Kate Sweeney - American Afterlife: Encounters in the Customs of Mourning

AMERICAN AFTERLIFE

ENCOUNTERS IN THE CUSTOMS OF MOURNING

KATE SWEENEY

Published by the University of Georgia Press
Athens, Georgia 30602
www.ugapress.org
2014 by Kate Sweeney
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sweeney, Kate, 1978
American afterlife : encounters in the customs of mourning/
Kate Sweeney.
pages cm
Include bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8203-4600-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8203-4600-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Funeral rites and ceremoniesUnites States.
2. Mourning customsUnited States.
3. Undertakers and undertakingUnited States.
4. United StatesSocial life and customs. I. Title.
GT3203.s94 2014
393dc23
2013016629

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
ISBN for digital deition: 978-0-8203-4689-2

FOR
Dennis AND
Martha Sweeney,
FOR ENCOURAGEMENT
PAR EXCELLENCE

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak
Whispers the oerfraught heart, and bids it break.

SHAKESPEARE,
Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 3

CHAPTER 1
American Ways of Death

CHAPTER 2
Gone, but Not Forgotten

DISMAL TRADE
Sarah Peacock, Memorial Tattoo Artist
Under the Skin

CHAPTER 3
The Cemeterys Cemetery

DISMAL TRADE
Kay Powell, Obituary Writer
The Doyenne Speaks

CHAPTER 4
The Last Great Obit Writers Conference

CHAPTER 5
Give Me That Old-Time Green Burial

DISMAL TRADE
Oana Hogrefe, Memorial Photographer
Memory Maker

CHAPTER 6
The House Where Death Lives

DISMAL TRADE
Lenette Hall, Owner, The Urngarden
The Business at the Back of the Closet

CHAPTER 7
With the Fishes

DISMAL TRADE
Anne Gordon, Funeral Chaplain
Funerals Are Fun

CHAPTER 8
Death by the Roadside

I wrote early drafts of this book over three years while living in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia. Most of the scenessuch as visits to Charleston, South Carolina, to take part in the Eternal Reefs memorial weekend and to Springfield, Illinois, to visit the Museum of Funeral Customstook place between 2007 and 2008. I have since contacted everyone I could whose stories appear here in order to see if anything critical has changed that would alter these narratives. In one casethe story of the obituarya great deal has changed. As it turns out, the newspapers sharp decline in recent years adds new poignancy and perspective to the events surrounding the last Great Obituarist Conference. While most of the scenes in these pages took place in 2007 and 2008, I have also updated all information regarding trends, facts, and figures. What you hold in your hands is a contemporary tale.

Secondly, these are stories of ordinary people who find themselves involved in death and memorialization. For many, these decisions are inextricably linked to religious faith. Religion influences, to varying degrees, how people treat the dying just before and after death, when and whether they bury or cremate or both, and what these rites mean to people in the larger cosmological sense. While this work acknowledges religious beliefs, except in certain key historic moments in which they were inextricably tied to death customs, it focuses instead on personal choice as influenced by forces other than the spiritual.

Finally, it is a great responsibility to write nonfiction about people and facts outside ones personal life experiences. Its one I have taken quite seriously. I am keenly aware that Im no historian, but rather a writer of popular nonfiction. However, I worked hard to make sure that the facts portrayed here, including historic elements, are accurate. In the years I worked on this project, I learned a little about a great many subject areasmaking me marvelous at dinner parties but hardly a comprehensive master of any one of these topics. Similarly, I logged many hours of interviews and follow-up conversations with the individuals whose voices appear here. While I work in service of the story and not the whim of its subjects, I sincerely hope that the resulting work resonates as accurate in fact and in tenor. I think every good writer wishes that.

AMERICAN AFTERLIFE

REVEALED:

Deaths brave new life

Jon Austin had been working as founding curator at the Museum of Funeral Customs for about a year when he had a curious visitor. His office door is always open to the lobby, so he could observe her as she neared the exit. Thanks for visiting! he called.

She was an elderly woman, probably in her late seventies or early eighties, and she nodded in his direction as she passed the antique carriage hearse on her way out. But then she stopped and stood completely still for a moment before turning around and returning to his office doorway.

You didnt tell all of the story, she said.

When recounting this, Jon Austin re-creates his own confused expression: He wanted to be polite, but at the same time, he had worked hard for months to get the museums collection of American death memorabilia just right, and so, theres kind of this bravado in me, he says. He asked her, What exactly have we failed to include?

Graveyard quilt, Nina Mitchell Collection, 1959.13, 1843.

COURTESY OF THE KENTUCKY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

She paused and then said, You havent explained what they do with the rest of the body.

And Jon Austin thought Rest ? But what he said was, Im sorry. But I cant understand your question. Can you help me? Give me more information?

She repeated it. You havent explained what they do with the rest of the body.

After one more confused exchange, she told him what she meant. When she was a child, a grown-up had told her that what you see in the casket is all thats present. Thats why they only open the upper end of the casket. Because thats all thats there. And now, this octogenarian asked, What do they do with the rest of the body?

Jon Austins chief joy in life sprang from putting together picture-perfect exhibits like those here: the 1930s embalming room display with its gleaming metal table, the early twentieth-century home-funeral display with its chrome-plated art deco casket jacks and dark velvet curtains. These opportunities to delve into and re-create history had driven him to pursue a career as a museum director and curator. He had not anticipated ever being faced with counseling a stranger about her personal experiences with funerals and death.

He stumbled and stammered out an explanation, offering to put her in contact with a number of funeral directors, friends of his who would support his assertion that human bodies are not cut in half before being buried.