The Whole Death Catalog
Page 1
ALSO BY HAROLD SCHECHTER
NONFICTION:
The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (with David Everitt)
Bestial: The Savage Trail of a True American Monster
Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America’s Most Fiendish Killer
Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America’s First Serial Killer
Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original “Psycho”
The Devil’s Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and the Trial that Ushered in the Twentieth Century
Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer
Fiend: The Shocking True Story of America’s Youngest Serial Killer
Savage Pastimes: A Cultural History of Violent Entertainment
The Serial Killer Files: The Who, What, Where, How, and Why of the World’s Most Terrifying Murderers
FICTION:
Nevermore
Outcry
The Hum Bug
The Mask of Red Death
The Tell-Tale Corpse
In loving memory of Sarah and Isadore Wasserman
Contents
INTRODUCTION
1 DEATH: Can’t Live with It, Can’t Live Without It
Is Death Necessary?
Death Across Cultures
Philippe Ariès and Western Attitudes Toward Death
Geoffrey Gorer and “The Pornography of Death”
The Good and Bad News About Immortality
America: Paradise Regained?
“The Wild Honeysuckle”
The Fellow in the Bright Nightgown
Death Fear
The Evil Dead
Death Anxiety Scale
Never Say Die
“Timor Mortis Conturbat Me”
I ♥ Death
Agony to Extinction: The Death Process
How Do You Know When You’re Dead?
Our Bodies, Our Deaths
Putrefaction: A Handy Guide
“Ghastly Gropings in the Decay of Graves”
What a Way to Go
A Grim Fairy Tale
2 BE PREPARED
“The Good Death”: Achievable Goal or Contradiction in Terms?
Mortuary Hall of Fame: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Ars Moriendi
Death at the Dinner Table: Talking About the Inevitable
Did Lincoln Dream of His Own Death?
Wills: Last and Living
“Who Gets Grandmas Yellow Pie Plate?”
Wacky Wills
Tending to the Terminally Ill
“Deathing”
Quality of Death: The Hospice Experience
Death Foretold
What to Do When Someone Dies
Death Certificates
“Not So Fast, Johnson”: The Dos and Don’ts of Death Notification
The Right to Die
Famous Last Words
3 FUNERAL FACTS
Burial: It’s Only Human
Ritual Burials: So Easy Even a Caveman Could Do It
The Wacky World of Funeral Customs
God Is in the Details: Religion and Burial
A Brief History of the American Funeral Industry: Making a Big Production of Death
Funeral Favors
It’s a Tough Job but Someone’s Got to Do It
From Furniture Maker to Undertaker
NFDA
The Funeral Home Experience
Funeralspeak
Mortuary Hall of Fame: Howard Raether
Step into My Parlor
Pre-need: Pro or Con?
GPL
SCI: The 800-Pound Funeral Gorilla
Coffins and Caskets: What’s the Difference?
Coffins for the Big-Boned
Unsung Heroes of the Death Industry: Almond Fisk
DIY Coffins
Rent-a-Casket
Kool Koffins
A Brief History of Embalming
Thomas Holmes
Equal-Opportunity Embalming
Unsung Heroes of the Death Industry: Roy F. McCampbell
Embalming: Don’t Try This at Home
How to Beat the High Cost of Embalming (Hint: Skip It)
American Hearses: Going in Style
Hearses for the Harley Crowd
Hearse Clubs: For Connoisseurs of Fine Vintage Funeral Coaches
Funerals: The Consumer’s Last Rights
FCA, USA
Scams and What to Do About Them
Funerals for the YouTube Age
Bereavement Fares
A Meal to Die For
Eat, Drink, and Be Buried
Eulogies
Wake Me When It’s Over
Oh, and Never Ever Wear New Shoes to a Funeral
Hand of Glory
Living Funerals
The Dead Beat
Greetings from the Grave
Obit for an Obituarist
4 GRAVE MATTERS
From Mass Grave to Memorial Park: The Rise of the Modern Cemetery
Take Me Out to the Graveyard
Ten Cemeteries to See Before You Die
Legends of Père Lachaise
The Only Travel Book You’ll Ever Need (Assuming You Spend All Your Vacation Time Visiting Cemeteries)
Cemetery Shopping Tips
The Ultimate Cemetery Locator
Gravedigging: A Dying Art
Written in Stone
Stone Love
Finally! A Magazine Addressed to the Needs of Taphophiles
The Tombstone of Tomorrow—Today
Buried Alive
The Lebenswecker: If This Doesn’t Wake You Up, Nothing Will
“One Summer Night”
The Undead: Fact or Fiction?
Pet Cemeteries
Gladstone, Michigan: Pet Casket Capital of the World
In Memoriam: Fluffy
Corpse-Napping: Ransoming the Dead
Burke and Hare: Making a Killing from Corpses
Digging Up the Goods
Necrophilia
“The Unquiet Grave”
5 CREMATION, CRYONICS, AND OTHER POSTMORTEM POSSIBILITIES
To Burn or Not to Burn?
Cremation: Then and Now
CANA
Ashes to Art
The Perfect Final Resting Place for Snack Lovers
Fly Me to the Moon
Sleeping with the Fishes
Ashes Aweigh
The Eternal Alumni Club
Hair Today, Memorial Gemstone Tomorrow
Keith, Coke, and Funerary Cannibalism
Cryonic Preservation: Cooling Your Heels (Along with the Rest of Your Anatomy) for a Few Millennia
Ted Williams: Dead Head
Green Burials
Ecopods: Designer Coffins for the Save-the-Earth Crowd
How to Make a Mummy
You, Too, Can Be a Mummy (and So Can Fido)
100 Percent All-Natural Mummies
6 LOSS AND HOPE
The Hour of Lead
Grief and Mourning
Dr. Lindemann and the Inferno
Condolence Letters
Grief Dreams
The Victorians: Fetishists of Death
Widow’s Wear
Hairwork Jewelry
Hold That Pose
Victorian Postmortem Photography: A How-to Guide
Widow Sacrifice
When Grief Is a Relief
Grief Goodies
Where Do the Gone Things Go? Children and Death
“In Childhood”
Kids and Pet Loss
Death Comes to Mr. Rogers’s Neighborhood
APLB
The Undiscovered Country: Where Do We Go from Here?
“The Indian Buryin
g Ground”
Heaven as Home
The Corpse Brides
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
The Near-Death Scenario
7 DEATH CAN BE FUN!
Death in the Movies
Death Lit 101
Deaths Poet Laureate
Deaths Playlist
A Death Song That Could Make Even John Wayne Cry
Lullabies: Ditties of Death
Six Feet Under: Must-See TV for Morticians
Magazines You Are Unlikely to Find in Your Doctors Waiting Room
Sick Jokes
“The Hearse Song”
Memento Mori
Memento Mori Calendars
Days of the Dead
Strange but True
Death: King of Terrors or Really Fun Hobby?
Bluelips: Your One-Stop Online Shopping Site for Those Hard-to-Find Mortuary Novelty Items
Build-a-Corpse: Fun for the Whole Family!
Mortuary Museums
Death Ed
And Following Our Midafternoon Séance, There’ll Be Lanyard Braiding at the Arts and Crafts Center
Cemetery Fun
Love and Death
The Bride Wore Black
The Last Word
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Introduction
Here’s some good news and bad news about personal longevity. Scientists confidently assert that it is entirely possible for a human being to enjoy a robust and active life until at least two hundred years of age. This can be accomplished by, among other things, employing atom-size nanobots to repair cellular damage at the molecular level, exchanging worn-out internal organs for bionic replacements, upgrading the nervous system with a degeneration-proof network of fiber optics, and creating artificial muscle with ultrathin synthetic filaments.
The bad news is that these and other life-prolonging technologies will not be generally available until roughly the year 2108. Which means that everyone now reading this book (as well as, tragically the person writing it) will be long dead.
Needless to say this is a bitter pill to swallow, particularly if you happen to belong to the generation that once hoped they’d die before they got old and now fervently pray they’ll live long enough to enjoy the full benefits of their AARP memberships. Having grown up in the postwar years—a genuinely golden age in U.S. history (despite a few pesky concerns such as the ever-present threat of nuclear Armageddon)—baby boomers have always taken it for granted that they were blessed with unusually good fortune: born into the best of all possible worlds. To think that the distant future holds a significantly better one—a world in which, thanks to the wonders of biotechnology, death can be put on indefinite hold—really rankles.
Still, if we can’t extend our happily self-indulgent lives forever, we can at least go out in style. One thing you can say about us boomers—we’re a trendsetting generation. Not to mention a supremely narcissistic one. For a half century, whatever’s been happening to us at the moment has clearly been the most important thing in the world. Every phase of life we’ve passed through—from TV-addicted childhood to Woodstockian youth to thirtysomething yuppiedom to Botoxenhanced middle age—has produced its own cultural craze. Now, with the geriatric years looming, death is sure to be the Next Big Thing.
Certainly the folks in the undertaking biz realize this. In his morticians’ handbook, Funeral Home Customer Service A-Z (Companion Press, 2004), Alan D. Wolfert, one of the gurus of the death industry, counsels his readers that “boomers are a new and very different breed of customer of funeral services. Understanding their wants and needs and then tailoring services to not only meet but exceed those needs is increasingly essential for funeral homes.” And what exactly is it that rapidly aging Aquarians are going to want in a funeral?
The consensus seems to be that we’ll be putting the fun back in funerals by eschewing the traditional type of memorial ceremony with all its depressing emphasis on grief, suffering, and bereavement. Instead, we will create our own cool, customized send-offs. A couple of years ago, the parody newspaper The Onion ran a piece headlined “Today’s Funeral-Goers Want to Be Entertained.” “Sure, funerals are still the number-one way to honor and grieve for our dead,” the article read. “But if they want to keep their place at the top, there’s gonna have to be some big-time changes. Mourners deserve a mind-blowing funeral experience they’ll never forget.” As Homer Simpson would say, it’s funny because it’s true.
Take, for instance, the farewell ceremony for that countercultural icon Hunter S. Thompson, whose ashes were launched from a gigantic cannon adorned with a double-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button while Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” filled the air along with a spectacular display of psychedelic fireworks. Not to everyone’s taste, perhaps. But that’s precisely the point. Nowadays, there’s no need to be buried (or cremated) like anyone else. You can keep marching to the beat of a different drum all the way to the grave.
Concerned that you lack the necessary skills to throw a truly memorable funeral, one that expresses the unique, inimitable (albeit now defunct) you? Not to worry. A new branch of the mortuary business has lately sprung up, composed of experts who, taking their cue from professional party planners, will help you arrange the perfect going-away-forever affair, complete with specialty catering, appropriate music, and even giveaway “funeral favors.” Sort of like a really top-flight wedding or bar mitzvah, only with a cadaver as the guest of honor.
There are also a growing number of companies that cater to the postmortem needs of enthusiasts of every stripe. Is scuba diving your “bag”? Why not have your cremated ashes incorporated into an artificial coral reef off the Florida coast so you can spend eternity submerged in balmy tropical waters? Have you been a fanatical Trekkie ever since the original airing of the show in the fall of 1966? Now, you can proudly assert your undying geekhood by being buried in a fiberglass casket modeled on the popular photon torpedo design as seen in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Is Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth your all-time favorite movie? If so, you might consider having your remains consigned to a biodegradable casket and interred in an all-natural, ecofriendly “green cemetery.”
The book you now hold in your hands contains a wealth of information about these and other alternative forms of body disposal. But (despite its titular tip of the hat to Stewart Brand’s bible of hippie-era self-sufficiency), The Whole Death Catalogue is not aimed exclusively—or even primarily—at New Agers, back-to-nature types, and do-it-yourselfers. Though our nation’s hardworking undertakers have been on the defensive since the publication of Jessica Mitford’s 1963 best seller The American Way of Death, many (perhaps most) of us still prefer the kinds of services offered by traditional funeral homes, including all-in-one package deals that cover everything from soup to nuts (or, in this case, embalming to interment). Addressing those faced with the painful task of burying a loved one, Thomas Lynch—poet, essayist, undertaker—offers nononsense advice: “If anyone tells you you haven’t spent enough, tell them to go piss up a rope. Tell the same thing to anyone who says you spent too much. Tell them to go piss up a rope. It’s your money. Do what you want with it.” Some people, after all, love to splurge on extravagant all-inclusive resort vacations, while others go in for wilderness backpacking. Choosing one over the other doesn’t make you a better person. As another sixties icon so wisely put it, whatever gets you through the night.
As a resource, The Whole Death Catalogue is designed to provide practical information on a wide range of mortuary-related matters: how to write a living will, where to find a convenient cemetery, whom to contact when someone dies, what to say in a eulogy, when to start planning for a funeral, et cetera, et cetera. But it’s much more than a source-book. Covering every conceivable aspect of the subject—historical, cultural, sociological, anatomical, anthropological, and more—it is meant to be an informative and, yes, entertaining read, brimming with amazing facts, amusing anecdotes, revealing insights, and time
less wisdom, as well as loads of cool pictures.
Appropriately enough, a final confession is in order. Death, it turns out, is a more or less inexhaustible topic. No single book could possibly cover the whole subject. Sweeping as this volume is, the title is a slight misnomer. The more accurate one—The Whole Lotta Death Catalogue—just didn’t sound right.
Is Death Necessary?
Of all the traits that distinguish human beings from other animals—language, toolmaking, the urge to buy other people’s unwanted stuff on eBay—perhaps the most fundamental is our awareness of our own inevitable deaths. To be sure, animals possess powerful survival instincts and do their best to avoid getting killed. But (so far as we know) they have no conscious knowledge of how little time they have here on earth. They go through life blissfully unaware that each passing day is bringing them closer and closer to the end.
Humans, on the other hand—particularly as we grow older—are all too keenly aware of how fleeting life is. On the plus side, this can add flavor and poignancy to our existence, making us savor the lovely and precious things in life (as the poet Wallace Stevens says, “Death is the mother of beauty”). But it also burdens us with a heavy load of anxiety and plagues us with the question “Why do we have to die at all?”
From time immemorial, humans have grappled with this mystery. Tribal myths from around the world offer a host of colorful explanations. According to one African tale, when the first humans pleaded with God to stop death, he complied with their wishes, but only on one condition: to prevent the world from becoming too crowded, there would be no more births. Unwilling to endure life without children, the people quickly begged God to return death to them.
In an Indonesian myth, death came into the world when God offered the first man and woman a choice between two gifts: a stone and a banana. Seeing no use for the stone, the pair chose the enticing fruit. At that instant, a voice thundered down from heaven: “Because you have chosen the banana, your life shall be like its life. When the banana tree has offspring, the parent stem dies. So shall you die and your children shall step into your place. Had you chosen the stone, your life would have been like its life, changeless and immortal.”