In 1963, Jessica Mitford published The book American Death. It is the most important investigation into the American funeral industry in history, revealing how the industry exploits its customers and profiteers. Until then, this was clearly an untouchable scandal. "American Dying" became an instant bestseller, making the funeral industry the trendiest topic in the media and swelling the number of nonprofit funeral organizations from 170,000 to nearly one million. Funeral industry reports have described the phenomenon as the "Mitford effect". And denounced her book as a "red conspiracy". American Dying also led to legislative changes, including new federal Trade Commission rules for the funeral industry.
Jessica died of lung cancer in 1996 at the age of 78. Her funeral, which cost just $533 (mostly cremation costs), was extremely low-key, in accordance with her wishes. On the eve of her death, Jessica completed a revised edition of Death Revisited In America, excerpted below.
Elaborate rationalization of burial
"Where is your sting, O death? Where, O death, is your victory?" (From the New Testament) Where is it? After the funeral, many grie-stricken relatives and friends of the dead have come to the sad conclusion that the real winners were the undertakers, who had won an ill-matched battle.
If businessmen "cloudy" (a 18th century British writer called mortician) according to the traditional literature has always been a comic role, the world recognized symbol of humor, from Shakespeare, dickens to Evelyn waugh's way, so they have successfully reversed the situation in recent years, Perpetrated a huge, cruel and expensive prank on the American public. The prank, of course, was hidden behind elaborate rationalizations by funeral directors.
Funeral operators have built up their own whimsical and bizarre worlds over the years, almost imperceptibly. They take the trap of "living gracefully" and nightmarishly turn it into a trap of "dying gracefully." The familiar "Madison Avenue" language of advertising, with its idiosyncrasies applied to every product and enough to paralyze any sales resistance, has infiltrated the funeral industry with a quirky new look. They all emphasize the qualities of excellence we take for granted in our daily lives: comfort, durability, beauty, refinement. If you listen carefully, you can pick up persuasive quasi-scientific language that is always reassuring even when the speaker doesn't know what he or she is talking about.
To keep the body from decaying, the company offers "fine copper - a high quality coffin, a great value for money for customers looking for long-term protection" and "colonial classic - grade 18 leaded steel, joinless lid, lap welded coffin structure". Some coffins are equipped with sponges, while others have springs built in. The Company also offers "coffin beds that can be raised and tilted." Now coffin linings don't always have to be silver, 'color-matching draping' offers a rich selection of fabrics that are soft and skin-friendly.
The shroud is no longer in use. You can hire a shroud tailor, who promises to provide "hand-stitched, original fashion -- the best farewell clothes, including men's suits, women's nightgowns, accessories, etc." The final touch is also perfect: "Natural gloss -- the best choice for preservative makeup." Where have we heard the phrase "protect the peace of mind"? CARES. In the funeral advertisement, the phrase refers to the Wilbert crypt, which is lined with 3/8-inch asphalt, lined with specially thickened, reinforced concrete, and "guaranteed with excellent care and maintenance." And the Cadillac, a status symbol in almost every glory, was this time a glossy funeral hearse. Although second-rate cars are now used to transport bodies and carry out procedures, the Cadillac is still the final leg of the journey to the cemetery.
The funeral industry has invented a whole new terminology
A new myth has been born, or has been established, at the heart of 21st-century American funeral customs, underpinning our particular customs about how to dispose of the dead. Just as a witch doctor must believe in his infallibility before he can manipulate his patients, the funeral industry must "absorb" its principles before it can communicate them to the public.
The first myth is that funerals today are based on "American traditions." I recall a story about a newly planted lawn at a brand new Midwestern university with this sign: "It is a tradition of this school that students will never set foot on this lawn. This tradition will take effect from Next Tuesday." A cursory review of the history of American funerals tells the same story. Simple to stark, undecorated pine coffins, and the transport and burial of the dead by family and friends were all that characterized the traditional American funeral until the end of the 19th century.
The second myth is that the American public is so fastidious about funerals of its own accord -- it can't be laughed at at the last minute. "Now that we have a high quality of life. The same high standards of death should be maintained." "Funeral costs vary from person to person, depending on personal taste and the quality of life of family members," said one funeral industry leader. In fact, not everyone has a choice at this time. They are usually for the first time in their lives, having to buy a product they know nothing about and are in the least critical mood. The truth is that the cost of a funeral varies from person to person, but it's not "personal taste" that determines how the undertaker makes the deal.
The third myth is a hodgepodge based on half-baked psychiatric theories. The importance of "memory images" -- the lifting of the lid to allow relatives and friends to see the dead one last time -- has been reinforced, so the body must be treated with state-of-the-art embalming techniques and make-up. Another impressive-sounding claim is that the need for so-called "grief therapy" is booming in the funeral industry. Historian deals with a study of American funeral affairs mortician "drama writer" new roles, alluded to the concept of "therapist" grief, "mortician became a stage manager, they created the right atmosphere, let a funeral in a drama, in which social relationships were stronger, got express or express emotion".
In the end, the funeral industry has invented a whole new set of terms, replacing the straightforward and practical words of the past, that are actually as flowery and inauthentic as the synthetic silk lining coffins. "Mortician" has been replaced by "funeral director" and "decorator." Even the directory in the yellow Pages, where you can find "Mortician see Funeral Director", follows suit. The coffin became the "coffin"; Hearses became "gift cars" or "professional cars"; Flowers became the "praise of flowers"; The body is usually referred to as a "loved one", but funeral etiquette dictates that the deceased should only be addressed by his or her first name, such as "Mr Jones"; After cremation, the ashes become "residual smoke". Euphemisms like "dormancy", "resting room" and "cremation -- the right temperature" pervaded the funeral industry.
If the mortician is stage manager, the star of the stage is the dead man in the coffin. The set manager, the backstage crew, the supporting cast are all designed to best showcase the dead. Without the dead, all other extras lose their meaning, like The Revenge of the Prince without Hamlet. With that end in mind, expensive goods and services have piled up, dazzling mourners and leaving their wallets bleeding.
Successful funeral management and marketing psychology
Morticians, like other businessmen, think about price, profit and sales techniques. Leon Wett, former president of the San Francisco Funeral Academy, once wrote, "Your marketing plan should launch from the moment the phone rings and the family asks for your services... Never anticipate what the families will buy. You can't gauge the strength of their relationship, the amount of their insurance claim, or the money they set aside for a funeral."
Marketing plans are based on subtlety and subtlety, avoiding aggressiveness. Industry leaders believe that "hard selling" is not appropriate and will only lead to failure. "Successful burial operation manual", points out that there are two words can not say to the customer - "from the point of pay attention to your dress, I know you like advanced things, must hope for your mother to buy a good coffin", or "imagine you dear father lying in this beautiful coffin, will form a picture of what a beautiful memory scenes". At the same time, opportunism is not an option. The funeral industry considers the proper display of coffins in showrooms as the core of funeral marketing. Sales dialogue, while dignified and restrained, must also make the most of this presentation.
An unsuspecting customer, entering the coffin showroom for the first time in his life, might expect to see a random array of goods at different price points. In fact, sellers worked hard to develop new and better displays, since they found that the placement of coffins was closely related to sales.
There are several articles in the funeral industry devoted to this topic, often supplemented by symposia, forums, study sessions, visual teaching tools, and scaled-down models of the show room (with miniature coffins that can be moved around for various experiments). All of this underscores the goal of the funeral industry: to achieve long-term, stable sales performance under superior environmental conditions.
In his book managing Successful Funerals, Mr. Krieger, former president of the influential American Association of High Ritual Teachers, discusses at length the relationship between coffin presentation and marketing psychology. He analysed what went wrong with arranging coffins in ascending order of price, which he called "the ladder of display" and noted that it "makes it easy to make direct price comparisons". If the coffins were lined up this way, customers might panic and switch to a very cheap one when they see the most expensive one first. One mistake to avoid is "uneven display" - too many low-priced coffins. Unbalanced displays greatly highlight products under $300, making it easy for customers to shop with satisfaction.
Special customers in special industries
Some grieving families may not have to go through the ramble, either, because a selling technique in the 1990s was to sell to customers only through catalogues. No one may judge a coffin by its "photo quality," but morticians enthusiastically claim that when they don't have to look at the real thing, families will choose the more expensive one. In short, whether flipping through a catalogue or visiting a showroom, this is a guided tour, and the meaning is probably not appreciated by the customer. As a customer, he would find himself in a peculiar situation, involved in a whole set of complications that could only be encountered at a funeral. The mindset of the customer is obviously very different, because there is a different reason why everyone walks into a funeral parlor. One may be at a loss because his young wife has just died in an accident. Another may be relieved that his eccentric, elderly relative has finally died after years of suffering from illness. The vast majority of funeral customers, whether depressed, heartbroken or joyfully looking forward to the reading of their wills, are bombarded with questions about what to do next. I'm making funeral arrangements, but obviously this is not the time to get too carried away with your own taste and style; I think I know what the deceased liked, but what did his family and friends expect? How can I avoid being criticized for doing something wrong? And, above all, it must be perfect, but what does a "perfect" funeral look like?
This brings us to the second peculiarity of the funeral business: the customer walks into a funeral parlor knowing almost nothing. What you need, what you should avoid, how much you should spend. Morticians estimate that the average person plans a funeral only once every 15 years. Funerals are the third biggest spender for the average American family, after buying a house and a car. However, even if the deceased is an elderly relative whose death is entirely expected and even considered a good thing, in most cases the undertaker cannot discuss these matters with anyone in advance. It's always a little weird to go around telling people that. They would say, "By the way, my uncle is very sick and won't live much longer. Do you know any good, reliable undertakers?"
Because of the nature of the funeral itself, the buyer's situation is very different from that of other buyers, such as car buyers. If you think about it, a prudent person with common sense who wants to buy a car will look at the rankings of The Magazine of Consumer Research or ask his friends for advice. He knows how dangerous it is to rush and trade blindly.
In a funeral home, even the most prudent person is like being in the middle of a vast sea, without any guiding goal or direction. It is not normal for anyone to compare products and services in advance and ask about the merits of york's Keystone and Beltsville's Fudgedale coffins. On the question of costing, the similar difference could not be more obvious. The customer of the funeral business is usually in no mood to compare prices and inquire about quality. He just wants to get things settled quickly. Not only was the customer anxious, but he couldn't take his time with the situation.
The third special factor facing the customer in the funeral business is that he must make a decision on the spot. Customers know impulse shopping is something to be avoided in everyday life, but in a funeral home, it always has to be impulse shopping. The usual business euphemisms -- "I'll check on it and get back to you", "I'll get back to you in a few weeks if I decide to buy it" -- don't work. And unlike most purchases, the "full refund within 15 days" rule doesn't apply to products purchased here.
Morticians write their own set of business laws
In 1994, the Federal Trade Commission amended the Funeral Regulations to prohibit morticians from charging "coffin handling fees" to customers who purchased a coffin at a discount store. The discount stores were new, but in the years since, their numbers have exploded, and now you can even buy a coffin on the Internet. But just as most customers of the funeral industry are prevented by circumstances from shopping around for a coffin, they are also prevented by tradition from complaining when they feel they are being charged too much or the service is poor. The reputations of TV repairers, lawyers and plumbers are as public property, and their shortcomings are talked about over dinner. In this respect, the reputation of the undertaker is much safer. When a friend knew I was going to write on this subject, she reluctantly told me the story of helping her brother-in-law with the funeral. She was looking for a long-established funeral home with a good reputation. She wanted to help the widow save money, so she chose the cheapest mahogany coffin, which was quoted at a lower price. Later, the salesman called to tell her that her brother-in-law was too tall to fit in the mahogany coffin and that she would have to use a different coffin, which cost $100 more. When my friend objected, the salesman said, "Oh, ok, we'll use the mahogany coffin, but we'll have to cut off his feet first." My friend was so scared by this nightmarish conversation that he didn't mention it again for two years.
Ignorance of laws governing the disposal of bodies is sometimes a factor in the funeral business. When it comes to embalming, for example, many people are surprised to learn that no state in the United States has laws requiring embalming, but that's true, except in certain circumstances, such as when a body is being transported by a common vehicle.
Morticians have also deliberately fostered such misconceptions, either by lying to customers about decrees or by imposing a sense of legal authority on practices they find profitable. This casual and contemptuous attitude to the law is even present in the mortician college, the institution where the mortician of the future receives his higher education. For example, most states have laws requiring that if a deceased person decides to donate his body for medical research, his family must do so in accordance with his wishes. However, modern Mortuary, a textbook on embalming, deals with this unpleasant subject in a few lines, which is highly misleading. Question: "If the deceased has said in his will that he will donate his body to the medical school for dissection. Will his widow carry out this claim regardless of her wishes?" A: "No... There are limits to the right to own or control one's own body, and the willingness to dispose of one's body must not cause shame and grief to the immediate family."
I've heard too much about morticians' tendency to make up laws in their business because of the huge profits to be made from doing so. So I did a firsthand investigation myself. I prepared a copy of the California Code, called the largest funeral service in my neighborhood and concocted a story: My elderly aunt was living in my house, very sick and with only a few days to live. Her daughter's on her way over here, but I thought I'd have some good advice and a little advance planning... There was a sympathetic gasp on the other end of the line. I went on to say that the aunt's family wanted nothing more than cremation. I was assured on the other end of the line: Sure, we can arrange everything. And THEN I said since all we need is a cremation, and there's no farewell ceremony, we figured we wouldn't buy a coffin. The voice from the undertaker was tense, but still fluent. He told me with calm authority that it was "illegal" for him to make such arrangements. I asked him, "Do you mean it would be illegal?" He said yes, he did. "In that case, can we just take the body to the crematorium in our station wagon?" There was a pause of surprise, and then he burst out in rapid succession: "Ordinary ladies, ma 'am, do not lug around a dead body. Ordinary ladies have neither the facilities nor the inclination!" (He was quite right, I thought).
I tried two more funeral homes, and they all told me the same thing: Cremate bodies without coffins, which is prohibited by California law. Three times in a row, they said the same thing, so convincingly that I began to doubt the terms of the California Code before me. I reread the parts of the regulations governing cremation and health, and finally read the whole code from cover to cover. I couldn't find anything, so I called a health department official, who told me that there are no California laws that require caskets for cremation. He added that coffins are not available when the poor are cremated by county-level welfare agencies.
Such tactics prompted the Federal Trade Commission to rule in 1984 that morticians could no longer lie to the public.
One is sad and remorseful, the other is sophisticated and careful
A fifth peculiarity of the funeral business is that customers have relatively abundant cash to pay for funerals. Families used to paying for major items in installments -- cars, televisions, furniture -- and scrimping every week suddenly have an insurance settlement and death benefits, often from more than one source. Morticians usually don't have to look too hard to find out how much insurance money a customer has. When filling out the victim's basic information form, ask the family a few simple, natural questions that will elicit all the information he needs to know. For example: "The deceased's occupation" "Shall we send the bill directly to the insurance company".
Morticians know the death benefits of every union in their area, as well as the death benefits of Social Security and workers' Funds, better than middle school students know the rankings of major League baseball teams. Social Security payment: $255; If the deceased is a veteran, add $300 and get a free burial in a state cemetery; In the event of death as a result of a work-related injury, certain state workers' fund statutes provide additional compensation of up to $5,000 for funeral benefits, etc.
Morticians know all the information necessary to make a sale. And the widow of the deceased? She's getting a lot of cash for the first time and is likely to be open to any suggestions from the industry. After all, he was the expert, and he was the only one who knew how to arrange things, and he was the only one who could guide her through the strange rules and rituals of the future so that everything would go on as usual.
Former New York City Probate Court judge Richard Fowler summed up what happens in the funeral industry when he once decided whether a funeral bill was reasonable: "One of the operational difficulties of these proceedings is that the parties to the funeral contract are often in very different circumstances. Generally speaking, those on the one side are emotional, full of remorse and sadness, while those on the other seek profit by caring for the dead. As a result, one is usually disorganized, confused and forgetful, while the other is generally awake, sophisticated and careful."
The guiding principle for funeral pricing seems to be "to each according to his ability and according to his means", regardless of the actual wishes of the bereaved family. A funeral director in San Francisco said, "If this guy drives a Cadillac, why give him a pontiac?" The Cadillac symbol plays an important role in morticians' thinking. It is also a form of reasoning peculiar to the funeral industry. A man can drive a Cadillac to an expensive restaurant and still be served by ordering a $2 cup of tea instead of a $40 dinner. The owner is unlikely to point to the elegant decor and staff and demand that the Cadillac owner order more dishes commensurate with his spending power to pay the restaurant's management fee.
How are the "65 funeral service charges" calculated
There was a time when the duties of a funeral director were clearly defined and the fees charged to funeral patrons were fairly transparent. The standard charge for a funeral in the late 19th century, in addition to the price of goods, would be to add items such as "domestic ceremony (burial of body) : $1.25", "Ice to cool body preservation: $10", "Permit application: $1.50" and so on. In keeping with the custom of funeral directors in those days, a few dollars would be added to the bill as "babysit fees," which was understandable. In 1880, embalming cost about $10. A mortician, in his 1900 manuscript, recommended a minimum fee for these services: "Corpse washing and shrouding: $5"; "Embalming: $10"; "Hearse: $8 to $10." As Robert W. Halbenstein and William M. Lammers, scholars of the history of the funeral industry, have noted, "Morticians at the time did not yet realize how much value would be generated by professionally providing personal services for a legal fee." Well, now they've thought of it all, and it's almost like they're trying to get back what they lost.
When it comes to designing service plots, funeral industry spokesmen tend to indulge in a gushing enthusiasm that laymen sometimes don't understand. There are a lot of contradictions in what they say. The International Association of Good Morticians has devised a phrase to explain its services: "The average funeral is nine and a half business days for the mortician and his staff, based on what the American public typically receives, including the use of cars and hearses, the use of buildings including chapels and other halls, That includes maintenance, insurance, taxes, licensing and depreciation fees, heating in winter, cooling in summer, and so on." The author goes on to say that while the embalming process takes only about three hours, "a person who has to work 40 hours a week for two weeks can perform a funeral service. Plus the 40 working hours that must be spent by other local professionals, including cemetery and newspaper work, and, of course, most importantly, clerical services. That adds up to about 120 hours of labor, which is the basis for pricing funeral costs."
Our spokesman lumped up a lot of things. Start with the "most important clerical service" : the average religious funeral lasts only 25 minutes, and the undertaker certainly doesn't pay for it. "Cemetery work" presumably refers to digging and burying graves. This already mechanized operation takes 15 to 20 minutes and is also not included in the mortician's cost. What does a newspaper do? This is a real conundrum. I think it refers to an obituary in the pages of a newspaper. I was surprised, by the way, to learn that newspapers were the "relevant profession" of the funeral industry.
It's hard to figure out how insurance, taxes, licensing fees and depreciation would count into 120 hours of labor. The serial writer does mention that a funeral includes "65 services." Basically the undertaker likes to call everything he does a "service." , for example, a typical "service" list includes project "complete statistics" (ie, fill out the death certificate, clear up the dead leaves how much insurance gold), "the coordination meetings" (and families set funeral trade meeting), and "records", actually refers to the burial clubs own bookkeeping. Apparently, they intentionally mixed the cost accounting with the actual funeral service accounting. Eighty percent of the time mortuary employees spend distracted is also counted as "working hours." The trendiest funeral parlors have opened 24 hours a day. This phrase also contains the following encouraging news:
The American funeral industry prides itself on the fact that it takes no more than two hours' drive to find a funeral director and embalmer anywhere in the United States at any time. Not even America's fire department can match that.
The embalming secrets of funeral homes
The drama begins when the body goes to the funeral home.
Nineteenth century skeletons would be surprised to see today's. He was suddenly sent to a funeral home, where he was quickly disinfected, cut, perforated, soaked, bound, trimmed, oiled, waxed, colored, made up and dressed up -- from an ordinary corpse to a "beautiful memory picture." The art of embalming and restoration, as these procedures are known in the trade, is so popular in the United States and Canada that for years funeral directors have treated it as a ritual, without even asking the body, or the family, if they wanted it.
Embalming is one of the most extraordinary processes, and you would be amazed at how docile Americans can be, spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on it, and foolishly ignorant of what it does and how it is done. There's probably not one person in 10,000 who really knows what's going on. Books on the subject are so hard to find that you won't find them in any roadside bookstore or library.
These days, countless TV viewers can watch surgeries from the comfort of their living rooms, and thanks to cartoons, the anatomy of the human digestive system is well known, even to kindergarteners. Embalming is a secret in America, where satisfying a varied curiosity has become a national pastime, and apparently not because it's too scary. In the early days of embalming in the United States, it was almost mandatory for embalming to take place in the home of the deceased, with relatives nearby to supervise. Today, however, family members who want to accompany them will be dissuaded by funeral directors. The law generally prohibits anyone other than an apprentice from entering the body disposal room.
A closer look at what embalming is all about probably offers an explanation: why are morticians so secretive about the procedure when it has become their raison d 'etre? Are they worried that once the public learns the details of embalming, customers will reconsider the service? If even funeral directors are reluctant to discuss embalming with outsiders, readers here could be forgiven for not wanting to read on. If you dare, let us lift the curtain of formaldehyde.
First, the body was laid flat in the mortuary of the mortuary, or so to speak, Mr. Jones reclined in the mortuary, ready to bid his formal farewell to the world.
The mortuary rooms of fancy funeral homes look like surgical rooms, empty and tiled. Indeed, the embalmer and makeup artist here has taken to calling his profession "skin surgery" (" skin surgery "has been aptly dubbed" half surgery "by some writers of the funeral business). His tools were scalpels, scissors, screwdrivers, tweezers, clamps, needles, pumps, tubes, bowls, basins -- a stark imitation of surgery. The same goes for their technology. This technique was learned after high school by studying in an embalming school for nine to 12 months.
He used advanced chemical industry to arm themselves, use all kinds of latex, spray, ointment, grease, powder and creams to adjust or soften the body tissues, there are a lot of cosmetics, beeswax and pigment, used to fill and modify body, there are even used instead of whole and plaster of Paris, supported and fixed body tools: The multi-angle head holder, the Edwards arm palm positioner, the rest pad (used to support the shoulder while embalming), and the Slop foot positioner, which resembles an ancient flangy.
Philadelphia eccles funeral college President John h. eccles so describe the first stage of the corrosion process: "in the hands of a skilled experts, these work can be done in a relatively short period of time, also won't cause too much damage to the body, as long as do some slight cutting is enough, mild to even in the body of the living will not bring serious inconvenience. It is necessary to drain the blood, not only to eliminate infection, but also to prevent discoloration and disfigurement of the body due to the presence of blood." Another textbook discusses the crucial issue of timing: "The sooner embalming is done, the better. Every hour that passes between death and embalming adds more questions and complexity."
How early should you start embalming? "Given the limited information available through preliminary and piecemeal technical studies," the authors tell us, "we conclude that embalming is best achieved before the body is completely lifeless, before cell death occurs. In general, this means embalming begins within an hour of the body's death." It might be comforting to listen to another author: "Because there used to be a fear of premature burial." "One of the functions of injecting chemicals to prevent embalming is to eliminate the possibility of being buried alive," he said. It's so fresh. They're all drained of blood. They're not buried alive.
Now look at Mr. Jones. The blood has been drained from the vein, replaced by embalming fluid injected from the artery. As stated in Principles and Methods of Embalming: "Every surgeon has a preference for where to inject and draw blood, and that's fine, as long as he can change his preference if circumstances require him to." The most typical preferred locations are carotid artery, femoral artery, jugular vein and clavicular vein. There are many preservatives to choose from. If used with "varying tones," it produces a "soft, elastic stiffness that keeps the skin velvety." The suntone collection is available in three colors: bronze, special makeup and light pink.
The next step was for Mr. Jones to use the trocar. It is a long hollow needle attached to a tube. It is captured from the abdomen, punctured in the abdominal cavity and chest cavity, and the tissue is sucked out and replaced with "cavity fluid." The puncture hole in the abdomen has to be stitched up, Mr Jones's face is covered with a thick layer of cream (to protect his skin from chemicals escaping) and his body is covered with sheets. There is much more to do. Although he is embalmed, he has not yet undergone grooming rehabilitation, and the best time to begin this work is eight to 10 hours after embalming, when his muscle tissue has solidified and dried.
The body is open for viewing in the farewell hall
Keep that in mind; All the effort expended on this corpse had been directed to make it more beautiful, to be seen as a man resting in health.
After a short break, the embalmer returned to the front, but now he was using locally available materials as a sculptor and make-up artist. Hand out? Easy. Make him one out of plaster of Paris. If one or both lips, nose or ears are missing, embalmers have several repair waxes on hand to create replacements. The pores and texture of the skin are pressed out with a small brush, and the makeup is applied to the surface. The head came off? I have to deal with severed heads all the time. The jagged wounds were trimmed and splints, wires and sutures were used to attach the skull to the torso. A good idea when it's time to lie in state is to cover your neck with something, a scarf or a turtleneck.
The exact opposite of the above is more frequent - gaunt and emaciated. In such cases, embalmers fill their hypodermic syringes with massage cream, find holes and depressions, and inject them. Don't forget the backs of your hands, fingers, and jaws when performing this procedure. The positioning of the lips repeatedly challenges the embalmer's craft. If you close it too tightly, you'll look stern or even discontented. Embalmers believe that the ideal solution is to create the impression that the lips are slightly open, with the upper lip sticking out slightly, so that the victim looks younger.
If Mr. Jones dies of jaundice, there's a good chance the preservatives will turn green. Would that baffle an embalmer? Not as long as he's persevering. Concealer could be thickly covered with ointment and cosmetics, the colours of the shroud and the lining of the coffin carefully tinted, and Mr. Jones displayed under a rosy light. Friends would say, "How healthy he looks."
The mending and filling is over, and Mr. Jones is now shaved, bathed and dressed. Use a cosmetic cream on his hands and face and shampoo his hair. Comb your hair and trim your nails. Special care should be given to those with calloused hands who have worked hard all their lives. Dirt should be removed with hand cream and fingernails should be cleaned clean. 'The family has never said anything about the fact that the deceased should have their nails trimmed so they look beautiful, even if they were not in the habit.'
Jones can be buried now. Placing the body properly requires a delicate sense of balance. When placed in the coffin, the body should be raised as high as possible, but not so high as to touch the nose when the lid is lowered. For we have been warned that laying the body too low "creates the impression that the body is in a box". Jones was then wheeled into the designated farewell hall, where a final touch was made -- his favorite pipe in hand; Or, if he's a reader, pick up a book. If Jones were a young master, he might catch a Teton bear. He welcomes open houses in the Farewell Hall from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day.
Funeral director pulls off 'Grief Therapist' role
Once everything is in place, the funeral director calls a staff meeting to make sure everyone is in place. Such meetings make employees feel like they are part of a team, each with clear responsibilities, and the funeral is a success. The funeral director had informed the pallbearers chosen by the family, arranged for priests, organists and soloists to attend, provided transportation for everyone, arranged and arranged flowers sent by friends. Edward A. Martin, in The Psychology of Funerals, notes, "The funeral director may not do as much as the family would like, but what the family appreciates is his assistance and guidance, his reassurance that everything is on track... What matters is the extent to which the service of the funeral director convinces the family that their feelings have been fully expressed."
Religious services may be held in a church or in the funeral home's own chapel. Most funeral directors prefer the latter option, which not only makes it more convenient for him, but also gives him a chance to show off his perfect facility to family and friends who come to pay their respects. After the sermon, mourners filed past the casket for a last look. No one ever asks the family if they want an open casket, because of course they do. As a result, in the mid-1990s more than 68 per cent of funerals in the United States were open caskets, a custom unheard of elsewhere in the world. The foreigners were surprised. A British woman living in San Francisco described her thoughts in a letter to this writer:
I have only attended one funeral in the US - that of an elderly colleague of mine. When the ceremony was over, I couldn't understand why everyone was walking to the coffin (sorry, coffin), but I thought it was best to follow everyone else. When I got there, I was petrified: the coffin was open, and poor old Oscar was lying in it in his brown tweed suit, with bronzed makeup and oddly colored lipstick. I'm sorry about my friendship with the old man, but IT hurts me, because I probably laughed. I made up my mind that I would never go to an American funeral again, and I would not go to an American funeral if I died.
The casket (which was ceremonially mounted on a "classic American premium metal hearse") was now carried by a hydraulic lift to a "Slippery" hearse with low-pressure tires and transported to another Cadillac hearse. The car's interior colors also need to match, "for the man who never stops striving for perfection."
At the cemetery, the coffins were lowered into the ground. The job, which used to be the preserve of friends of the deceased, is now done by a special machine. An Evergreen brand artificial turf is ready to cover the dry soil. Overhead, shading the sky, is a portable "sterile worship tent" designed to withstand the summer heat and humidity and the winter storm.
Then came the dusting of the coffin, as the presiding priest solemnly recited, "Dust to dust." To complete this step today, just hold the Gordon spreader and shake your wrist. You don't have to get dirt all over your hands, you don't have to get dirt on your fingers. What a simple, solemn, beautiful, pious, modern way! The Golden Leak Spreader is a nickel-plated brass appliance. Not only was it "beautiful and durable", it was "a tool for building good relationships" and could be given to clergymen as a "decent non-commercial gift". It's shaped like a salt shaker.
Without even touching a hand, the coffin and the earth became one.
The funeral director has succeeded in his nascent role as a "grief therapist" whose trick is to guide participants through a maze of tricks and tricks. He freed families from red tape, he dressed the dead as a living doll, he arranged for the body to nap for days in the farewell hall, and he gave a polished performance that left no place for the concept of death -- except when it was rashly mentioned by a priest conducting a religious service. He did everything he could to make everyone happy about the funeral. He and his team fought with all their might against death. To their surprise, they won.
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