funeral
Last week, I planned my funeral.
Relax–I’m fine. Here’s the thing: in the past few months, since wrapping up edits on six to carry the casket and one to say the mass, I’ve been trying to shift my focus to another project, a book about weddings. When I’m so deeply immersed in something, shifting to something else is difficult for me, and I was facing a bit of–I don’t think I can call it “writer’s block”...more of a “I can’t get into the right space frustration,” like when you really want to change lanes on the highway as you quickly approach your exit but can’t make the move in time. A little bit of panic, a little bit of anger toward the world, a little bit of desperate resignation. I returned to things I’d written before…nothing. I returned to the structure of the project that I’d sketched out a few months ago…nothing. I dove into research…nothing. Well, actually I found a few really interesting resources, but in terms of getting into the right headspace and generating momentum…nothing.
So I tried a practice that I leaned on during grad school, one of the three things I credit for my academic survival: when stuck, stop spinning my wheels. Try something similar, but different. Maybe it seems obvious, but walking away from one topic and pursuing the same questions with another helps me build momentum. So, instead of obsessing over weddings, I started thinking about…funerals! Since the wedding book project is very much inspired by the process of planning my own wedding…I turned my attention to how would I plan my funeral.
My husband cringes when, like a good Irish-Catholic, I make passing references like, “Oh, I want that song at my funeral.” It’s a familiar and familial joke–I can’t tell you how many times I heard my mother say it. Usually, it was just a flash of wit, just a little hyperbole about how much one likes something, but sometimes it was serious, and I often took note of the end-of-life wishes Mom would cast out. It even prompted one of the last conversations I had with her–she’d chosen to end hospice care and was preparing for the end. While watching The Sound of Music with her in the den, she said, “There’s a song I want at my funeral…” I dutifully grabbed my laptop, started a new document, and we planned her funeral together.
I’ve often said that my mother prepared me for her death from the moment I was born. Starting around age 5, she took me to every wake in town, echoing a practice her father did with her. They weren’t long visits–just enough time to acknowledge the death of a person, usually by kneeling or standing at the side of the open casket and uttering a little prayer and joining a receiving line to speak briefly to the bereaved. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” my mom would say so naturally, so genuinely, but also so succinctly. She didn’t list all the things she remembered or enjoyed or would miss about the deceased–she was not one to emote publicly, but in this case it was justifiable restraint. She was often irked by wake-goers who would dump their own emotions on the grieving, in part because of the burden on already heavy hearts but also because it held up the line. I got to continue this little tradition as a campus minister–occasionally, I’d coach students through a wake when a classmate’s parent died. “You don’t have to say or do anything else,” I’d whisper. “Just say something kind, show them you’re here for them, and then keep moving.”
I learned quickly that a wake is a great place to learn about people, and the range of comfort levels in the presence of a corpse fascinated me as a kid. The skitterish would be barely on their knees by the time they whispered the last words of the Lord’s Prayer and quickly made the sign of the cross to let them move on with the line of mourners. Those were the awkward visitors for whom every aspect of a wake flummoxed them–they stumbled when speaking to folx in the receiving line and stood rigidly along the side of the room. On the other hand, the most, well, the most Irish-Catholic would kneel and contemplate the body with a smile. They’d stand next to the casket and chat, sometimes about the deceased (“Wasn’t she wonderful?”), sometimes reviewing the coffin wardrobe (“Can you believe they’re burying him in that?”), sometimes offering a little gallows humor. Mom loved repeating her father’s joke–when asked at a wake, “Well, Larry, how do you think he looks?” he replied, “He looks dead.”
Off to the side and adjacent to my mother, who was chatting with friends or standing solemnly, going with the mood of the room, I’d watch the line of mourners file in and make smalltalk with each other (another reason to keep moving at a wake–if you think smalltalk in general sucks, try getting stuck in a receiving line at a wake with a Chatty Cathy or an Emo Eeyore). I’d notice the spectrum of responses, from the ones who rushed through the motions, the ones who couldn’t even look inside the coffin, to the ones who moved deliberately, who seemed to enjoy one last chance to sit with an old friend. I’d notice the chasm between the folx who blended in and the folx who stood out, the wailers and the ones who were talking the ears off of the widowed partner or orphaned children while they poured more and more grief onto already aching shoulders.
While I’ve gladly picked up many of Mom’s methods for mourning, there is one practice I haven’t emulated. When one of her children gave her a gift, a permanent marker would somehow appear, and she’d have the giver’s name or initials written on the bottom before she finished saying, “Oh, thank you. You didn’t have to do that.” We all understood what it meant, but when others were puzzled about it, she’d say, “I don’t want them fighting over things when I’m gone.” When facing doubts about the veracity of this practice, I’d parade friends around the house and lift objects to reveal the “BILL” or “WDH” she’d written on my gifts, and the various names and initials of other siblings underneath vases and ashtrays and teapots and statuettes and tchotchkes and…
I’ve always been grateful for all of this preparation. It made me comfortable with grief and ambiguity. It gave me language that served me and people in pain. I’ve never lamented the limitations of this life–death is a part of life and these practices are part of the social fabric that comforts and nourishes us in hard times. My mom’s training helped me see that the things we do when people die aren’t really about the person who died. Instead, they constitute a kind of reorganization of the family and community. They make space to channel the anger and rage and pain that come with grief, and they provide time for people to connect, reflect, and discern how to move forward. When people say they don’t want a funeral after they die, I echo Mom’s disdain. “It’s not for you,” she’d stress, “It’s for the rest of us.”
Mom’s training also prepared me for grad school. It gave me a poignant and personal perspective that helped me approach rituals both analytically and empathetically. It got me thinking about the ways we use ritual to attend to personal, communal, and societal needs and how these structures can provide comfort and inspiration. It also got me thinking about how we use these structures to manipulate individuals, communities, and whole societies.
As her own death approached, Mom’s training came to an end, and I was finally standing next to the coffin (well, among 10 siblings, I was technically two spots away from the coffin). I welcomed hugs and tears from old friends and classmates. I welcomed brief moments with her friends, some of them legends in family lore, others newcomers who’d only known her for a few years. I smiled politely when fundraisers from various organizations gushed to celebrate her generosity, though I couldn’t help but resent the whisper of “We’re in the will, right?” between the lines. I did my best to wrap up conversations with lingerers and did a fair amount of comforting for a handful of folx who just crumbled as they passed her casket, including a few of whom I had to ask, “I’m sorry, how did you know her?” (the slightly more polite version of “What the fuck?!”). All that preparation didn’t shield me from pain, but it did give me a container to hold it, to work through it. It gave me enough structure to sustain the things that had to get done, but it also gave me flexibility to find a quiet place to just sit, to just remember, to just be. It was in those quiet places that I could tap into the joy that would keep me smiling and laughing through the tears. But most importantly, it took the pressure off. Instead of panicking about the big questions and personal discomfort, I could be fully present and able to connect with family and friends.
While we were prepping Thanksgiving dinner, my husband heard my sister say, “I want that at my funeral.” He quickly asserted, with a fair amount of exasperation, “Catholics are far too comfortable talking about death.” My sister, the handful of niblings who were there, and I all laughed knowingly, almost conspiratorially. We recognized it as a familiar familial trait, and we all knew that, in time, he’d catch on.
Planning one’s own funeral might feel morbid, but it strikes me as a beautiful way to reflect on one’s life and clarify what’s important to us. It’s also a way to be thoughtful about shaping one last moment to connect with people who love us (or tolerate us enough to show up). It also avoids, or at least mitigates, the projections of mourners, those justifications like “She would have loved this” when, in fact, she really wouldn’t. For most of my life, I assumed I’d have a Catholic funeral, so funeral planning would’ve been more like theological Mad Libs–pick the songs and readings to plug into the liturgy and leave the rest to the priest. Since I feel very excluded from Catholic practice, that’s not a priority for me anymore, so, to design a ritual that reflects my experiences, identities, and values, that gives people who love me a glimpse of my ideal world, that makes space for people to grieve and reorganize, where do I start?
For my wedding ceremony design work, my elevator pitch starts by acknowledging that, for people who don’t have a cultural or religious tradition to draw on (either because they grew up without one, because they’re excluded from those practices, because they want to blend traditions, or because they want to do something original or distinct), the American wedding industry doesn’t offer many options that aren’t rooted in 19th century Protestant liturgy and European royal court customs. Sure, they can do a courthouse wedding or ask friends or family to officiate (usually with a downloaded generic script or an earnestly but scrabbled together ceremony), but I offer a process that aims to design a ceremony that provides a moment that is meaningful to them and the people surrounding them, that reflects their experiences, identities, and values, and that makes preparation for the ceremony a little more meaningful.
The same is true for funerals–outisde religious and cultural traditions, funeral professionals rely on familiar practices, but one doesn’t see a whole lot of innovation. As a result, from the corner funeral home to Hollywood depictions, most American funerals that aren’t rooted in a religious or cultural tradition still mimic traditional Christian liturgies and burial practices, rooted in beliefs and worldviews that may or may not resonate with the mourning community. As I do with designing weddings, it’s worth revisiting these practices to identify the elements that function well and align with the values of the people at the center. The goal isn’t to create something perfect–it’s to create something authentic, something that authentically reflects the people at the center and authentically makes space for people to acknowledge and move forward from that loss.
The purpose of a funeral is pretty clear–it marks the death of a person. The variety of practices–the hard part, the creative part–comes with the next question: how? How do we mark the death of this person, in this place, at this time, and with these people? I started collating all the ideas and fancies that I’d named over the years, the music, texts, and practices that accompanied “I want this at my funeral,” but that just resulted in a mess of content. Were I planning a variety show or concert, I’d let a performance arc emerge, but I want my funeral to be an engaging experience, not a passive performance. So I returned to the functions of ritual itself. Over time, I developed a definition of ritual that’s informed by my experiences observing, researching, dialoguing about, teaching about, designing, and leading rituals, and I use it both for guidance in constructing and analyzing them and as a touchstone to keep it effective and safe from veering into pure performance.
A ritual is an intentional event that effects changes in relationships, communicates values, creates culture, shapes people’s perceptions, informs how they navigate life, and changes the world.
A series of questions is embedded in this definition, questions I use to interpret or analyze a ritual experience and as prompts to build a ceremony.
Intentional event: What is the intent? What’s the purpose of the ritual? What brings these people together?
Effect changes in relationships: What changes are being effected? Whose relationships? Who is participating, and what histories do they bring?
Communicate values: What values are being communicated? What is important to the people at the center?
Create culture: What culture is being created? How are people witnessing, participating, or interacting? Is culture being nurtured? renewed? adapted? blended? eroded?
Shape perceptions: How is the experience framed? How are the senses engaged? What is being recognized? affirmed? challenged?
Inform how to navigate life: What information, ideas, or resources are introduced? What guidance is being offered?
Change the world: If the ceremony is a glimpse into the ideal world for the people at the center, what kind of world is in microcosm here? What are participants taking away from it?
When it comes to weddings, couples prioritize these components differently. My job isn’t to impose my worldview on them–it’s to help them identify what’s most important to them and to create a moment that gives people who love them a glimpse of their ideal world. For any kind of ritual, it’s the same, especially for funerals. And since this is about planning my funeral, I explored these questions to capture the kind of world I want to create for the folx I leave behind, and from there I started to develop a structure, both in terms of the flow of practices and in the physical and aesthetic context. I want to emphasize the flow from past to present to future. I want people to have an experience of community. I want to give form to the shift from my presence to my absence. I want to make space for people to meet their needs. I want to honor and welcome the diversity of identities that compose me and that each person brings, to create a space that is safe and generative. I want the focus to be on the world we’re building together and not on the past that delivered us. I want to offer language and music and practices that help me create meaning in my life.
So here’s what emerged.
While we were making dinner the other night, I said to my husband, “You’re not going to like my next newsletter.” When I started to explain, “So last week, I planned my funeral,” I could hear the eyes rolling in his head. My goal here isn’t to depress or to dwell on mortality. Instead, sharing this comes out of two particular experiences. First, when I meet people and share my profession, I get one of two responses–either, as if I’d mispronounced my own title, “A virtual designer?” or, “Umm, what does a ‘ritual designer’ do exactly?” I hope this provides a little glimpse into my process and a chance to think about how we experience, use, and are impacted by rituals.
Second, for people who don’t have a tradition to draw on and don’t want to go through the motions of someone else’s customs, there aren’t many readily available resources. A few months ago, a friend reached out in a panic after his brother died because the chaplain who would lead the funeral provided a ceremony that really didn’t reflect anything about his brother. It’s hard to think clearly with the shock of grief, and my friend didn’t know where to start. I asked a few questions to get a better sense of his brother and the community that surrounded him and created a short service. He and other family members made a few tweaks, and they provided the script to the chaplain. My guess is that most people who find themselves in similar circumstances don’t have someone like me on call (see reason number one, above), so they defer to what’s available. I hope this plants a few seeds–if you don’t know where to start when swimming through grief, here’s a starting point.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, what are the other two things that got me through grad school? Well, there’s the “first and last rule.” I’m a slow reader, so facing the volume of books on my syllabus, I applied a trick I learned from another student. Almost all of the books in the field are published with the same structure, so you really only have to read the first and last chapters in full and the first and last paragraphs of the chapters in between to get what you need. But the most important thing that got me through: The Golden Girls.
