FUNERAL AND MEMORIAL PRACTICES

In 1900, it was not uncommon for death to strike at any age. Young children and people over age sixty-five each accounted for about a third of annual deaths in the United States. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, in developed countries, death was largely confined to older adulthood. Three-fourths of annual deaths in the United States now occur to persons over the age of sixty-five. This demographic shift in the age at death, along with urbanization, migration, secularization, and consumerism, have contributed to dramatic changes in funeral and memorial practices in the United States over the past century.

J. J. Farrell, in Inventing the American Way of Death, 1830–1920 (1980), describes common funeral-related practices that prevailed through the mid-to-late 1800s among people of European descent. Most people died at home during this period, and funerals and burials were handled by the immediate family and neighbors. After the death, women in the family would wash, dress, and prepare the body for burial. Men were responsible for making the plain wood coffin or securing it from the local carpenter. Male survivors dug the grave, and in some cases carved the grave stone. The wake was typically held at home, followed by a committal service at grave-side.

As industrialization flourished, American cities grew more crowded, and living spaces became smaller. When death occurred, many families did not have the physical space for a wake in the home. D. C. Sloane (1991) cites three other reasons for the expanding roles of undertakers in the late nineteenth century: (1) the rise in popularity of embalming; (2) a longer distance from the home to the cemetery necessitated someone to organize the procession; and (3) families were concerned about ensuring that all the formalities were followed. The National Funeral Directors Association was established in 1882. The group decided to use the term funeral directors, rather than undertakers, in an effort to portray a more professional image. During the twentieth century, the role of the funeral director continued to expand into areas previously held by the family and the clergy.

The late twentieth century trend of a few international, profit-seeking funeral chains buying up family-owned funeral homes across the country has led to some concern over the homogenization of the American funeral. There is, however, evidence of a growing movement toward more personally meaningful arrangements, where funeral home personnel function as "facilitators" rather than "directors." Whether homogenization or personalization prevail, three central decisions remain for individuals responsible for final arrangements: 1) what to do with the deceased body?; 2) what type of ceremony will take place to acknowledge the death?; and 3) how shall this person be remembered?

What to do with the body?

Throughout human history, societies have prescribed appropriate final disposition of human remains. Factors affecting final disposition practices include religious beliefs, climate, geography, available space, ethnicity, economics, social customs, and environmental concerns.

Religious beliefs concerning final disposition are influenced by conceptions of what follows death, as well as the role of the physical body. Hinduism and Buddhism require cremation, while Lutherans have no formal position for or against it. The Roman Catholic Church opposed cremation until the latter part of the twentieth century, at which time cremation became permitted, but not encouraged. According to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, "For the final disposition of the body, it is ancient Christian custom to bury or entomb the bodies of the dead; cremation is permitted, unless it is evident that cremation was chosen for anti-Christian motives" (Order of Christian Funerals, 1990, p. 6).

For both religious and cultural reasons, most Jewish people are buried and not cremated. Many Jews believe in the resurrection, "the return of the soul to the resuscitated body" (Kastenbaum & Kastenbaum, 1989, p.257) and cremation has taken on added negative connotations because of the horrors of the Holocaust.

Several First Nation (American Indian) tribes have the tradition of wrapping the corpse in hides or blankets and setting it out in the air for a year or more. Habenstein & Lamers (1960) explain that, in some tribes, the wrapped body was set in a tree or on a man-made platform. Among Dakota Indians, "at the end of this period of air burial, it was given earth burial" (p. 687).

NOTE: Cremation can be a means or an ends to final disposition.

Immigrants to the United States have faced barriers to maintaining traditional body disposition preferences. For example, Hmong refugees to the United States have encountered problems while attempting to make final arrangements because their practices differ from the local norm. They do not wish to be embalmed, do wish to hold the funeral ceremony at home, and desire more control over selecting an auspicious location for burial.

Table 1 lists contemporary final disposition options. Although the cremation rate continues to climb (10 percent in 1960, 24 percent in 1998, and projected 40 percent by 2010), earth burial of casketed remains continues to be the most common form of final disposition in the United States, accounting for about 65 percent of all dispositions. National cremation rates mask the wide variation among the states. Hawaii, Nevada, and Washington have cremation rates over 50 percent, while Mississippi, West Virginia, and Alabama have cremation rates of about 5 percent.

The two remaining forms of final disposition are rarely used. Medical and dental schools around the country accept body donations, or willed bodies, for use in research and training. After two years of use, the bodies are generally cremated and either returned to the family or buried in a group grave.

By 1993, about fifty people had opted for cryogenic suspension. Interest in cryogenics was piqued in 1964 when R. C. W. Ettinger published his book, The Prospect of Immortality. Ettinger defines cryogenic suspension as "specialized cold storage of clinically dead people. . .in hope of eventual rescue, revival, repair, and rejuvenation by future technology" (Kastenbaum, 1994–1995, p. 159). During an interview with the editor of the journal Omega, Ettinger reported the cost of a full-body cryogenic suspension at his Cryogenics Institute was $28,000, compared to $51,000–$60,000 for cryogenic suspension of just the head at other institutes.

Ceremony to mark the death

There are two categories of ceremonies that mark the death of a loved one: a funeral service, in which the body of the decedent is present, generally in a casket; and a memorial service, in which the corpse is not present because it is not available (e.g., lost at sea, destroyed in a fire, missing) or because it has been cremated. Many factors can affect the type of ceremony that follows death, including religious beliefs, ethnicity, local customs, attitudes about the cause of death, age of the person who died, economic circumstances, and perceived social expectations on the part of the person who plans the ceremony.

Dawson, Santos and Burdick report that the social functions of a funeral include: (1) public recognition that a death has occurred; (2) a framework to provide support to those most affected by the death; and (3) a socially accepted way of body disposal. Other functions include: allowing survivors to say good-bye; affirming the worth of one's relationship with the person who died; allowing people to search for meaning in life and death; reinforcing the fact of death in all our lives; and establishing an ongoing helping relationship among mourners. Involvement with funeral rituals may also help with adjusting to the loss, and a funeral can help the community of survivors acknowledge their own mortality while providing social meaning to the passing of a life.

Most of the benefits accrue to individuals and societies from a funeral service are expected to exist for memorial services as well, with the exception of the effects of actually viewing the decedent (which can be, but is not always, part of a funeral service). Some people may benefit more from funeral services, others from memorial services. It may be the contents of the service— rather than the presence of the body—that affects attendees. Research is needed in this area.

A new twist on attending a funeral or memorial service has been made possible by the Internet. In a 2000 Washington Post article, Dan Eggen described the funeral service of a seventy-seven-year old woman in Scottsdale, Arizona, "attended" by over twenty people who watched it over the Internet from the East Coast, "many of them elderly relatives who could not make the trip" (Eggen, 2000, p. A01).

How will this person be remembered?

For many centuries, grave markers have served as the primary physical reminder of a life lived. Grave markers and cemeteries have undergone dramatic changes since the mid-1800s. Four places of interment existed in the United States before the nineteenth century: isolated pioneer graves; family farms; churchyards; and potter's fields (for the indigent). In his book, The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History (1991), D. C. Sloane traces the history of the American cemetery including the advent of the rural cemetery of the early 1800s, with its winding lanes and ornate headstones in a natural garden setting; the development of the lawn cemetery, which became popular following the Civil War, with its park-like landscaping and prescribed markers; and the establishment of memorial parks in the 1920s and 1930s, which all but removed the impression of death from the premises by requiring semiuniform flat grave markers that do not interfere with the suburban landscape. (The use of flat markers lowers maintenance costs because lawn mowers can do the work that was previously done by hand). Each type of cemetery reflects the prevailing ideas about the appropriate balance between nature and art, ownership, community inclusiveness, and the relationship between the living and the dead.

Grave-marker inscriptions have also followed trends. Up until the eighteenth century, most burials occurred in churchyards in small towns. Churchyard epitaphs functioned as constant reminders of the transitory nature of human life. "The most common epitaph was 'Where you are now, so once was I. Where I am now, so you will be"' (Jackson and Vergara, 1989, p. 10). By the mid-nineteenth century, Victorian epitaphs reflected more emphasis on the self. "Individual responsibility for the salvation of one's soul, which to some degree supplanted the dominance of the mother church, led to highly individual expressions of faith and grief. . .and a new preoccupation with the grieving family left behind" (Brown, 1994, p. 4).

Contemporary choices for epitaphs run the gamut from simply stating name and birth and death dates to explanations of genealogy and reflections of the decedent's past times. Examples of the latter include the following epitaphs found in a Midwestern cemetery, "I'd Rather be Drag Racing" and also "World's Greatest Trucker" (Brown, 1994).

Aside from grave markers and monuments, there are many other ways in which loved ones have been memorialized both in public and in private. Obituaries continue to notify the community of a death and convey the impact of someone's life and death for the family and community. Memorial photographs of the deceased remain important private possessions, although seldom shared outside the immediate family. Mourning jewelry containing pieces of hair from the decedent was popular in the Victorian era. Today, mourners can purchase a locket containing the cremated remains of a loved one.

Information technology has facilitated changes in memorialization. Video memorial tributes, with family photos set to music, are available through funeral homes, and virtual cemeteries are found on the World Wide Web.

P. Roberts (1999) reports that the emerging Web cemetery is akin to a combination epitaph, obituary, and cemetery. "These sites provide a place to leave words and symbols memorializing the dead among tributes to others who have died" (p. 337). Visitors can leave virtual flowers or stones at markers, and they can sign a virtual condolence book as well. One visitor left this comment at a Web cemetery: "A wonderful idea for one to remember their loved ones. In cyberspace they are everywhere and no where and can be remembered by all" (Roberts, p. 356). Another cyber-visitor wrote: "Thank you for providing me a place where I can go for solace and comfort.. . .I never dreamed I would receive such gratification through cyberspace" (p. 346). Greater use of Web-based memorial practices (and other aspects of final arrangements) are sure to follow in the coming decades as the World Wide Web continues to transform life, and death.

The funeral as a purchase

It is customary to think about funeral, burial, and memorial practices as social, religious, and cultural rituals, but they have become characterized as consumer transactions as well. The American Way of Death (1963), a best-selling book detailing the anticonsumer practices of some members of the funeral industry, helped to expand the grassroots Funeral and Memorial Society movement, now known as the "Funeral Consumers Alliance." Currently there are about one hundred local societies dedicated to educating consumers on funeral options and costs.

In 1984, the Federal Trade Commission issued the Funeral Rule, requiring every funeral home in the country to provide accurate, itemized, written price information to anyone who asks for it in person. The rule also prohibits funeral homes from engaging in deceptive or unfair practices. The Funeral Rule applies to both preneed and at need (after the death) funeral home purchases, but does not cover cemetery, crematory, grave marker, or third-party casket sellers. Consumer advocates are calling for an expansion of the Funeral Rule to include all vendors of funeral-related goods and services.

With most deaths postponed until older adulthood, and funeral directors serving as the repository of final arrangement information, many families face making or overseeing final arrangements without much experience. A 1995 study reported that half the people responsible for final arrangements of a deceased loved one had no idea what the final costs would be before they met with the funeral director. Despite this lack of knowledge, a lot of money is at stake. The mean cost of final arrangements, the study found, was $6,500 (a range of less than $200 to over $14,000).

It is ironic that as the number of funeral and memorial options has increased, the average adult's experience with making final arrangements has decreased. There is also a lack of consensus as to who is responsible for making final arrangements, and when they should be made. Especially in the case of older adults, should decedents make and pay for arrangements before death? Or should this responsibility fall to survivors? These decisions are generally dealt with on a family-by-family basis, though more information, discussion, and options regarding funeral and memorial practices can be expected with the aging of the baby boom cohort.

Mercedes Bern-Klug

See also Death and Dying.

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