Bringing Out the Dead: Changes in Funeral and Burial Practices in the United States
By Kathryn Farr
Death.
The word in and of itself is the most final of tenses. It is the end of the line, the last hurrah, the sunset of one’s life. It is something no one can understand until it happens to them, and still, there are euphemisms for this last mystery of life. “He’s kicked the bucket,” people willl say, or “she’s passed away.” Shakespeare used “shuffle off this mortal coil,”( Macrone, eNotes.com) and the Bible asks, "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"( 1 Cor: 15:55) But, even while humans attempt to shroud death in as much mystery and silence as possible, there are still conventions that must be followed, traditions that must be kept, and observances that must be made. While, over time, certain things have changed, research has shown that funeral customs in America have come full-circle, through a return to simple body preparation, as opposed to embalming, simple funeral services focusing on a celebration of life rather than mourning a death, and simple burial and body disposal, as opposed to burial in a modern cemetery, with far more rules and regulations to go with it.
In the years following the Revolutionary War, some Americans sought to explore new parts of the New World. These settlers were mostly Scots-Irish, and they left the urban confines of Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, and the Carolinas, and moved into what is now known as Appalachia. These were the people that came to be known as mountain folk or hillbillies. (Divine, Breen, 2007) Those mountain folk brought their own set of traditions that had been passed down from their Celtic ancestors.
The traditions brought to rural Appalachia were very simple, but rooted in communal care. When someone was sick, the local “granny woman” would be sent for, to attempt a cure with her herbal remedies. Doctors were few and far between, and hospitals certainly weren’t a part of rural mountain communities after the Revolutionary War, and even well into the 20th century, there were few clinics and hospitals in Appalachia. Along with the granny woman, the neighbors would come and help tend the sick, and also help tend to the family. Neighbor ladies would bring food, and the men would help out on the family farm if needed to do so, after all, most neighbors were related in one way or another.
When someone died, the neighbors once again helped out. Someone would go and toll the church bell, once for each year of life, and that would notify the rest of the community that someone had died. In 1973, Mrs. Maude Shope, a lifelong resident of Rabun County, Georgia said, “They didn’t have no funeral homes t’take ‘em to, y’know. If one was t’die here last night, we laid’im out. What neighbors was already here ‘cause somebody’uz sick would strip th’bed off and put’im on a plain plank till y’got your casket.” (Wigginton, 1973) That is a summation of exactly what would happen when the neighbors arrived to help after a death.
Usually, the ladies would tend to the corpse. The body would be washed, dried, and either dressed or wrapped in a simple shroud. The features of the corpse would be “set”, meaning the eyes and mouth would be closed, and the mouth would be held closed with a strip of whatever fabric was handy, and the eyes would be kept closed with coins, usually nickels, quarters, or half-dollars reserved for this purpose. The use of these coins as opposed to pennies was a matter of simple aesthetics; copper tended to cause discoloration of the skin around the eyes, and silver did not. Also, coins of higher denominations were heavier, and better able to weigh down the eyelids to keep them closed. (Crissman, 1994)
During the preparation of the body, the coffin would be built. The coffin would be fashioned out of whatever lumber was handy at the time, more often oak, hickory, pine, or chestnut. Sometimes the coffin would be painted, or covered in cloth to dress it up a bit, and later on, some people used pre-fabricated metal handles and latches to keep the coffin closed. Most of the time, the coffin was painted black, if at all, sometimes it would have a bit of decorative carving on it. Most coffins created during this period were the variety known as “toe-pinchers”, not the rectangular shaped caskets seen today. If the coffin was lined, it would be with either white or black fabric that was readily available, and the lining would be tacked over cotton batten, to make the deceased more comfortable during their slumber until the resurrection. (Crissman, 1994)
Because the deceased were not embalmed, burial had to take place quickly. Most of the time, neighbors would take turns digging a grave in either the local churchyard, or on the homestead of the family. Even in burial, there were customs to be followed. The coffin was to be placed in a grave dug so that the feet would be pointing east, and the head pointing west, so the decedent could view the rising sun. This came from a belief that the Second Coming of Christ would come from the East, and the dead would rise up and take part in Judgment Day. Also, the rising sun is very symbolic of the Resurrection of Christ. (Crissman, 1994)
These were the customs that held sway until the time of the Civil War. Once the Civil War was in full swing, and there were Union soldiers dying all over the South, arterial embalming became more of a necessity. Up until the embalming of one Elmer Ellsworth, a Union colonel who was shot while attempting to remove a Confederate flag from atop a hotel, soldiers were either buried where they lay, or left on the battlefield while their comrades in arms beat a hasty retreat. But, Thomas Holmes, who came to be known as the Father of Embalming (Roach, 2003), gave Ellsworth a proper arterial embalming, and thus ensured that he could have a hero’s funeral. Instead of a decaying body, those who filed past Ellsworth’s coffin saw a distinguished soldier, which gave embalming a public boost. The second major public boost to embalming came with the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The President was embalmed prior to being placed on a funerary train to tour the country, and the relatively good condition his body remained in, as opposed to a body that was not embalmed and would deteriorate quickly, convinced many Americans that embalming was an honorable thing to do for their loved ones.
Post Civil War, embalming became the norm for preparing the dead. Funeral homes gained popularity, and people stopped preparing the dead and laying them out at home. Coffins were no longer made by the local carpenter, but casket companies such as Batesville Casket Company sprang up. Burial was no longer on the homestead, or in the churchyard, but in areas dedicated to burial as cemeteries came into existence. (Laderman, 2003)
Along with the modernization of embalming, with mortuary schools coming into existence that trained funeral directors in the art of embalming, the modernization of the casket was taking place. Caskets began to be made out of fine mahogany, or brass, or steel, lined with satin, and included actual mattresses and pillows to lay the decedent on. Caskets also boasted having seals that allowed gases that sped up decay to escape, or “burping” caskets. This brings to mind a fairly morbid version of a Tupperware catalogue. (Mitford, 1998)
Of course, to go along with modernized caskets, containing modernly embalmed bodies, the modern burial vault came into existence. Burial vaults are made out of a variety of materials, depending on the level of protection from the elements one is willing to pay for. Vaults have been crafted out of aluminum, asphalt-lined concrete, copper, and various other materials. Some of them are made to be quite gorgeous, engraved with lovely designs. (Mitford, 1998) Their purpose, naturally, is to give the family of the deceased reassurance that their loved one is protected from the elements, and thus not as prone to decay as quickly. Granted, this has no bearing in truth, as bodies, even those that have been embalmed, are far more prone to decay rapidly in an anaerobic, or airtight, environment. When shut up in a tightly sealed casket, and a tightly sealed burial vault, the bacteria that cause decay flourish. This can lead to leakage, which is extremely unpleasant. While funeral directors claim this is rare, the truth is that it happens more often than not, especially in the case of entombment in a casket with a sealer.
Funeral directors might have gotten away with hiding these, and other less than savory business practices, had a book published in 1963, by Simon and Schuster, not caused a huge uproar and shake-up of the funeral industry. This book, titled The American Way of Death, paved the way for major changes in the way things were done. Its author, Jessica Mitford, was inspired to write it because her husband, labor attorney Robert Treuhaft, was getting increasingly frustrated in his dealings with San Francisco area funeral directors over their gobbling up the majority of the insurance policies left to survivors of longshoremen. Mr. Treuhaft was angry because the funeral directors seemed to know, down to the penny, just how much these insurance policies paid out, and they were determined to get most of those funds for themselves by up selling expensive caskets, embalming and cosmetic services, burial vaults, and services at funeral homes, rather than at a church. (Mitford, 1998)
When Jessica Mitford began research for what would become a bestseller, and a title spoken of in angry whispers by funeral directors everywhere, she was absolutely astonished at what she found. She learned that not only did funeral directors know how much insurance policies on people who worked in various professions paid; they would adjust costs of funerals accordingly. Rather than have standard pricing for their services, funeral directors charged what the insurance policy, or the family, would be willing to bear. She also learned that funeral directors would tell families of the deceased things like California state law required embalming even for cremation, which was, and is, an outright lie. (Mitford, 1963, and 1998)
Ms. Mitford was outraged by these practices, and because of her scathing review of the modern funeral industry, legislators began calling for change. At first, the funeral industry and its lobbyists were able to contain the uproar, and legislation that would require an itemized price sheet presented to the family, and funeral directors to be honest about what state laws did and did not require, fell by the wayside. However, after tireless campaigning by Ms. Mitford, and others who were concerned that families were being taken advantage of in their time of grief, the Funeral Rule was passed by Congress in 1984. It stated that consumers had the right to choose, be it a funeral home, or services they wished provided, that prices must be quoted over the phone, that funeral directors would be prohibited from lying about state law, most specifically when it came to embalming, and that the cheapest casket would be displayed with other, far more expensive caskets. Also, funeral directors would not be allowed to tell the family that an “eternal sealer” casket would preserve the deceased forever (or any other unspecified, indefinite time period). (Mitford, 1998)
With the publication of The American Way of Death, and Pope John Paul XXIII’s reversal of Pope Leo XIII’s 1886 ban of the use of cremation by Roman Catholics as a method of disposing of the body of a loved one during the Vatican II Council in 1963, changes began to take place. Cremation became much more popular than it had been. Indeed, the percentage of decedents being cremated is currently at 25%, and is proposed to steadily rise in coming years. (Rosen, 2004) Indeed, with cremation’s costs being, in some cases, quite significantly lower than the cost of the average American funeral, it’s no surprise that it’s becoming a very attractive option. After all, one can choose to be cremated and his or her ashes placed in a lovely urn, or scattered in a setting that has great meaning to him or her, at a lower cost than being embalmed, cosmetically enhanced, placed in an expensive casket, and shown in an open casket funeral service that seems to be so much of a morbid attraction. (Matson, 2001)
Cremation has not been the only option that has become increasingly popular post The American Way of Death. When the public started to become educated on what, exactly, happens to a body in the care of a funeral director, and others began to point out that most states do not prohibit a family member from caring for his or her own dead, home funerals began to resurface. (Harris, 2007) There are groups dedicated to educating the public on what their options really are, so they do not have to deal with a funeral director whose goal is to make a sale.
Not only is the home funeral making a comeback, so is the home burial. For those who own land in an area where burial of a person is not strictly prohibited by local zoning laws, or state health code, their loved ones can be buried on their own property, as opposed to in a modern cemetery which requires the use of an expensive burial vault. Also, along with the home burial, more and more cemeteries are dedicating space to “natural” or “green” burials, in which the deceased is buried either in a simple, biodegradable shroud, or a plain wooden coffin, or a biodegradable cardboard casket. (Harris, 2007)
In this day and age, one can choose to be cremated, and have one’s ashes mixed with cement to form a reef ball. Don Brawley, founder of the Reef Ball Foundation, started his organization in the early 1990s. In 1991, he and his partner, Todd Barber, dropped the first reef balls into the waters off the Florida Keys, after securing the proper permits from the state of Florida. Within five years, five hundred thousand reef balls have been placed in ocean waters around the world, by thirty-five different projects designed to create life from death. The reef balls encourage the growth of marine life by their construction; their broad bottom design allows for stability in place on the ocean floor, and their rough surface and properly aligned alkalinity make the reef ball very hospitable to marine species to attach themselves and thrive. Also, reef balls are certainly a far simpler disposition of cremated remains than traditional burial in a cemetery, which involves burial vaults, grave liners, and modern caskets. (Harris, 2007)
As shown in this research paper, funeral customs in America have come full-circle through simpler methods of preparing the body of the deceased, simpler funeral services, and simpler burial. Although many still choose the new traditions of embalming and casketing their dead, and burial in modern cemeteries, more are choosing cremation, or home funeral, or home burial, or even being made into an artificial reef. Rather than continue engaging in what could be considered ecologically unfriendly practices, more Americans, with their eco-consciousness rising, seem to be choosing cremation over embalming the deceased with chemicals that can harm the environment. Rather than making death as sanitary as possible, more Americans are accepting death as a natural part of life, and choosing to have funeral services that reflect this, and celebrate the life of the deceased. And, rather than burying their dead in modern cemeteries that attempt to promise eternal preservation, more Americans are choosing to scatter the ashes of a loved one at that person’s favorite nature spot, or have those ashes made into a part of a reef ball, to continue the life cycle of the ocean, or bury the body of a loved one in a natural cemetery, where that person will return to earth. Instead of being afraid of death, Americans are returning to the ways of their ancestors, by accepting death as a part of life, and engaging in more traditional practices.
Bibliography
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Harris, M., (2007). Grave matters: a journey through the modern funeral industry to a natural way of burial. New York, NY: Scribener.
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Matson, T., (2001), The last thing you want to do, Mother Earth News, retrieved February 26, 2009 from Academic Search Complete database.
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