Six Feet Under -- Or Not

The recent death of a friend's neighbor under circumstances of an unusually difficult nature has led to a vigorous discussion among a group of women over funeral practices and the advisability of including children therein.

I voiced the opinion that the funeral process is one of those natural life cycle things and that I saw no reason to exclude children. Another woman suggested that the process is anything but natural, to which I could only respond that, while she is correct (Hey! I watched every episode of Six Feet Under! No embalming or open caskets for me!), it is "culturally" natural for many people and part of the process of supporting them in their bereavement.

Like all of our views, mine is formed by my own life experience. When my mother and baby brother were killed in a car accident, there was no thought of me or my surviving brother attending the funeral; we were in the hospital in serious condition. However, there was also no thought of informing us about the events at hand, a decision that left me confused and resentful. I did learn, many years later, that my mother was buried with my brother in her arms, and that her obstetrician had had a magnificent bouqet of flowers delivered, the card saying, "To a lovely mother." And, of course, I learned that when young people die, the tsuanmi of grief is so overpowering that no one functions rationally for decades. Maybe forever. It does not occur to the adults that the small children might be wondering, "Where exactly is my mommy?"

For years afterward the adults in the family sought to protect the children from the repercussions of death: family members, friends, pets. It was, of course, with the pets that we finally grasped what was rightfully ours: the privilege of burying one of many dogs and cats to lie in the small country cemetery up the road, where gravestones marked the remains of family members and a small white cross carried a child's hand-painted letters: Best Dog In The World.

When my stepmother died last spring, my father expressed his usual revulsion toward the practice of an open casket viewing. That was his third experience in burying a wife, and he knew his preferences. This time, I asked him what she would have wanted. We also discussed the preferences of her family and ended up with a compromise: an open casket for family members for half an hour before the visitation opened to the public. That didn't satisfy everyone; one young relative even voiced his opinions for all to hear when he spoke during the post-funeral graveside service.

If I have learned anything from the five funerals I have attended in the past year, it is that I need to write my wishes down, sooner rather than later. They aren't too complicated: sprinkle me in Lake Chautauqua, off the coast of St. Augustine, and on Mount Pisgah. Put up a monument of an angel with BIG WINGS (think Angels in America) where I walk, preferably a strikingly carved glass one that will be as much a gift in the sunlight to the cemetery walkers and runners as is the stained glass bonsai tree monument already there. I have some specific music requests -- I do like a formal church service with major, major music. I like it when people go out in style -- my dad's minimalistic views are not mine.

On the other hand, I don't have the slightest desire for my remains to be displayed for a public viewing. A lot of people say that the presence of the body cements the finality of death for those left behind. I can't discount that for others, but it's not been my experience. I am very much aware that dead is dead. On the other hand, my grandfather has been gone for 21 years and often seems present to me, as does my stepmother who died last year. I never saw my grandfather's body; I held my stepmother's hand as she died and sat with her for about an hour afterward. Not because her body was there, but because we were both caught in some magical and windy place between here and there. The body itself, for all the attention we lavish on ours while we live, turns out to be rather insignificant in the end. The spirit moves, even in a cramped and poorly designed hospital room.

The most moving service I've attended in the past year was for a man about my age who was a stained glass artist. His company had restored all the glass in the magnificent church where his memorial service was held and the timing was perfect, with the mid-afternoon sunlight streaming through one of the major side windows. Everything about the service reflected a perfect balance of the family's mixture of sorrow over one gone far too soon and relief that his extreme suffering had ended in combination with their celebration of the exquisitely triumphal beauty of his life's work.

It's very difficult to find a way to celebrate a person's life in the short hour or so usually allotted to a funeral or memorial service and simultaneously attend to the needs and preferencees of all the mourners. One of the reasons I liked that memorial last October was the way in which it encompassed grief and celebration in balance. We tend to find ourselves at "Celebrations of Life" these days and, while laughter and music and honoring of lives well-lived are all important, the terrible grief that accompanies them should be acknowledged as well. We live in a culture in which people are often staggered by their sense of loss and disorientation months after someone's departure; we need to remind ourselves at the memorial or funeral service that grief is for a lifetime. The alteration of the fabric of our lives is permanent, regardless of how we accomodate ourselves to it, and it is ludicrous to pretend otherwise.