bereaved have other pressing concerns, or are simply exhausted. <a href="http://www.bath.ac.uk/sps/staff/kate-woodthorpe/">Previous research</a> I have undertaken indicates that many people simply do not want to engage with death for fear of tempting fate, leading to a general lack of emotional, practical and financial preparation for the inevitable. Two thirds of the UK population <a href="https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/news/press-releases/britons-with-no-will-should-act-fast-warns-law-society/">do not have a will</a>.</p>
<h2>Last rights</h2>
<p>All of this points to a clear need for policymakers, the third sector and commercial organisations to collectively provide services and policies that are coherent, agile, responsive and future proofed, to ensure that they meet the varying demands of different demographic groups. </p>
<p>With the anticipated rise in the death rate, it must be hoped that the current hands-off approach will no longer be the <em>de facto</em> norm within political circles. </p>
<p>Policy needs to make use of expertise and evidence from across all sectors, to ensure that dying and bereaved people experience continuous, well-resourced services at such a difficult time of life. </p>
<p>Disorganised or under-resourced end of life care, a lack of support for families and bereaved people, and issues with funeral costs and burial and cremation provision should not be compounding an already challenging time. </p>
<p>It is surely within the grasp of organisations and policymakers to ensure that they do not contribute to the plight of people at their most vulnerable. And the time to act is now – before services come under ever greater demand.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83616/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Woodthorpe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Millions of people are affected by death and dying – but politicians don’t want to talk about it.
Kate Woodthorpe, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Bath
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/78031
2017-05-21T20:17:56Z
2017-05-21T20:17:56Z
Consumers lose out in funeral industry lacking competition and regulation: study
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170073/original/file-20170519-12266-mg2we5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A recent study has highlighted the need for tighter regulation within the funeral industry.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Consumers are often unnecessarily upsold on funerals due to a lack of information and real competition, in an industry that is fairly unregulated, new <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/business/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/310140/Its_Your_Funeral_Report.pdf">research</a> finds. </p>
<p>We studied data on the size, scope and nature of the funeral industry. We also examined the regulatory environment in which it operates, looking at what factors drive prices in this A$1 billion industry. We conducted a comprehensive review of online funeral businesses and used a telephone survey to collect data. </p>
<p>At some point, everyone will engage with the funeral industry either as a consumer or a beneficiary of its services. The funeral industry has a business model that relies on bundling three aspects of death: ceremony, disposal and memorialisation. </p>
<p>Our research finds, accessing these services is more often than not driven by circumstance than real consumer choice. This is largely because most deaths occur in an institution (hospital, aged care facility, nursing home) and the social stigma surrounding dealing with the dead. This creates an opportunity for funeral directors to add a significant service fee and mark-up on coffins. </p>
<h2>Regulation and prices in the funeral industry</h2>
<p>Despite several government <a href="http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/images/stories/committees/fcdc/inquiries/55th/fi/response/FCDC_FI_Govt_Resp.pdf">inquiries</a> into the industry, professional associations, like the The Australian Funeral Directors Association (AFDA), have argued that current self regulatory arrangements are sufficient and intervention will likely only further increase costs to consumers.</p>
<p>But there’s still significant disparity in legislation and regulations surrounding funeral services between states, our study shows. </p>
<p>For example, each state and territory has its own regulations regarding the disposal of dead bodies which are not all uniform and some date back to 1929. But in terms of transporting those bodies, only five of the eight states and territories have regulations. NSW is the most stringent and in WA the regulation only covers transporting when death occurs while on inter-hospital transfer. Because consumers are likely to only be infrequently confronted with these regulations it can cause some confusion.</p>
<p>There’s also variations in tenure for burial plots. Even though perpetual tenure is available, some expensive funeral plots in NSW or Victoria only give consumers the right for 25 years. After that someone will have pay to renew the tenure or the plot might be reused through a method called “lift and deepen”.</p>
<p>In terms of pricing of services, we conducted a survey of more than 150 funeral product providers, both online and via telephone. </p>
<p>In our survey we asked about two standard products. A direct committal whereby the body is taken directly from its location to be cremated in an appropriate receptacle. The other product we asked about was an essential service or “basic” funeral. </p>
<p>The basic funeral is regulated in some states (i.e. in NSW), this means funeral directors have to offer this product and give a breakdown of each item provided in the service. These two products do not generally include extras such as death notices or flowers, often included as hidden charges. These extras drive funeral prices toward the upper end of the <a href="https://www.moneysmart.gov.au/life-events-and-you/over-55s/paying-for-your-funeral">reported range of between A$4,000 to A$15,000</a>. </p>
<p>However, the two items that take up the largest proportion of the price of a funeral are the funeral director’s service fee and the coffin or casket. The funeral director’s service fee covers transporting and preparing the body, organising the funeral service and regulatory requirements, which accounts for nearly 40% of the price on average. </p>
<p>Mark-ups on coffins and caskets are commonly between 300% and 500% and have been reported up to 1000%. These prices generally represent approximately 30% of the price of a funeral.</p>
<p>Our study found that a direct committal including cremation would cost between A$1200 and A$6500 with an average of price of A$2755. When it came to the basic or essential services funeral the cost ranged from A$2440 to A$9000 with an average price of A$4902. </p>
<p>Two key factors contributed to differences in prices: whether the funeral was provided by one of the brands owned by the large listed corporation and whether the operator had prices online. If the operator did advertise prices online, consumers were likely to save somewhere between A$1000 and A$1500 for the same product. Most well-known funeral brands in Australia do not provide prices online.</p>
<p>The industry in Australia is dominated by one listed company, InvoCare, which operates under recognisable brand names such as White Lady Funerals and Simplicity Funerals. It enjoys a 40% market share and reportedly up to 80% on Australia’s profitable east coast.</p>
<p>Collecting data was made difficult by the refusal of many operators to discuss prices or return calls without an actual death to provide services to. In many cases we were redirected to the pre-need funeral salesperson.</p>
<p>As part of our study we also reviewed pre-need (pre-paid) funerals and funeral insurance. Pre-need funerals have been on the agenda of <a href="https://www.commerce.wa.gov.au/sites/default/files/atoms/files/regulationofprepaidfuneralsfinalreportnovember2007.pdf">several government inquiries</a> and <a href="https://www.commerce.wa.gov.au/sites/default/files/atoms/files/1consultationrisprepaidfunerals.pdf">reviews</a> due to complaints of upselling to relatives or contracts no longer being able to cover costs. This has resulted in significantly increased regulation in the form of formal contracts and requirements regarding investment of funds in most jurisdictions. </p>
<p>Funeral insurance also confuses consumers who do not understand it is just low value life insurance, where premiums can easily outstrip funeral costs very quickly. According to <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/wealth/dig-deep-before-buying-funeral-insurance-plan/news-story/77c20bdd4c9d9c3b79ac2388fec6762d">a 2010 study by company Rice Warner</a>, your premium over time could amount to more than A$85,000 for only A$6,000 of cover if you took out insurance at age 60 and lived until 90. Approximately 750,000 Australians are covered by a funeral insurance policy.</p>
<p>Our research shows regulation of funeral product providers needs to be improved and made consistent across all areas of Australia. This will improve consumer understanding and choice, ensuring funeral providers offer consumers products that fit their needs.</p>
<p>Product information standards also need to be developed for increased price transparency and disclosure around pre-need funeral contracts and insurance, to safeguard consumers from predatory marketing practices.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78031/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sandra van der Laan receives funding from CPA Australia.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lee Moerman receives funding from CPA Australia</span></em></p>
Regulation of funeral products needs to be consistent to improve consumer understanding and choice.
Sandra van der Laan, Professor of Accounting, University of Sydney
Lee Moerman, Associate Professor, University of Wollongong
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.