The Whole Death Catalog

by Harold Schechter

  JEWISH

  Among the Orthodox, the corpse is first thoroughly washed by members of a burial society who perform this ritual purification while reciting the required prayers. Since Jewish law forbids the mutilation of the deceased, embalming and autopsy are strictly prohibited unless demanded by local law.

  Once cleansed, the corpse is garbed in a simple white shroud made of muslin, cotton, or linen. Males are also wrapped in their fringed prayer shawls, one corner of which is cut off to signify that the deceased is now sundered from his earthly religious obligations. The corpse is then placed in a plain wooden coffin. If soil from Israel is available, it is sprinkled over the body. Shards of pottery, symbolizing the destruction of the Temple, may also be placed on the eyes and mouth of the deceased. The coffin is then sealed, Judaism having no tradition of open-casket viewing.

  Burial must take place as soon as possible after death, ideally before sunset on the same day or, at the latest, within twenty-four hours. A brief, simple service—consisting of a selection from the Psalms, a eulogy, and a concluding memorial prayer—is held at a funeral chapel, synagogue, or the gravesite. Once the service is over and the coffin has been lowered into the earth, the mourners come forward to throw shovelfuls of earth into the grave.

  ISLAMIC

  When a Muslim is on the brink of death, he is attended by loved ones who comfort him and recite supplications to Allah on his behalf. The dying person himself is gently encouraged to offer a final declaration of faith: “There is no god but Allah.”

  When the end comes, the corpse is washed and then wrapped in a plain white shroud called a kafan. As in Judaism, embalming is forbidden and burial is expected to take place as soon after death as feasible. The body is first transported to the site of the funeral service—preferably the outer courtyard of the mosque—where the community gathers to conduct the requisite prayers. The deceased is then carried to the cemetery. Only men are allowed to take part in the actual burial. The body, still wrapped in its shroud, is placed in the grave on its right side, facing Mecca and leaning close to the wall of the grave. (If local law requires a burial container, a simple wood coffin is used.) A stone or wooden slab is arranged over the shrouded corpse to protect it from the dirt. Each of those present tosses three handfuls of earth into the hole, which is then quickly filled up by the men.

  HINDU

  The Hindu belief in reincarnation forms the basis of its funeral rituals. To expedite the transmigration of the soul to a new body, the old one is consigned to the flames. Thus, while cremation is forbidden by Jewish and Muslim law and optional for Christians, it is standard practice among Hindus.

  Since a human corpse is regarded as a source of pollution, survivors do their best to minimize direct contact with the dead. After receiving a ritual cleansing, the body is anointed with sandalwood paste and dressed in new clothes—white for men, red for unmarried girls and wives who predecease their husbands. Next, the deceased is arranged on a bier that is adorned with flowers and sprinkled with rosewater. Mantras are chanted. The bier is then borne to the cremation site beside a river, where a pyre is built. Ghee (clarified butter) is liberally smeared on the body. The chief mourner, typically the eldest son, encircles the pyre three times before igniting it. Once the body has been incinerated, the ashes are collected for disposal in one of India’s holy rivers.

  BUDDHIST

  There is no single way of conducting a Buddhist funeral. “As the religious teachings of Buddha were disseminated throughout Asia,” explains thanatologist Robert Kastenbaum, “the beliefs and practices were adapted to indigenous cultural traditions dealing with death.” Thus, Buddhists in China, Japan, Thailand, Tibet, Cambodia, Korea, Laos, and Vietnam follow different national and local customs for body disposal.

  Still, while Asian funeral practices display tremendous cultural diversity they tend to follow what Robert W. Habenstein and William Lamers describe as “a general pattern of activity” characterized by “family lamentation, prayers by monks, swathing of the body, offerings to the dead, the preparation of a decorated bier or carrier, a noisy and usually colorful funeral procession, cremation as the preferred mode of disposal, and ancestor worship in some form of cult of the dead.”

  For Western Buddhists, a funeral is a simple, dignified affair that shuns all lavish expenditure and ostentation. Both cremation and earth burial are permitted—the manner of disposal is purely a personal choice. In either case, a simple casket (which may be open or closed) is arranged at the front of a hall, alongside a shrine holding a Buddha image, flowers, incense, and loving tokens in remembrance of the deceased. Simple rites are conducted that may include readings of poetry, collective chanting of contemplative verses, silent meditation, eulogies, and other tributes. The family then accompanies the body to the graveyard or crematorium, where a brief committal service may be held.

  RECOMMENDED READING

  For more detailed discussions of burial rites as practiced by the major Western religions, see Earl A. Grollman’s anthology, Concerning Death: A Practical Guide for the Living (Beacon Press, 1974).

  If you’re planning a Buddhist funeral, you’ll find helpful advice on the website of the Network of Buddhist Organizations, www.nbo.org.uk/funerals/funerals.htm.

  DEATH DEFINITION: State Funerals

  ANYONE OLD ENOUGH TO HAVE MEMORIES OF JOHN F. KENNEDY’S ASSASSINATION KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT A state funeral is since the entire nation sat riveted to the television on the afternoon of November 25, 1963, watching as the slain president was borne to the grave. The images remain indelible: the riderless steed with a pair of backward-facing boots in the stirrups, the long procession of foreign dignitaries marching solemnly along Pennsylvania Avenue behind the grieving family, the military bugler blowing “Taps” at the gravesite, one note cracking like a stifled sob.

  Full of pomp and ceremony, American state funerals are granted by law to all U.S. presidents— current, former, and-elect—as well as to other honorees designated by a sitting president. The details vary according to the wishes of the individual, but they all share certain features, including military pallbearers, twenty-one-gun salutes, and flag-draped coffins. After reposing in the East Room of the White House (in the case of sitting presidents), the body is conveyed to the Capitol Rotunda to lie in state for public viewing. Typically, the coffin is borne by a caisson drawn by six horses of the same color (though some individuals, like the unassuming Gerald Ford, have opted for a less formal limousine hearse). A memorial service, attended by international heads of state, is held in Washington, D.C., often at the National Cathedral, after which the body is transported to its final resting place.

  Eleven U.S. presidents, including the four who were killed by assassins (Lincoln, McKinley, Garfield, .. and JFK), have been honored with state funerals.

  A Brief History of the

  American Funeral

  Industry: Making a Big

  Production of Death

  When a death occurred in the United States before the late 1800s, no one contacted a funeral home and hired a mortician to handle the burial arrangements—mainly because there were no funeral homes or morticians. Death (as Gary Laderman documents in his 1996 book, The Sacred Remains) was a simple, dignified family affair.

  In the rural areas of pre-Civil War America, funerals followed a typical pattern. People generally died at home surrounded by relatives and friends. Immediately afterward, the body was laid out by close relations who washed (and, if necessary, shaved) it, then dressed it in a shroud or “winding sheet” of muslin or wool. The corpse was then placed in a simple pine coffin, frequently built by a family member or neighbor.

  Over the next one to three days, the body would remain at home, often in the front parlor, where volunteer “watchers”—relatives, neighbors, and friends—kept a round-the-clock vigil, “sitting up” with the corpse until burial time. Depending on the weather, a tub holding a large block of ice might be placed beneath the coffin, with smaller chunks distributed about
the unembalmed body.

  On the day of the burial, a service was held, often at the home of the deceased. Hymns were sung, psalms read, a discourse and eulogy delivered. Afterward, the coffin began its journey to its final resting place. Depending on the distance, it would be carried on foot or conveyed in a horse-drawn wagon.

  Sometimes the simple home service was followed by a more elaborate one at church. The corpse was borne to the local meetinghouse for a final public viewing and funeral ceremony. Then it was on to the graveyard. A somber procession accompanied the body to the burial site, where the grave had already been dug—occasionally by a sexton, though more often by neighbors or relatives of the deceased.

  After the coffin was lowered into the ground, a few last words were spoken by anyone who wished to tender them. The mourners would toss a branch, some straw, or a handful of earth onto the coffin lid—a ritual gesture of farewell. Then the grave was filled while the survivors stood by and watched, or—as frequently happened—they performed the task themselves.

  Every stage of this process—from the laying out of the corpse to the sewing of the shroud, the “watching” of the body to the building of the coffin, the carrying of the bier to the digging of the grave—was conducted, for the most part, by family and friends of the deceased. The rural funeral, as Laderman writes, was an “intimate affair” performed “by a close circle of relations.”

  The situation differed in more urban areas, where upon someone’s death an undertaker was immediately summoned to the home to take charge of the body, order a casket, arrange the funeral service, and assume other responsibilities that country dwellers traditionally handled on their own. Even in the towns and cities, however, death was still an “intimate affair” in the early decades of the nineteenth century. People died in their own beds and were laid out in the front parlor, where mourners gathered for home funeral services.

  All that began to change in the aftermath of the Civil War. The main reason had to do with innovations in arterial embalming. Widely employed during the war by the pioneering surgeon-chemist Dr. Thomas Holmes, this procedure made it possible to ship dead young soldiers home in a relatively well-preserved state. When Abraham Lincoln’s corpse was embalmed for its slow, solemn journey back to Springfield, Illinois, the process gained further legitimacy.

  By the closing decades of the nineteenth century, arterial embalming had been widely embraced as the preferred way of preparing the dead for the traditional open-casket viewing. Suddenly, even country dwellers required the services of a person who could handle a trocar and injection pump. To satisfy the public’s growing demand for attractive “lifelike” corpses, undertakers had to become skilled in this new, highly specialized technique (which they often learned from traveling embalming-supply salesmen). Before long, they began to conceive of themselves in a different light—as members of a bona fide profession who, by dint of their training and expertise, were entitled to a more elevated social status (and a correspondingly higher pay scale).

  By the 1880s, they were publishing trade journals (The Casket, The Shroud, Embalmer’s Monthly), establishing mortuary schools with standardized curricula, and joining a professional society whose very name—the Funeral Directors’ National Association of the United States (later streamlined to the National Funeral Directors Association, or NFDA)—proclaimed their proud new self-image. No longer did they wish to be identified as mere undertakers, tradesmen who trafficked in funerary paraphernalia and services. Henceforward—through their education, know-how, civic devotion, and ethical conduct—they would win the same respect accorded to doctors, lawyers, and clergymen. Or at least that was the plan.

  At first, they continued to make house calls. Notified of a death, they arrived with their chemicals and equipment and set to work in some secluded spot, often the bedroom of the deceased. Not infrequently, a family member stood by and witnessed the procedure. In the early years of the twentieth century, however, a number of factors came into play that changed the nature of the business.

  For a variety of reasons—the sharp drop in mortality rates, the rapid rise in the number of hospitals, even the elimination of the front parlor as a standard feature of the middle-class home—death began to disappear from the everyday lives of most Americans. As the new century progressed, people, particularly city dwellers, became increasingly cut off from the earthier realities of existence that had been integral to the lives of their ancestors. A certain squeamishness became the norm.

  Back in the old days, if you planned to serve chicken for Sunday dinner, you beheaded, plucked, and butchered the bird yourself. Increasingly, however, people wanted to be sheltered from the disagreeable facts of that process and to purchase their poultry in a ready-to-use and sanitized form. That same attitude extended to mortuary matters. Instead of dying at home surrounded by loved ones, people increasingly expired in hospitals. And the preparation of corpses for viewing (like the processing of farm animals for consumption) became something to be handled far out of the customers’ sight, so as not to offend their delicate sensibilities.

  At the same time, people still wanted the viewing to take place in an intimate, seemingly domestic setting. Not in their actual domiciles, of course—home was no longer a place for anything as depressing as death, and besides, front parlors had gone the way of the horse and buggy. What the modern age demanded was a place designed to suggest the comfort of an old-time parlor but dedicated to the specific purposes of corpse preparation, public mourning, and mortuary display.

  Hence, the rise of that peculiarly twentieth-century institution, the funeral home (or parlor). A singular combination of the commercial and the domestic, this modern, all-inclusive establishment not only gathered the full range of funerary services and products under a single roof but also, by serving as the proprietor’s actual living quarters, provided the bereaved with a comforting place for their final communion with the dead, an atmosphere suffused with the sacred associations of family and home.

  As funeral homes proliferated and the mortuary business blossomed into a full-fledged industry, the disposal of the dead became an increasingly elaborate and costly affair. In the old days, an undertaker might charge sixty dollars for his services: coming to a home, preparing the corpse, providing the coffin, overseeing the funeral, and transporting the remains to the grave. Suddenly, a newly bereaved family would find themselves seated in the hushed receiving room of their neighborhood funeral parlor while the crisply efficient director quietly set forth a range of options that might easily run up expenses into the thousands of dollars.

  The age of the modern funeral industry had arrived.

  RECOMMENDED READING

  The standard history of American funeral directing is The History of American Funeral Directing (National Funeral Director’s Association, 2001), by Robert W. Habenstein and William M. Lamers. Gary Laderman, a professor of religious history, has produced two highly readable books on the subject, The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799–1883 (Yale University Press, 1996) and Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America (Oxford University Press, 2003).

  Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.

  —YOGI BERRA

  Funeral Favors

  In recent times, handing out increasingly ostentatious party favors has become a standard feature of certain celebratory occasions. The early New England Puritans had a similar tradition—only they didn’t practice it at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and kiddie birthday parties. They did it at funerals.

  According to Robert W. Habenstein and William M. Lamers, authors of the definitive History of American Funeral Directing (National Funeral Directors Association, 2001), the custom of giving “funerary gifts” to mourners originated in England and was transported to the American colonies by early Puritan settlers. Rings, scarves, gloves, books, and various items of needlework were the most common of these handouts.

  What began
as a heartfelt gesture quickly turned into extravagant showiness. At one early-eighteenth-century ceremony, more than a thousand pairs of gloves were given away; at another, two hundred mourning rings worth a pound apiece—a significant sum in those days. If you were invited to a sufficient number of funerals, you could acquire enough of these items to stock a general store. Habenstein and Lamers cite the case of the Reverend Andrew Eliot of North Church in Boston, who—after tallying “his take for thirty-two years”—discovered that “he had received two thousand nine hundred and forty pairs of funeral gloves.” By the mid-eighteenth century, the practice had gotten so out of hand that the General Court of Massachusetts passed a law prohibiting such “prodigious excess” at funerals.

  It’s a Tough Job but

  Someone’s Got to Do It

  For well over a century, members of the “dismal trade” (as undertakers have been known since the 1700s) have come in for more than their fair share of abuse. In novels and movies, they are almost invariably portrayed as money-grubbing vultures, oozing piety as they do their best to squeeze every last penny from their poor, grieving victims. A character identified only as “J.B.,” one of Mark Twain’s comical creations, is a case in point. Appearing in Twain’s memoir-cum-travel book, Life on the Mississippi, this shameless rapscallion, who has previously tried his hand with disappointing results at the “insurance-agency business,” can’t keep from gloating over his new and infinitely more profitable calling. When Twain innocently asks if there is “much profit on a coffin,” J.B. crows: