Exit strategy
It seems unthinkable that the practice of direct cremation, direct burial – the rapid and unceremonious disposal of the dead – could land on our shores. It’s been preying on my mind. Now I’m not so sure.
Here’s a view from Rabbi Mark S Glickman writing in the Seattle Times about what he calls the “desire to de-emphasize or avoid focusing on death”:
My Aunt Margie died a few weeks ago. And now that she's gone, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do.
I hadn't seen Aunt Margie very often for the past several years, but we were very close when I was a boy. She had a kind smile, she took genuine interest in our lives, and it was rumored that nations had gone to war just to get a piece of her famous chocolate roll. My brothers and I did, too.
Aunt Margie lived near San Francisco, and as her death approached, I began making plans to go to her funeral. I was attending a conference in Southern California. Maybe I could reroute my return trip through the Bay Area.
The call finally came when I was in Santa Monica, just before lunch. I was enjoying the warmth and the sunshine, but then my mother's name flashed onto my cellphone screen. Yes, Aunt Margie had died. The end was peaceful. In accordance with her wishes, there would be no burial rites. Her body would be cremated without ceremony.
No funeral? Not even a memorial service? But ... but ... she had just died! What was I supposed to do? I felt like I needed to do something about her death — to honor her, to memorialize her somehow. Was I supposed to just go on as if nothing had happened?
He concludes:
Judaism teaches that a spark of God burns within every human soul, and that, therefore, when a person dies, a part of God dies, too. The divine presence shrinks with the death of every human being.
In response, after a person dies, Jews recite the Kaddish, our prayer of mourning, in an attempt to restore God's presence to the world. "Yitgadal v'yitkadash shmei rabbah," it begins, "May God's great name be magnified and sanctified."
I won't presume to tell you how you should mourn your loved ones' deaths, or what preparations you should make for your own. I will, however, encourage you to remember that human life is awesome and mysterious; that a person's death is often sad and always significant; and that we mourn best when our actions reflect these great truths.
My dear Aunt Margie has died. The sun no longer shines quite as brightly as it used to. May God's great name be magnified and sanctified.
Read the entire piece here.
Labels: direct cremation
posted by Charles Cowling at
10:38
8 Comments:
Thank you, Charles. We really do need the opportunity to 'do something' and to acknowledge the life led and the loss we have experienced.
Years ago, this would have been unimaginable- to just dispose. In this trend we not only ignore death, we belittle the importance of life and lose some of our humanity.
Is the acknowledgement of a life and a loss not important enough any more for us to reschedule our plans for a day to at least gather to support one another and remember?
I can't think of anything MORE important.
Thanks for this provocation, Charles: an oblique and clever reminder that managing death well is the sign of a sane society.
To my mind, the bonkers thing about 'direct disposals' is that all the money goes on the wrong thing: on keeping coffinmakers and crem owners in business. We should be spending our dosh on reflective rituals and cakes and ale, and getting our money's worth!
I can see the point in having just a committal, whether burial or cremation, followed by a memorial ceremony of some kind a little later, to allow people time to gather from afar. (Though as a colleague of mine puts it a little bluntly, a coffin is a big draw, and you may get a smaller attendance for a memorial ceremony unless you're famous.)
The thought of nothing at all happening is chilling, for anyone who cared even a little. Like, for example, staff from care homes and hospices who sometimes manage to get away to attend a funeral, which given their jobs I find touching and impressive.
But it's tricky, isn't it, if it is someone's particular wish to have no rites? I'd feel hesitant about contradicting that wish, but pretty bad - worse - if I put it into effect. It's a horrible idea.
Sonority, resonance, truth, tears, hugs, and poems, prayers if you want, hymns and songs, candles and music and flowers, and afterwards cakes and ale as K says.
Kaddish isn't only a Jewish prayer, it's a human need. We need to do something with and to the world after someone dies, to "weave his absence into the fabric of things." Whether you believe in an afterlife or not, death rites are life rites. Antigone died to ensure them for her brother, a long time ago.
"Howl, howl, howl. O, you are men of stones.." How can anyone bear not to mark a death somehow, anyhow?
I've experienced two sides of this dilemna, and have seen the effects of both on the survivors who loved the people who had passed.
My uncle died two years ago. I was very close to him throughout my life. He was a bit of a loner, and moved across the country for the last 2 years of his life. When he died, my mother and another uncle, his only 2 siblings, went to Arizona and dealt with his cremation, and finalizing his affairs. However, there was no service, memorial, or any ritual to give closure to those of us who knew and loved him.
On the other hand, I lost my husband of 29 years in July '09. It was devastating to me, my girls, our many friends, and family. My sister-in-law, my daughters, and I planned a beautiful memorial service in our backyard. Two hundred people attended. We shared stories, pictures, his favorite music, and blessings from a variety of traditions. I'm positive that it touched the heart of every person there. Many people told me that it was life-changing and inspiring. It was a true celebration of who he was and what he believed in during this life.
So, my point is, that a ritual to honor a life does not have to be sad. It can be beautiful. It can be inspiring. But, most of all, it is necessary and important in the healing process for all involved.
I still think this sad trend has more to do with people's hatred of funerals because of bad experiences of them in the past (and who hasn't had a few of those? What's the standard reaction to the simple word 'funeral', let alone the actual practice?) than any positive desire to do something different.
If I thought that was all there was on offer, I too would want to spare my family the agony.
Let's get the message out loud and clear; funerals are highly desirable rituals, and just because they're usually done dismally badly doesn't make them bad. One beautiful song is all it takes to convert a music hater.
Jonathan, how do we know they are "usually done dismally badly?" What's the measure of this?
No doubt there are many perfunctory ceremonies, no doubt at all that crems are often pretty dire environments - but I think there is a danger that because we may have strong views about what a funeral should be, we assume that funerals that are otherwise are dismal.
Isn't the only measure of the effectiveness of a funeral the responses of the people at it? Even if we have creative ideas about what it could have been like, don't we risk being patronising if we assume we know what the funeral "should" be like? I grapple with this tension in my own practice.
But of course I agree that we need to show people that funerals are desirable and essential rituals, and we need to make clear to them all that is on offer. FDs are key to this too. The default mode is too strong - but that is exactly what some people want.
Along with Charles and many others, I hate the song "My Way" with an almost dangerous intensity - but if a family want it, they get it. It's not for me to mutter "oh please not - look, I know a beautiful Bach sonata" or "how about the Red Hot Chili Peppers?" Unless they ask me for suggestions. Which they do, fairly often.
Seems to me we have to grow the alternatives out of what we do, and acknowledge the primacy of the family's preferences, even if we do offer suggestions and discuss alternatives. I can't really write off what people want as dismal, though it is certainly a dismal business if they can't get what they want!
You're right to pull me up on my assumption, Gloriamundi - but I'm going not on my opinion of funerals I've been to, so much as their reputation with people who talk about them.
The family's responses are not the only measure of effectiveness, though they can be instructive. Remember the concept of 'secret disappointment', and the need it implies to believe the funeral went well, and you realize you have to take even the most effusive praise with just a little caution; what will they say of your own best efforts in a year's time? My own experience tells me they become, if anything, more grateful over time, but that's one area where I don't make assumptions.
'My Way' was played at one of the nicest funerals I've conducted; and I'd set fire to the CD of my own favourite music to make sure the direst of songs was played instead, if that's the FAMILY's own wish. What spoils a good funeral, when it does, is not the family's choices but their lack of power to choose after they've had their funeral hijacked by the 'traditions' they've acquiesced to. And please don't tell me that's what they want - if no-one had portrayed the pseudovictoriana we associate with funerals, can you think of anyone who would have invented it for themselves? It's like saying Kentucky Fried Chicken is what people want, merely on the evidence that they want it.
One enlightening comment I heard recently, however, was the same appreciative things said about having choice taken away as are said about having choice explained. The only conclusion I can come to is that what people want is to be cared for. But if they want to dispense with the funeral altogether, can we assume that is WHAT they want?
Oh, and postscript to above: My comment about a beautiful song had nothing whatever to do with music.
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