On the Death of Outdated Modes of Coping with Death
An interview with home-funeral advocates
The undulating countryside of Pennsylvania is dotted with farmhouses and homesteads from the 1800s, many slowly, then all-at-once, collapsing into their own shadows. The lucky ones though are rescued from oblivion, renovated with new roofs to keep out the weather and the bats, retrofitted with inconspicuous air conditioning units, and thereby transformed into picture-perfect havens in which to gather and share a picnic lunch. From the front porch of this particular farmhouse where I find myself this summer afternoon, here and there I spot lazing cats who might be the feline descendants of the cats who lived on this farm a century or so ago; likewise, I peer over the shoulder of my host, to the hillside across the quiet road and see the grave of her father.
This is the biannual, semi-coordinated potluck (because once they all brought desserts) and business meeting of A Natural Undertaking, a group led by three women bringing awareness to the option of home-funerals and providing practical, how-to advice. They greet each other with socially distanced air-hugs because of the pandemic, settle up their share of the expense for maintain their website at naturalundertaking.org, then dive right in to business. Penny, Eleanor and Annie serve the counties of southeast Pennsylvania, helping to guide people interested in caring for a loved one after death.
In a given year, these women are contacted by only a handful of people who are either currently experiencing the death of a loved one, or planning for it. A Natural Undertaking is therefore not terribly time-consuming, a hobby rather than a profession. Funeral homes and the funeral industry they comprise are still the state-government-sanctioned, one-stop-shop for the disposition of the dead. But there is room, legally, for home-funerals in most states. And according to the folks of A Natural Undertaking, there is a psychological and spiritual need for the living to be more intimately involved beyond the phone call, the life insurance and dropping off the dress or suit and shoes at the funeral home. The passing of yesterday’s model of the funeral is therefore an unhurried process; is it, I wonder, as inevitable as any other death?
“I felt how wrong it all was, and knew it was against nature; I really was traumatized…everything in my very sensitive being felt that it was against the natural order of things.”
It was, in fact, the trauma of her own father’s funeral (not his death, mind you, but his funeral) in early 1968 that led Annie, decades later, to help found A Natural Undertaking. “My father died when I was just weeks from becoming twenty-one and Dad was just fifty-seven. He was my first big death and I was appalled at the goings-on that the funeral home insisted on after his death. He was kept away from us, only my mother could bring him clothes in which to be buried and no one else could see him because he was not embalmed; his casket was closed. I felt how wrong it all was, and knew it was against nature; I really was traumatized…everything in my very sensitive being felt that it was against the natural order of things.”
Since 1968, some things have changed; funeral homes may be less likely to “insist” upon the details of the funeral, but the psychological space the funeral home occupies hasn’t budged much. Sitting with Penny, Eleanor and Annie cues memories of the funerals I experienced in my childhood, and the strange associations I made as a kid. Was it supposed to be a privilege, I wondered, to reside temporarily upon death at the large and stately funeral home? And those somber, dark-dressed men who moved like ghosts through crowds and told people where to sit and when to stand — how did they, and only they, know exactly how a funeral was supposed to go?
When a loved one died, I observed in my youth, the procedure is call the funeral home, and they take care of it from there. It was only in the movies that the bereaved clung to a lifeless body, refusing to hand it over to a stranger. Except that it really does happen, as in the case of Beth Knox of Maryland, who was told by the hospital after the death of her seven-year-old daughter in a car accident, that they were required by law to release her daughter’s body only to a funeral home. In Beth’s words, “Now that her heart had stopped beating, I was being told that her care was no longer my concern.” Not only did this feel wrong to Beth, it actually was a misinterpretation of the law. But confusion, even among professionals in funeral homes, hospitals, coroners’ offices and police stations is very common, which is why Beth later brought the concept of a home-funeral to a mainstream audience by founding the organization called Crossings.
Penny first learned about the possibility of a home-funeral when she was helping her cousin in California, who was dying of cancer. “When she passed, they held a home-funeral for her, which I had never heard of before. Then someone suggested that I watch ‘A Family Undertaking,’ [a documentary about the home-funeral movement in the US]. When I heard that Beth Knox, [a home-funeral guide featured in ‘A Family Undertaking’], was going to be holding an actual workshop on doing home-funerals in Pennsylvania, I immediately signed up. During that weekend training, I met four other women from Pennsylvania who were also interested, and the five of us formed A Natural Undertaking. That was around 2007. We knew that most people were totally unaware that taking care of their own after death was even a possibility. We made it our task to educate not only families, but the professionals — funeral directors, coroners, hospice, even state officials.” Since 2007, the membership of A Natural Undertaking has fluctuated; these three women remain its core.
Many of us are lucky enough to live long stretches in which death seems remote, even hypothetical. I wonder, as one of Penny’s cats sniffs at my fingertips, whether humans are partly motivated to acquire pets in order to experience vicariously all the stages of life — from heedless childhood to measured adulthood to later life and then death. We can relate to animals with shorter lifespans — our dogs and cats and hamsters — and call them “part of the family.” We mourn pet deaths in an “open dress,” an invitation-only rehearsal for the passing of our human companions — parents, friends, possibly even children — which promise to be both more piercing and public. It strikes me as odd that just as a growing slice of the population, mentored by groups like A Natural Undertaking, is re-learning the ancient practice of caring for one’s own dead, a professional funeral service for pets is emerging, like this one: http://www.cloudninepets.com/. Now that pets are family members, some are turning to professionals to take over the labor of the funeral, as if professional removal of the body will take the grief away as well. That is the question, isn’t it? Does conventional funeral service help or hinder us in our bereavement?
He felt cold, and lifeless, and we all had the visceral experience that he was, indeed, gone.
The first step in letting go of what I learned a funeral is supposed to be is to sit with Penny, Eleanor and Annie, to glean from them what a home-funeral can be. Penny said, “When my dad died, at home, in his sleep one night, my mom had been well schooled in ‘DO NOT DIAL 911, call one of the siblings!’ There are twelve of us. We had already spoken with both our parents about holding a home-funeral, so my mom waited till a decent hour in the morning and called three of the local families. Family came, washed and dressed my dad’s body, and laid him out peacefully in their bed. And then more family began to arrive, from everywhere. One brother went to Lowe’s, bought plywood, and constructed a simple coffin, and placed it in the dining area on sawhorses with a tarp under it. Sisters brought paint, brushes, glitter and balloons. And everyone who came to see my dad to say goodbye was also invited to add something to his coffin, which in the course of two days was beautifully decorated by children, family, friends — of all ages. The dining area was just part of the living area, so everyone sat around talking, eating, visiting and painting.”
“Here’s what I noticed the most,” Penny continues, “When my dad’s loved ones came into the bedroom, one or two at a time, they sat on the bed next to him, and they all touched him — put their hand on him, on his arm, or shoulder. Now, Dad, of course, could not feel that, but it seemed important that he was touched by those saying goodbye. He felt cold, and lifeless, and we all had the visceral experience that he was, indeed, gone. I think that that helps us process the fact of death.” This touching of the body, observed not only in humans, but also in dolphins, chimpanzees and elephants, as described in by Rebecca DeWees of the Elephant Listening Project, suggests that a need for touch in the grieving process is scripted in our DNA. Annie adds, “Being with a beloved person or good friend after that person has died is an experience one does not forget. I finally have learned that this is one of the real meanings for the term ‘bearing witness.’ I hold this time as one of the most sacred times we can spend with someone we love.” Indeed, one of the aspects of the pandemic that is particularly scarring is that the experience of dying occurs in isolation. A covid-19 death is one of a shortlist of diseases for which a home-funeral could pose a hazard to the family.
It is awkward to ask. What about the physical processes of decay during the time Penny and her family held vigil? But home-funeral advocates, of all people, are prepared to respond to these types of questions. “Put in the simplest terms,” says Penny, “you need to deal with the fact that you have an organic body which is going to start decaying — so time is of the essence.” [During her father’s home-funeral,] “all we had to do was turn up the air conditioner to high.” After three days, she could detect just the slightest whiff of odor. By then, they were ready to part with his body. “On the third day, we carried Dad out of the bedroom and laid him in his beautiful coffin. We, as a family, said the Lord’s Prayer. And the funeral home transported him to his burial site in the local graveyard. There is no need, in this graveyard, for a vault or liner, so his homemade coffin was simply lowered into the grave. It was simple and beautiful. He was surrounded by his huge and loving family.” We turn our heads to the gentle slope of the cemetery.
In the case of Penny’s father, they “did have the help of our local funeral home, who did the paperwork, got the death certificate signed and processed, and did the transport of the body. All that can be handled by family without the aid of a funeral home, but it is somewhat complicated, time consuming, and needs to be done correctly. My family ended up choosing not to do that. I have been involved with families which have done it all.”
“Can you tell me the stories of others you’ve advised?” I ask. Penny says, “One that comes to mind was a family in Chester County who wanted very much to bury their two-year-old son, who had just died of liver disease, on their own spacious rural property. They were told by the ‘authorities’ that it was illegal, which was not true. It took a lot of encouragement and affirmation from us, and a lot of leg-work on the part of an uncle of the child, to move forward and indeed bury their baby son on their own land. I would have to say that each story is unique and personal to the family, but without exception, the home-funeral option has been a meaningful and healing one. There are many varieties of how those funerals and the final dispositions of the bodies may go — each meeting the needs of the individual families. It has been an honor to serve families in their time of transition, loss, and grief.”
Part of me flinches at the idea of bathing and dressing the body of someone I love. It seems too intimate. But is there something more behind my hesitation? I sit with it awhile. We commune over sweet potato salad, quinoa burgers topped with home-grown tomatoes and garden-fresh cilantro, followed by yogurt smoothies. I begin to recognize that while dressing a lifeless loved one, the fact of death is inescapable, so undeniable that it presents physical challenges, which home-funeral guides can teach you how to manage. But, doesn’t this make it exactly the kind of experience that might help one fully grasp an absence? Of course it makes me flinch. This awareness is a mile-marker; I walk past it. Now the idea of caring for a loved one in death seems as natural as satisfying any need they might have had while living: making something for them to eat or getting them a glass of water. In the words of the first British, female priest, Evelyn Francis Capel, “Anyone who stays away from a death because of distress, because the physical aspects can be so very unpleasant, will turn out to have missed the one experience of a lifetime which can make known the true heights of love.”
Accepting that death is “normal” should not be difficult for an adult. Yet, I forgive myself for this difficulty, as obvious as it is, because it is the food we have been fed. Even in our largely-secular society, the contents of the Bible are woven into the fabric of our culture. Paul wrote, “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” (1 Corinthians 15:26 King James Version) The retired Bishop of the Episcopal Church, John Shelby Spong, counters with “I think the time has come to recognize that life is supposed to die. Death is not unnatural. Paul is wrong: it is not the last enemy to be destroyed. It is a normal part of life, like being born.”
It occurs to me that the ones who are poised to benefit most from the resurgence of home-funerals are the very young, who have nothing to unlearn and may be spared confusing ideas about what a funeral is supposed to be. This seems important to Penny, too. “I want to add this,” she emphasizes. “There were many, many children who passed through my parents’ apartment, and saw my dad, dead, lying on the bed. No child was traumatized, because what they experienced was love and acceptance and the normalcy of an aged grandparent who had died. They all contributed their art work to the coffin, surrounded by adults who accepted death as part of a normal experience.” And that is the core of it for me — that a home-funeral might help us accept that death is normal and to accept, specifically, the death of someone we love, an experience that is sure to be painful, destabilizing and even crippling — all of that — yet entirely normal.
