The American Way of Death Revisited Read Online Free PDF Page B

lining, for one may choose among a rich assortment of “color-matched shades” in nonabrasive fabrics. Shrouds no longer exist. Instead, you may patronize a grave-wear couturiere who promises “handmade original fashions—styles from the best in life for the last memory-dresses, men’s suits, negligees, accessories.” For the final, perfect grooming: “Nature-Glo—the ultimate in cosmetic embalming.” And where have we heard that phrase “peace-of-mind protection” before? No matter. In funeral advertising, it is applied to the Wilbert Burial Vault, with its ⅜-inch precast asphalt inner liner plus extra-thick, reinforced concrete—all this “guaranteed by Good Housekeeping.” Here again the Cadillac, status symbol par excellence, appears in all its gleaming glory, this time transformed into a sleek funeral hearse. Although lesser vehicles are now used to collect the body and the permits, the Cad is still the conveyance of choice for the Loved One’s last excursion to the grave.
    You, the potential customer for all this luxury, are unlikely to read the lyrical descriptions quoted above, for they are culled from
Mortuary Management
and other trade magazines of the industry. For you there are the ads in your daily newspaper, generally found on the obituary page, stressing dignity, refinement, high-caliber professional service, and that intangible quality, sincerity. The trade advertisements are, however, instructive, because they furnish an important clue to the frame of mind into which the funeral industry has hypnotized itself.
    A new mythology, essential to the twentieth-century Americanfuneral rite, has grown up—or rather has been built up step-by-step—to justify the peculiar customs surrounding the disposal of our dead. And just as the witch doctor must be convinced of his own infallibility in order to maintain a hold over his clientele, so the funeral industry has had to “sell itself” on its articles of faith in the course of passing them along to the public.
    The first of these is the tenet that today’s funeral procedures are founded in “American tradition.” The story comes to mind of a sign on the freshly sown lawn of a brand-new Midwestern college: “There is a tradition on this campus that students never walk on this strip of grass. This tradition goes into effect next Tuesday.” The most cursory look at American funerals of past times will establish the parallel. Simplicity to the point of starkness, the plain pine box, the laying out of the dead by friends and family who also bore the coffin to the grave—these were the hallmarks of the traditional American funeral until the end of the nineteenth century.
    Secondly, there is the myth that the American public is only being given what it wants—an opportunity to keep up with the Joneses to the end. “In keeping with our high standard of living, there should be an equally high standard of dying,” says an industry leader. “The cost of a funeral varies according to individual taste and the niceties of living the family has been accustomed to.” Actually, choice doesn’t enter the picture for average individuals faced, generally for the first time, with the necessity of buying a product of which they are totally ignorant, at a moment when they are least in a position to quibble. In point of fact, the cost of a funeral almost always varies, not “according to individual taste” but according to what the traffic will bear.
    Thirdly, there is an assortment of myths based on half-digested psychiatric theories. The importance of the “memory picture” is stressed—meaning the last glimpse of the deceased in an open casket, done up with the latest in embalming techniques and finished off with a dusting of makeup. Another, impressively authentic-sounding, is the need for “grief therapy,” which is big now in mortuary circles. A historian of American funeral directing hints at the grief-therapist idea when speaking of the new role