The American Way of Death Revisited

by Jessica Mitford

  When in 1995 Massachusetts passed a law permitting rentals, there was an outcry from the trade that the practice might spread disease, “especially where body fluids are spilled in casket containers.” Not to worry, said health officials, because rentals can be fitted with new cloth and cardboard liners each time they are used. Some Massachusetts funeral directors quickly got the picture. With such an extravagant return on inventory kept in perpetual use, they are now urging survivors to consider rental units in preference to low-cost cremation containers.

  Not only is cremation discouraged, even hampered, by the funeral industry, but once all impediments have been overcome, the ghouls who had formerly pursued the corpse now lust for the ashes. The natural impulse of survivors to scatter ashes or bury them in a garden or other favored spot has for years been frustrated in California, if not elsewhere, by laws that prohibit the disposition of cremated remains on private or public property. The widespread impact of this cruel restriction is illustrated in a recent (1997) instance where 5,200 boxes of cremated remains, entrusted to a pilot hired to scatter them at sea, were discovered in a storage locker and an airplane hangar.

  If you can’t sell an urn, why not turn the ashes over to a flying service for sea scattering? Seems fair. But is it? Here again, the byword is follow the money. The dozens of mortuaries that collected $100 to $200 from the survivors for the service paid the poor wretch who was to do the scattering an average of $30 to $60. None of them took the trouble to ascertain whether their instructions were actually carried out. Using median numbers, it will be seen that the mortuaries realized, among them, a profit of $526,000 from this seemingly insignificant sideline. At the same time, preliminary investigation has revealed that the majority of the victims who paid to have their relatives’ ashes scattered were never informed that they had the right to take the ashes home with them. Had they known of this option they would not, of course, have paid to have them scattered.

  Throughout the industry, cremation today remains the poor, ugly stepchild among the modes of final disposition. Existing state laws, regrettably, serve only to help the industry play havoc with the consumer’s desire for a simple, cheap funeral. Funeral people are forever declaiming that cremation is legally more challengeable than burial. They argue that the reason they so often feel obliged to overrule a decedent’s expressed wish for a cheap exit is their desire to avoid being sued by family members who would find such disposition “emotionally damaging.” Research, however, has turned up only one case in which such an action was filed, and it was thrown out by the judge on the grounds that the primary right of disposition lies with the decedent if expressed in writing during his lifetime.

  After Words

  A recent report from CANA issued in December 1996 has spurred cremationists to seek ever more Creative Concepts for the extraction of maximum profitability. According to CANA’s projections, 26 percent of Americans who die in the year 2000 will be cremated, and of those who die in 2010, 39.9 percent—three times the number of those who were cremated in 1985—will make their exit in like manner. But not necessarily in the same way. The funeral folk are already looking ahead and have other plans for them.

  One such was revealed during a “Keys to Cremation Success” symposium sponsored by the Funeral Service Insider in the spring of 1997. The scholars were urged to require “identification viewing” prior to cremation, “to avoid any mix-ups.” The title of one presentation, “How to Add $1,400 or More to Each Cremation Call,” reveals the larger motive for this tactic. “Seeing Mom in a cardboard box sometimes prompts a family member to ask if we don’t have something a little nicer,” said the presenter. The ruthlessness of subjecting family members to a forced viewing is something to wonder at until one recalls that it is one of the “keys to cremation success.” In one case, where the mother’s body had been embalmed before they chose cremation, family members became so distraught from the unwanted experience of an “identification viewing” that they have turned to the Funeral and Memorial Societies of America (FAMSA) to seek an opinion from the FTC on whether consumers can decline this procedure. There is no doubt that they may refuse to pay the fee that some mortuaries are charging.

  Another key to cremation success? “When families don’t buy an urn, require them to purchase a temporary container to hold the cremains. But make sure you label (or stamp) that box with the words ‘temporary container’ on all four sides. If you usually give cremains to the family in a box from the crematory, stamp that box with the temporary container label. That makes families most likely to upgrade beyond the temporary container,” suggests the Funeral Service Insider.

  * In a remarkable coup for the funeral industry, their lobbyists in California won legislation that prohibits survivors from scattering cremated remains on private or public property—forcing them to go through the cemetery or the funeral director to arrange for the disposition of cremated remains. What few undertakers are likely to acknowledge, however, is that it is perfectly legal for a family to simply take the cremains home with them. After speaking with every law enforcement agency in the state from the FBI to county sheriffs, I learned that no officer is vested with the authority to check up on what happens to Aunt Martha’s ashes, nor are they willing to collar culprits caught in the act of “illegal” scattering. Although this law is totally unenforceable, the industry uses it to pressure the family to hand over the cremated remains for more profitable commercial disposition.

  * And more recently still, an executive officer of Service Corporation International (see chapter 16).

  * See footnote, this page.

  11

  What the Public Wants

  The funeral service profession exists only because it has received the approval of the public…. Present methods, facilities and merchandise exist because the public has found in them values it has been willing to pay for in spite of the necessary sacrifice of other things.…

  Are these values real? Do they spring from higher and finer motives? Do they lift and inspire? Are they worth what they cost? The answer is found in the reactions of the public. If the public accepts these things, prefers these things, the answer is in the affirmative.

  —EDWARD A. MARTIN, B.A., MORTICIAN,

  Psychology of Funeral Service

  The theme that the American public, rather than the funeral industry, is responsible for our funeral practices—because it demands “the best” in embalming and merchandise for the dead—is one often expounded by funeral men. “We are merely giving the public what it wants,” they say.

  This is an interesting idea. It is a little hard to conceive of how this public demand is expressed and made known in practice to the seller of funeral service. Does the surviving spouse, for example, go into the funeral establishment and say, “I want to be sure my wife is thoroughly disinfected and preserved. Her casket must be both comfortable and eternally durable. And—oh yes, do be sure her burial footwear is really practical”?

  Perhaps it does not often happen just like that. Yet it has been known to happen, and in fairness to the undertaking trade, an example should be given of a case in which the funeral buyer, of sound mind and deeply aware of his own desires, wanted and demanded the best.

  The case involves Mr. August Chelini, a fifty-seven-year-old mechanic, sometime scrap dealer and garage owner. His monthly earnings averaged $300 to $400. Mr. Chelini, an only child, lived with his aged mother, who died in 1943 at the age of ninety-nine years and seven months. It then became incumbent upon Mr. Chelini to arrange for the funeral, which he did by calling in Mr. Silvio Nieri, an undertaker and family friend.

  What developed is best recounted by quoting from the transcript of the case of August Chelini, plaintiff, versus Silvio Nieri, defendant, in the Superior Court of San Mateo County, California.

  Mr. August Chelini comes to life for us in the pages of a court reporter’s typescript. We learn his hopes and fears, something of his history, something of his philosophy, his way of life, his motives
and methods. He was in some respects an undertaker’s dream person, a materialization of that man of sentiment and true feeling for the dead so often encountered in funeral trade magazines. Only the fact that he was suing an undertaker for $50,000 casts a slight shadow.

  The case opens with the arrival of Mr. Nieri at the Chelini home. Mr. Melvin Belli, counsel for the plaintiff, is examining:

  Q. [Mr. Belli] When he came to the house, did you have a conversation with him?

  A. [Mr. Chelini] Well, he come in and he asked me if he should move the body, and I told him I wanted to talk things over with him first.

  Q. Did you have a conversation there?

  A. So I talked to him out in the kitchen, and explained to him what I wanted, and the conversation was that I told him what my mother requested.

  Q. What did you tell him in this regard?

  A. Well, I told him that my mother wanted to be buried where there was no ants or any bugs could get at her.

  Q. Had your mother made that request?

  A. She made that request.

  Q. By the way, was your mother of sound mentality at the time?

  A. Oh, yes, very sound. Pretty bright.

  Q. Did you tell him anything else?

  A. Well, I told him that she had $1,500 of her own money, and that I intended to put all that into her funeral, and she had other moneys coming, and I wanted a hermetically sealed casket, because—

  Q. You told him that, that you wanted—

  A. I told him I wanted the best kind of embalming, and I wanted her put in a hermetically sealed casket.

  Q. Did you know what a hermetically sealed casket was at that time?

  A. Well, I know that it was a casket that no air or no water could get into.

  Q. All right, did you tell him anything else?

  A. I told him that is what I wanted. I didn’t care what the cost was going to be, but I did have the $1,500 on hand that belonged to her, and these other moneys were coming in that I could put into it later.

  Q. All right. Did you tell him anything else at that time?

  A. Also told him that I was anticipating making a lead box to eventually put her in, after the war was over; that lead couldn’t be had at that time, and I am a mechanic. I intended to construct a lead box.

  Q. You were going to do it yourself?

  A. Yes, I have a sample of the box, the design of it, and I told him that I was going to figure to put her in a crypt until the war was over, and so that I could get the necessary things and put her away in accordance with her wishes.

  Q. By the way, you lived with your mother all her life?

  A. There was times she lived out in South City, but we were with her pretty near every day.

  Q. So, after you told him that you were going to make this lead coffin, after the war, did you have any further conversation with him?

  A. Well, we talked about the embalming, how long he could preserve it, he says, “Practically forever,” he says. “We got a new method of embalming that we will put on her, and she will keep almost forever.”

  Q. Pardon me. Go ahead.

  A. I says, “That is a pretty long period, isn’t it?” Well, he says, “They embalmed Caruso, and they embalmed Lincoln, that way, and they have these big candles near Caruso, and we have a new method of embalming. We have a new method of embalming. We can do a first-class job, and she will keep almost forever.”…

  Q. Then, the next day, did you have another conversation with him?

  A. Then the next day he told me that I would have to come down to his establishment, and pick out a casket.…

  Q. And you went down there?

  A. My wife and I went down there.

  Q. And when you got down there, did you have a further conversation with him?

  A. Well, yes, he took me down in the basement there where he had all these caskets, and he told me to look them all over, and we picked out what we thought was the best casket in the house.… First I looked around, and my wife looked around. We both decided on the same casket. So, I asked him if that was a hermetically sealed job, he says, “Oh, yes, that is the finest thing there is, that is a bronze casket.” He told me this was a casket, it was a bronze casket, and was a hermetically sealed casket, and he said that that is the finest thing that is made, and he says, “This is pre-war stuff,” and he says, “As a matter of fact, this is—I am going to keep one of these myself, in case anything happens to me, I am going to be buried in one of these myself.” … He quoted me a price, then he says, “Well, that will be $875, that will include everything, everything in connection with the whole funeral,” he says, “That will be completely everything in connection with the whole funeral, $875.”*

  Q. Yes.

  A. So, from what he told me, this casket was the best—it seemed very reasonable, so I told him that we would select that.

  (Later that day, Chelini’s mother was brought back to his house.)

  Q. Was there any conversation in the house?

  A. Well, by the time I got there, she was up there, the wife and I decided to put her in the dining room, originally, and when I got up there, he had her in the living room.

  Q. Did you have some conversation with him at that time?

  A. So, he said, “Well, I think it will be better to have her here, because there is a window here, she’ll get lots of air.” He said he would have to put this body here in the front room on account of the window was here.

  Q. Yes.

  A. And he said it would be better to have a breeze, a flow of fresh air come in there.

  Q. All right, did you have a conversation about the funeral with him to hurry over this?

  A. Let’s see. I don’t think there was very much spoken about the funeral right then. I was feeling pretty bad. He spoke of this new embalming. He picked up her cheeks and skin on her and showed me how nice it was, pliable, it was—

  Q. Did he tell you that that was a new method of embalming?

  A. Yes, and her cheek was very pliable, her skin was especially.

  Q. Is that what he said?

  A. Well, that is the way he said that is the way it felt, and he told me that is a new type of embalming that they have, pliable.…

  Q. All right, then you had a discussion with him at that time about paying him the money?

  A. I asked him how much it was. He says, “it was $875.” So I says, “Well, I want mother’s ring put back on her finger,” I says, “when she is removed from the crypt to her final resting place. I want that ring put back on her finger,” and I says, “I want some little slippers put on her that I can’t get at this time,” I says, “I want her all straightened up, and cleaned off nice,” and I says, “I will add another $25 for that service, for doing that,” so he says, “All right,” he says, “if that is the way you want it, we will do it, I would have done it for nothing,” so I gave him that extra check for $25.… Oh, I also reminded him to be sure that when they put her finally into the cemetery, to see that she was properly secured, and he says, “Don’t worry about it,” he says, “I will see that everything is done properly.” So, he took the check, and I asked him if he would go out and have a little drink with me, which he consented to, and which we did, in the kitchen.

  (Probably, a little drink was seldom needed more than at that moment and by these principals. The scene now shifts to Cypress Lawn Cemetery.)

  Q. Did you go out there when your mother was taken out there?

  A. Yes, I went out to the funeral, and she had the services there. Why, she left here on one of those little roller affairs, and we all walked out. Mr. Nieri—I came out to the car and asked him if he would go in there and see that she was properly adjusted from any shifting, or anything, and make sure that she was well sealed in, so he went in there, and he come out, and I asked him, I says, “Did you get her all sealed in nice? Did you straighten her all up nice?” He says, “Don’t be worrying about that, Gus,” he says, “I will take care of everything.”

  Mr. Chelini was, i
t appears, the exceptional—nay, perfect—funeral customer. Not only did he gladly and freely choose the most expensive funeral available in the Nieri establishment; he also contracted for a $1,100 crypt in the Cypress Lawn mausoleum. He appreciated and endorsed every aspect of the funeral industry’s concept of the sort of care that should be accorded the dead. An ardent admirer of the embalmer’s art, he insisted on the finest receptacle in which to display it; indeed, he thought $875 a very reasonable price and repeatedly intimated his willingness to go higher.

  At first glance, it seems like a frightful stroke of bad luck that Mr. Chelini, of all people, should be in court charging negligence and fraud against his erstwhile friend the undertaker, asserting that “the remains of the said Caroline Chelini were permitted to and did develop into a rotted, decomposed and insect and worm infested mess.” Yet the inner logic of the situation is perhaps such that only a person of Mr. Chelini’s persuasion in these matters would ever find himself in a position to make such a charge; for who else would be interested in ascertaining the condition of a human body after its interment?

  It was not until two months after the funeral that Mr. Chelini was first assailed by doubts as to whether all was well within the bronze casket.

  Mr. Chelini was in the habit of making frequent trips to his mother’s crypt—he was out at the cemetery as many as three, four, or even five times a week. Sometimes he went to pay what he referred to as his vaultage; more often, merely to visit his mother. On one of these visits, he noticed a lot of ants “kind of walking around the crypt.” He complained to the cemetery attendants, who promised to use some insect spray; he complained to Mr. Nieri, who assured him there was nothing to worry about.