Creating Meaningful Funeral Ceremonies

Alan Wolfelt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317756521
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

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Part 1:

Influences on the Deritualization of the Funeral

“To forget one’s ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without a root.”

Chinese proverb

For many, traditional funeral rituals have lost much of their value and meaning. They are perceived as empty and lacking creativity. I myself have attended way too many of what I would term generic funerals–cookie cutter ceremonies that leave you feeling like you may as well have been at a stranger’s funeral. As more and more people attend these meaningless funerals, society’s opinion of the funeral ritual in general nosedives. This in turn causes people to devalue the funeral that will be held for them someday: “When I die, don’t go to any trouble.” A tendency to minimize one’s own funeral is for many a reflection of the sense of purposelessness they have witnessed while attending a generic funeral service.

Let’s explore a few of the other causes of the deritualization of the funeral service in North America:

• We live in the world’s first death-free generation.

Many people now live into their 40s and 50s before they experience a close personal loss. Today two-thirds of all deaths in the U.S. each year happen to people 65 or older. One result of this mortality rate shift is that if you are forty or older and have never attended a truly meaningful funeral, you probably don’t realize the importance of having one.

In the early 1900s, on the other hand, most children had been to many funerals by the age of ten. (In 1900 over half of all deaths in the U.S. each year were deaths of children 15 or younger.) Aging, illness and death were an everyday part of family life. While we certainly appreciate the medical advances that have helped lower the mortality rate and prolong lifespans, they are also distancing us from aging, illness, death, grief–and thus the funeral ritual.

• We live in a mobile, fast-paced culture.

Tremendous geographical distances often separate family members and friends today. Fifty years ago, friends only had to walk down the street to be a part of a funeral; now it is not unusual for them to fly in from thousands of miles away. This isn’t convenient, and we are a convenience-based culture. If it isn’t easy, we often just don’t do it.

Have you also noticed how we like many things to be fast in our culture? It seems that efficiency or speed is often placed above effectiveness. This often goes hand-in-hand with “cheaper is better.” So, some people combine the thought that direct cremation with no services will be fast and cheap. Yet, while this may be true, some survivors may pay an emotional price for years.

• We value self-reliance.

Have you noticed that the biggest section in bookstores these days is the self-help section? We live in an era of rugged individualism and independence. We reward people for “doing it on their own.” How many of us grew up learning the North American motto, “If you want it done right, do it yourself”? Yet, when someone in your life dies, you must be interdependent and connected to the world around you if you are to heal. In short, rugged individualism and funerals don’t mix well.

• We eschew spiritualism.

As our society becomes more educated, we seem to be adopting a more academic orientation to life and death. As I travel throughout North America, I observe that some of the largest pocket areas of direct cremation with no ceremony are in highly populated, academic communities. In a 1962 study, sociologist Robert Fulton confirmed that people who doubt the usefulness of funerals are more likely to be highly educated, professionally employed and financially well-off. Observational research of today is consistent with Fulton’s 30-year-old findings.

How many of us grew up learning the North American motto, “If you want it done right, do it yourself”? Yet, when someone in your life dies, you must be interdependent and connected to the world around you if you are to heal.

Of course, many among this highly educated population would argue they have found a substitute for the old-fashioned, “morbid” funeral: the memorial service. It seems that the more educated one becomes, the more “at risk” one becomes for not participating in death rituals. The potential problem with memorial services is twofold: 1) they are often delayed until a more convenient time weeks or months after the death, and 2) the body is often not present. These factors tend to encourage mourners to skirt the healing pain that funerals–because of their timeliness, their focus on embracing a variety of feelings, including pain (not just joy), and their use of the body as reality check–set in motion. How many times have you heard someone leave a memorial service saying, “Wasn’t that great! No one even cried!”? While some memorials are certainly meaningful and authentic, I am suggesting that too often they do healthy mourning a disservice.

• We don’t understand the role of pain and suffering.

Another major influence on the deritualization of death in our culture is our avoidance of pain. We misunderstand the role of suffering. People who openly express their feelings of grief are often told to “carry on”, “keep your chin up” or “just keep busy.” Worse yet, some bereaved people are greeted with theologized clichés like “God wouldn’t give you any more than you can bear,” and “Look at it this way… now you have an angel in heaven.” This misuse of doctrine is used by some for the purpose of suppressing “incorrect” thoughts and feelings.

“When a person is born, we rejoice. When they are married, we celebrate. When they die, we pretend nothing happened.”

Margaret Mead

Shame-based messages like the above examples result in some bereaved people thinking that mourning (i.e. sharing your grief outside yourself) is bad. If you are perceived as “doing well” with your grief, on the other hand, you are considered “strong” and “under control.” Of course, it is easier to stay “rational” if you don’t participate in a ceremony that is intended to, among other things, encourage you to embrace feelings and acknowledge a painful reality.

• We have lost the symbolism of death.

Deritualization also appears to be influenced by a loss of death’s symbols. Ariès, in his book The Hour of Our Death, identifies the symbols representing death in art and in literature, as well as in funeral and burial customs. He maintains, and I agree, that symbols of death are no longer prominent in contemporary North American culture, and that gone with them is a link that in previous generations provided meaning and a sense of continuity for the living.

In generations past, for example, the bereaved used to wear mourning clothes or armbands, often black, that symbolized their sorrow. In some subcultures, mourners also hung wreaths on the door to let others know that someone loved had died. Today we can’t even tell who the bereaved are. For some, memorial flowers, both at the funeral and at the cemetery, are becoming another ousted symbol. Today we opt for the more practical but less spiritual monetary donation: “In lieu of flowers, please send contributions to…”

Perhaps the ultimate symbol of death that we are tending more and more to forsake is the dead person’s body. When viewed at the visitation or during the funeral service itself, the body encourages mourners to confront the reality and the finality of the death.

Perhaps the ultimate symbol of death that we are tending more and more to forsake is the dead person’s body. When viewed at the visitation or during the funeral service itself, the body encourages mourners to confront the reality and the finality of the death. Of course, opponents of viewing often describe it as unseemly, expensive, undignified and unnecessary. Yet, seeing and spending time with the body allows for last goodbyes and visual confirmation that someone loved is indeed dead. In generations past, the body often served as the very locus of mourning; the bereaved came to the dead person’s home to view the body, pay their last respects and support the primary mourners. In fact, the body was often displayed for days before burial. Today, with our increasing reliance on closed caskets and direct cremation with no services, we are forgetting the importance of this tradition.

As Ariès writes, “The change (in death’s role in our society) consists precisely in banishing from the sight of the public not only death but with it, its icon. Relegated to the secret, private space of the home or the anonymity of the hospital, death no longer makes any sign.” As we eliminate the symbols of death, we also appear to be eliminating the rituals, historically rich in symbolism, that remind us of the death of others as well as our own mortality.

• We deny our own mortality.

One woman said to me recently, “I don’t do death.” She is not alone. Many people in North America today deny their own mortality and thus the need for rituals surrounding death. In his book The Funeral: Vestige or Value, author Paul Irion calls this “assumed invulnerability.” He reflects that, “Man knows that he is only assuming invulnerability, that he is ultimately vulnerable, and yet to admit this fact totally is to be defenseless.” In other words, denying our own mortality is better than the alternative.

Sigmund Freud also wrote of this theme in his Collected Papers when he concluded, “At bottom no one believes in his own death, or to put the same thing in another way, in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.”

The increasingly popular belief in cryonics is perhaps the ultimate manifestation of our mortality denial. One of the largest cryonics groups had 353 members in 1993, up from 29 in 1983. Through cryonics, which involves the freezing of a dead body (or sometimes just the head of a dead body) and its hoped-for future reanimation, believers attempt to defy death. In fact, the motto of the Cryonics Society of New York is “Never say die.”

Funeral misconceptions

• Funerals are too expensive. The social, psychological and emotional benefits of authentic funerals far outweigh their financial costs. Besides, a funeral needn’t be lavishly expensive to be meaningful.
• Funerals make us too sad. When someone loved dies, we need to be sad. Funerals provide us with a safe place in which to embrace our pain.
• Funerals are barbaric. On the contrary, meaningful funeral ceremonies are civilized, socially binding rituals. Some people think that viewing the body is barbaric. Cultural differences aside, viewing has many benefits for survivors. (See pp. 10 and 16.)
• Funerals are inconvenient Taking a few hours out of your week to demonstrate your love for the person who died and your support for survivors is not an inconvenience but a privilege.
• Funerals and cremation are mutually exclusive. A funeral (with or without the body present) may be held prior to cremation. Embalmed bodies are often cremated.
• Funerals require the body to be embalmed. Not necessarily. Depending on local regulations, funerals held shortly after the death may require no special means of preservation.
• Funerals are only for religious people. Not true. Non-religious ceremonies (which, by the way, need not be held in a church or officiated by a clergy person) can still meet the survivors’ mourning needs as discussed in Part 2 of this booklet.
• Funerals are rote and meaningless. They needn’t be. With forethought and planning, funerals can and should be personalized rituals reflecting the uniqueness of the bereaved family.
• Funerals should reflect what the dead person wanted. Not really…While pre-planning your funeral may help you reconcile yourself to your own mortality, funerals are primarily for the benefit of the living.
• Funerals are only for grown-ups. Anyone old enough to love is old enough to mourn. Children, too, have the right and the privilege to attend funerals. (See more on children and funerals, p. 54.)

“Primitive man faced his grief directly and worked out a syste...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part 1: Influences on the Deritualization of the Funeral
• Part 2: Exploring the Purposes of Meaningful Funeral Ceremonies
• Part 3: The Caregiver’s Role in Creating Meaningful Funeral Ceremonies
• Part 4: Practical Ideas for Creating Meaningful Funerals
• Authentic Funeral Ceremonies: An Outline
• A Final Word
• Ten Freedoms for Planning Meaningful Funerals
• Recommended Readings
• About the Author