When my life partner died, it was just before midnight. For the past several days, family and friends had visited her, knowing she was near the end (from ovarian cancer, that sneaky thing.)
I called the hospice, and the nurse on duty said she'd drive up from the city. After she examined Marge and pronounced the time of death (into the next date, by the time she arrived), she said she'd phone the funeral home to come pick up the body. My daughter and I said "No, absolutely not! We want to keep her here till we're ready for the funeral home to take her."
The nurse insisted that legally that was not permitted, but of course I stood her down because I knew it was indeed, permitted. It turned out that the nurse had only dealt with deaths in the hospital, not in the home.
I talked with the mortuary we had prearranged long before, through our state's branch of the Memorial Society that limits costs and last-minute decisions. (https://memorialsocietyofgeorgia.org/) Of course it was fine; they'd wait for me to call before they came to get the body. I've often wondered, since that night, how many people are bullied into letting the body of a loved one be taken away because an "expert" said it had to be that way.
Our Episcopal priest brought us hugs and prayers, and holy water and sprigs of evergreen with which she sprinkled and blessed Marge's body. All day long, people came to say goodbye and to place something on Marge's body that symbolized their appreciation for her. Eventually her face and heart and hands were completely covered.
This took all day. It was very slow...ceremonial...and it felt exactly right.
It wasn't till sunset that it felt like time to let her body go. A close friend brought her big frame drum and two more drums for us. As the two men from the mortuary tenderly lifted Marge's body onto their stretcher, my friend and daughter and I began to drum, in a slow, steady rhythm that the drums themselves seemed to choose.
And so, crying, we drummed her out as the sun began to drop below the hills. My feeling was then, and remains unchanged, that I couldn't have borne to let her body go without the drumming. In days after, other people drummed in her memory. She was well and deeply loved.
I have long wanted the most environmentally friendly final arrangements possible: a plain, untreated pine box, for example (rented, ideally, although I don't know if you can be buried without a coffin).
I have recently learned from Caitlin Doughty's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/OrderoftheGoodDeath that one can opt out of embalming, which is terrible for the environment, and creates an overall unnatural final experience. I do understand that things need to move more quickly when one is not using embalming fluid, and I'm ok with that. I learn a great deal from Caitlin.
I don't want death to be this mysterious, unspoken-of, far-away, scary thing. I want to know about it, be part of it. To not cast away the dead to be someone else's "problem". I love Catherine's story above as it reflects this understanding. It actually reminds me of my ideal birth, which it took me four babies to get - I didn't want anyone telling me when to push or counting in my face while I did. My body knew when to push. I didn't even have to consciously choose it. Two pushes was all it took to deliver him this way. I like the parallels here between lower-intervention birth and lower-intervention death.
Thank you for writing about this, and for hosting the conversation. <3
My husband and I had this conversation recently, partly inspired by your piece on the caskets by the Trappists; we're currently living far away from all our friends and family, in a place we've had no chance to get to know, and are expecting to move around a bit more before we find ourselves settled anywhere. So in light of that, "please don't bury me in the Midwest" was the refrain of our conversation -- we currently have (not on paper just yet) an In Case Of Tragedy plan which has a burial location tentatively near his parents and a sketch of "the first few months" in terms of who to stay with and a moving-out timeline.
I've also requested explicitly to not be embalmed; the concept wigs me out, and I've made this very clear to my husband on several occasions.
Eventually we may also have funeral Mass plans on hand somewhere too; I plan to insist against eulogising. The trend at funerals to speak well of the dead as if they're past Purgatory makes me anxious; pray for your dead! Pray them to heaven! Free passes are incredibly rare and you can't just presume them! aaa!
there's a parish in Boston where the priests do something similar: hold funerals for homeless people. the ones who would die forgotten are given a final chance at dignity and being remembered.
Well, the thing that's topmost in my mind when I think of what will happen to my body after I die is... being an organ donor, or donating my body for medical students to practice on!
My dad often brings up the topic - he says it's inconsistent for religious people to worry about what happens to their body after death. (to the point of objecting about donating organs.) And I tend to lean towards his view - and think I could defend it all the more: We as Christians ought to want to be able to preserve life. (Genesis 45:5) Christians ought to be giving like God the Father who is by nature generous, and gives us not only physical bodies, but every good & perfect gift. (This same discussion came up again this very week! Dad said, "There are some religious people - I don't know if you guys are like this - who would object to [donating ones body as an organ donor]." I'm kind of frustrated that I can't seem to dispel his suspicion! Or I'm frustrated that he associates Christians with this tendency he strongly disapproves of! But, oh well, I can be thankful that I know this topic is likely to come up again & again, and that it's a conversation which has potential to point to that which is beyond death.)
I found that Augustine had said something really relevant, and it made my heart glad:
"This does not mean that the bodies of the departed are to be scorned and cast away, particularly not the bodies of the righteous and faithful... For if such things as a father's clothes, and his ring, are dear to their children in proportion to their affection for their parents, then the actual bodies are certainly not to be treated with contempt, since we wear them in a much closer and more intimate way than any clothing..." (and that is the part that perhaps my dad and I might tend to brush aside)
"...But if the absence of the necessities of life, such as food and clothes, although causing much misery, does not shatter the good man's courage to endure with patience, and does not banish devotion from his soul, but rather fertilizes it by exercise, still less does the absence of the usual honours of funeral and burial bring misery to those who are at peace in the hidden abodes of the devout*. Therefore where those honours were not paid to the bodies of Christians in the sack of their great city, or of other towns, now fault lay with the living, who were unable to offer them, and no penalty was suffered by the dead, who could not feel their deprivation." (and this is the part that maybe resonates with my dad's point.)
-City of God, Book I, Chapter 14, translation by Henry Bettenson, Penguin Classics
One of my “reach projects” before the pandemic was to start a pan-Orthodox burial society for our area, since some parishes had lots of vigorous young people, others had lots of well-off lawyers (helpful for navigating regulations in a place with so many different legal jurisdictions), and still others had, well, plenty of people who should be preparing for their own funerals. Dn. Mark Barna’s book “A Christian Ending” (https://store.ancientfaith.com/a-christian-ending) is a guide for communities to organize these kinds of efforts — including how to opt out of embalming, minimize the environmental impact of burial containers, and ritually care for the body before burial. (One anecdote Dn. Mark tells: workers at one morgue observed that his was the first Christian group to come to wash and pray over the body, after seeing many groups of Jews, Muslims, and others.)
When my life partner died, it was just before midnight. For the past several days, family and friends had visited her, knowing she was near the end (from ovarian cancer, that sneaky thing.)
I called the hospice, and the nurse on duty said she'd drive up from the city. After she examined Marge and pronounced the time of death (into the next date, by the time she arrived), she said she'd phone the funeral home to come pick up the body. My daughter and I said "No, absolutely not! We want to keep her here till we're ready for the funeral home to take her."
The nurse insisted that legally that was not permitted, but of course I stood her down because I knew it was indeed, permitted. It turned out that the nurse had only dealt with deaths in the hospital, not in the home.
I talked with the mortuary we had prearranged long before, through our state's branch of the Memorial Society that limits costs and last-minute decisions. (https://memorialsocietyofgeorgia.org/) Of course it was fine; they'd wait for me to call before they came to get the body. I've often wondered, since that night, how many people are bullied into letting the body of a loved one be taken away because an "expert" said it had to be that way.
Our Episcopal priest brought us hugs and prayers, and holy water and sprigs of evergreen with which she sprinkled and blessed Marge's body. All day long, people came to say goodbye and to place something on Marge's body that symbolized their appreciation for her. Eventually her face and heart and hands were completely covered.
This took all day. It was very slow...ceremonial...and it felt exactly right.
It wasn't till sunset that it felt like time to let her body go. A close friend brought her big frame drum and two more drums for us. As the two men from the mortuary tenderly lifted Marge's body onto their stretcher, my friend and daughter and I began to drum, in a slow, steady rhythm that the drums themselves seemed to choose.
And so, crying, we drummed her out as the sun began to drop below the hills. My feeling was then, and remains unchanged, that I couldn't have borne to let her body go without the drumming. In days after, other people drummed in her memory. She was well and deeply loved.
I have long wanted the most environmentally friendly final arrangements possible: a plain, untreated pine box, for example (rented, ideally, although I don't know if you can be buried without a coffin).
I have recently learned from Caitlin Doughty's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/OrderoftheGoodDeath that one can opt out of embalming, which is terrible for the environment, and creates an overall unnatural final experience. I do understand that things need to move more quickly when one is not using embalming fluid, and I'm ok with that. I learn a great deal from Caitlin.
I don't want death to be this mysterious, unspoken-of, far-away, scary thing. I want to know about it, be part of it. To not cast away the dead to be someone else's "problem". I love Catherine's story above as it reflects this understanding. It actually reminds me of my ideal birth, which it took me four babies to get - I didn't want anyone telling me when to push or counting in my face while I did. My body knew when to push. I didn't even have to consciously choose it. Two pushes was all it took to deliver him this way. I like the parallels here between lower-intervention birth and lower-intervention death.
Thank you for writing about this, and for hosting the conversation. <3
My husband and I had this conversation recently, partly inspired by your piece on the caskets by the Trappists; we're currently living far away from all our friends and family, in a place we've had no chance to get to know, and are expecting to move around a bit more before we find ourselves settled anywhere. So in light of that, "please don't bury me in the Midwest" was the refrain of our conversation -- we currently have (not on paper just yet) an In Case Of Tragedy plan which has a burial location tentatively near his parents and a sketch of "the first few months" in terms of who to stay with and a moving-out timeline.
I've also requested explicitly to not be embalmed; the concept wigs me out, and I've made this very clear to my husband on several occasions.
Eventually we may also have funeral Mass plans on hand somewhere too; I plan to insist against eulogising. The trend at funerals to speak well of the dead as if they're past Purgatory makes me anxious; pray for your dead! Pray them to heaven! Free passes are incredibly rare and you can't just presume them! aaa!
there's a parish in Boston where the priests do something similar: hold funerals for homeless people. the ones who would die forgotten are given a final chance at dignity and being remembered.
Well, the thing that's topmost in my mind when I think of what will happen to my body after I die is... being an organ donor, or donating my body for medical students to practice on!
My dad often brings up the topic - he says it's inconsistent for religious people to worry about what happens to their body after death. (to the point of objecting about donating organs.) And I tend to lean towards his view - and think I could defend it all the more: We as Christians ought to want to be able to preserve life. (Genesis 45:5) Christians ought to be giving like God the Father who is by nature generous, and gives us not only physical bodies, but every good & perfect gift. (This same discussion came up again this very week! Dad said, "There are some religious people - I don't know if you guys are like this - who would object to [donating ones body as an organ donor]." I'm kind of frustrated that I can't seem to dispel his suspicion! Or I'm frustrated that he associates Christians with this tendency he strongly disapproves of! But, oh well, I can be thankful that I know this topic is likely to come up again & again, and that it's a conversation which has potential to point to that which is beyond death.)
I found that Augustine had said something really relevant, and it made my heart glad:
"This does not mean that the bodies of the departed are to be scorned and cast away, particularly not the bodies of the righteous and faithful... For if such things as a father's clothes, and his ring, are dear to their children in proportion to their affection for their parents, then the actual bodies are certainly not to be treated with contempt, since we wear them in a much closer and more intimate way than any clothing..." (and that is the part that perhaps my dad and I might tend to brush aside)
"...But if the absence of the necessities of life, such as food and clothes, although causing much misery, does not shatter the good man's courage to endure with patience, and does not banish devotion from his soul, but rather fertilizes it by exercise, still less does the absence of the usual honours of funeral and burial bring misery to those who are at peace in the hidden abodes of the devout*. Therefore where those honours were not paid to the bodies of Christians in the sack of their great city, or of other towns, now fault lay with the living, who were unable to offer them, and no penalty was suffered by the dead, who could not feel their deprivation." (and this is the part that maybe resonates with my dad's point.)
-City of God, Book I, Chapter 14, translation by Henry Bettenson, Penguin Classics
One of my “reach projects” before the pandemic was to start a pan-Orthodox burial society for our area, since some parishes had lots of vigorous young people, others had lots of well-off lawyers (helpful for navigating regulations in a place with so many different legal jurisdictions), and still others had, well, plenty of people who should be preparing for their own funerals. Dn. Mark Barna’s book “A Christian Ending” (https://store.ancientfaith.com/a-christian-ending) is a guide for communities to organize these kinds of efforts — including how to opt out of embalming, minimize the environmental impact of burial containers, and ritually care for the body before burial. (One anecdote Dn. Mark tells: workers at one morgue observed that his was the first Christian group to come to wash and pray over the body, after seeing many groups of Jews, Muslims, and others.)