I find that there seems to be within all of us an ingrained curiosity about life and death, but the latter is usually kept to the confines of whispers and shadows. I propose here a place to bring light where there is darkness.
Let me introduce myself and present for you my qualifications, as it were. I’ve always come across death as a theme in my life. I attended my first funeral when I was 6, but even before that had always been aware of my grandfather, who though he died before I was born, was still in some ways very much a part of the family. Our tradition (or curse if you prefer) seems to be that there will always be a funeral to attend around the holidays. I can’t remember a year without one. My best friend in middle school was run over crossing the street after school. My first boyfriend died in a car accident on his way to see relatives for Christmas. A week after I met the man I later married, his father died. My husband now works in a funeral home. Thus I have been acquainted time and again with my mortality.
Now, I consider myself in most respects a normal human being (While I have nothing against Goths and other groups normally associated with morbidity, I do not consider myself as one of them). And after spending some time on these boards, I find that time and time again the subject comes up. (Dying with eyes open, Burn or Bury, Grief )
So, if you’ve got a question in the realm that I or my husband could answer, please ask. I didn’t want to make this strictly an ‘Ask the’ thread, as I’m sure there are others who are equally if not better qualified to provide answers.
Oddly enough, someone started a thread called Ask the “_____” threads I hope to never see and mentioned undertaker.
I would be curious regarding beliefs. Has seeing death on a regular basis affected your husband’s beliefs (assuming he’s a mortician and not the computer programmer at a funeral home)? Has it made him more religious? Does he have a stronger/lesser belief in an afterlife?
Have you read The American Way of Death? What did you think? Have you seen The Loved One? (One of my top-ten favorites :“Gotta find a way to get these stiffs off my land!”)
Well, my husband is officially the Assistant to the Funeral Director (and occaisional computer programmer when needed). He assists in all aspects of the preparation of the body and services. He also does after hours pickups.
We’re both Christians, fairly religious. We don’t attend church regularly, but when you work with an ordained minister (the funeral director for him, my boss’ husband is a minister as well) every day, you feel like you do. We both have always had a very strong belief in the afterlife.
I’ll get him to answer more fully when I see him after work today.
Personally, though, it’s quite strange to me, because I always assumed that like many doctors I know, those who deal with death so intimately would have a tendency to be desensitized by it. I have found the reverse to be true, at least in my personal situation. The people who work at the funeral home are some of the most religious people I know, and of all the Christians I’ve known, they seem to have a sort of comfort and serenity in their faith that many lack.
Well, there are alternatives to traditional burial and cremation. I’m not entirely certain about funeral pyres, but assuming you owned a piece of land, and there were no zoning laws or other city ordinances barring it, you might be able to get away with it. I can imagine though, that charges for desecration of a corpse or unpermitted burning or something similar could be applied. It would depend greatly on your location, but to my knowledge there are no laws specifically against it.
‘Natural’ and ‘Green’ burials are becoming more popular. (link) The idea behind a natural burial is that the body should be allowed to decompose naturally, allowing the land and ecosystem to thrive. Land is reserved specifically for this purpose, and if caskets are used at all, they are usually either cardboard, wood or some other non-toxic material. Headstones and markers are usually not allowed, nor are plastic flowers or anything of that sort.
Mortuary law differs from state to state, but if you’re curious about what’s legal you can check here to get some specifics.
Well, do you mean in our particular funeral home? Generally burial. I think you’ll find that open-casket services for burial are most common in the Southern United States, although cremation is definitely making a good showing nationwide. The Funeral Director once quoted me that about a decade ago less than 10% of the population was opting for cremation, but now it’s closer to 30%. I can’t say where he got his figures, but if you look at statistics from the Cremation Association of North America they tend to bear around 20-30%. Their projections for the year 2025 bring it up to almost 50%.
Oops! I missed your post the first time I responded. Please accept my humble apologies!
No, I haven’t read The American Way of Death but I need to get around to it. I took a great thanotology course in college and read Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain. Very fascinating look into the industry, if a bit dated.
Haven’t seen The Loved One but hubby has. Not quite to his style of humor, but sounds like something I’d love!
Hi, this is Charles(FH Employee) by way of qualification I have seen several hundred dead bodies in various states of decomp/ as well as almost any form of death you can imagine. I’ve also seen people inside and out, as embalming(Which I do not do, but assist with) an autopsy requires all the stitches to be removed(My job) organs, which are kept in a bag in the body cavity including the brain, are removed and placed in a thicker bag(My job) then various levels of embalming fluid(Essentially denatured alcohol w/ preservatives) are pumped into vital veins(LFD’s job), which have all been severed by the ME during the autopsy. Then it all goes back together and gets sown up(My job).
Anyhow, barring one gentleman, who as near as I can figure out pulled a ‘Wiley-Coyote’ and sawed through a branch he was standing on, causing him to fall into a storage shed, where he was simultaniously pinned by the branch and suffocated while burning to death due to a fire he started somehow on the way down, no you cannot have a funeral pyre. (Short of smoking on your death bed with the O2 turned up.)
The exceptions to this are:
A) Find a facility that is licensed to perform funeral pyring, if any exist in the U.S. laws vary from state to state and county to county, so there’s no telling what you might find.
B) Pay the exorbitant cost(5- 10K$ depending on the international shipping laws of the country you are destined for and whatever you want done here first like a veiwing) to have your body shipped to a foreign country where funeral pyres are legal and be burned and(If desired) mailed back. If pyrings are anything like cremations, the ashes once it is complete are no longer considered by law to be a body, and can be sent through standard mail. Life insurance would be a great investment for you if this is your plan.
C) Have a trusted member of your immediate family(Preferrably a convicted felon) throw your body onto the pyre before immediately hopping on a plane to another country. Serious felony here(5-20yrs just for burning you, if the PD thinks it was murder they’re really screwed), so they probably can’t ever come back.
Hope this helps.
P.S. For the cheap version, just ask at the FH if they can cremate you with the door open.
In * The American Way of Death * author Jessica Mitford says that there is actually a shoe manufacturer, specificly for dead people. The shoes lace up the back, or so I read. Of course, if it’s one of those 3/4 coffins, shoes would be optional.
Hooray! This is one of the Ask The ________ threads I’ve been waiting for.
What’s the normal income for a mortician just starting out?
Do they really stack the bodies in the crematorium? I’d hate to think Grandma’s ashes are mixed together with those of Joe Stranger.
What other jobs are there for someone who thinks they’d like that general line of work? Say, for somebody with the brains and personality to do mortuary work, but who doesn’t want to risk screwing up the reconstructive work on somebody’s loved one? The risk of ruining a last viewing is the only drawback I really see in this line of work. I’ve seen some not-very-well-done bodies and would hate to be the one to present those bodies to their respective families, you know? Or is it possible to get a job as a mortician without having to deal with the reconstructive work that’s sometimes necessary?
Okay, I tried to post this last night but got caught just as the boards were down. That’s what I get for my insomnia.
Hubby says:
“While there probably are shoe makers that make shoes for this purpose, I’ve never seen a funeral home use them as it’s fairly easy to put shoes on a body. If a family provides shoes for the body, they must be placed on the body for burial unless it is physically impossible to do so, in which case they are set in the casket near the feet.”
Hubby says:
“Because during the autopsy all of the internal organs are cut out and weighed. That severs the main arteries to the arms, legs and head (connected to the heart.) You have to find the ends of all those arteries in the shoulders, neck and leg area in order to inject the embalming fluid. Normally the injection would be done through the carotid artery and drained through the jugular vein. It needs to flow down one side, through the body and out the other while the embalming fluid is pumped in. The stitches (in a Y shape starting at the pectoral muscles near the shoulder, running down meeting at the base of the chest and then straight down to the pelvic area) must be cut and removed in order to gain access and remove the bag of internal orgams. The bag of organs must be filled with cavity fluid and then replaced in the cavity after embalming. There is also a set of stitches running from ear to ear across the crown of the head for removal of the brain. Those stitches must be removed to gain access to the inside of the skull to fill with hardened plaster of paris (hardened inside the removed skullcap) in order to replace the weight of the brain which is left in the bag of organs in the body cavity.”
Hubby says:
“It varies by geography, but it would be somewhere between $25-45k a year. BTW: Mortuary school is only a two-year A.S. program.”
Hubby says:
“It’s against regulations of operations (In FL through the dept of banking and finance). You can be fined for it, but chances are nobody’s going to jail. If it’s bad enough you can be shut down, but as a caveat, a lot of places do it anyway if things get busy.”
Hubby says:
“Well, for one thing it’s remarkably impossible to screw someone up. You receive all manner of training in mortuary school. They work on John Does who are going to the public cemetary, so you have a lot of active experience, and an internship with a funeral home that is a licensed training facility. Aside from that, you could look into pathology, organ harvest for organ and tissue banks, or crematory attendant.”
I apologize to the mods for bending (breaking?) the one person per account rule. Hubby is signing up for his own account first thing tomorrow
Being that I have no convicted felons in my family ( nuts) and I live semi-rural, I think I would just have Mr. Ujest pull a burning permit and stack me atop all the old furniture that we’d like to get rid of anyway. Throw on some accelerant, toss in a match and
:::::FOOOOM:::::
There goes Shirley…
Marshmellow anyone?
(Thanks for the links.)
Another book that is a great read is **Caring for your Dead ** by Lisa Carleton ( I think.)
Mmmkay, I misunderstood the question above. (This is Charles, BTW, under my new screen name.) The correct answer is no.
There was a crematory in GA where they were caught throwing bodies over the fence instead of cremating them (Authorities found a couple hundred back behind the place.). And a gentleman in S.FL was exchanging the ashes for kitty litter and letting his cat use the ashes instead. Essentially sick people can do crazy things, but the vast, vast majority of places would never dream of doing this.
From a financial and time saving sense it doesn’t work out. The more that goes into the crematory the longer it takes to burn(i.e. obese people come out later than skinny folks.) and the heat requirements are high for a human body. Also the chamber is a lot smaller than you’d think, just large enough to fit a full sized casket into, not really much room for two people+jets of flame. It’s probably a bit faster to cremate people seperately than together, just like baking turkeys.
Also, some units can only handle so much, and many crematories will turn away funeral homes with a person that’s too heavy(Although I’ve lied to get someone in under the weight limit before, so it can be pushed a bit.) If someone too large goes in, the fat on their body goes up like bacon grease and can cause the heat level to rise too high, culminating in a flow of burning grease leaking out through the door on an older unit. After I heard about that happening at a local place we had used I stopped lying about the weight limits
Special Fact: No one can ever be cremated with a pacemaker(The funeral director cuts it out before they go.) because it will go off like a small grenade inside the crematory.
For a great time, ask a crematory attendant in your town to show you the collection of replacement hips and other nick nacks they find after someone’s gone up. They look just like hardware from the Home Depot.
Whenever you think of funerary arts, try to think ‘theatrical’. From casket drapes to colored lights, we’ve got it all.
If the weight of the brain isn’t replaced, the head won’t sink down in the pillow the right way, which makes them look funny and unnatural. This is especially important because the autopsy leaves a deficiency in the neck because parts of the esophogus and windpipe are removed with the stomach and lungs, along with lots of veins, arteries and anything else that gets in the ME’s way when he’s working. That causes there to be less stuff in the neck then before and it tend to cave in a little if the head is pressed forward by the pillow, causing a kind of deppression or fold where you know there shouldn’t be one.
Alignment of the various body parts is absolutely essential when someone’s being put out to view because if something’s not lined up right it can ruin the affect, and make the person look dead, which is what we’re trying to avoid. There are a lot of styrofoam supports made in different shapes to be stuck in the casket, so you can raise a shoulder up more on one side or turn a head straight and hold it there. They are most often placed just below the elbow and turned up to prop the forearm so that the hands can come together over the chest in that famous restful sleep position.
Is it legal for a human to be preserved using taxidermy?
If I want to be stuffed like deer or bears in a museum after I die, can I?
Can I keep Uncle Bob or Aunt Sarah in my hallway like this when they die?
2) Have you ever done a “fun” funeral? What I mean is, a funeral that isn’t grim or sad. I’ve heard of people that want funerals with clowns and dancing, but you never actually see pictures of these in the news.
