CONFESSIONS OF A FUNERAL DIRECTOR » Archive for year 2014

The Meaning in the Forgetting

11 years ago

by Caleb Wilde in Dying Well, Guest Posts

Today’s guest post is written by John Davis:

Dementia is a lost-ness, a wild unknowing, an uncomprehending path that leads nowhere and means nothing. It does not easily lend itself to sentimentality or imagined goodness. It is stark and haunting.

The distance and isolation that falls over a family is inescapable, as is the cruel glacial drifting that forces people to become strangers to one of their own. It alters interactions and mercilessly constricts those we know until only a shell remains. One sees the mimicking mask of a stranger and feels the sting and ache of a familiar body inhabited by one who is now not known.

At first its presence is barely noticed: a name not remembered, a misplaced pen, a pause, a break, a whisper of a stranger’s voice coming from mother’s mouth. But eventually it forces its way into the center.

She was our common ground. We all knew her doting, her goodness, her infectious love and laughter. We were connected to each other by our knowledge of who she was to us. Now we are bound by her cold unknowing. We are unremembered and unknown to her, and somehow this makes us unable or unwilling to talk of her as if she is who she was. She has slowly fallen out of our conversations, our family rituals – and unforgivably – our thoughts.

Her body is now but a poor memento, a walking replica that is shoddily made. It is not quite right in the important ways. The eyes are different. They no longer perceive or comfort. And the hands are not right. The hands should be better taken care of. They should be softer. They should knowingly grasp back. These don’t. These hands seem to not know how. It is impossible to imagine what these hands have done or where they have been. They do not know, and therefore they can not be known. They are not hers.

I am alone. She is alone. It is joyless, soulless, and a deep sadness.

Yet I am struck by the incompleteness of those words. They do not capture what I feel or all that I know to be true. I refuse to accept the awful arithmetic that allows a decade worth of confusion to equal more than an entire life lived. I know innately that what is broken means less than what is beautiful, and I believe deeply that hope and memory are made of stronger things than a diseased unknowing.

So after witnessing her mind smolder with disease and living through the slow burn I want to shout that there was more, and that I can remember when things were different. I want it to be known that there were days when the sun shone on my grandmother and she was strong and brave, confident in her step and sure in her voice, and that the world was too small to hold her love.

I know what happened to her, but I do not approve, and I am not resigned. So I force myself to remember the sound of her voice, and I say her name to others, and I dream her back to me.

I see her enlivened face as I knew it in my youth: her skin creased like worn paper, her smile gleaming, and her eyes blue splashes of lapping waves on top of a mirrored sunset. She walks towards me and I hear her laugh. I reach for her hand and she tenderly turns my fingers to fit within her own. We walk along the shore as the sun slowly slides beneath the endless expanse of a summer ocean and whisped water strikes our arms and necks and legs. And we talk in half-whispers. She tells me where she has been and that she loves me more than I could ever imagine, and that she always has. I tell her that I know, and that I never forgot her love. I tell her that it was all that I ever really knew.

*****

About the author: Biblical Seminary attendee (only for a semester though. apparently I like questions more than answers.) I spent a few years as a social worker (both with the elderly and mental health population). Currently self-employed as a ‘personal historian‘. Which means that I help individuals turn their memories into something more and find meaningful ways to memorialize the lives of loved ones.

Visit John’s website HERE.

Dementia

Six WTF Funeral Stories

11 years ago

by Caleb Wilde in Aggregate Death

STORY NUMBER 1: FUNERAL FIGHT

A fight broke out during a funeral at a Phoenix church after a friend of the departed punched a man who had reportedly been fighting with the deceased before he died.

Phoenix police said the fight broke out Friday afternoon at St. John’s Institutional Baptist Church, when the unidentified friend recognized the other man and punched him “in honor of the fallen.”

The Arizona Republic reported that many of the other people attending began fighting, but there were no injuries and no arrests when officers broke up the scuffle.

Phoenix TV station KSAZ said the fight involved up to 30 people.

STORY NUMBER 2: OBESE CORPSE CAUSES CREMATION BLAZE

Concerns were made public after a crematorium in western Germany failed to control a fire which occurred during the funeral of a man who weighed 440 pounds.

After fighting the blaze for four hours, firemen determined the temperature of the furnace reached some 600 degrees celsius causing damage to the crematorium’s chimney.

Because obese bodies have a higher fat content, they burn for longer reaching temperatures that current crematorium facilities find difficult to control, revealed a German website.

In a bid to tackle this growing problem, crematoriums in the country have been adjusting their equipment to compete in what has become a fierce marketplace there.

STORY NUMBER 3: POT BROWNIES HOSPITALIZE UNSUSPECTING FUNERAL GOERS

Three senior citizens had to be hospitalized Saturday after being served brownies they didn’t realized were laced with marijuana.

The victims, who are all in their 70s and 80s, were attending a funeral in Huntington Beach, Calif. During the service, they each tried the pot brownies, which were passed around on a tray according to KTLA.com.

Soon after, the trio were admitted to a local hospital after complaining of “nausea, dizziness, and inability to stand unassisted.”

A police investigation revealed that the tray of ganja goodies had been brought as a tribute to the deceased who, according to the investigators, had used medical marijuana.

STORY NUMBER 4: CROSS COUNTRY TRIP WITH DEAD GIRLFRIEND

Ray Tomlinson’s girlfriend died on a road trip from Arizona to Michigan. Believing he had 48 hours before he was legally required to report her death, he drove her decomposing corpse, along with his 93-year-old mother, the rest of the way home. He didn’t take her body to the hospital, he told the Detroit Free Press, because he “cared too much for her.”

Tomlinson, 62, told police that he believes that the woman, whose name has yet to be released because her family has still not been informed of her death, died somewhere in Oklahoma or Texas.

STORY NUMBER 5: LEGS OF CORPSE CUT OFF TO FIT COFFIN

A GRAHAMSTOWN funeral parlour owner, who allegedly forced two undertakers to cut the legs off a body because it would not fit into the coffin, is facing charges of mutilating a corpse.

The grisly details came to light when one of the undertakers, who has battled sleepless nights and nightmares after allegedly being ordered to cut the man’s legs off with an angle grinder, finally came clean.

Siyakubonga Funeral Services owner Ronel Mostert was arrested and appeared in the Grahamstown Magistrate’s Court recently after the body of Thamsanqa Tshali was exhumed.

STORY NUMBER 6: SHAYNA SMITH CUTS THE CORPSE OF HER BOYFRIEND’S EX (IT’S COMPLICATED)

Shayna Smith

Look, we all deal with death in different ways. When someone important in your life passes there’s this huge emptiness inside and you don’t know what you’re gonna do with yourself. Even when it’s your WORST ENEMY.

Shayna Smith dealt with her grief over losing a rival by crashing the funeral and defiling that rival’s body. The deceased was the ex of Smith’s boyfriend and the police described their relationship as “frenemies.” Who needs actual enemies when you’ve got frenemies like this?

According to reports, the woman’s mother saw Smith with her hands in the casket. She walked over, probably not even imagining something so awful could be happening, and Smith bolted. That’s when she saw that the deceased’s make-up was smudged and her hair and FACE had been cut. Smith is now being charged with illegal dissection of a human body. Thanks for the head’s up that you need a permit to do an autopsy, coppers.

16 Famous Death Masks

11 years ago

by Caleb Wilde in Aggregate Death

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

BLAISE PASCAL

OLIVER CROMWELL

BEETHOVEN

MICHELANGELO

MOZART

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

NICOLA TESLA

RICHARD WAGNER

ROBERT E. LEE

VOLTAIRE

WALT WHITMAN

FAT BATMAN

Ten Tips to Help Children Grieve

11 years ago

by Caleb Wilde in Children and Grief

In the Western world, death is one of the last taboos. Death has become so sterile … so unspeakable … so frightful … so improper … that we assume we MUST protect the innocent souls from it’s darkness. In many parental minds, those “innocent souls” who need the most protection are our children. So we shield them from death, and keep them away from funerals, viewings and the dead.

Death, though, isn’t something that we CAN protect our children from. As much as we want to give our children security and answers to their questions, death, by it’s very nature, takes away security and only provides questions. The desire to protect our children from death is understandable, but it is a part of life that — if ignored — only becomes more difficult, more frightening and more harmful. It’s a part of life that may provide some of the best teaching moments for your children. Teaching moments where you can share that:

Life has an end.

Love continues on.

We have to live and love as much as we can because we don’t know how long we have.

All of us will die, so we must pursue our dreams and enjoy the life we’ve been given.

Not only should we recognize that death confrontation provides our children with incredible teaching moments, we should also realize that children do indeed grieve. They are connected. They love. They feel. And so when death comes, they grieve. Depending on their developmental stage, they will grieve differently than adults. But as long as they are apart of our family, of the community of the deceased, they have the right to grieve with us.

Here are a few helpful tips that I’ve gathered from three separate Counseling journals about how to help your children grieve:

When death happens, have a close relative, preferable a parent, tell the child about it immediately.
Stay close to the child, giving them physical affection. Instead of pushing them farther away from the community during death, draw them closer into it.
Children grieve in cycles. For example, they may be more inclined to play and divert their focus from the death when the death is recent and parents are grieving intensely. More than adults, children need time to take a break from grief. It is important to know that it’s okay to take a break. Having fun or laughing is not disrespectful to the person who died; this is a vital part of grieving, too.
Avoid euphemisms such as, “passed on,” “gone away,” “departed”. In and of itself, the concept of death is difficult enough for a child to understand; using euphemisms will only add to the difficulty.
Advise the child to attend the funeral, but do not force him or her to go. The funeral and viewing is the community expression of grief. As a part of the community, it’s valuable for the child to take part in that expression. Questions will arise. But, those questions are necessarily. And it’s okay if you don’t have the answers. Part of the reason why many of us DON’T take children to viewings and funerals is because we’re afraid of our children seeing us grieve … we’re afraid of our children seeing us in a state of weakness.
Let the child see you grieve; it gives them permission to grieve on their own. “It will help the child to see the remaining parent, friends and relatives grieve. Grief shared is grief diminished…if everyone acts stoically around the child, he or she will be confused by the incongruity. If children get verbal or nonverbal cues that mourning is unacceptable, they cannot address the mourning task.”
Gently help the child grasp the concept of death. Avoid vague explanations to the child’s questions, but answer each question as honestly as possible.
Keep other stressing situations, such as moving or changing schools to a minimum; after the ceremonies, continue child’s regular routines.
Be honest with the child about the depth of the pain he or she will feel. “You may say, ‘this is the most awful thing could happen to you.’ Contrary to popular belief, minimizing the grief does not help.
Feed your child copious amounts of bacon and pizza. Because kummerspeck isn’t always a bad thing.