The Whole Death Catalog Read online

  ALSO BY HAROLD SCHECHTER

  NONFICTION:

  The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (with David Everitt)

  Bestial: The Savage Trail of a True American Monster

  Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America’s Most Fiendish Killer

  Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America’s First Serial Killer

  Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original “Psycho”

  The Devil’s Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and the Trial that Ushered in the Twentieth Century

  Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer

  Fiend: The Shocking True Story of America’s Youngest Serial Killer

  Savage Pastimes: A Cultural History of Violent Entertainment

  The Serial Killer Files: The Who, What, Where, How, and Why of the World’s Most Terrifying Murderers

  FICTION:

  Nevermore

  Outcry

  The Hum Bug

  The Mask of Red Death

  The Tell-Tale Corpse

  In loving memory of Sarah and Isadore Wasserman

  Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  1 DEATH: Can’t Live with It, Can’t Live Without It

  Is Death Necessary?

  Death Across Cultures

  Philippe Ariès and Western Attitudes Toward Death

  Geoffrey Gorer and “The Pornography of Death”

  The Good and Bad News About Immortality

  America: Paradise Regained?

  “The Wild Honeysuckle”

  The Fellow in the Bright Nightgown

  Death Fear

  The Evil Dead

  Death Anxiety Scale

  Never Say Die

  “Timor Mortis Conturbat Me”

  I ♥ Death

  Agony to Extinction: The Death Process

  How Do You Know When You’re Dead?

  Our Bodies, Our Deaths

  Putrefaction: A Handy Guide

  “Ghastly Gropings in the Decay of Graves”

  What a Way to Go

  A Grim Fairy Tale

  2 BE PREPARED

  “The Good Death”: Achievable Goal or Contradiction in Terms?

  Mortuary Hall of Fame: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

  Ars Moriendi

  Death at the Dinner Table: Talking About the Inevitable

  Did Lincoln Dream of His Own Death?

  Wills: Last and Living

  “Who Gets Grandmas Yellow Pie Plate?”

  Wacky Wills

  Tending to the Terminally Ill

  “Deathing”

  Quality of Death: The Hospice Experience

  Death Foretold

  What to Do When Someone Dies

  Death Certificates

  “Not So Fast, Johnson”: The Dos and Don’ts of Death Notification

  The Right to Die

  Famous Last Words

  3 FUNERAL FACTS

  Burial: It’s Only Human

  Ritual Burials: So Easy Even a Caveman Could Do It

  The Wacky World of Funeral Customs

  God Is in the Details: Religion and Burial

  A Brief History of the American Funeral Industry: Making a Big Production of Death

  Funeral Favors

  It’s a Tough Job but Someone’s Got to Do It

  From Furniture Maker to Undertaker

  NFDA

  The Funeral Home Experience

  Funeralspeak

  Mortuary Hall of Fame: Howard Raether

  Step into My Parlor

  Pre-need: Pro or Con?

  GPL

  SCI: The 800-Pound Funeral Gorilla

  Coffins and Caskets: What’s the Difference?

  Coffins for the Big-Boned

  Unsung Heroes of the Death Industry: Almond Fisk

  DIY Coffins

  Rent-a-Casket

  Kool Koffins

  A Brief History of Embalming

  Thomas Holmes

  Equal-Opportunity Embalming

  Unsung Heroes of the Death Industry: Roy F. McCampbell

  Embalming: Don’t Try This at Home

  How to Beat the High Cost of Embalming (Hint: Skip It)

  American Hearses: Going in Style

  Hearses for the Harley Crowd

  Hearse Clubs: For Connoisseurs of Fine Vintage Funeral Coaches

  Funerals: The Consumer’s Last Rights

  FCA, USA

  Scams and What to Do About Them

  Funerals for the YouTube Age

  Bereavement Fares

  A Meal to Die For

  Eat, Drink, and Be Buried

  Eulogies

  Wake Me When It’s Over

  Oh, and Never Ever Wear New Shoes to a Funeral

  Hand of Glory

  Living Funerals

  The Dead Beat

  Greetings from the Grave

  Obit for an Obituarist

  4 GRAVE MATTERS

  From Mass Grave to Memorial Park: The Rise of the Modern Cemetery

  Take Me Out to the Graveyard

  Ten Cemeteries to See Before You Die

  Legends of Père Lachaise

  The Only Travel Book You’ll Ever Need (Assuming You Spend All Your Vacation Time Visiting Cemeteries)

  Cemetery Shopping Tips

  The Ultimate Cemetery Locator

  Gravedigging: A Dying Art

  Written in Stone

  Stone Love

  Finally! A Magazine Addressed to the Needs of Taphophiles

  The Tombstone of Tomorrow—Today

  Buried Alive

  The Lebenswecker: If This Doesn’t Wake You Up, Nothing Will

  “One Summer Night”

  The Undead: Fact or Fiction?

  Pet Cemeteries

  Gladstone, Michigan: Pet Casket Capital of the World

  In Memoriam: Fluffy

  Corpse-Napping: Ransoming the Dead

  Burke and Hare: Making a Killing from Corpses

  Digging Up the Goods

  Necrophilia

  “The Unquiet Grave”

  5 CREMATION, CRYONICS, AND OTHER POSTMORTEM POSSIBILITIES

  To Burn or Not to Burn?

  Cremation: Then and Now

  CANA

  Ashes to Art

  The Perfect Final Resting Place for Snack Lovers

  Fly Me to the Moon

  Sleeping with the Fishes

  Ashes Aweigh

  The Eternal Alumni Club

  Hair Today, Memorial Gemstone Tomorrow

  Keith, Coke, and Funerary Cannibalism

  Cryonic Preservation: Cooling Your Heels (Along with the Rest of Your Anatomy) for a Few Millennia

  Ted Williams: Dead Head

  Green Burials

  Ecopods: Designer Coffins for the Save-the-Earth Crowd

  How to Make a Mummy

  You, Too, Can Be a Mummy (and So Can Fido)

  100 Percent All-Natural Mummies

  6 LOSS AND HOPE

  The Hour of Lead

  Grief and Mourning

  Dr. Lindemann and the Inferno

  Condolence Letters

  Grief Dreams

  The Victorians: Fetishists of Death

  Widow’s Wear

  Hairwork Jewelry

  Hold That Pose

  Victorian Postmortem Photography: A How-to Guide

  Widow Sacrifice

  When Grief Is a Relief

  Grief Goodies

  Where Do the Gone Things Go? Children and Death

  “In Childhood”

  Kids and Pet Loss

  Death Comes to Mr. Rogers’s Neighborhood

  APLB

  The Undiscovered Country: Where Do We Go from Here?

  “The Indian Buryin
g Ground”

  Heaven as Home

  The Corpse Brides

  The Light at the End of the Tunnel

  The Near-Death Scenario

  7 DEATH CAN BE FUN!

  Death in the Movies

  Death Lit 101

  Deaths Poet Laureate

  Deaths Playlist

  A Death Song That Could Make Even John Wayne Cry

  Lullabies: Ditties of Death

  Six Feet Under: Must-See TV for Morticians

  Magazines You Are Unlikely to Find in Your Doctors Waiting Room

  Sick Jokes

  “The Hearse Song”

  Memento Mori

  Memento Mori Calendars

  Days of the Dead

  Strange but True

  Death: King of Terrors or Really Fun Hobby?

  Bluelips: Your One-Stop Online Shopping Site for Those Hard-to-Find Mortuary Novelty Items

  Build-a-Corpse: Fun for the Whole Family!

  Mortuary Museums

  Death Ed

  And Following Our Midafternoon Séance, There’ll Be Lanyard Braiding at the Arts and Crafts Center

  Cemetery Fun

  Love and Death

  The Bride Wore Black

  The Last Word

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Introduction

  Here’s some good news and bad news about personal longevity. Scientists confidently assert that it is entirely possible for a human being to enjoy a robust and active life until at least two hundred years of age. This can be accomplished by, among other things, employing atom-size nanobots to repair cellular damage at the molecular level, exchanging worn-out internal organs for bionic replacements, upgrading the nervous system with a degeneration-proof network of fiber optics, and creating artificial muscle with ultrathin synthetic filaments.

  The bad news is that these and other life-prolonging technologies will not be generally available until roughly the year 2108. Which means that everyone now reading this book (as well as, tragically the person writing it) will be long dead.

  Needless to say this is a bitter pill to swallow, particularly if you happen to belong to the generation that once hoped they’d die before they got old and now fervently pray they’ll live long enough to enjoy the full benefits of their AARP memberships. Having grown up in the postwar years—a genuinely golden age in U.S. history (despite a few pesky concerns such as the ever-present threat of nuclear Armageddon)—baby boomers have always taken it for granted that they were blessed with unusually good fortune: born into the best of all possible worlds. To think that the distant future holds a significantly better one—a world in which, thanks to the wonders of biotechnology, death can be put on indefinite hold—really rankles.

  Still, if we can’t extend our happily self-indulgent lives forever, we can at least go out in style. One thing you can say about us boomers—we’re a trendsetting generation. Not to mention a supremely narcissistic one. For a half century, whatever’s been happening to us at the moment has clearly been the most important thing in the world. Every phase of life we’ve passed through—from TV-addicted childhood to Woodstockian youth to thirtysomething yuppiedom to Botoxenhanced middle age—has produced its own cultural craze. Now, with the geriatric years looming, death is sure to be the Next Big Thing.

  Certainly the folks in the undertaking biz realize this. In his morticians’ handbook, Funeral Home Customer Service A-Z (Companion Press, 2004), Alan D. Wolfert, one of the gurus of the death industry, counsels his readers that “boomers are a new and very different breed of customer of funeral services. Understanding their wants and needs and then tailoring services to not only meet but exceed those needs is increasingly essential for funeral homes.” And what exactly is it that rapidly aging Aquarians are going to want in a funeral?

  The consensus seems to be that we’ll be putting the fun back in funerals by eschewing the traditional type of memorial ceremony with all its depressing emphasis on grief, suffering, and bereavement. Instead, we will create our own cool, customized send-offs. A couple of years ago, the parody newspaper The Onion ran a piece headlined “Today’s Funeral-Goers Want to Be Entertained.” “Sure, funerals are still the number-one way to honor and grieve for our dead,” the article read. “But if they want to keep their place at the top, there’s gonna have to be some big-time changes. Mourners deserve a mind-blowing funeral experience they’ll never forget.” As Homer Simpson would say, it’s funny because it’s true.

  Take, for instance, the farewell ceremony for that countercultural icon Hunter S. Thompson, whose ashes were launched from a gigantic cannon adorned with a double-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button while Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” filled the air along with a spectacular display of psychedelic fireworks. Not to everyone’s taste, perhaps. But that’s precisely the point. Nowadays, there’s no need to be buried (or cremated) like anyone else. You can keep marching to the beat of a different drum all the way to the grave.

  Concerned that you lack the necessary skills to throw a truly memorable funeral, one that expresses the unique, inimitable (albeit now defunct) you? Not to worry. A new branch of the mortuary business has lately sprung up, composed of experts who, taking their cue from professional party planners, will help you arrange the perfect going-away-forever affair, complete with specialty catering, appropriate music, and even giveaway “funeral favors.” Sort of like a really top-flight wedding or bar mitzvah, only with a cadaver as the guest of honor.

  There are also a growing number of companies that cater to the postmortem needs of enthusiasts of every stripe. Is scuba diving your “bag”? Why not have your cremated ashes incorporated into an artificial coral reef off the Florida coast so you can spend eternity submerged in balmy tropical waters? Have you been a fanatical Trekkie ever since the original airing of the show in the fall of 1966? Now, you can proudly assert your undying geekhood by being buried in a fiberglass casket modeled on the popular photon torpedo design as seen in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Is Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth your all-time favorite movie? If so, you might consider having your remains consigned to a biodegradable casket and interred in an all-natural, ecofriendly “green cemetery.”

  The book you now hold in your hands contains a wealth of information about these and other alternative forms of body disposal. But (despite its titular tip of the hat to Stewart Brand’s bible of hippie-era self-sufficiency), The Whole Death Catalogue is not aimed exclusively—or even primarily—at New Agers, back-to-nature types, and do-it-yourselfers. Though our nation’s hardworking undertakers have been on the defensive since the publication of Jessica Mitford’s 1963 best seller The American Way of Death, many (perhaps most) of us still prefer the kinds of services offered by traditional funeral homes, including all-in-one package deals that cover everything from soup to nuts (or, in this case, embalming to interment). Addressing those faced with the painful task of burying a loved one, Thomas Lynch—poet, essayist, undertaker—offers nononsense advice: “If anyone tells you you haven’t spent enough, tell them to go piss up a rope. Tell the same thing to anyone who says you spent too much. Tell them to go piss up a rope. It’s your money. Do what you want with it.” Some people, after all, love to splurge on extravagant all-inclusive resort vacations, while others go in for wilderness backpacking. Choosing one over the other doesn’t make you a better person. As another sixties icon so wisely put it, whatever gets you through the night.

  As a resource, The Whole Death Catalogue is designed to provide practical information on a wide range of mortuary-related matters: how to write a living will, where to find a convenient cemetery, whom to contact when someone dies, what to say in a eulogy, when to start planning for a funeral, et cetera, et cetera. But it’s much more than a source-book. Covering every conceivable aspect of the subject—historical, cultural, sociological, anatomical, anthropological, and more—it is meant to be an informative and, yes, entertaining read, brimming with amazing facts, amusing anecdotes, revealing insights, and time
less wisdom, as well as loads of cool pictures.

  Appropriately enough, a final confession is in order. Death, it turns out, is a more or less inexhaustible topic. No single book could possibly cover the whole subject. Sweeping as this volume is, the title is a slight misnomer. The more accurate one—The Whole Lotta Death Catalogue—just didn’t sound right.

  Is Death Necessary?

  Of all the traits that distinguish human beings from other animals—language, toolmaking, the urge to buy other people’s unwanted stuff on eBay—perhaps the most fundamental is our awareness of our own inevitable deaths. To be sure, animals possess powerful survival instincts and do their best to avoid getting killed. But (so far as we know) they have no conscious knowledge of how little time they have here on earth. They go through life blissfully unaware that each passing day is bringing them closer and closer to the end.

  Humans, on the other hand—particularly as we grow older—are all too keenly aware of how fleeting life is. On the plus side, this can add flavor and poignancy to our existence, making us savor the lovely and precious things in life (as the poet Wallace Stevens says, “Death is the mother of beauty”). But it also burdens us with a heavy load of anxiety and plagues us with the question “Why do we have to die at all?”

  From time immemorial, humans have grappled with this mystery. Tribal myths from around the world offer a host of colorful explanations. According to one African tale, when the first humans pleaded with God to stop death, he complied with their wishes, but only on one condition: to prevent the world from becoming too crowded, there would be no more births. Unwilling to endure life without children, the people quickly begged God to return death to them.

  In an Indonesian myth, death came into the world when God offered the first man and woman a choice between two gifts: a stone and a banana. Seeing no use for the stone, the pair chose the enticing fruit. At that instant, a voice thundered down from heaven: “Because you have chosen the banana, your life shall be like its life. When the banana tree has offspring, the parent stem dies. So shall you die and your children shall step into your place. Had you chosen the stone, your life would have been like its life, changeless and immortal.”