Category: Cultural Expressions

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Judy Chicago contemplates death, and all it means, in this powerful exhibition

Artist Judy Chicago

By Angela Haupt

Judy Chicago is well-aware she’s going to die one day — and she’s coming to terms with it. In her newest body of work, the 80-year-old feminist artist reckons with her own mortality, as well as the untimely death she fears for the planet’s threatened species and ecosystems.

“The End: A Meditation on Death and Extinction,” at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, consists of nearly 40 works of painted porcelain and glass, plus two large sculptures. It’s divided into three sequential sections: “Stages of Dying,” “Mortality” and “Extinction.” Chicago’s new series is “luminous,” according to exhibition curator Virginia Treanor. “I think it’s going to be a really contemplative experience. People will be moved by it, for sure.”

Here’s a closer look at five of the pieces on display.

“Stages of Dying 5/6: Depression.”

Stages of Dying 5/6: Depression

An aged, bald woman cradles her face in her hands in this white porcelain piece, which is part of the “Stages of Dying” section of the exhibition. The figure personifies one of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. These stages can apply both to those who are grieving the loss of someone and to those grappling with their own end. The older woman Chicago depicts is intended to represent an Everywoman, as well as the indiscriminate inevitability of death. “For so much of human history, the male figure has been the archetype of humanity,” says Treanor. “We say, ‘mankind.’ She wanted to shift that paradigm and make an Everywoman rather than an Everyman.”

Mortality Relief

A woman’s eyes are closed, her head resting on a pillow, hands clasped around a bouquet of lilies. The bronze sculpture is a self-portrait of the artist, who in the “Mortality” section of the show imagines different scenarios in which she might die. “Mortality Relief” pays homage to traditional death masks, which were used from the Middle Ages until the 19th century — before the advent of photography — to preserve someone’s likeness after death. Treanor describes the sculpture as “peaceful and serene.”

“Mortality Relief.”

In the Shadow of Death

Thirty of the pieces in “The End” — including this one from the “Mortality” section — are kiln-fired paintings on black glass: a laborious process that requires multiple firings. Each time something’s put into the kiln, there’s a risk that it’s going to break, which means that the artist needs to be exacting. “In the Shadow of Death” is engraved with a quote from philosopher Todd May, reading, in part: “To forge our lives under the haunting shadow of death is both our reality and our opportunity,” with an emphasis on the word “opportunity.” It’s Chicago’s way of noting that there’s no need to fear death. “We have this opportunity in life because we know it’s finite,” Treanor says. “It’s going to end at some point.”

“How Will I Die? #2.”

How Will I Die? #2

A woman, once again a self-portrait of Chicago, is curled into the fetal position, text wrapped around her body — “Will I leave as I arrived?” — in this kiln-fired painting on black glass. “Linking the experience of birth and death is powerful in a visual way, but also in an existential way,” Treanor says. She particularly lauds Chicago’s use of a wrinkled, aged figure. “This is classic Judy Chicago, and it’s one of the reasons I love her and her work so much,” she says. “She’s constantly pushing the boundaries. Nude women in art are a dime a dozen, right? But very rarely do we see an older nude woman. Very rarely do we see older women at all.”

“Stranded.”

Stranded

In “Extinction,” the final section of the exhibit, Chicago turns from pondering individual death to the obliteration of entire ecosystems and species. A gaunt polar bear clings to a melting iceberg in the black-glass painting “Stranded.” Other works depict elephants killed for their tusks and trees flayed of their bark. Capturing that kind of destruction requires extensive research, which Chicago has described as an emotionally draining experience. “It was interesting to hear her speak about these works, and equating the physical exertion that went into them — like multiple [kiln] firings — with the emotional toll it took on her,” Treanor says. “She said it was really gut-wrenching.”

If you go/

Judy Chicago — The End: A Meditation on Death and Extinction

National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1250 New York Ave. NW. nmwa.org .

Dates: Through Jan. 20.

Admission: $10; $8 for seniors and students; free for members and visitors 18 and under.

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Water cremation and human composting…

The new, eco-friendly frontier of dying

by Eillie Anzilotti

We are running out of space to bury people, and cremation has an enormous carbon footprint. So people are finding new ways to dispose of the bodies of their loved ones.

Matt Baskerville has served as a licensed funeral director in Illinois for the past 24 years. In that time, he’s seen his industry—and what people want after their deaths—change dramatically.

For instance, when Baskerville entered the business in the mid-’90s, the cremation rate was roughly 10%. Now, when he looks at the records of recent years at his own businesses (he directs at four funeral homes in towns of 10,000 people or less), he sees that more than 40% of people are opting for cremation.

According to new findings from the National Funeral Directors Association, for which Baskerville serves as a spokesperson, the national cremation rate is projected to be around 54% (“The Midwest tends to be a bit more traditional,” he says). Burial, once the far-dominant option for end-of-life services, has dropped to just around 41%, and Baskerville expects it will continue to decline in popularity.

Many factors are driving this shift. For one, Baskerville says, “we’re a much more mobile society.” When families tended to live and die in the same place for generations, burial was a way to keep everyone together. But now, he’s seeing that in his hometown of Wilmington, Illinois, the younger generation is dispersing, and the ties to location are not as strong. Services like cremation better meet the needs of families who are spread out geographically. It’s becoming so much more commonplace that a new set of startups now exist to cater to families whose loved ones opt for cremation. One Portland-based company called Solace, for instance, operates as a direct-to-consumer cremation service that manages the transport, storage, cremation, and return of the remains for a flat fee.

There’s also a growing awareness that traditional burial is incompatible with the state of the planet. We are, quite simply, running out of space to devote plots of land to people who are no longer living. In cities, space for necessities like housing and parks is already in short supply, and many cities like Berlin are beginning to convert old cemeteries to other land uses. But even in places where space is not so crunched, like Baskerville’s hometown, there’s a growing recognition that the burial process—from the chemicals used to embalm a body to the wood used to create caskets—is environmentally damaging, and people are beginning to seek out alternatives.

“People like the concept of going green,” Baskerville says. But even traditional flame cremation does not exactly meet that need. Cremating a single body emits as much carbon as an 1,000-mile car trip.

So increasingly, people are seeking out greener alternatives for their afterlife. A process called alkaline hydrolysis is now legal in 15 states, including Baskerville’s home of Illinois. He describes it as “flameless cremation” because what it entails is using the gentle flow of warm water mixed with alkali (usually sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide) to naturally liquefy a body over the course of several hours. The process creates relatively little emissions and leaves behind no waste. The leftover liquid can be disposed down the drain, and the remaining bones and metal can then go in an urn, like a traditional cremation. In Baskerville’s businesses, around 40% of people who chose cremation are opting for the flameless process.

Another emerging alternative is human composting, which was legalized in Washington (the first state to do so) in spring 2019. Through exposure to microbes, bodies can be naturally broken down and turned into soil—around one cubic yard per person, to be precise. A Seattle-based company called Recompose is pioneering the service, which will be available as an option to Washington residents beginning May 2020. Katrina Spade, Recompose’s founder and CEO, previously founded the Urban Death Project to advocate for the practice as both more sustainable and more practical in terms of land use. Recompose has proposed memorial sites where family members could come visit the bodies as they were decomposing. The dirt could then be given to families to save or to use to grow trees or plants. The company plans to open its first site in 2020.

While body composting is limited to Washington for the time being, Baskerville would not be surprised if it became more widespread. “Trends in burials tend to begin on the west coast and spread from there,” he says. Cremation, for instance, first overtook burials in popularity on the west coast, and interest in greener options, he believes, will continue to grow.

Moving away from traditional burials also tracks with a shift in American attitudes toward death on the whole. The rising “death wellness” movement encourages a more open and accepting approach to death and mortality, whether that be through dinner parties built around the discussion of death, or through hiring “death doulas” to coach people as they approach the end of life. HBO recently released a documentary called Alternate Endings that explores the different ways in which people in the U.S. are opting to memorialize themselves. Certainly, the availability of a wider range of funeral options necessitates a more open conversation around end-of-life planning and what death and burial means to individuals. To Baskerville, this is a good thing. “In years past in the American culture, death has been a topic that was not talked about,” he says. Now, though, “end of life is more of an open topic of conversation in most families now.”

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The Cost of Dying in All 50 States

By Gabrielle Olya

There are many reasons to celebrate getting older, but having to think about the cost of death isn’t one of them.

For starters, funeral costs can add up fast. The National Funeral Directors Association cited the median out-of-pocket funeral expenses for 2016 — including viewing and cremation costs — at $7,360. On top of that, the average out-of-pocket expenditure for end-of-life necessities is $11,618, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

One of the biggest factors impacting funeral expenses — and the cost of dying, in general — is the state where the death certificate is issued. Just like the cost of living, the cost of dying depends on where you reside.

GOBankingRates calculated the average costs for end-of-life medical care and funeral expenses in each state by multiplying the national averages for those services by every state’s cost-of-living index. The study also considered 2018 inheritance tax and estate tax data, sourced from the Tax Foundation.

50. Mississippi — $18,509

Average funeral expenses: $6,684
Average end-of-life medical costs: $11,825

The cheapest state to die in, Mississippi, has no estate tax or inheritance tax. Average funeral expenses total $6,684, and average medical costs associated with dying come out to $11,825 — both well below the national average. This is unsurprising because Mississippi also has the cheapest cost of living in America, according to a separate GOBankingRates study.

49. Arkansas — $18,681

Average funeral expenses: $6,746
Average end-of-life medical costs: $11,934

The cost of dying in Arkansas is similar to that in Alabama. Funeral expenses in Arkansas average $6,746, while medical costs associated with dying hover around $11,934. The state has no estate tax or inheritance tax.

48. Oklahoma — $18,702

Average funeral expenses: $6,754
Average end-of-life medical costs: $11,948

Medical costs associated with dying in Oklahoma are typically around $11,948, and the average cost of a funeral is $6,754 — notably below national figures. You won’t have to pay inheritance or estate taxes when you die in Oklahoma.

47. Missouri — $18,724

Average funeral expenses: $6,762
Average end-of-life medical costs: $11,962

In Missouri, the cost of a funeral averages $6,762, and the medical costs related to dying average $11,962. Neither estate taxes nor inheritance taxes are imposed.

46. New Mexico — $18,810

Average funeral expenses: $6,793
Average end-of-life medical costs: $12,017

The cost of a funeral in New Mexico averages $6,793, while medical expenses related to dying typically total $12,017. New Mexico doesn’t levy an estate tax or an inheritance tax.

45. Tennessee — $19,068

Average funeral expenses: $6,886
Average end-of-life medical costs: $12,182

Funeral costs average $6,886 in Tennessee, and medical costs related to dying are normally around $12,182. One of the most tax-friendly states for retirees, Tennessee doesn’t have an estate tax or an inheritance tax.

44. Michigan — $19,111

Average funeral expenses: $6,902
Average end-of-life medical costs: $12,209

As the seventh-cheapest state to die in, Michigan doesn’t impose an estate or inheritance tax. The average cost of a funeral in the state is low at $6,902, and medical costs associated with dying are typically around $12,209.

43. Kansas — $19,132

Average funeral expenses: $6,909
Average end-of-life medical costs: $12,223

The cost of a funeral in Kansas averages $6,909, and medical expenses related to death total approximately $12,223. No inheritance tax or estate tax is collected in the state.

42. Georgia — $19,175

Average funeral expenses: $6,925
Average end-of-life medical costs: $12,250

Falling below the national average, the standard cost for funeral expenses in Georgia is $6,925, while medical costs associated with dying are usually around $12,250. Georgia has no estate tax or inheritance tax.

41. Alabama — $19,197

Average funeral expenses: $6,933
Average end-of-life medical costs: $12,264

The average cost of a funeral in Alabama is $6,933, and medical costs associated with dying typically total $12,264. Like the other members of the 10 cheapest states to die in, Alabama doesn’t have an estate tax or an inheritance tax.

40. Wyoming — $19,197

Average funeral expenses: $6,933
Average end-of-life medical costs: $12,264

The average cost of a funeral in Wyoming is $6,933, and medical expenses associated with dying total $12,264, on average. Neither an estate tax nor an inheritance tax is collected in Wyoming.

39. Indiana — $19,347

Average funeral expenses: $6,987
Average end-of-life medical costs: $12,360

Medical costs related to dying in Indiana average $12,360, and the standard for funeral expenses is $6,987. There’s no inheritance tax or estate tax in Indiana.

38. Iowa — $19,369

Average funeral expenses: $6,995
Average end-of-life medical costs: $12,374

Iowa has no estate tax, but unlike many other states, it does have an inheritance tax of up to 15%. The average cost of a funeral is $6,995, and medical expenses related to dying hover around $12,374.

37. Nebraska — $19,519

Average funeral expenses: $7,049
Average end-of-life medical costs: $12,470

If you’re inheriting from a deceased family member in Nebraska, you’ll be taxed at a rate between 1% and 18%. However, the state doesn’t impose an estate tax. The cost of a funeral in Nebraska averages $7,049, and medical expenses associated with dying are typically around $12,470.

36. Ohio — $19,519

Average funeral expenses: $7,049
Average end-of-life medical costs: $12,470

Coming in below the national average, funeral costs in Ohio run approximately $7,049, and medical costs associated with dying total $12,470, on average. Ohio doesn’t have an estate tax or an inheritance tax.

35. Kentucky — $19,541

Average funeral expenses: $7,057
Average end-of-life medical costs: $12,484

Funeral costs in Kentucky total approximately $7,057, while medical expenses related to dying average $12,484. The state doesn’t have an estate tax, but its inheritance tax can be as much as 16%.

34. West Virginia — $19,584

Average funeral expenses: $7,072
Average end-of-life medical costs: $12,511

Dying in West Virginia will cost close to the national average, at around $12,511 in medical costs and $7,072 in funeral expenses. There’s no estate tax or inheritance tax in West Virginia.

33. Texas — $19,669

Average funeral expenses: $7,103
Average end-of-life medical costs: $12,566

The average cost of a funeral in Texas is $7,103, while medical costs associated with death are typically around $12,566. Texans don’t pay an estate tax or an inheritance tax.

32. Idaho — $19,841

Average funeral expenses: $7,165
Average end-of-life medical costs: $12,676

You won’t be charged an estate tax or an inheritance tax in Idaho, which is good news if you are the executor of a will. Plan for around $7,165 in funeral costs and approximately $12,676 in medical expenses associated with dying.

31. Louisiana — $20,185

Average funeral expenses: $7,290
Average end-of-life medical costs: $12,896

There’s no estate tax or inheritance tax in Louisiana. Medical costs related to death average $12,896, and funeral expenses run approximately $7,290.

30. Illinois — $20,314

Average funeral expenses: $7,336
Average end-of-life medical costs: $12,978

Like most states, Illinois doesn’t have an inheritance tax. However, estates worth more than $4 million are taxed at a rate of 0.8%-16%. Funeral costs average $7,336, and medical costs related to dying are typically around $12,978.

29. North Carolina — $20,400

Average funeral expenses: $7,367
Average end-of-life medical costs: $13,033

In North Carolina, there’s no estate tax or inheritance tax, so you won’t have to worry too much about what might happen to your money after you die. The average cost of a funeral is $7,367, and medical expenses associated with dying tend to total $13,033.

28. South Carolina — $20,615

Average funeral expenses: $7,445
Average end-of-life medical costs: $13,170

In South Carolina, the average cost of a funeral is $7,445, and medical costs associated with dying average $13,170. There’s no estate tax or inheritance tax.

27. Arizona — $20,852

Average funeral expenses: $7,530
Average end-of-life medical costs: $13,321

There’s no estate tax or inheritance tax in the Grand Canyon State. The average cost of a funeral is $7,530 in Arizona, and medical expenses related to death tend to add up to $13,321.

26. Wisconsin — $20,916

Average funeral expenses: $7,554
Average end-of-life medical costs: $13,363

Funeral costs in Wisconsin tend to total around $7,554, while medical expenses associated with dying average $13,363 — which are both on the cheaper side for the U.S. as a whole. No inheritance tax or estate tax is instituted, but Wisconsin is one of the most expensive states to file taxes, in general.

25. Florida — $21,045

Average funeral expenses: $7,600
Average end-of-life medical costs: $13,445

The cost of a funeral in Florida is typically around $7,600, and medical expenses associated with death average $13,445. No estate tax or inheritance tax is levied in the Sunshine State.

24. Utah — $21,153

Average funeral expenses: $7,639
Average end-of-life medical costs: $13,514

Still under the U.S. benchmark, medical costs associated with dying in Utah average $13,514, and funeral expenses are approximately $7,639. The state doesn’t impose an inheritance tax or an estate tax.

23. North Dakota — $21,239

Average funeral expenses: $7,670
Average end-of-life medical costs: $13,569

North Dakota doesn’t have an inheritance tax or an estate tax. Medical expenses associated with dying are usually around $13,569, and the average cost of a funeral is $7,670.

22. South Dakota — $21,454

Average funeral expenses: $7,748
Average end-of-life medical costs: $13,706

No estate tax or inheritance tax is imposed in South Dakota. Funeral expenses average $7,748, and medical costs related to dying are typically around $13,706 — just above the U.S. average.

21. Virginia — $21,647

Average funeral expenses: $7,818
Average end-of-life medical costs: $13,830

There’s no estate tax or inheritance tax in Virginia. Medical costs related to death hover around $13,830, and funeral expenses average $7,818.

20. Minnesota — $21,841

Average funeral expenses: $7,887
Average end-of-life medical costs: $13,953

Slightly above the national average, standard funeral costs in Minnesota come out to $7,887, and medical expenses associated with dying are approximately $13,953. The state has no inheritance tax, but if the value of your estate is above $2.4 million, you will be subject to an estate tax between 13% and 16%.

19. Pennsylvania — $21,862

Average funeral expenses: $7,895
Average end-of-life medical costs: $13,967

Pennsylvania doesn’t have an estate tax, but it does levy up to 15% in inheritance taxes. Medical expenses related to dying total approximately $13,967, and the average cost of a funeral is $7,895.

18. Colorado — $22,701

Average funeral expenses: $8,198
Average end-of-life medical costs: $14,503

There’s no need to stress about an estate tax or inheritance tax in Colorado, as neither is imposed. Funeral costs average $8,198, and medical expenses correlated with dying generally total $14,503.

17. Montana — $22,980

Average funeral expenses: $8,299
Average end-of-life medical costs: $14,681

The standard cost of a funeral in Montana is approximately $8,299, while medical costs related to dying typically average $14,681. You can keep any gold and jewels passed down to you in the Treasure State free of estate or inheritance taxes.

16. Delaware — $23,238

Average funeral expenses: $8,392
Average end-of-life medical costs: $14,846

You won’t pay an inheritance tax or estate tax in Delaware. Funeral costs average $8,392, and medical expenses related to death tend to fall around $14,846.

15. Nevada — $23,324

Average funeral expenses: $8,423
Average end-of-life medical costs: $14,901

Expect to spend about $8,423 on funeral costs in Nevada. Typical medical expenses involved with dying are $14,901, and there’s no estate tax or inheritance tax. Nevada is also one of the states with no income tax.

14. New Hampshire — $23,582

Average funeral expenses: $8,516
Average end-of-life medical costs: $15,066

Medical costs related to dying in New Hampshire average $15,066. Funeral expenses add up to $8,516, on average, but there’s no estate or inheritance tax in the Granite State.

13. Washington — $23,797

Average funeral expenses: $8,594
Average end-of-life medical costs: $15,203

In Washington, funeral expenses average $8,594, and medical expenses related to dying typically hover around $15,203. There’s no inheritance tax, but estates worth more than $2.19 million are taxed between 10% and 20%.

12. Vermont — $24,614

Average funeral expenses: $8,889
Average end-of-life medical costs: $15,725

Vermont has a 16% tax on estates worth more than $2.75 million. There’s no inheritance tax, but funeral costs average $8,889, and medical expenses related to death are typically around $15,725.

11. Maine — $25,259

Average funeral expenses: $9,122
Average end-of-life medical costs: $16,137

Maine estates valued at more than $5.6 million are taxed between 8% and 12%. There’s no inheritance tax, but the average cost of a funeral is $9,122, and $16,137 is the standard for medical expenses associated with end-of-life care.

10. Rhode Island — $25,667

Average funeral expenses: $9,269
Average end-of-life medical costs: $16,398

The average cost of a funeral in Rhode Island is $9,269, and medical expenses associated with death typically amount to $16,398. There’s no inheritance tax, but a 0.8%-16% tax is levied on estates worth more than $1.54 million.

9. New Jersey — $26,892

Average funeral expenses: $9,712
Average end-of-life medical costs: $17,181

In New Jersey, the standard funeral costs $9,712, and medical expenses correlated with dying average $17,181. There’s no estate tax, but you’ll face an inheritance tax of up to 16%.

8. Connecticut — $27,451

Average funeral expenses: $9,914
Average end-of-life medical costs: $17,538

In Connecticut, funeral costs are typically around $9,914, and medical expenses related to end-of-life care average $17,538. There’s no inheritance tax, but a 7.2%-12% tax is levied against estates valued at over $2.6 million.

7. Maryland — $27,881

Average funeral expenses: $10,069
Average end-of-life medical costs: $17,812

Funeral expenses in Maryland average $10,069, and medical bills associated with dying typically add up to $17,812. Maryland is one of the few states with both an estate tax and an inheritance tax. Inheritances are taxed up to 10%, and estates worth more than $4 million are taxed at a 16% rate.

6. Alaska — $27,924

Average funeral expenses: $10,084
Average end-of-life medical costs: $17,840

The average cost of a funeral in Alaska is $10,084, while medical expenses associated with dying hover around $17,840 — both of which are much higher than the national average. On the plus side, the state doesn’t have an inheritance tax or an estate tax.

5. Massachusetts — $28,290

Average funeral expenses: $10,216
Average end-of-life medical costs: $18,073

At around $10,216, funeral costs in Massachusetts are well above the national average. Medical expenses related to end-of-life care average $18,073. No inheritance tax is levied in Massachusetts, but estates worth more than $1 million are taxed at a 0.8%-16% rate.

4. Oregon — $28,849

Average funeral expenses: $10,418
Average end-of-life medical costs: $18,430

There’s no inheritance tax in Oregon, but if you own property in the Beaver State, plan your estate carefully — those worth more than $1 million will be taxed at a 10%-16% rate. Funeral expenses average $10,418, and medical costs related to death tend to be around $18,430.

3. New York — $29,902

Average funeral expenses: $10,799
Average end-of-life medical costs: $19,103

In New York, you won’t pay an inheritance tax, but estates worth more than $5.25 million are taxed at a 3.06%-16% rate. Funeral expenses average $10,799, and medical costs correlated with dying are $19,103.

2. California — $32,611

Average funeral expenses: $11,777
Average end-of-life medical costs: $20,834

Though it’s the second-most expensive state to die in, California doesn’t levy an estate tax or an inheritance tax. The standard cost of funeral activities is around $11,777, and medical expenses related to dying average $20,834.

1. Hawaii — $41,467

Average funeral expenses: $14,975
Average end-of-life medical costs: $26,492

Death in Hawaii is by far the priciest among all the states, as funeral costs average $14,975 and the benchmark for medical expenses correlated with end-of-life care is $26,492. The Aloha State doesn’t have an inheritance tax, but estates worth more than $11.2 million are taxed at a 10%-15.7% rate.

Where You Die Impacts the Financial Burden You Leave Behind

Fortunately for people who have to face the death of a loved one, many states don’t add an additional financial burden on the deceased’s family by levying taxes. However, this wasn’t always the case, as many states have removed estate and inheritance taxes in recent years. Others have left taxes in place but raised the exemption levels:

  • Indiana repealed its inheritance tax in 2013.
  • Tennessee repealed its estate tax in 2016.
  • New York raised its exemption level to $5.25 million and will match the federal exemption level in 2019.
  • New Jersey fully phased out its estate tax in 2018.
  • Delaware repealed its estate tax in 2018.

Overall, the cheapest places to die are Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and New Mexico. The most expensive places to die are Hawaii, California, New York, Oregon and Massachusetts.

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Living with death

Joan Pillsbury attaches the supports for the handles from the inside of the coffin during the coffin building workshop last month.

By MELINA BOURDEAU

The only guarantees in life are taxation and death, according to Benjamin Franklin. For Ellen Arrison of New Salem, that reality is literally sitting inside her living room right now — in the form of a rectangular pinewood coffin.

“I hope it has lots of coffee rings and wine stains on it before I have to use it,” said Arrison, who was one of a dozen participants who took part in a recent coffin-making workshop in Greenfield that was co-sponsored by was co-sponsored by Green Burial Massachusetts and the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Western Massachusetts. According to Arrison, an experienced hospice nurse, making a coffin “made death more real” and caused her to confront end-of-life questions — a subject that she says is taboo in western culture.

“We’re all going to die, but we don’t believe it. Part of life is appreciating the time there is,” said Arrison. Housing the coffin in her living room serves as “a conversation starter” and is a constant reminder of her own mortality. She intends to keep it there until it needs to be used for its intended purpose.

“I knew I wanted a green burial, so that’s part of it too,” Arrison said. “I live in a rural area and I’d like to be buried in my own land. I love it and I’ve spent a lot of time and energy and money — I’d like to give back to the land.”

The coffin making workshop, which was led by Joan Pillsbury of Greenfield, treasurer of Green Burial Massachusetts, a nonprofit advocacy group, cost $210 and covered about two to three hours. Participants made “quick coffins” with pine provided by carpenter Chuck Lakin of Waterville, Maine, who also provided the tools and oversaw the construction process, Pillsbury said. The workshop drew people from varied walks of life.

“Everyone’s skilled were varied. Some people had no experience with tools, some could have finished the project in an hour,” Lakin said. “I tried to explain and guide people through the process.”

Afterward, the group, like pallbearers, “made a ceremony out of carrying their coffins to their vehicles,” Lakin said.“Everyone would carry a coffin to someone’s car, then that person would drive and park. Then they would do the same thing with someone else’s coffin. It must have been a sight for someone just passing by.”

Don Joralemon, a retired Smith College anthropology professor, is keeping his coffin in the basement of his home in Conway. He said he decided to make a coffin because he “isn’t a fan of the funeral industry” and he wanted to take the burden away from his family when the time comes.

“I hope to make use of it in land in Conway,” Joralemon said. “It’s a simple process. You have to get permission from the Board of Health and there needs to be a permanent indication that there’s a grave on the property.”
He said the experience of building the coffin was wonderful and he would recommend it to anyone.

The craft of coffin making

Before making coffins, Lakin, who said he’s been a woodworker since he was 26 when he got out of the United States Navy, made a living as a librarian at Colby College. When his father was dying, Lakin said he spent the last six weeks of his life surrounded by family and loved ones. It was a very personal and moving experience, Lakin said.

“He was in his own bed with each of his family touching him when he passed,” he recalled.

After, his family called a funeral home and his father’s body was taken away.

“He was hauled away and I hated it because it had been so personal and all of a sudden he was gone,” said Lakin.

Later on, Lakin read a manual about how to take care of a loved one after they have died. The book included instruction on how to wash, present and bury someone after death. Before, Lakin noted, “I hadn’t thought of what was next.”

“That’s when I began talking about these things with people,” he continued. “Not to convince them of what to do, but to provide information so they can have the experience I wanted to have.”

He decided to try his hand at making coffins so that others wouldn’t experience the emptiness that he felt. These days, Lakin says he makes between three and five coffins a year and uses the money he makes to travel to events throughout Maine and talk about the options people have funerals.

“People have no idea they have as many options as they do,” Lakin said.

He met Pillsbury at one of these events, the annual Funeral Consumers of Maine, and agreed to hold the coffin-making workshop. If there was enough interest, Lakin says he’d be willing to put on another workshop in the future.

A healing endeavor

For Lakin and the workshop participants, building the coffins was a way of confronting their mortality head-on. According to Lakin, Americans are proficient at ignoring the reality that they are going to die someday.

“You have to recognize and admit it is going to happen,” Lakin said. “It’s a natural part of life; there’s a transition in and there’s a transition out. It happens to everyone. … Your attitude toward it and preparation makes all the difference. It turns what could be a tragedy into a spiritual experience.”

Lakin was speaking from personal experience. When his wife, Penny, died in 2017, Lakin held the funeral at their home. He said he wife was in their house for the last five weeks of her life and, for the duration of those weeks, it was like a “long party.”

“We have a good support group, and we told them to stop by anytime,” Lakin said. “Sometimes there would be 12 people in the living room.”

After her death, Lakin said that two of her best friends anointed and dressed the body. Lakin built her coffin and invited guests to come over and draw and write messages on it. Then after four days, which included a time to display the body, they held a burial ceremony followed by dinner at her favorite restaurant.

“We offered people the ability to do something physical — writing or drawing something — to help them (grieve),” said Lakin. “They were grieving and I don’t think they knew what they were going through.”

Arrison had a similar experience with a home burial as a child after a friend’s grandfather died.

“He was laid out in the living room for three days,” Arrison said, noting, “I, personally, find the idea of viewing a body when it’s presented in an artificial way macabre. It makes it seem disconnected in some way.”

Green burials and the death positive movement

The term “death positive” might seem like an oxymoron, but those who are a part of a growing movement of the same name say it’s an effort to demystify mortality in American culture.

Joralemon, the retired Smith professor who attended the workshop, covered the topic in his book titled “Mortal Dilemmas: The Troubled Landscape of Death in America.” Americans have made death into a taboo subject, he says. But it hasn’t always been that way.

“It didn’t use to be so bad. Deaths would happen in the home. The body would be washed, coffins would be made by a carpenter. It wasn’t a surprise or taboo,” Joralemon said. “Then the profession of funeral director was made when more people were dying in hospitals.”

In contrast to culture’s perspectives on death, he said it’s imperative that people confront their own mortality.

“Life is a transformation and death is part of it,” Joralemon said. “Bit by bit, hopefully, we can start to recover the comfort with death and celebrate the moments before that.”

Along with the workshop, Arrison noted that her experience as a nurse has helped normalize the idea of death.

“I did hospice care for some time and I’ve been with people in the process of dying,” Arrison said. “It was valuable and a privilege. It also makes the inevitability (of death) more real. It’s familiar when it’s happening to someone else. I think that the experience is not difficult or frightening, it’s interesting and curious.”

“You get a health care proxy, a will, build your coffin,” Arrison said. “These activities take some of the dread out of it. It normalizes it and you appreciate the time you have — it’s a procrastination deterrent.”

More than preparation for the end of her life, knowing that she’s going to die someday “softens my heart,” Arrison said. “I know that every person is going to die, too. It enhances the experience of life. I have a more positive perspective. It’s actually life-affirming.”

Lakin said he learned about the term “death positive” from Caitlin Doughty, a mortician and funeral home director in Los Angeles, California, who made videos answering questions about death and dying.

“She started by answering people’s basic questions about death, then she ran out of common questions and had to look for topics,” Lakin said. “I found it informative and entertaining because she has a sarcastic sense of humor. I don’t think she coined the term ‘death positive,’ but I think she popularized it.”

He said the death positive movement coincides with a similar trend called the “green burial movement.” Both stress a more personal quality to end-of-life care.

Green Burial Massachusetts is a grassroots organization that educates people about green burials — where a person is not embalmed and put into a coffin or shroud that will biodegrade along with the body. The person is buried about 3 ½ feet in the ground, where aerobic decomposition can occur.

“A burial will happen on a piece of land 3 ½ feet under the ground, where the person isn’t embalmed and there’s no concrete,” Lakin said. “Everything is biodegradable — the person can be buried in a shroud, a coffin, a cardboard box. They also typically use stone from the area as monuments, engraved with the names and dates.”

Joralemon said his philosophies align with the green burial movement because “this is what we did for millennia and there’s no reason not to set aside land for people who would like a green burial.”

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Death and learning to understand it

Dying is a social not a medical event. We must accept it as part of life’s narrative

“Nobody knows what dying is like. Everybody is terrified, nobody is talking about it, everybody thinks they know what it’s like, and everybody thinks it is awful.”

By June Shannon

“How people die lives on in the memory of those who live on.” – Dame Cicely Saunders,, founder of the modern hospice movement.

Do you know what dying looks like? Do you want to know?

A lot of people are afraid of death and dying, yet like birth, it is one of life’s most natural processes. We don’t talk about it, but it happens to us all, and if we are very lucky, it occurs at the end of a long and happy life.

For many who fear death it is perhaps the fear of the unknown that is most terrifying, and it is that fear that Dr Kathryn Mannix, former palliative care physician, author and full-time campaigner for better public understanding of dying, is working to ease by encouraging us all to “narrate dying”.

Speaking to The Irish Times, Dr Mannix said that after 30 years in palliative care she found she was having the same conversations with unprepared families and terrified people with terminal illnesses, whose image of dying came only from television and films which did not reflect reality. She said people generally, had no idea what the “normal, relatively predictable and usually, fairly comfortable process dying is actually like”.

She recalled meeting the adult retired sons of a father in his late 90s who was dying and none of them knew what their father’s wishes were. She described them as “panic-stricken” when asked how or where their father wished to die. A number of the sons who were in their 70s, confessed that their father had in the past tried to share his wishes for the end of his life with his sons, but they refused to discuss it and jokingly admonished him for being morbid.

“This made me realise that we can’t keep doing this to our families,” Dr Mannix said. “This is a national public health problem. In fact, it is an international public health problem that people in parts of the world that have highly developed and sophisticated and accessible to everybody medicine, have forgotten what normal dying looks like.”

Planning for death

According to Dr Mannix, nowadays the tendency in modern health systems to call an ambulance to bring everyone who is very sick and may die, to a hospital full of technology that might just save their lives, which, she acknowledged was wonderful if it worked, meant that nobody knows what normal death looks like. “So now nobody knows what dying is like. Everybody is terrified, nobody is talking about it, everybody thinks they know what it’s like, and everybody thinks it is awful. And actually, if they were less afraid, they would be able to sit down and have those conversations and plan better and die better,” she said.

Instead of putting off what may seem like a difficult conversation until it is too late, Dr Mannix suggested that we should all know more about dying and start planning for our own deaths while we are well. “We should all be thinking about how we would like our dying to be, where, who would be our companions,” she said.

She added that these plans can be tweaked with time and suggested that we should be having these conversations around any birthday that falls on the five times table after the age of 50.

Dr Mannix explained that like birth, which starts with labour pains and progresses through a predictable sequence of events, the process of dying also involves an anticipated sequence of events that are very similar from one person to the next, irrespective of what they are dying from.

“Just like every woman who has ever given birth to a baby feels she has had a particular unique experience, every midwife who has attended that woman has been through the same process that she always has. Because it’s the individual who makes it individual, it is not the process . . . every person who is dying is having their own unique, individual, personal family experience but those of us who are caring for them are seeing the same sequence of events time after time,” she said.

Steps of process

When Dr Mannix meets a patient who expresses a fear of being in pain or distressed when they die, she gently asks if they would like her to explain the process of dying to them and tells them that if they find it too distressing, they can ask her to stop at any time.

Nobody has ever asked Dr Mannix to stop.

She said that when people learn what really happens when we die, they don’t find it terrifying, on the contrary they see it as compelling and comforting.

“I tell somebody and then there is a long pause, usually when I dry my eyes . . . and then they say ‘That’s not what I was expecting, can you tell my wife that? Can you tell my dad that, can you tell my kids that?’ and, ‘That’s wonderful I want my family to know it will be a comfort’.”

By understanding the dying process, grieving families will take the comfort of witnessing their loved one experience normal, gentle dying into their bereavement with them.

Dr Mannix explained that at the end of our lives we simply get more tired and need to sleep more.

As the illness state advances and death becomes closer, the periods of being awake get less and the periods of sleep get longer. Eventually, she said there comes a time when a patient is so deeply unconscious that they cannot be woken. When they do wake up later on, they report that they had a good sleep. Therefore, Dr Mannix said we know that being unconscious is not unpleasant for people.

She explained that when a person is unconscious, medical staff can continue to give them their regular medication to help ease the symptoms of their disease, such as breathlessness or pain, via an injection or syringe pump rather than in tablet form.

“They sleep more, they are awake less. We change the route of the medicines, but it isn’t the medicines making people sleep, it’s the illness, it’s the process of dying and at the very end of people’s lives they lapse into unconsciousness,” she said.

Unconscious state

Dr Mannix explained that this unconsciousness doesn’t feel like falling asleep and the person is not aware that it is happening.

Once the person is completely unconscious the only part of the brain that still functions is that which drives breathing which then becomes completely automatic.

She explained that at this point a person’s breathing alternates between cycles of deep and shallow breathing.

She also pointed out that in this deeply unconscious state, the dying person is not aware of their vocal cords. However, when they breathe out through their vocal cords it can make a noise and family members may fear that this is the sound of their loved one groaning or sighing in distress.

The so-called “death rattle” people hear can also be explained. This too is all part of the dying process and occurs because the dying person is so unconscious that they can no longer cough or swallow to clear normal secretions like saliva or mucus from the back of their throat.

“We would normally cough or splutter or gag if anything is touching the back of our throat because it is a reflex to preserve our lives. Once you are deeply unconscious, all of those sensations are just lost and we tolerate that . . . because you are breathing, the air is going in and out, it makes that funny clicking noise that you would normally never hear in any other circumstances because, in any other circumstances people would clear their throat,” she explained.

Dr Mannix said it was important to remind families that this was automatic breathing because when someone is deeply unconscious, they cannot feel distress.

“As time goes by the breathing gets slower, there are pauses and then eventually there will be an outbreath which doesn’t seem any different to any other out breath, but there just isn’t an inbreath afterwards. It’s as gentle as that.”

“You can’t stop death from being sad. If we love people, then death is a terrible blow – it is a very great sadness. But we can stop it from being terrifying.”

According to Dr Mannix, 100 years ago we would never have spoken about childbirth in public, but we would have all known about dying and she believes it is time for lay people to reclaim death and dying.

Death bed

While Dr Mannix acknowledged that GPs, community nurses and palliative care specialists would always have a role in the dying process, to help ease symptoms and ensure that the person is as comfortable as possible, she said that dying was not a medical matter but rather a social one.

Therefore, she was appealing to medicine to “give dying back to everyone”. “People will only understand what is happening around the death bed if we narrate it,” she said.

By helping grieving families understand the dying process, this will allow them to take the comfort of witnessing their loved one experience normal, gentle dying into their bereavement with them, Dr Mannix said.

“You can’t stop it from being sad. If we love people, then death is a terrible blow – it is a very great sadness. But we can stop it from being terrifying. We can give people the knowledge that they need to be with people who are dying.”

Dr Mannix’s book With the End in Mind: Dying, Death and Wisdom in an Age of Denial was shortlisted for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize and she is one of a number of speakers due to address the annual dotMD conference which takes place in Galway in September.

Hailed as a festival of medical curiosity and known by some as the Electric Picnic of medical conferences, dotMD is a celebration of the heart of medicine. dotMD is curated by Dr Ronan Kavanagh, consultant rheumatologist; Dr Muiris Houston, GP and medical journalist and writer; and Dr Alan Coss, consultant gastroenterologist.

The purpose of this highly popular event which, for the first time in its seven-year history is taking place outside Dublin, is to expose doctors, medical students and other healthcare professionals to the ideas taking place at the interface between medicine, the humanities and technology.

Themes included in this year’s two-day dotMD meeting in Galway on Friday, September 13th and Saturday, September 14th, include, jazz, death, art, stories and zombies.

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Washing My Boy’s Body

When a hospice counselor is called to the bedside of a child who has just died, he leads the parents through a Buddhist ritual for cleaning the body. In the process, he guides them through the fires of grief, which burn away everything but love.

Misery, 1897. Kathe Kollowitz

By Frank Ostaseski

One day, in the middle of writing a foundation grant report, I got a call from a man I didn’t know. He explained that he was the father of a 7-year-old boy who had been very ill with cancer. Some people had told him that I might be able to help him out.

I said certainly, I would be willing to help the family through their grieving process. I made some suggestions about how I might be able to support when the time was right.

The man paused. It was clear that I didn’t understand yet what was happening. He practically whispered, “No, Jamie died a half hour ago. We’d like to keep our boy at home in his bed for a little while. Can you come over now?”

Suddenly, the situation wasn’t hypothetical; it was real and staring me in the face. I had never done anything like this before. Sure, I had sat at the bedsides of people who were dying, but I had not attended the death of a young child with two grieving parents in unimaginable pain. I honestly had no idea what to do, so I let my fear and confusion arise. How could I possibly know in advance what was needed?

I arrived at the house a short while later, where the dispirited parents greeted me. They showed me to the boy’s room. Walking in, I followed my natural inclination: I went over to Jamie’s bed, leaned down, and kissed him on the forehead to say hello. The parents broke into tears, because while they had cared for him with great love and attention, nobody had touched the boy since he had died. It wasn’t their fear of his corpse that kept them away; it was their fear of the grief that touching him might unleash.

I suggested that the parents begin washing the boy’s body— something we often did at Zen Hospice Project. Bathing the dead is an ancient ritual that crosses cultures and religions. Humans have been doing it for millennia. It demonstrates our respect for those who have passed, and it is an act that helps loved ones come to terms with the reality of their loss. I felt my role in this ritual was simple: to act with minimal interference and to bear witness.

The parents gathered sage, rosemary, lavender, and sweet rose petals from their garden. They moved very slowly as they put the herbs in warm water, then collected towels and washcloths. After a few moments of silence, the mother and father began to wash their little boy. They started at the back of Jamie’s head and then moved down his back. Sometimes they would stop and tell one another a story about their son. At other times, it all became too much for the father. He would go stare out the window to gather himself. The grief filling the room felt enormous, like an entire ocean crashing upon a single shore.

The mother examined and lovingly cared for each little scratch or bruise on her son’s body. When she got to Jamie’s toes, she counted them, as she had done on the day he was born. It was both gut-wrenching and extraordinarily beautiful to watch.

From time to time, she would look over at me as I sat quietly in the corner of the room, a beseeching question filling her eyes: “Will I be able to survive? Can I do this? Can any mother live through such loss?” I would nod in encouragement for her to continue at her own pace and hand her another washcloth, trusting the process. I felt confident that she would find healing by allowing herself to be in the midst of her suffering.

It took hours for the parents to wash their son. When the mother finally got to the face of her child, which she had saved for last, she embraced him with incredible tenderness, her eyes pure reflections of her love and sorrow. She had not only turned toward her suffering; she had entered into it completely. As she did, the fierce fire of her love began to melt the contraction of fear around her heart. It was such an intimate moment. There was no separation between mother and child. Perhaps it was like his birth, when they had the experience of being psychologically one.

After the bathing ritual was complete, the parents dressed Jamie in his favorite Mickey Mouse pajamas. His brothers and sister came into the room, making a mobile out of the model planes and other flying objects he had collected, and they hung it over his bed.

Each one of them had faced unbelievable pain. There was no more pretense or denial. They had been able to find some healing in each other’s care and perhaps in opening to the essential truth that death is an integral, natural part of life.

Can you imagine yourself living through what these parents did? “No,” many of you will say, “I cannot.” Losing a child is most people’s worst nightmare. I couldn’t endure it. I couldn’t bear it, you may think. But the hard truth is, terrible things happen in life that we can’t control, and somehow we do bear them. We bear witness to them. When we do so with the fullness of our bodies, minds, and hearts, often a loving action emerges.

And sometimes they act with enormous compassion toward others who have suffered similarly or who may yet in times to come.

One of the most stunning images of this that I can recall came after the major earthquake and tsunami disabled the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. A photo in the newspaper revealed a dozen elderly Japanese men gathered humbly, lunch baskets in hand, standing in a line outside the plant’s gates. The reporter explained that they were offering to take the place of younger workers inside who were attempting to contain the radiation-contaminated plant. In total, more than five hundred seniors volunteered.

One of the group’s organizers said, “My generation, the old generation, promoted the nuclear plants. If we don’t take responsibility, who will? When we were younger, we never thought of death. But death becomes familiar as we get older. We have a feeling that death is waiting for us. This doesn’t mean I want to die. But we become less afraid of death as we get older.”

Suffering is our common ground. Trying to evade suffering by pretending that things are solid and permanent may give us a temporary sense of control. But this is a painful illusion, because life’s conditions are fleeting and impermanent.

We can make a different choice. We can interrupt our habits of resistance that harden us and leave us resentful and afraid. We can soften around our aversion.

We can see the way things actually are and act accordingly, with wise discernment and love.

The Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah once motioned to a glass at his side. “Do you see this glass?” he asked. “I love this glass. It holds the water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. Yet for me, this glass is already broken. When the wind knocks it over or my elbow knocks it off the shelf and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ But when I understand that this glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious.”

After being with Jamie’s parents as they bathed their son, I returned home, and I held my own child very close. Gabe was also 7 years old at the time. I saw clearly how precious he is to me, what a joy he is to have in my life. While I felt devastated by what I had witnessed, I also was able to appreciate the beauty in it.

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How Attending A Death Cafe Helped Me Heal After My Grandmother’s Death

I found myself opening up to strangers about death and finding a sense of comfort in the process.

By Madeline Wahl

On the last day of my grandmother’s life six years ago in fall 2014, I hugged her goodbye after an afternoon at my grandparents’ home in South Florida and expected to see her for lunch the following day. However, I woke up the next morning to the news that my grandmother had died suddenly in her sleep. Instead of meeting up for lunch, my family called to make funeral arrangements. I rescheduled my flight and figured out bereavement days with my job at the time. Because I was on vacation, I thankfully had time to spend with my grandmother during her last unexpected days. The shock from finding out she had died lasted through the week and well beyond her funeral.

After her death, I flew back to New York City to return to what remained of my old life. I’d wanted to leave everything I knew and loved behind and embark on an adventure to a place where I knew no one and recognized nothing. In winter 2015 I’d finally had enough courage and money saved up to visit Iceland on a solo trip for my grandmother’s belated deathiversary. I didn’t expect to find a group of Americans and road trip around the southern coast of Iceland and fall in love with traveling alone, a new part of my life my grandmother will never know.

Every year since my grandmother’s death, without fail, I panic around her deathiversary. How could I commemorate her and the impact she had on my life? In the years since Iceland, I’ve talked with family, went to yoga and stayed low-key. In 2018, four years after she died, I thought I’d go on another solo trip because I wasn’t working and had the time to travel.

However, instead of traveling, I did something different and more close to home. I attended a Death Cafe, where strangers gathered together to talk about death in a supportive environment, at a cemetery in Brooklyn on a cold autumn weeknight. I was intrigued about going to a cemetery where the topic of conversation revolved around death. It wasn’t like death was a hot topic of conversation for small talk, so I didn’t really have the opportunity to bring up death on a whim to friends and family, specifically my grandmother’s death, which happened years ago. I wasn’t sure what to expect or how much I would even talk about such an intimate part of my life with people I didn’t know. Once inside the crematory’s chapel, I noticed a small group of people gathered around trays of cookies and water bottles. The director introduced herself and the backstory of the Death Cafe and then separated us into smaller groups.

My group chose a private back room with urns lining the walls. We pulled our chairs together in a circle and introduced ourselves. The conversation started with why we were there and why we decided to attend a Death Cafe and then expanded to religion, stories of loved ones and friends and their passing and then to the beyond: What happens after we die? Is it good that we don’t know what happens? What would happen if we did? One girl asked how grief changes over time, and how grief changes people. We sat in reflective silence and I thought about the week after my grandmother died when I needed to be around only close friends and family. All of my senses had been muted. I lived life that week in quiet contemplation surrounded by familiarity, the exact opposite experience I was having at the Death Cafe: alone and surrounded by strangers.

After we rejoined the main group, the organizer shared two poems about death with us before concluding the Death Cafe. I felt a sense of peace at having talked about my grandmother to a group of strangers and keeping my memory of her alive. After my grandmother’s death, I was so angry at how she died. The director spoke of a good death and what that means, and my mom, after my grandmother died, had also mentioned that it was a good death. I’ve realized I was upset at the way my grandmother passed and, in a way, of our unfinished conversation. Never saying goodbye and never having that final lunch together.

In the years since my grandmother’s death, I needed to confront my ideas about life, death and everything in between and beyond. I needed the space to talk to people who hadn’t moved on because they didn’t have a starting point to move on from. I found myself opening up to these people and becoming more intimate the further our conversations progressed. After all, how do we talk about death when death is such a taboo topic to talk about?

My grandmother’s presence is still here, in the jewelry and pictures and memories left behind. Attending a Death Cafe provided a space of comfort and allowed me to talk openly and freely about my thoughts and feelings to strangers, and since then, family and friends, about all aspects of death in an open manner. My grandmother’s deathiversary, I’ve come to realize after leaving the Death Cafe, is another day that comes and goes with the passing of time. While my grandmother’s death came as a shock, the ending of her life came, as my mom said, as a mercy to her. A good death to a good person, and these realizations came from open conversations about death.

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