By Andrew Hoffman
Welcome back to my column as we dive into my professional insight on the changing attitude about the value of the deceased, and how to honor them.
Some people would argue that funerals are costly, broken and exploitative. There is an argument to be made here since funerals can be expensive based on what a family wants and what they choose. The median cost of a traditional funeral with burial is between $9,000 and $10,000 depending on what part of the country you live in, and that is not a small amount. Full-service cremations are a little less and cremation memorial services are less than that, but playing devil’s advocate here, how much does a wedding cost? Some people celebrate a union between two people as a major life event and it is nothing to spend $20,000 to $30,000 on it. Weddings and funerals are major life events and I feel they deserve to be celebrated.
So, cost may be a factor as to why people choose not to honor an individual when they pass. Another factor is avoidance. We as a society hate to be reminded that we are mortal. According to Sarah Chavez, one of the founders of the death positive movement and executive director of The Order of the Good Death, at the core of our relationship with dying and death is our obsession with youth. Sarah says, “We’re a youth-centric society. I think a very large part of that is because of our fear of death. The U.S. is the largest antiaging market in the world, spending millions of dollars on anti-wrinkle cream, hair dye and cosmetic procedures. We hide our elderly away in nursing homes and hospitals to prolong their lives out of sight because they remind us of our own mortality.” Sarah may have a point. Whenever my firm has a death of a young person in their teens or twenties, I notice the young friends have a horrible time accepting the fact of the death. It’s like they can’t fathom it. Most young people feel that they will live forever and are indestructible.
Seeing someone who died young makes people uncomfortable. Hence people may avoid doing any type of funeral service because they want to avoid any type of discomfort.
The same could be said of nursing homes. I always hear from people “I hate going to visit grandma in the home, it’s so depressing”. People hate going and want to avoid it because it makes them think that one day, they will probably end up there and at some point, they will die. This is not a fun fact and therefore, we do or not do things to avoid it.
So now we have identified cost and avoidance of mortality as reasons to avoid honoring a loved one, but I think there are a few more. The next would be avoiding religious customs or lack of any. More often than not, funerals and memorial services have religious ceremonies or some religious aspects. If a person doesn’t believe in the afterlife, a traditional funeral might not feel right to them. I have found personally in working at Jeffries and Keates funeral home that if there is a lack of some sort of faith or religious instruction people tend to do the bare minimum just to get things over with. In their mind there is no difference in the death of a person and when a candle gets blown out. This to me as a believer is disheartening, but that seems to be the case for me.
Something that goes hand in hand with lack of some sort of faith or spirituality is a decline of sentimentality. Today’s world is becoming increasingly “me” centered, with individuals focusing on their own wants and needs rather than those around them. As virtual communication replaces face to face interactions, selfishness replaces selflessness and an evolution toward a self-involved attitude becomes normalized, leaving little motivation to consider what others may require.
Regardless of reasoning electing not to have some sort of service for a loved one is a very selfish option. Because a funeral or memorial service is not just for the immediate family but for all of the deceased’s extended family, friends, coworkers, and essentially the whole community where that person lived. But this thought process goes by the wayside too often in the increasingly nihilistic approach to life held by so many of the younger generations.
Andrew B. Hoffman is a funeral director at Jeffries and Keates and Keates-Plum Funeral Homes. He is a twenty-two year veteran of the funeral industry.
