So yesterday I went to the funeral home with my brothers, my cousin, my mom, and all my aunts and uncles. If you know anything about funeral arrangements, you know it’s the worst parts of buying a car wrapped up with all the fun and excitement of the death of a loved one. It is every bit as sleazy, scammy, and manipulative as you would imagine it could be.*
I’m glad my brothers and I were there, because had we not been, I think my mom and her siblings could have been suckered into a whole bunch of unnecessary expenses, some of which they were suckered into regardless.
It all started when the funeral home started pressuring us into getting my grandfather embalmed. Actually, it started way before that. The death industry has managed to subtly spread the myth that not only is embalming necessary for a body to be presentable, but that it may even be required by law. In Maryland, it’s not the law. There is a stipulation that “extended viewing” would allow the funeral home to require embalming, but nowhere is “extended viewing” defined. When my family sat down to have a discussion about whether or not embalming was necessary, the misinformation was coming out of the mouths of my relatives. “If he’s not embalmed we can’t have an open casket,” or “If he’s not embalmed he’ll start to stink,” or “If he’s not embalmed we won’t be able to bury him.” From what I can tell, all of these are inaccurate. Embalming is expensive ($1600 in our case), unnecessary where cold storage is available, unnatural, and bad for the environment. Does anyone has experience with a viewing and an non-embalmed body? I’d love to hear it.
The next big ticket item that can be ignored, one that we managed to keep our family from purchasing unnecessarily, is a vault. In Maryland a vault is not required, but a graveliner is (I think). A graveliner essentially keeps the ground from collapsing as the coffin degrades, and it keeps some moisture out of the grave, as well as keeping any degrading material of the body or the coffin out of the ground. It’s essentially a box in the ground that the coffin goes into. A vault is a box that goes inside the graveliner, and then the coffin goes in the vault. They start at about $3000 bucks for plain concrete and then go as high as $20,000 for fancy stuff with copper or bronze linings and embellishments. They try and sell you on the vault by saying that without it “weather” could get into the coffin sooner, essentially forcing you to visualize the deceased rotting in the ground. In our case it would have been an especially bad decision to buy a vault because our grandfather won’t even be buried with us at the graveside. The cemetery only does burials once or twice a month, and all the bodies delivered to the cemetery before that day are buried then, no visitors allowed. We wouldn’t have ever seen the vault even if we purchased it. And I wouldn’t be surprised if numerous families had purchased vaults, only for that money to go into the pockets of funeral salesmen. Don’t let a funeral director tell you that a vault is required unless you’ve read the law and know he’s right. In Maryland, he wouldn’t be.
Eventually we got to the coffins themselves, and that was a horrible process in and of itself. They try to sell you on all this fancy, polished, filigreed nonsense, when all you want is something simple and respectful. My older brother asked for a book of cheaper options once we reached the end of the first book and the cheapest option was $3000. We were told that the book we were looking at was the only book available. Then my mom told a story about when my grandfather was making arrangements for his sister and the funeral director then told him that the option he had picked for his sister was “nice”. “No,” he barked in reply, “Not nice. A necessity.” After that story the funeral director magically found a book of cheaper options. My family eventually settled on something for about $1,400 that looked remarkably like a similar option available for $700, but my mom and her siblings took a vote and opted for the more expensive one. I’m still not sure why. It’s not like you can go to a funeral and remember what the casket looked like, or that you could (or even should) look at a casket and guess how much it cost. Just build me one out of plywood. It’ll be good enough.
But that’s the thing about coffins, everybody wants to think that with a nice enough vault, graveliner, and coffin, the body will stay perfect forever. In fact, the funeral director kept talking about how some coffins had gaskets and how others did not. He was really pushing the gasket thing pretty hard, I think for the same reason as the vault: to scare people into thinking of their loved one decomposing. Well guess what? We all decompose. There’s nothing you can do to prevent it. You’re going to be rotting in the ground regardless, and all this bullshit they try and sell you does nothing but prevent the former husk of your loved one from doing what it does naturally. You’ll never see them like that, so why do you even give a fuck? Are you concerned that they’ll check out the digs you bought for them if they come back in spirit form? Why the fuck would they do that? They could haunt themselves up season tickets for the Ravens and the Orioles. They could haunt themselves up a nice little spot in a strip club. They could haunt themselves up a seat in a movie theater. Why would they want to bother seeing the nonsensical shit you bought for them? They are dead! It doesn’t matter what they liked, or what they hated. They’ll never see any of it.
Finally we came to all the small details nonsense that still managed to cost an arm and a leg. A bouquet to go on top of the coffin? $200. A book for people to sign with their name and address? $40. Prayer cards? $80 for 200. And while I’m on the topic of prayer cards, what the hell are they all about? They’re like funeral trading cards. I really don’t understand why people take these things, and I REALLY don’t understand why they take 3 or 4 at a time. It’s just a card with a name, two dates, and a prayer on it. You can make your own for free, AND you can pick your own prayer! I tried to push for only getting 100, but my uncle insisted we get at least 200. I’m glad they only went that high. I can just imagine a box of 500.
My grandmother is still learning of the loss of her husband, hundreds of times every day. Fuck anyone who would dare spin that into a good thing. Comments are back on.
*Here’s Penn and Teller’s evaluation of the death industry on Bullshit. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
And that’s why I really appreciated the fact that my dad took all the necessary steps at the age of 45 to set up what he wanted done with his body, paid for it and gave me a notorized copy of said instructions. When he died in a motorcycle accident three years later, I was relieved to a) not have to deal with that crap while I was grieving. b) not have to pay any money…he was cremated, placed in a modest double sized urn and he only paid $700. My dad was nothing if not frugal. I want to punch these funeral home types for making them spend so much money. Sorry to your family about what’s been going on lately.
The image of your grandmother reliving tragedy in such a way made me so sad yesterday. Condolences on your loss.
I’m sorry for your loss, truely. Maybe this might help with your Grandmother.
http://alzheimers.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9601087...
ACW—I’m so sorry–*hugs*. I’ve been through this. I lost my dad in 06. I’m terribly sorry—the funeral industry bites.
We actually rented the coffin for my mother and the liner was the only thing that had to be purchased. We also had her cremated due to the way she died in ‘06. But it was excrutiating going through all the little silly costs that they throw in there. We picked the things we wanted and not the things the funeral home would have “up-sold”.
I am sorry for your loss and unfortunately, I worked around Alzheimer’s patients and it is not going to get any easier as the funeral approaches.
Has your family thought about sheilding your grandmother from the most of it and just taking her when she is absolutely necessary? Or has the doc maybe prescribed somehting that can lessen her anxiety?
Once again, I am so sorry for your loss.
How could anyone possibly spin her continued reminders of her husband’s death as a good thing?
I just hope one day she has a shadow of a memory and stops asking, for everyone’s sake. :(
(Sorry, no cheery comment today. But I’m giving you a non-touchy-feely hug.)
Just wanted you to know I’ve been thinking about you. I don’t have any wisdom to offer, just the solidarity of someone who has been there an inordinate number of times in my 37 years, the Alzheimer’s included. Music and pictures help. Sit and talk with her and let her look at pictures. Sometimes you get a little window of clarity for a while and they begin to understand.
Thank goodness you’re so smart. If they don’t realize in the midst of the tragedy, I hope your family eventually sees how lucky they are that you and your brothers were there to protect them against predatory funeral directors.
I’ve been thinking about you… I hope your Grandmother is okay.
I would just like to say that I truly sympathize with your situation. My grandfather lives with me and has alzheimer’s. Fortunetly (i suppose?) his wife passed before it got bad, but until someone has to live with someone with alzheimers it is impossible to understand the horror of the disease. Besides this, by grandmother on the other side of the family just passed from a brain aneruism that no less was on the “memory” part of the brain. We realized something was wrong when she couldn’t remember her dogs name. One of the saddest thing’s I have ever seen was visiting her at the hospital and watching as she stared blankly at my mother (her daughter) totally clueless as to who she was. What an awful way to go.
Re the death industry - you cite several reasons why I’m a big advocate for cremation.
I can hardly imagine anything more wrenching than your grandmother’s situation - for her and for those around her. It sounds like the 9th circle of hell, except there’s no moral to the story. Well, maybe “don’t get old?” I’m truly sorry for your family - how awful, how painful. My sympathies to all of you.
ACW,
I was very sorry to read about your loss.
My grandmother was suffering from the onset of alzheimers when my grandfather died. She had also been not quite deaf as a stone for twenty years prior. The situation became worse in the three years between his death and hers, when the only people she recognized were my dad and my uncle, and she couldn’t understand where her husband was, or who I or my sister were.
Both my grandparents were embalmed. They didn’t look like themselves at all. Personally, I’m fond of cremation.
My step-cousin wasn’t embalmed when he died, but I don’t know if they were able to have an open casket (he committed suicide by running his truck into the biggest tree he could find). I remember his dad saying his son had put enough shit into his body while he was alive, he wasn’t putting more in now that he’s dead.
:( Sadness.
My deepest sympathies and empathy to you and your family. My wife’s grandmother has developed alzheimer’s over the last few years, and it is very difficult. She even has some violent episodes when she forgets who her daughter (my MIL) is, even though they see each other several times a week. On the bright side, at least she doesn’t remember that she didn’t like me.
As for the religious aspect, I truly believe that this is not the way things were meant to be. The Bible explains much of the world’s problems as a result of our rebellion against God. When Jesus was here, the New Testament shows that much of His ministry was healing people, and He openly wept for our pain. He also said that when the time was right, He will come back and fix it.
Say what you will of my belief, but it gives me and millions of other people hope. I have seen the changes that that hope has made in people’s lives. Please don’t get me wrong - I agree that the living nightmare your grandmother is going through is horrible. Your question is a very common and valid one, and I just wanted to at least give you the short answer.
So sorry for your loss.
While I have no experience with Alzheimers, I do remember vividly my encounter with the funeral industry after the death of my mother when I was 20. It is a great thing that you and your brothers are there to help.
We had this same bullshit when my brother died suddenly. Everyone in my family is an athiest, so we didn’t have a viewing, or even a ceremony at the funeral parlor. We had him cremated and put in a plastic box. They made us buy a casket for no reason! We were all to grief strucken and overwhelmed to fight, and we ended up spending $7,000.
Found out a two year later that the funeral home we used was one of a few illegally selling cadavars to this one company by falisifying the families signatures. It was investigated on 20/20. We are still waiting to find out if my brother was sold.
A lot of the Southern states have pretty lenient burial laws, so there is a small but growing number of home burials, where you can put the deceased on your own property, as long as it doesn’t interfere with a water table, have a negative causal effect on neighboring property, blah blah blah. It took several people fighting for this to occur, as the death industry fought long and hard against home burials. I’ve had a viewing of a non-embalmed body, and really, when you’re talking about an elderly person with a prolonged bout with cancer, makeup and fake tan can only do so much.
I have been thinking about you and your family since I read these posts. I am so sorry. I feel sick for your Grandmother and for your family as you go through this. Alzheimers is a horrible disease and it is so cruel. I am so sorry.
Condolences and love.
If it’s any consolation at all, despite what your grandmother is going through - she is only learning of his death once. She won’t remember the others. Death is hardest on the living and those we leave behind. May you find strength in your family and your loved ones in the days to come.
Sorry about your loss. It’s disgusting the way funeral homes attempt to exploit people’s pain. I guess no industry is immune to corruption.
My family has been lucky that my mom went to highschool with the local funeral director in her hometown and is one of those rare, stand-up guys that doesn’t do all that upselling. There are wonderful funeral homes out there who view their business of caring for the dead and the living as a calling, it sounds like the one in charge of your grandfather is not one of those. I think it’s a delicate balance they walk between operating a business and caring for grieving families, so I would have to agree with another commenter who stated the pros of pre-planning and/or cremation (which is what I plan to do). Oh, and don’t get me started on the racket that is funeral insurance.
My thoughts are with you and your family.
Terribly sorry for your loss. I’ve been a party the planning of many funerals, and I agree it is a total racket. I don’t understand why people can’t let go of the body, and live with the spirits left behind.
I’m so very sorry for your loss. It’s fucking awful for you and for your family. I wish all of you strength and peace.
I’m so sorry for your loss and for having to see your grandmother suffer.
ACW, please allow me to (belated) add my condolences on teh passing of your grandfather. My sincerest sympathies go out to you also for your grandma.
With regard to caskets, NEVER EVER purchase a casket that seals. You’re absolutely correct: unless we’ve been creamated, we all decompose. That’s what is supposed to happen. Hermetically sealed caskets, however, promote anaerobic decomposition, which allows the build up of noxious gases within the casket. Eventually, these explode, sometimes destroying the casket. The explosions can even be heard above ground, in some cases. Not to mention the soupy toxic mess that the body becomes in these cases. It’s just another way for the funeral industry to make a big buck at the expense of disoriented and grieving people.
I’m glad your mom and her sisters had you there to guide them through this and offer them the voice of reason.
If yu want to read a relatively amusing Shit Story, go visit my blog (http://luluslibretto.blogspot.com). It’s nowhere as good as your toilet anecdotes, but it might make you smile.
My father had suffered a stroke immediatetly prior to my mothers death…and yes we had to keep telling him of her death each time he called for his ‘mary’, which was the only in word he could say in his condition.
We were fortunate that he died shortly thereafter as he could not understand why his wife was not coming to see him in the hospital.
These were the toughest days of my life but I learned so much about living through their deaths.
It does indeed get better but you will not be the same person you were before. Embrace that.
I’m very sorry for your loss- both of them. Two. I can’t imagine.
What I can empathize with you on is what is happening to your grandmother. My boyfriend’s grandmother passed away last month and his great grandmother- her mother- doesn’t even know. She’s 105 and they opted not to tell her that her last child passed away. It’s terribly sad. She asks about her everyday, then forgets asking and assumes she’s in the next room of the home they lived in together.
Who’s to say what’s right or wrong in situations like these. Sometimes we don’t get to choose what we remember or forget. And maybe THAT is harder for those who remember still.