Chapter 8 Flashcards
What are the important social functions of funerals?
1) Serves to acknowledge and commemorate a person’s death
2) Provides a setting for the disposition of the body
3) Assists in reorienting the bereaved to their lives
4) Shows the link between the bereaved and their social world
Overall, attending a funeral, as we’ve talked about in prior lectures, helps to provide (for some) a sense of closure, and provides a link for family, friends and other loved ones between the dying phase, to mourning the death and engaging in the bereavement process.
First funeral task: the death announcement
Definition: Notifying relatives, friends, and colleagues a death has occurred.
Usually, news of death gets conveyed from immediate family to the wider community.
Untimely announcements are usually upsetting. To not be informed of death in a timely manner is considered insensitive and demonstrates a lack of respect.
Other funeral tasks after the death announcement
Find out what the deceased wanted regarding a funeral or memorial service, and their desire for burial, cremation, or green disposition
If need professional help, contact a clergy member, leader of one’s spiritual community, funeral home, mortuary (where bodies are prepared for viewing), or memorial society
Understanding a difference between a funeral home and a mortuary
Write an obituary
Arrange for out of towners if there will be a funeral or memorial service
Plan the service (pallbearers, eulogies, clergy or officiators)
Memorial tasks, like photos, memory book or board, website, slide show, if appropriate to one’s culture or religion
Differences between funeral homes and mortuary
A mortuary is focused on the mortuary sciences of caring for and preparing the body for burial orcremation. The mortuary may or may not involve a funeral director (although in some jurisdictions, a funeral director is required to be involved). A mortuary typically offers on-site cremation. On the other hand, funeral homes have larger areas where services can be held and public viewings also take place. Sometimes the funeral home has a mortuary attached, but not always. A mortuary, however, usually does not have these facilities and viewings are closed and are attended only by the family members.
Conventional funeral costs
1) Services provided by funeral home - Use of mortuary facilities and equipment, casket
2) Disposition of the body
Purchase of a graveside of mausoleum, cost of cremation, internment, entombment or scattering, and urn
3) Costs related to memorialization
Monument or marker for the grave, inscription for the marker in the columbarium
4) Miscellaneous expenses
Honorarium for clergy, death notices
Funeral costs in Toronto
Depending on what is desired, anywhere from $1400 to over $12,000
Simple cremation: $1600
Cremation with funeral service: around $2800
Typical gasketed casket: starts around $1200
Basic funeral package (transfers, death certificate, staff costs, embalming, casket, service): starts around $4500-5000
Typical funeral home services
Transferring body to funeral home
Embalming
Preparing the body
Crematory services
Flowers
Providing staff and facilities for viewing and funeral ceremony
Use of hearse, service cars, or limousines
Provide caskets, burial vault, and memorial cards
US Funeral Regulations
In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission implemented the Funeral Rule.
KEY POINT
Stipulates that funeral service providers must give detailed information about prices and legal requirements to people who are arranging funerals
Disclosure of itemized prices is required both over the telephone and in writing
PLEASE NOTE
Certain acts are prohibited, like charging a fee for embalming without prior permission, requiring clients to purchase caskets for direct cremation, or making the purchase of any good/service conditional on the purchase of any other funeral good/service.
Canadian Funeral Regulations
Funeral, Burial and Cremation Services Act, 2002:
There are specific statutes that apply to consumer protection, especially around pricing, such as not charging for embalming without prior permission.
The law also discusses a number of other important issues, such as the need for a license to operate a funeral home, cemetery, or crematorium, or the discovering of burial sites.
PLEASE NOTE
It is illegal to build on Indigenous, First Nations, or Aboriginal burial sites. These laws have often not been followed, and development has been permitted.
Ontario Funerals
The death has to be registered, and then a burial permit has to be obtained.
Usually it is the deceased’s next of kin who is responsible for arranging what happens with the body.
Family members are permitted to make funeral arrangements as long as they are not being paid to do so.
If a family cannot afford it, there are resources available from the local municipality to cover costs for the funeral, cremation or burial.
Ontario laws do not require an outside container for caskets, but some cemeteries have by-laws which require their use.
Ontario does not require embalming, but it may be required for airline travel, for example.
What is a wake?
Also known as visitation or viewing. Traditionally held on the night after death occurs
Because it is a social event—perhaps not in the typical sense—it is nonetheless an opportunity to have healing interactions in the aftermath of the loss. Interestingly, the wake used to be a safeguard against premature burial. So the wake was also developed as another strategy to make sure that the person proclaimed dead was actually not alive. While this is no longer needed for the purpose, the wake or visitation is often a part of funeral rituals
KEY POINTS
Opportunity to pay respects and say goodbye
Opportunity to have healing social interactions in the aftermath of loss
Historically, was a safeguard against premature burial
Embalming
Replacement of usual bodily fluids with preserving chemicals (e.g., formalin-which is comprised of formaldehyde, is a typical preserving chemical. In order for there to be a viewingor visitation, the body would have to be preserved or it will decay) with an embalming machine
Viewings are done in about 60% of earth burials
If a viewing will be held, embalming is typically conducted
Embalming not needed when the burial happens quickly
If the deceased is cremated and no viewing is held, embalming would not be necessary
Embalming is the typical way that the body is preserved, although other ways to preserve the body exist. For example, some funeral homes or mortuaries have a cooling room, where the body is kept in very low temperatures.
Caskets
Caskets end up being one of the biggest expenses of a funeral
Lots of container choices: Cardboard, wood, copper, bronze
PLEASE NOTE
Gasketed steel casket (airtight) is the most common option in North America
Becoming popular to pre-purchase them online, also big box stores sell them
Procession
The ceremony where the body is taken from the site of the funeral to the place of burial
Considered in many cultures to be an honour to carry the body to the final resting place
Entombment
The casket is placed into a building designed for this purpose
Sometimes families will purchase the right to internment in a cemetery, and on that space, build a mausoleum
Mausoleums must conform to the regulations of the cemetery and the government to provide lasting disposition
Occurs in less than 5 percent of deaths.
The building of mausoleums is highly regulated by the government, and must conform to both provincial law and regulations of the cemetery so that they provide lasting disposition. This is a choice that is not that common, and only in about 5% of deaths are bodies entombed.
