The US social landscape is unique in the way it makes room for the vocation and concern of citizenship. I’ve learned this through being a practitioner in deliberative democracy over many years. Today Trump and Clinton strut the last days of their campaign in the direct democracy arena. Every day self-reliant grassroots movements and passionate advocacy are advanced by ordinary citizens across the country on issues such as mental health, neighbourhood safety, police accountability and engaging parents with schools.
This determination for change is evident in what’s termed the ‘home funeral’ movement. After the Global Financial Crisis, many simply could not afford funerals. They were sick of being sold products by funeral directors, notably embalming, an ubiquitous practice in the US. I attended the National Home Funeral Alliance’s conference a couple of years’ ago, and got a flavour of the citizen led movement in the sign-in line when the woman next to me introduced herself: ‘I’m Margaret, and this is my sister Helen … we did our mother.’ Intrepid baby boomers without financial resources, they’d been inspired to organise a home vigil or ‘lying in state’ and funeral, taking care of bathing, dressing, vigil and transportation themselves.
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Thanks to National Home Funeral Alliance
The coast-to-coast movement comprises a mix of educators, death doulas, health care and funeral professionals, green burial specialists, Death Café convenors, artists and craftspeople, and those like Margaret, who read in a newspaper or on the net that the family could do it without calling on funeral directors. Margaret then made connections with educators in her state through a Google search. Those who have had the experience often become educators. They can undertake training with home funeral practitioners in numerous states. They may lead the way in their own communities for a new way of approaching death, dying and funerals.
The conference was an intriguing US-wide get-together. The title ‘Home Funeral in Community, Restoring the Lost Art’, suggests the American folk spirit that marked the action. I got together with men and women ranging from 30 to 70. At every meal people were hard at death conversations over weak coffee, comparing notes on regulatory requirements in their respective states and discussing tools of the trade. Americans are tactful, never insisting, simply helping others towards their point of view. ‘You might want to think about buying a body board, said one practitioner to another, ‘it makes it so much easier to move the body across – you should think about it.’ Only to be met with protestations that a double sheet is good, a sheet is quite fine.
If a DIY funeral is right for the person, it works well if a planning process has been put in place, roles and tasks considered and conversations had. The activity of doing after death care and a funeral ourselves contributes to sense making, a key aspect of successful grieving and integration of loss. Death is a mystery. It is something humans with few exceptions are at pains to banish from front of mind. Yet it happens to all. In contemporary society our exposure to the reality of death is often very limited. The body is whisked away soon after death, and there may be little further contact with it again. No wonder it is difficult to make sense of. Integrating the experience of loss has to take place via the mind, without the concrete support of the senses. Seeing. Touching a cold body. Listening, and not hearing breath.
The body present at home before the funeral? It’s morbid. Confronting. It’s unnecessary. It will be frightening. These are commonly held views and tend to make the funeral domain strictly one for funeral directors. This makes it the norm to hand over authority to them. They are experienced and resourced to provide a seamless experience. Their work is not easy yet they often describe it as rewarding.
This is equally true of those of us who are part of the movement for ‘death literacy’ and new funeral norms. Groundswell, recently ran their annual Dying to Know Day. Every 8th August, hosted conversations are held with the intent of countering fear, isolation and taboos around end of life discussions.
‘Have you thought about what you want when you die? Have you discussed it?’
‘Oh yeah, don’t worry about it, I just want to be buried in the backyard.’
Hitting on a solution like this seems trouble-free. Yet Imagine flying over the suburbs of Sydney or Melbourne, and instead of noticing swimming pools out of the window, picking up the imprint of a massive DIY graveyard, not of pets, but family members.
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Painting the coffin, forever home …
‘Oh I just want something sustainable. There’s this fantastic new biodegradable pod coffin. You can be buried in it in foetal position and a tree grows out of it.’
The beauty of this individual solution to body disposal has seen it liked on Facebook more than 12,000 times. The pod is still in the design phase but many people think it is an immediate option. On a moment’s reflection the bio aspect of the pod is way more complex than an enviro-friendly Christmas card studded with callistemon seed that is supposed to result in a gorgeous shrub in the garden. It may take some years to perfect. Nonetheless beauty and sustainability are values both innovators and their audience aspire to.
Holding a facilitated conversation for a group of friends, family or health clients can be light and enjoyable. It can acknowledge the optimistic, sometimes unrealistic thinking that comes from thinking alone. It is not morbid to talk about practical aspects of caring for a dead body that we usually outsource to funeral companies. With ease around what many see as a difficult subject, we are more likely to hold in mind values such as sustainability, beauty or cost-effectiveness, that in ordinary circumstances inform our decision-making. We can stop to calculate the human and environmental costs of producing a cheap cardboard coffin in China and shipping it to Costco.
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