The American Way of Death Revisited (27 page)

Theologically, Bishop Pike explained, the body has served its sacramental purpose, that of housing the personality of the individual, “which in life to come receives a new, appropriate means of expression and relationship.” The remains are not the person; they are rather like discarded clothing. Nevertheless, as the outward and visible sign of personality, they are to be treated with respect and reverence. In the same way, the presence of the casket at the funeral service has a symbolic function, much like that of a flag in a parade. There is no objection to cremation; on the contrary, most Protestant clergy think it a very good idea. The memorial service, at which the coffin is not present, is also quite permissible, and this practice is, in fact, on the increase.

Is there any contradiction between the reverent treatment of human remains and the bequeathing of those remains to medical schools for research purposes? “No, a positive, constructive use of the body for medical research is by no means irreverent. It is in fact a noble and fine thing for a person to make such provision in his will. We believe in the Resurrection and the continuous personal life of the individual spirit, not of the earthly remains.”

Speaking of the use of flowers at funerals, Bishop Pike explained that while people are free to have flowers sent, this is not encouraged.
More and more frequently, donations to charity in memory of the deceased are in order. “When many flowers are in fact sent, in many churches they are placed in the narthex or in the transept—except for flowers in the two vases at the altar.”

Lastly, Bishop Pike emphasized that the proper place for a religious funeral service is in church—and
not
in the “chapel” of a mortuary. Protestant ministers will officiate at the funerals of non-church members if asked to do so. Most churches make no charge whatsoever; some churches in the East do make a small charge to those who are not contributing members, “but it’s chicken feed compared to the overall cost of the funeral.” The family may want to make a small payment to the verger (“That’s up to them”), and the organist generally makes a charge.

In all of this, there is cold comfort indeed for the funeral director, who is most anxious to put his entire range of goods and services fully at the disposal of the mourners. For, to what avail the art of the embalmer if his handiwork is to be concealed in a closed coffin? Of what use is the “copper casket of
SEAMLESS
construction, made without joints or seams of any kind,” if its seamlessness and freedom from joints are hidden beneath a funeral pall? What is to become of the “chapel” with its rheostat-controlled lighting, deep-piled wall-to-wall carpeting, cushioned pews, soft, cold color scheme, and Pilcher organ if funeral services are to be conducted in—of all things—a
church
? And, if the family so desires, with no casket present at all? Lastly, if the minister will be counseling and comforting the bereaved family, what is then left of the funeral director’s “professional” role of grief therapist?

Many of the views expressed by Bishop Pike were echoed by a Jewish religious leader, Rabbi Sidney Akselrad of Temple Beth El in Berkeley, California: “In Jewish practice, simplicity is the rule. There’s no need to go into debt over a funeral. The Jewish tradition emphasizes a very simple coffin.” He spoke with approval of a Jewish custom in pre-Hitler Germany; simple, identical coffins were stored up for rich and poor alike “that there might be no competition in death.” Rabbi Akselrad advised: “Ask the cost; don’t be embarrassed to put the question to them.” But he found that people on the whole do not like to go through this kind of survey.

Although the Jewish faith requires the presence of the coffin during
the funeral service, Rabbi Akselrad did not approve of the open-casket ceremony: “I don’t like the display. It’s not very Jewish. I don’t like the parade to view the handiwork of the funeral director, especially after the service, which should attempt in some small way to bridge the gulf between life and death; the viewing of the remains tends to reopen the wound.” However, like Bishop Pike, the rabbi felt that in some cases the immediate family might derive comfort from looking on the face of the dead.

Of slumber-room visiting, he thought this was something of a social experience, where people gather for a reunion—“So glad to see you” said all around—but “sometimes the deceased is overlooked.”

Rabbi Akselrad related one embarrassing experience in which a widow begged him to accompany her to the funeral establishment to help negotiate the price of the funeral. The funeral director quoted one price as the least expensive funeral he offered. The rabbi demurred, saying that he had told the woman she could purchase one for less, upon which the funeral director quickly relented. Since that time, Rabbi Akselrad has been loath to get involved in the financial end of the funeral.

Not so Reverend Laurance Cross, pastor of the Berkeley Community Church. As one who has officiated at more than six thousand funerals, Reverend Cross was a veteran in dealing with undertakers of every kind.

He placed great emphasis on the importance of distinguishing between the fair-minded, ethical undertaker with a conscience and those who use “psychological pressure” to force up the price of a service. “You can’t damn them all,” he said. “It’s not true to portray them as all of a kind.” He told of several in his own community—“decent, sincere people who pursue their work according to the highest ideals.” Many of these would like to see far-reaching changes in the approach and practices of the industry; one almost suffered a nervous breakdown because of the sharp business dealings of his partner. “Unfortunately, though, of the two kinds of undertaker, the expensive kind dominates,” Reverend Cross said.

In relating one of his selection-room skirmishes, he took on aspects of an avenging angel with an Alabama accent—for he hailed originally from that state. The selection-room arrangement described by Reverend Cross had none of the subtleties of the Triangle Plan or
the Keystone Approach. “First you come to a magnificent casket—it’s like a pink show window. You’d think it was the Queen’s jewels on display. The inside is made of beautiful satin, and it’s set out on a thick white carpet. You walk along and come to the next one. That’s another beauty, maybe in a different pastel shade. You see a few more, and then you come to the absolute end. There aren’t any more. Those you have seen are priced very high. At this point, most people say, ‘Well, that’s more than I can afford, but he doesn’t have any others—I guess I’ll have to settle for one of these.’ However, if the customer is mean enough to say, ‘I haven’t got that much. We’ll have to take the body elsewhere,’ then the funeral director opens a door you
never knew existed
.”

Shifting angrily in his chair, Reverend Cross warmed to his theme. “You go into another room where there are maybe half a dozen caskets—in less attractive colors than the other beauties—and at somewhat lower prices. That’s where psychology comes in. The average person who has managed to avoid the more expensive caskets now feels that at least he has saved several hundred dollars. But if you’re as mean as the devil, you may still insist that the caskets you’ve seen are more than you were prepared to pay. So you go through the same procedure. The funeral director opens
yet another door
you never knew existed, and here are some for even less. If you are so mean that you still won’t spend that much, you are led into the last room. The funeral director pulls down a thing that looks like an ironing board, and shows you an ugly casket, maybe purple in color. The cheap ones are purposely made up in hideous colors, and they have no handles, no lining. If you still won’t buy that, you are taken from there through a concrete alleyway as dark as Egypt. You come to a garage where all the funeral cars are parked. There he pulls out a box. It’s just six pieces of redwood nailed together.”

“How much does he charge for that one?”

“He’ll charge anything he can get out of you for it,” said Reverend Cross, giving that avenging-angel look.

Those in the funeral trade who had looked upon the mild and occasional interventions of the clergy as yet another “menace” have more recently been confronted by a threat of honest-to-God authenticity. It has cropped up in various parts of the country, and has been led, unexpectedly, by Catholic clerics, who have come out foursquare
to denounce not the occasional undertaker but the business as a whole.

One such is Father James Connolly, pastor of St. Blaise Church in Bellingham Center, Massachusetts. In a broadside attack on funeral directors published in the
National Catholic Reporter
(August 1995), Father Connolly called into question the legitimacy of the funeral director’s participation in Catholic funerals.

Defining the Church’s view of the funeral Mass as a celebration of the believing community in which members should be active participants in the rituals of death, he expressed deep concern over the extent to which mortuary personnel seek to supplant the role of the parishioners.

In a statement deplored by
Mortuary Management
as “bold,” Father Connolly went on to say:

The parish decided the time had come to take matters in hand. “We announced to them that they would no longer lead the entrance procession at funerals in our church. We meet them at the front door and the community receives the body and returns it after Mass to the funeral directors at the front door,” said Father Connolly. He goes on to describe the shocked and incredulous reaction of the mortuary brethren:

Mortuary Management
soon had reason to bewail an even more egregious instance of clerical meddlesomeness. The setting is Phoenix, Arizona, where a parish priest has likewise barred mortuary personnel from the church, asserting that “there is no need for delivery men unaccustomed to Catholic liturgy and not members of the family or the parish to insert themselves into our sacred liturgy and procession when they are not needed and are not requested to do so by the priest.” The latter voice is unmistakably that of Father Henry Wasielewski.

Fifteen years ago, outraged by the high cost of dying, Father Henry felt called upon to do something about it. Aware that the key to any solution lay in consumer education and in penetrating the highly secret wholesale price of coffins, he organized the Interfaith Funeral Information Committee (IFIC), an ecumenical task force consisting of local clergy, social workers, and community leaders to study the industry. Starting modestly, the committee opened an information hot line. Two telephone lines were installed, one for taped messages in Spanish and one in English. Callers were given the names of five funeral homes which offered complete funerals for $650. Surveys by the committee disclosed that some mortuaries in the area were charging as much as $1,800 for the identical product.

Since those early days, Father Henry, with extraordinary dedication and energy, has gone on-line, extending his information network to a nationwide audience.

An example of the facts and figures he offers includes a mind-bogglingly exhaustive price survey of 120 funeral homes in the Houston, Texas, area. To establish a basis for comparison, he uses the following guidelines:

Father Henry has found sixteen mortuaries in the area that will provide a complete funeral for the recommended maximum sum of $2,500 or less, and lists them in his report. Also listed are three casket retailers that will deliver a designated casket to the mortuary as priced above.

There follow price lists for the next hundred Houston-area establishments, whose charges for the same products and services run from $3,000 to $9,910. The casket markup for some of these is more than five times the wholesale cost.

The establishments in the highest bracket—$7,000 to $9,910 for the same services and commodities—are:

These are of interest because all seven are owned by the giant conglomerate Service Corporation International (SCI). Robert Waltrip is founder and chairman of the board of SCI.

Close on the heels of SCI is the Loewen Group, second-largest corporate consolidator in North America, represented by five Houston-area mortuaries, all quoting a uniform minimum price of $5,990.

Although the major consolidators have in the past shown a preference for high-end sales and have invested money to better attract high-end consumers by improving the appearance of the physical plant, it should by no means be assumed that the low-end public is being neglected. Low-end mortuaries are being acquired, in some cases to close them down and thereby reduce competition, more often to gouge low-end consumers. That the poor pay more is a truism that has not been disregarded by the conglomerates. Our investigator has ascertained that in a Denver mortuary fronting for SCI, a
gray-cloth-covered coffin, the likes of which would create consternation if found befouling the premises of one of their high-end establishments, was being retailed to its customers for $1,995. The standard wholesale cost of this box is $140. SCI’s cost is even lower because of its volume discounts.