Ending It All

 Funerals

The older you get, the bigger your family, the wider your circle of friends, the more organizations you belong to, the more funerals you go to in the U.S.  Yeah, it’s not pretty.  Yet the ‘style’ of the U.S. funeral varies widely.  In Christian ones, especially mob or cop movies, everyone is dressed in severe black with sunglasses.  There is a casket, some Catholic Priest drones on, dirt is thrown on the casket in the hole – and there are always some FBI agents, unwanted girlfriends, prior wives and assassins lurking around.  Most funerals in films are very formal and conservative like this, reflective of their class origins.  Unless it’s the Big Lebowski blowing ashes in your eyes...and you decide to go bowling.  "And what was that shit about Vietnam, Walter?"

Mob boss?

Yet some people don’t even have a funeral of any kind.  The immediate family might gather around the ashes urn in the cemetery and say a few words.  They are probably not religious.  Sometimes one member of a family will bury an urn without even talking to other family members about what they are doing - as if they 'owned' the funeral. 

Others have the full Church reception, coffee and sweets, long ceremony, open casket and only the preacher speaking.  That is an Evangelical Lutheran ceremony, which is a church service with prepared texts and the singing of designated hymns to ‘unite’ the congregation in meandering vocalizations.  The preachers almost never know the dead intimately so they have to read a description prepared by the family.  Sometimes there is not even that. This denomination has softened up a bit to go for cremation as the years go on. 

No talk of the departed by family or friends at a small-town Presbyterian ceremony in the early 1970s either.  It was the style of the time, giving religion and the minister everything. We carried the heavy casket and body out to the waiting hearse and nearly dropped it going up the stairs.  The body was installed in a ‘freezer’ at the cemetery until spring because the ground was frozen.  No cemetery scene there.

The Congregationalists on the other hand allow family and friends to talk after the minister has said their piece.  Like most funerals, there are pictures or home movies to help the living remember the dead.  There is food to eat, songs to be sung, organs to play and sometimes favorite secular songs are included.  I went to one ‘bifurcated’ ceremony officiated over by a right-wing conservative pastor burbling over with praise for God and Jesus, but held in a non-religious ‘chapel’ at the main cemetery in Minneapolis.  The senior, liberal member of the departed presided in competition with the pastor, and gave the lead talk, as was also allowed by the Congregationalists. This one was live-streamed for those who could not make it.  Many don’t or can't go to funerals because they are far away, as families are scattered across the U.S. or world.

It is almost universal now in the U.S. that services, internments and the like do not always have to occur immediately, as there is no health risk or raw body anymore. 

Like weddings, funerals are changing.  Instead of church services, atheists and agnostics have events in bars, in people’s homes, even in a book store.  I’ve been to remembrances in packed living rooms where everyone who wants to speaks and there is no religious symbolism anywhere. Same with bars, where the drinks are hoping to lubricate Finnegan Awake again while anyone says their piece and the dead get to hear their favorite music played.  Here at May Day it's had 3 packed events for former elderly comrades who have died with no religious symbolism, just talking, stories, jokes and laughs. Because funerals – or remembrances - are really for the living.  Tears are few and that is also observed, especially when some linger into their 100s or were in very poor health.  The family might also have a church service after a ‘remembrance,’ or not, depending on their political and cultural leanings.

Another notable ceremony was organized by the friends of the departed who was a lesbian leftist activist.  These women had it again at the non-religious, ‘chapel-like’ building in Minneapolis’ biggest cemetery.  There many speakers, her favorite secular rock and pop music and a good time was had by all. I think only a few members of the family attended, because as I recall most objected to her 'lifestyle.'

Cremation has now overtaken formaldehyde. Caskets have become absurd.  Some are doing ‘natural burials’ wrapped in a rug or textiles.  Ashes end up in lakes, in rivers, in the ground, in favorite places, sometimes just on a shelf for a long time.  Words might be spoken by the family while the ashes are scattered.  In the Big Lebowski the ashes didn’t even end up in the Pacific, Donny's favorite body of water. Joss sticks are burnt in memory by others.  There are small alters on the Day of the Dead.  Sometimes the grave stone is misspelled and there is nothing buried there at all.  It’s just a marker.   And sometimes there is no marker at all, the body lost underground, buried in a packed Swiss cemetery under other caskets, 6 deep.

Funereal, yes.

P.S. - "Funeral" Scene in the Big Lebowski:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk61MeDmk2M

Prior reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Captain Fantastic,” “Unlikeable Protagonists and Ulysses,” “November” *(Galan) or the word ‘funeral.’

The Kultur Kommissar

June 16, 2024