One traveler, cited in an article that appeared in USA Today, needed to get from Kansas City Missouri, to Phoenix for his father-in-law’s funeral. The half-price bereavement ticket he was offered by United came to $380. When he checked online, however, he found a regular flight on a different carrier for only $250. (Indeed, some airlines can beat their own bereavement discounts with cheaper flights.)
Getting a bereavement fare also requires that you provide the airline with certain documentation, including the name and phone number of the funeral home and, sometimes, a copy of the death certificate.
Increasingly, as the airline industry revamps its pricing strategies, major carriers are doing away with their bereavement fares. Delta, for example, eliminated them a few years ago after introducing a simplified pricing scheme called “Simplifares” that offers low-priced last-minute tickets.
Other major carriers, however—American, United, Northwest, Continental—continue to offer bereavement discounts. The major benefit of these fares is that they usually have more flexible travel rules than other last-minute tickets (most are refundable, for example, and allow date changes and open-ended returns). In terms of price alone, however, you might well find a cheaper flight online or through a travel agent.
A Meal to Die For
Having a big feast right after planting a loved one in the ground might seem at first blush a bit peculiar, if not actively disrespectful of the dead. Throughout the ages, however, and in cultures all over the world, such post funeral meals have been an important part of the healing process—an occasion for friends and family to gather around the bereaved and offer comfort.
Some scholars theorize that funeral feasts were originally held for the benefit of the newly deceased. Back in ancient Roman times, for example, people evidently believed “that the dead required nourishment in some way, and that the tedium of their existence in the tomb could be relieved by participating in a feast held by their relatives and friends at their place of burial.” Following a funeral, therefore, the mourners would throw a party at the gravesite—thus allowing the dead person to take part one last time in that most popular of all ancient Roman pastimes, the drunken orgiastic revel.
For the most part, however, cultural anthropologists agree that the funeral meal evolved as a way to help the living. From Bali to Belgium, Iceland to India, Mexico to the Mississippi Delta, it’s traditional for mourners to share a postmortem meal. Customs vary, of course. Some are simple, some lavish. Though most are held after the burial, some take place beforehand. And the mood can vary from festive to somber. But the impulse behind these occasions is the same: to provide a communal support system, to show the bereaved that they are not alone, and to help assuage their sudden sense of abandonment and isolation.
And the funeral meal serves another function, too. Indulging in a hearty dinner after returning from the cemetery proves that we’re still very much alive. In that sense, as Lisa Rogak suggests in her mortuary cookbook, Death Warmed Over (Ten Speed Press, 2004), the postfuneral meal is a way of affirming life in the presence of death—of thumbing your nose at the Grim Reaper.
Menus for funeral meals vary widely, of course, depending on cultural tradition. Rogak’s book offers a range of international recipes, from Hungarian Funeral Goulash to Irish Wake Cake to Mexican Pan de Muerto (bread of the dead). And in their delightful book Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral (Hyperion, 2005), Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays provide instructions for such standards as Can’t-Die-Without-It Caramel Cake and Liketa Died Potatoes, along with Gouda Cheese Grits and the mandatory Tomato Aspic with Homemade Mayonnaise (“Can you be buried without tomato aspic? Not in the Mississippi Delta you can’t”).
Not only down South but throughout America, traditional funeral fare seems designed to ensure that the mourners won’t outlive the dearly departed by very long. Among the alarmingly artery-clogging offerings typically served at American funeral meals are Wisconsin cold bacon-cheese dip, Mormon funeral potatoes (consisting of hash browns, cream of potato soup, sour cream, grated Parmesan, and butter), and pig tails cooked in sauerkraut, a dish popular in the Baltimore African American community.
But like all other culinary practices in what one writer has dubbed the “United States of Arugula,” even these traditions are evolving. Interviewed about the changes he’s noticed in his nearly forty years of partaking in the Jewish postfuneral ritual known as the “Meal of Restoration,” Rabbi Sholom Lipskar of Bal Harbour, Florida, observed: “You’re getting a lot more vegetable trays and less of the fried, fatty foods. Nowadays people are more health conscious.”
RECOMMENDED READING
Besides the two books mentioned previously, you’ll find recipes—along with practical advice on everything from writing condolence notes to composing your own obituary—in Jessica Bemis Ward’s Food to Die For: A Book of Funeral Food, Tips, and Tales (Southern Memorial Association, 2004).
There’s nothing like a morning funeral for sharpening an appetite for lunch.
—ARTHUR MARSHALL
Eat, Drink, and Be Buried
In the popular mind, the New England Puritans were a bunch of finger-wagging killjoys who frowned on all earthly pleasures. Even the Puritans, however, occasionally allowed themselves to eat, drink, and be merry. Especially at funerals.
Colonial New England funeral feasts were surprisingly lavish affairs. According to historians Robert Habenstein and William Lamers, the menu at one of these occasions “featured beef, ham, bacon and fowls, supplemented by fish, oysters, 150 eggs, peas, onions and potatoes, followed by cheese, fruit, and sweetmeats”—all washed down with “rum, wine, beer, gin and brandy.” The bill for this blowout came to nearly $850—the equivalent of “between five and ten thousand dollars in modern purchasing power.”
PENNSYLVANIA DUCTH FUNERAL PIE
This traditional postfuneral treat is both easy to fix and lip-smacking good. At 400 calories a slice, it’s a bit of an indulgence if you’re watching your weight. But what the heck—you only live once!
1 tablespoon cornstarch
½ cup sugar
1¾ cups water
2½ cups seedless raisins
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest (yellow part only)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons butter
Prepared pastry for two-crust 9-inch pie, unbaked
Preheat oven to 400°F Mix cornstarch with sugar, then gradually stir in the water. Add raisins and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens. Remove from heat and add the grated lemon zest, lemon juice, and butter. Pour filling into prepared pie shell. Place top crust over pie, crimp and trim edges, and cut slits to allow for escaping steam. Bake 30 minutes or until done.
Makes 8 servings.
The Puritans may have persecuted heretics, hanged their neighbors as suspected witches, and put people in the stocks for laughing out loud on the Sabbath, but on the plus side, no New England mourner ever left a funeral hungry!
Eulogies
Being asked by bereaved family members to say a few words at a funeral is clearly a sign of their high regard for you, as well as a mark of the special place you occupied in the life of their loved one. But it can also seem like an intimidating responsibility especially if you’re not particularly comfortable with public speaking.
If you are invited to deliver a eulogy, there are a number of tips to keep in mind. To begin with, you’ll need to spend time preparing your remarks and writing them down. This is no time for improvisation. Even people possessed of extraordinary rhetorical gifts have to rely on the written word. Mark Antony’s rousing “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” eulogy in The Tragedy of Julius Caesar seems to be delivered off the cuff. But in reality, it was composed by Shakespeare.
Not that anyone expects you to be Shakespeare. What is required is a simple, straightforward tribute to the deceased, delivered in a natural, conversational voice. Peop
le who have analyzed the ingredients of successful eulogies agree on a number of points:
Make it brief. Anywhere from three to ten minutes is the normal length, though it’s a good idea to consult beforehand with the family or officiating clergyman. If a number of speakers are lined up, you might be told to keep it shorter. (Remember: a single typewritten, double-spaced page takes roughly a minute to read aloud.)
Keep it personal. A eulogy is not the same as an obituary—that is, it’s not meant to be a biography of the departed or a summary of his or her achievements. It’s a personal, sincerely felt tribute that captures something true about the subject, something that made him or her so special to you.
Be specific. Don’t just generalize about what a wonderful, witty, loving person the departed was; recall a particular anecdote that captures his or her personality. In a eulogy delivered for his malapropism-prone grandfather, for example, writer Garry Schaeffer recalled the time that—while dining together at a Spanish restaurant—the old man ordered the “Gestapo soup.”
Don’t be overly glum. As Schaeffer’s example indicates, it’s perfectly appropriate to inject some humor into a eulogy. Indeed, in a fine Esquire magazine piece, “How to Give a Eulogy,” writer Tom Chiarella flatly declares, “You must make them laugh. Laughs are a pivot point in a funeral. They are your responsibility. The best laughs come by forcing people not to idealize the dead.” At the same time, it’s important to remember that you are not there to perform a stand-up routine or deliver a roast.
Be honest—up to a point. Telling the truth about the person is important, but you want to emphasize the positive. A funeral service is no place for brutal honesty. It’s one thing to elicit warm chuckles from the audience by describing the departed’s lovable quirks. But feelings are raw at these times, and you’ll want to avoid anything that smacks of criticism. Likewise, a eulogy is not an occasion for you to offer a tearful confession or belated apology for some wrong you committed against the deceased. Remember: this is not about you.
Let your feelings show. It’s okay to choke up or shed a few tears while recalling the deceased. But you don’t want to get carried away in a tide of emotion. That’s why it’s important to rehearse your eulogy before you deliver it.
Added to these are a few rules of thumb recommended by Tom Chiarella: “Don’t read poetry unless you knew it going in. Don’t use Bartlett’s. Don’t do imitations. Don’t sing unless they ask you. Even then, consider not singing.”
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
Tom Chiarella’s essay can be found at the Esquire website, www.esquire.com. Two slender but helpful guides are Garry Schaeffer’s A Labor of Love: How to Write a Eulogy (GMS Publishing, 1998) and Leo Seguin’s How to Write and Deliver a Loving Eulogy (Seguin Books, 1998). If you’re interested in reading some world-class eulogies, Ted Tobias reprints several dozen in his book, In Tribute: Eulogies of Famous People (Bushky Press, 1999).
For those who feel absolutely incapable of composing an original eulogy, there are online companies that offer fill-in-the-blank eulogy forms or, for a slightly higher fee, custom eulogies prepared by a professional writer. You’ll find these services at www.lovingeulogies.com and www.instanteulogies.com.
Wake Me When Its Over
The word wake is linguistically connected to watch, as in surveillance. Strictly speaking, a funeral wake is the custom of keeping vigil over a corpse from death until burial by family, friends, and neighbors (or, in some places, paid watchers). The practice is ancient and widespread and appears to spring from a variety of motives—from the practical need to keep rats and other vermin away from the body to various archaic fears, such as the superstitious belief that unless a close watch is kept over the dead, evil spirits might come and whisk it away to the netherworld.
While many traditional wakes were simple, somber affairs—a pair of old friends conversing quietly all night at the kitchen table while the deceased lay upstairs in the bedroom—others involved a good deal of boisterous merrymaking. Irish wakes in particular are known for their carousing, though other cultures, too, practice festive food-and-drink-fueled wakes. Such postmortem partying is generally seen as a life-affirming act of defiance—a kind of rowdy thumbing of one’s nose at death. Some anthropologists also believe that these raucous prefuneral gatherings are meant to ensure that the deceased really is gone for good and can therefore be safely interred. After all, if all that drunken revelry doesn’t wake Grandma up, nothing will.
Nowadays, particularly in America, the word wake is often used interchangeably with visitation—not a lively at-home get-together in the presence of the deceased, but a subdued viewing of the embalmed corpse at a funeral parlor.
RECOMMENDED READING
A lovely depiction of an old-fashioned American wake can be found in the story “Miss Tempy’s Watchers” by the New England writer Sarah Orne Jewett. Originally published in 1888, this simple but quite moving tale concerns two women in a small New Hampshire farming community who have volunteered to keep vigil over the body of their neighbor, Miss Tempy Dent, over the course of a long night. It is frequently included in anthologies of classic American literature and can be found in its entirety online at http://faculty.uml.edu/mpennell/amlit2/Tempyhtm.
Two worthwhile studies of traditional Irish funeral customs are Sean O’Suilleabhain, Irish Wake Amusements (Mercier Press, 1967) and E. Estyn Evans, Irish Folkways (Routledge, 1957).
Oh, and Never Ever Wear
New Shoes to a Funeral
Given the number of actual real-world perils we’re constantly being warned about—from identity theft to trans fats to untended airport baggage—you’d think there’d be enough things in life to watch out for. But superstitious people know that you can never be too careful. So here are fourteen death-related folk beliefs to add to your list of worries.
If a bird flies into your house through a window, someone in your family will die.
If your left eye twitches, there will be a death in your family.
If you dream of muddy water, there will be a death in your family.
If someone in your household dies and you don’t cover your mirrors, the first person to see his reflection will be the next to die.
If three people are photographed together, the one in the middle will die first.
If thirteen people sit down at a table to eat, one of them will die before the year is out.
If you rest a broom against a bed, the person who sleeps there will die.
If, during the twelve nights preceding Christmas, you dream of a loved one lying in a coffin, that person will die within the year.
If you walk or ride past a cemetery without tucking your thumbs into your fists, one of your parents will die.
If you see an ant in winter, all the members of your household will die.
If you don’t hold your breath while walking or driving past a cemetery, you will die.
If you see an owl in the daytime, you will die.
If you point at a passing funeral procession, you will die.
If you count the cars in a funeral cortege, you will die.
Please note: Even if you scrupulously heed these warnings and never point at a passing funeral procession, count the cars in a cortege, or walk by a cemetery without holding your breath, you will still die. But hopefully not so soon.
Hand of Glory
Beyond providing medical students with the raw material for their dissection classes, human corpses don’t, by and large, have much practical use. If you believe in witchcraft, however—and have access to the dead body of a person hanged for murder—you can whip up a nifty little item that will have all kinds of useful (if highly illicit) applications.
Known as the “Hand of Glory,” this black-magic charm not only purportedly has the power to unlock the door to any house but, when used at night, will prevent the sleeping inhabitants from awakening. The value of this amazing implement for any professional burglar can hardly be overstated.
The trick, of
course, is procuring one. First, you’ll have to sever the hand of a hanged killer while the corpse is still dangling from the gallows. If you can manage this during a lunar eclipse, so much the better. (There is some disagreement about which hand works best, though the consensus seems to be either the left hand or the one that wielded the murder weapon.)
Next, wrap the hand in a shroud and squeeze out as much blood as possible. Then place the exsanguinated hand inside an earthenware jar, add salt, saltpeter, and black pepper, mix well, and let stand.
While the hand is curing, make a candle. Most experts recommend that you use fat rendered from the dead man’s flesh, along with virgin wax and sesame oil. Ideally, the wick should be made from a strand of corpse hair, though freshly spun flax will do in a pinch.
After two weeks, remove the hand from the jar, brush off any clinging powder, and place it in an oven fired with fir branches. (You can also dry it in the sun, though only during the dog days of summer.) After one hour, the hand should be ready. Remove from the heat and curl it into a fist, leaving just enough space between the middle and ring fingers to accommodate the candle.
Place the candle in the appropriate space, squeeze the fingers tight, and there you have it—your very own Hand of Glory, ready to light your way into the homes of unsuspecting victims. E-Z? U bet!
The Whole Death Catalog Page 19
