HW 54 - Independent Research B

When I was about four or five years old, my parents enrolled me in the NYSEC’s (New York Society for Ethical Culture) Sunday school program. The program focused on the question, “what is the right thing to do?”. Throughout the 8 or so years I spent in the program, I had a multitude of teachers/mentors. In the program when someone turns 13, they end the youth program and join the teen leadership program. The current teacher for both of these classes is a woman named Rita. Rita was my Sunday school teacher for  2 or 3 years, and I’ve been in the teen program since 2008ish. I chose to interview Rita because I’ve learned a lot from her, and she is definitely a person I’d look to for guidance.  We didn’t talk about a text, but during a recent meeting, we read the book, “How Full is your Bucket?”. There are two versions of the book- an adult book, and a children’s picture book. We opted for the picture book.

The book follows a little boy who is mean to his little sister, so his grandpa tells him that everyone has a little bucket over their heads that empties a little every time they feel let down. The next day at school, bad things keep happening to him and his bucket is nearly empty. During recess he visualizes everyone with their bucket, getting fuller because they're playing and having fun. Throughout the afternoon, his bucket gets fuller, because people do nice things for him because he's feeling glum. When he gets home, he decides to play with his little sister, because he is so happy, and so her bucket can be full. I think that the morals around this story are interesting. The concept being taught to children is similar to the concept of karma (what goes around comes around, good or bad).


On the phone with Rita, we talked a lot about her personal feelings surrounding the dead. Most of what we talked about was on spirituality. She focused on a recent death of her friend Chris. He was married to her friend and they had a girl. Chris died due to cancer a few months ago, leaving his wife and five year old daughter behind. She said that recent events led her to believe that spirits do live on and effect the lives of people who they touched while alive.


The first strange event was when some adults were asking the five year old daughter if she understood what happened to her daddy. She said that he was at peace and was with Caroline now. This was strange because no one in the family ever talked about Caroline, who was Chris' mother. The next thing was that he lost his wedding ring a few months before his death, and once he did pass away, his wife was "really sad and depressed. She said 'Chris, I just need you to give me some sign that you are taking care of things- that i'm not alone'. She was angry that her dead husband left her with a mess". Right then, her nephew came out of her parent's bedroom and said that he had found the ring. The peculiar part though was that it was stuck between two mattresses- a strange place for the nephew to find it.

The last thing, that has really made Rita think more about spirits carrying on in the world, was a phone call. Chris' wife was sitting in her car, crying, when her phone started to ring. The caller ID was Chris. She picked up, somewhat angry, and asked why this person was calling her. The man on the other end said that she had in fact called him- which was not true. They had a little bit of a conversation and she explained to him what had happened, and he actually ended up living in their old neighborhood. This might not have had and extreme message or effect on Chris' wife, but it's just a really strange thing to happen. "He left in such an unfinished way, so young, his spirit...who knows...I'm open to the idea of spirits living on".  

HW 53 - Independent Research A

In Her Childhood Dream, a Funeral Home Was the Destination - Tim Stelloh 
Lisa S. Dozier saw her great uncle's dead body when she was seven. This event set the path for the rest of her life because she wanted to make dead people look as peaceful as he did. She now runs her own funeral home, which is unique because she works in a male dominant industry. Women are quickly beginning to merge themselves into the funeral industry. Her parents never took her want to work with the dead seriously until she graduated college and began working as an apprentice. Though working in the industry brings questions from many people, her work is important because a woman knows specific things that a man might not. In order for her to graduate from school, she needed an apprenticeship which is hard for women to find in the industry. She found one while on a bus, and now drives hearses sometimes, which catches people's eyes. 

Daily Life in the Business of Death - Stella Kramer
Scott Palmer grew up with his family's funeral home business. Palmer decided not to join the family business when he got older, but he did a photo project titled "Raised by the Dead". He did the project because people are uncomfortable with the subject of funerals. The photo series is expressed with no emotion- in order to show fact. Many people are shocked when they see the photos, but soon become curious. Much of society is appalled yet secretly attracted to death, and tries to avoid dealing with it as much as possible. Palmer's project allowed him to get closer to his family.

These articles were relatively different. The first one discussed the difficulty for a woman to work in the funeral industry, and the second focused on the uncomfortable aspect of the care of the dead. They both discussed really interesting aspects for this unit, but I think the focus lies mainly on the emotional difficulty that people have when caring for the dead.

I did my interview with my friend Sophia at Riverdale Funeral Home. We spoke to Jim, the office manager. He takes care of family needs and has to think logically as well as realistically to help families get what they want. Riverdale Funeral Home is a family-owned operation, which creates a sense of warmth, and sometimes their clients know someone in the family which can provide more comfort for the family. He said that a lot of families opt for cremation, but that when there is a body burial, the home requires embalming. But touching on a more personal note, he said that he has to separate his emotions for different places. He compared his work experience as an English teacher to his current job; while he's comfortable with his co-workers, he needs to suppress certain emotions at work. At home, same thing, just different things need to be suppressed. Overall to me, Jim seems to handle himself pretty well at work, and I hope that the same goes for at home.

HW 49 - Comments on Best of Your Break HW

Comments I made:

John: 
I thought that you discussed some really interesting and strong points in this assignment. If I were to take a guess, I’d say that religion/spirituality has an extreme effect on care of the dead. I thought it peculiar (in a good way) that you focused more on the emotions associated with belief systems and death, but that it did stray away from this unit (it ties a lot into illness and dying but not so much care of the dead).
My favorite line from this post was probably, “This black void the non religious pool”. I personally found it a beautiful line to read. But, your strongest paragraph was your conclusion. I think that connecting what you learned from your peers to your personal beliefs was a really good way to end the post.
There were just a few grammar/spelling mistakes which made some parts strange to read, but overall, really good analysis.

Lucas:

I liked that your intro paragraph told the reader what to expect to learn from the post. I thought that all of the ideas flowed really well.
I did think that you could have pulled some more powerful insights from your interviews but adding some analysis and your own personal preference.
One part I think you could have elaborated more on was "it seems more natural to honor and remember the deceased as they lived". I personally thought that this was an interesting way to see death, and that you could have analyzed it deeper.
Overall your post was really good though.


Comments on my Blog:  
Lucas:

While I'm sure that the interviews were interesting at the time, I don't really feel like either you or I learned very much from them. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes the best texts are ones that don't tell you something new, but organize concepts you were already familiar with in ways that you were not able to before. I enjoy reading books that are set up like this because they help me flesh out my own thoughts.


Your paragraph on emotion was a good start in asking pertinent questions, the topic of emotion related to death is definitely worth writing about in a later paper/project. I think we are all subconsciously afraid of death, as you said. I think this is because biologically we are driven to avoid death throughout our lives; by eating, drinking, reproducing and so on. What good would your body be if it didn't strive to stave off death at every opportunity? If only my super was as vigilant with water leaks as the human body is with disease -__- 

Dad:
You mention that the general consensus seemed to be that people wanted to be cremated, even your friend who had a spot waiting for her in a family plot, preferring the “back to nature-y and freeing option”. I feel the same way, opting for cremation. That “freeing option” is coming to terms with the finality of life as we know it. They are one with nature, as opposed to the hope some people have via cryogenics, that there’s always that outside chance that somehow life can be prolonged or regenerated.

H didn’t want people to cry. You wondered whether there was some sort of subconscious fear of death. I don’t think it’s fear. I think and agree as you point out it is the idea that you will never interact with that person ever again.  

John:
Your final paragraph was very strong; I liked your inquiry on crying, something that seems obvious because we encounter it all the time yet I’ve never put much thought into why. A question that probably can’t be answered by us, but it still is important to ask those questions. Questions we may never find the answers to but appreciate that we don’t have an answer, rather than make up our own dumb answer or excuse and pretend we know something we definitely do not.
Your interviewees didn’t seem to help much besides developing that one strong inquiry you had. This might be for a number of reasons, one being those you interviewed like many don’t know too much on how they view death, another might be just that you have dull interviewees, but what do I know.
Another strong post,
john   

HW 50 - First Third of Care of the Dead Book Post

Stiff

Mary Roach

Published 2004, New York, NY

There are many different ways for corpses to be handled. People are going to find my book disrespectful. At the face lift/anatomy refresher course I'm observing, there are about forty heads, partial neck included, sitting in drip pans on lavender clothed tables. Lavender was chosen because it can be soothing to doctors who become disgusted by the cadaver's head that they're working on. Surgeons benefit from opportunities like this, but sometimes it's hard to find body parts to work with. Ronn Wade is trying to change the system to surgeons have more access to body parts. If surgeons want to practice a technique, they form a group, call Wade, and pay him for the lab and cadavers. Surgeons are rarely given practice opportunities because learning in school is similar to the experience of an apprenticeship- they learn their techniques from observing and then trying. The technique of observing to learn is similar to the operating theaters used in the nineteenth century. Bransby Cooper preformed a bladder stone removal on Stephen Pollard. There was no anesthesia because it wasn't used during surgery until 1846. The tools Cooper was using were ineffective, so he stuck his finger into the open wound, and with no luck, measured his finger length to those of the men observing him. Eventually the stone was removed and Pollard went to bed, but he died of an infection in just over a day. I asked one of the surgeons I'm observing if she's going to donate her body when she dies. She tells me no, reasoning that some surgeons aren't as respectful of the cadavers as they could be. 

Herophilius, the "father of anatomy", was the first physician to dissect human bodies. Soon his dissections moved on to live criminals. Using executed criminals for dissection carried over to the the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Britain.

Quotes:

"Being dead is absurd. It's the silliest situation you'll ever find yourself in. Your limbs are floppy and uncooperative. Your mouth hangs open. Being dead is unsightly and stinky and embarrassing, and there's not a damn thing to be done about it." (11)

"For most physicians, objectification is mastered their first year of medical school" (21)

"When you take a photograph of a patient for a medical journal, you have the patient sign a release. The dead can't refuse to sign releases, but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't want to. This is why cadavers in photographs...have black bars over their eyes" (32)

"You do not question an author who appears on the title page as "T.V.N. Persaud, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc., F.R.C.Path. (Lond.), F.F.Path. (R.C.P.I.), F.A.C.O.G."(53)

"The people of the 1800s seemed to feel that burial culminated in a fate less ghastly than that of dissection". (57)

While reading I began to think more and more about the respect that people have for the dead. These thoughts came on because a lot of the first chapters focused on ethics. Different things effect different people. I found it interesting when one of the surgeons told Mary that she wouldn't donate her body to study because some doctors take pictures of their cadavers. I thought, of all things to find disrespectful; a photo? A cadaver no longer has a conscience and can no longer make a decision, but when they did have a conscience, they made the decision to donate their body. Along with their donation might come photos of their body- not necessarily for pleasure, but for learning. Another "aspect" of respect that I thought about was that after death, people are somewhat idolized. I don't mean that they become some martyr for a cause or a new religious symbol; the people who cared for them during their life begin to talk about all of the amazing things that they had done in their life. If you've ever sat in on a memorial service or a funeral, people decorate their deceased loved ones with words of praise and glory. Once in a while there'll be someone slightly honest enough to say "____, while stubborn...." and will add a little something negative to their spiel. I realize that this part of analysis sort of took away from the main objective of the book, but I still believe that respect is an important part of what Roach is projecting through her book.

HW 48 - Family Perspectives on the Care of the Dead

Before this assignment, I never actually knew what my parents wanted to happen to their bodies when they die. Maybe it was for them to "protect" me from thinking about death. Both of my parents want to be cremated after death. My mom said that she thought the idea of rotting away in a box wasn't too pleasant. She'd rather have her ashes scattered in parts of Hawaii where she and my dad went for their honeymoon. My dad said that he's not too sure but he'd want them spread somewhere in the U.S. so it would be easier for me to do it. He said that "getting through customs in other countries with a box of ashes is probably a very difficult task to complete". My mom didn't really touch on previous family members' deaths, but my dad talked about his parent's remains. Both of them wanted their bodies donated for scientific study. His dad passed first, and his body got "lost", so our family never got his ashes back. With my grandmother's body, "there was a paper trail to follow, so it made the entire process easier on us".

***To be continued

HW 47 - Peer Perspectives on the Care of the Dead

When interviewing some friends about the current unit "Care of the Dead", I found that there was a general sense of uncomfortableness. One of my friends, S, said, "This topic is weird". Maybe I didn't approach the conversation correctly; simply asking "Can I interview you?", without telling them what our conversation would be about. Nonetheless I learned some interesting things about some of my friends. S, a longtime friend, actually already has an after death plan, "I already have a plot with my family in a cemetery". Later in our conversation she mentioned that she has thought about cremation though, and would want her ashes spread out. I asked her why, "No real reason, but it seems like the most loving and back to nature-y and freeing option I guess". Actually, the consistent answer amongst my interviewees was that they wanted to be cremated. H and SM thought that the idea of their remains sitting in a box underground was creepy. H went on to say that she would want her friends and family to gather at some point after her death and just talk, "When my uncle died, my whole family needed to just let it out. It's important because a lot of people are isolated, and grief is often better expressed in groups of people. Gathering helps to relieve stress or anger or whatever a person may be feeling, because they have a chance to let it all out". 


Another interesting thing that H and I discussed was that she didn't want people to cry. "It seems kinda stupid. Like, I appreciate they're upset about me through crying, but that sort of thing happens. You can be upset, but just don't make a huge scene out of it just for a show. be happy that I at least got some time to live my life and interact with people". This sparked a general question in my head; why do people cry when someone dies? I wonder if there is some sort of subconscious fear of death that is ignited when they are faced with the death of someone they knew well. Yes, the crying probably also has to do with the fact that a person will never interact with their dead loved one again (unless they believe in certain paths after life), but there is more to human emotion than meets the eye. 

HW 46 - Initial Thoughts on the Care of the Dead

The other day I turned to my friend Kady and said, "If I were to die, I'd want you to throw a party". I'm not sure where the initial thought came from, I don't think we were even talking about death. She looked at me confused and said, "What, are you planning on dying anytime soon?". I explained to her that I wasn't, but that the idea of a celebration seemed nice. Instead of associating death with sorrow, we could associate death with happiness. This conversation reminded me of when Beth came in to speak to us. I remember that she mentioned that instead of having a sad funeral for Erik, they celebrated his life with friends and family. That sounded nice to me.

My general belief in what should happen to bodies once death has taken place, is that bodies should be treated with care, with no alteration, unless otherwise specified by the subject's will, and whether the body is cremated or buried is up to the "loved ones". I personally would probably like to be buried. I have nothing against cremation, I think that spreading someone's ashes can actually be a beautiful ritual, but I don't think that there's any place I'd want my ashes spread.

During class I said this wouldn't be a hard unit to do. I think I lied. This wont be hard for me emotionally, but it's a tough subject to work through. I can't even get my first thoughts down. My mind just keeps jumping from subject to possible subject, and I don't know where to begin. There are so many different subjects of possible examination; funeral homes, cremation, religious rituals, the cost. 

Some questions I have left over after all of this thinking:

- What are some rituals practiced in other countries surrounding the care of the dead?
- Why do we bury our dead? Why do we cremate them?
- How does cremation work?
- Are coffins completely sealed?
- Six feet under- any other specific reasons other than stench?