Tag: After Death

Posted on

An ice cream man died of cancer.

A funeral procession of ice cream trucks honored ‘the king.’

Hassan Dervish, above, was lauded by his brother as a “really honest and hard-working person” for his decades of work as an ice-cream vendor in England.

By Timothy Bella

Savash Turkel was among a small group of family and friends who showed up on a dreary Friday morning in southeast London to bury his brother, Hassan Dervish, an ice cream man for more than 40 years who recently died of cancer.

But something was different about this December funeral procession, Turkel told The Washington Post: The jingles from ice cream trucks, driven by colleagues who knew and admired Dervish, flooded the streets in memory of a 62-year-old man hailed by loved ones as the “king of the ice cream.”

“The first one came and then there was another and then there was another,” said Turkel, 57. “All of a sudden, there were probably 10 ice cream trucks that followed him all the way to the cemetery. There were so many ice cream trucks for my brother.”

The moment with the 10 ice cream trucks was captured in an emotional video posted to Twitter that’s been viewed more than 10 million times as of Saturday afternoon.

“Just witnessed an ice cream man’s funeral and all the ice cream vans came and followed in solidarity,” tweeted Louisa Davies, the woman who posted the viral video. “I AM SOBBING.”

As observers pointed out on social media, the procession for Dervish follows in the tradition of ice cream vendors honoring fallen colleagues at their funerals in the United Kingdom. In February, 10 trucks gathered to celebrate the life of Pasquale Marucci, a popular, Italian-born ice cream man in Hampshire, England, according to the BBC. A similar funeral procession unfolded in July for John Lennie, who served generations of customers in Wimborne Minster, England.

After growing up in Cyprus with a tailor for a father and stay-at-home mother, Dervish emigrated to the U.K. in his early 20s, Turkel said. The brother noted how Dervish, one of four siblings in the family, had always loved ice cream and was curious about what life would be like to bring smiles to so many people.

“He was in the ice cream trade for all of his life,” he said.

After arriving around 1980, Dervish made a good life for himself in southeast London, Turkel said, and later married and had two children. His ice cream dreams had also become a reality, setting up an ice cream factory in the Lewisham neighborhood in the early 2000s.

From the time he started serving ice cream in the area, Dervish wanted to not just be a friendly face with sweet treats but also someone who gave back to his family and friends, his brother told The Post.

“He was passionate about the work he was doing. He was always helping out all his friends. He helped them all out,” Turkel said. “That’s why so many people loved him. My brother was a really honest and hard-working person.”

His health, however, took a turn for the worse around 2019, after he was diagnosed with a cancer that weakened him tremendously, Turkel said.

“The last two years, he was suffering,” his brother recalled. “He was taking all the treatments and everything.”

Dervish died on Nov. 12, his brother said, after fighting Stage 4 cancer that had “spread all throughout his body.”

“He couldn’t survive it, unfortunately,” Turkel told The Post.

When the funeral was scheduled more than a month later, coronavirus safety restrictions limited the number of people who could come for the Friday ceremony, the brother said.

That’s when the jingles from the ice cream trucks — Mr. Softee, Akan’s Soft Ice Cream, Mister Creamy — became the soundtrack for Dervish’s funeral.

Even though not as many people were at the funeral because of safety precautions, the presence of the ice cream vendor community at the procession left Turkel speechless.

“What can I say?” he said. “All of his friends, they came to pay their last respects to him.”

Videos of the funeral procession have gotten a huge reaction on social media, with many people admiring the sadness and beauty of the tribute. Davies, whose video has reached millions, tweeted that any money made off the video would be donated to a charity of Dervish’s family’s choice.

Ismail Mehmet, who said he was at Dervish’s funeral, captured a video of the ice cream trucks as they pulled into the cemetery.

“I’m amazed how much of an impact it has had to the area,” Mehmet wrote.

Turkel said that while his brother’s family and friends are emotionally exhausted and overwhelmed by the millions who’ve responded to the sweet procession, they are grateful that many more can see how Dervish was “a friend to everyone.”

“He touched so many hearts in so many ways,” Turkel said. “It makes me so proud of him.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

Body farms, human composting, conservation cemeteries: Why I wanted to create a better plan for my end-of-life directive

Leaving a legacy that ensures a sustainable earth for our loved ones and our communities.

By Mallory McDuff

When I was in middle school, my father built a prototype of a pine casket, which fit in the palm of his hand, the wood sanded smooth to the touch. My mother kept her jewelry in the box, which sat on her dresser for years.

“My funeral should be a celebration of life, and I’d like to be buried without embalming or a concrete vault,” my dad told us. “I hope to build my own casket like this before I die.”

At the time, his plans for death felt like background noise, the idiosyncrasies of a parent in a teenager’s eyes.

Then, in my late 30s, my parents died in mirror-image cycling accidents, hit by teen drivers on rural Alabama roads, two years apart. My three siblings and I managed to fulfill my father’s wishes, which gave us a way forward through our shock and then grief.

Fast forward to my 50s, with teenagers of my own: I’d been invited to share the story of my father’s green burial at a conference to help others plan ahead for their own deaths. I looked out at 100 people gathered in the parish hall of my Episcopal church, the Cathedral of All Souls, in Asheville, N.C.

Yet the conference soon revealed I had work of my own to do on this very topic of life and death.

During a session about end-of-life directives, a close friend whispered to me, “I need to revise my will since my ex is still in it!”

My final wishes didn’t align with my values

I hadn’t looked at my final documents since I’d drafted them 10 years earlier, after my own divorce and my parents’ passing. As the workshops and breakout groups proceeded, my face became flushed: I’d chosen cremation for its affordability and convenience — as straightforward as calling in and picking up a prescription.

My final wishes didn’t align with my values as an environmental educator or the example my father had given me.

One of the presentations focused on home funerals, keeping a vigil for the deceased at home, rather than taking the body directly to a mortuary.

Discovering a conservation cemetery

“No state law requires embalming,” Yongue said. “And it’s legal to transport a body in your car.”

She shared heartbreaking, but intimate, images of a teenage girl in a white dress helping carry the shrouded body of her mother to the gravesite at Carolina Memorial Sanctuary, a conservation cemetery which Younge founded that protects the land in perpetuity through conservation easements.

I’d walked the land at this burial ground, which felt like strolling in a wooded preserve, rather than a manicured lawn, as the graves are surrounded by native grasses, trees and shrubs.

I turned to the friend next to me. Our oldest daughters, now in college, had gone to preschool together. Her eyes, much like mine, were filled with tears.

During my session, I described how my father discovered that his neighborhood cemetery in Fairhope, Ala., didn’t require a concrete vault in the grave. One month after my mother was killed, my dad read to us a two-page typed document outlining details for his future funeral — like his bluegrass band at the burial and plenty of shovels so that young and old could close the grave.

He was in the best shape of his life, but wanted us to have a plan. When he was killed two years later (despite biking with a fluorescent vest and reflective lights on the shoulder of the road), we followed his wishes for a burial that restored, rather than degraded, the Earth.

“My sister and I are likely the only graduates of Fairhope High School who’ve prepared our father’s body for burial in the refrigerated room of the local funeral home,” I told the audience.

My dad’s body had been transferred to the coroner’s office and then the mortuary. Yet the funeral home director agreed to let us wrap him in my mother’s linens, according to his plan, and place his body in a handcrafted pine casket, constructed by a friend who pulled an all-nighter for the job.

Providing a plan for my final wishes

After listening to the other speakers at the conference, I wanted to provide the same type of plan for my two daughters, 22 and 15, who seemed more comfortable with emergency-room resuscitations on “Grey’s Anatomy” than talking about our own mortality. But as a single mom, I knew this journey would need to include them both, even if they weren’t ready to fully listen.

When I returned home that night, I opened the file cabinet in my bedroom and took out the folder containing my will, cremation directive and advance care directive. My final wishes for cremation didn’t seem to fit me in my 50s, given my children’s uncertain future in a climate emergency.

I’d completely forgotten my instructions for a party after my funeral with beer and barbecue from Okie Dokie’s Smokehouse, a restaurant I loved when my young children needed a quick dinner on a school night. (Per the menu, it offered “swine dining.”)

Since the conference, I’d learned about alternatives to burning fossil fuels to cremate a body into pulverized bones and ashes. While more than 50% of people in the U.S. opt for flame cremation, I’d heard about aquamation—also called alkaline hydrolysis—that uses water and lye to dissolve a body, rather than fossil fuels, and is legal in 20 states.

I’d also read about a “body farm” only an hour away at Western Carolina University, where you could donate your body to contribute to research on decomposition without the embalming required by medical science. The research at this body farm had contributed to the innovative process called human composting, which transforms a body into nutrient-rich soil, now legal in Washington state and Colorado. I wanted to know more.

That night, I decided to embark on a one-year journey to revise my final wishes with climate and community in mind. My directives for my body would have to be affordable and acceptable to my daughters.

During the year, I’d end up discovering a cemetery on the college campus where I live, attending home funerals, interviewing end-of-life doulas, volunteering as a parking attendant at the conservation cemetery and talking to my daughters about the end of our lives, just as my father did with me. My book, “Our Last Best Act: Planning for the End of Our Lives to Protect the People and Places We Love,” tells of that yearlong research.

When I told my youngest about the possibility of a home vigil after I died, she was not amused. “I will sleep in a Motel 6 if that happens,” she said. “I can pay for it myself!”

In that moment, I saw myself — a teenager rolling my eyes as my father handed me a smooth pine casket to hold in my palm — not knowing what tools I’d need to equip me for the years ahead.

I didn’t anticipate my parents’ deaths or the climate crisis we now face. But I have learned from this search that final wishes are an individual decision, a family decision and an ecological decision, with personal stakes affecting both climate and community.

It’s not a metaphor to say we are all one body on this planet. As my father said, “I want a funeral that involves my family and my friends without harm to the Earth.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

Apple now lets you pick someone to inherit your data when you die

by

A feature included in Apple’s latest iPhone update is something you probably don’t want to think about: who gets access to your phone if (or should we say when?) you die.

The change to Apple’s “Digital Legacy” feature is included in iOS 15.2. Now, you can designate contacts who will have access to your accounts when you pass away.

Those loved ones will have access to your photos, text messages, notes, apps and more. Certain things like payment information and passwords won’t be accessible, says Apple.

You can designate up to five loved ones as legacy contacts. You’ll be given an access code that you should put with the rest of your estate planning information. Eventually, one of your legacy contacts can present that access code and a death certificate to Apple to obtain access to your accounts.

Legacy contacts verified by the company will have access to the account for three years. At that time, the account will be permanently deleted, Apple says.

Here’s how to designate a legacy contact:

  1. Go to Settings on your iPhone and click your name at the top.
  2. Tap “Password & Security,” then “Legacy Contact.”
  3. Designate up to five contacts as legacy contacts.
  4. Print and save the access code. Your contacts will need this and your death certificate to gain access.

Apple has more information about how to request access to a deceased loved one’s account here.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

Why I Decided To Have A Wake For My Dog

“I hated the idea of saying goodbye to our beloved shelter pup in a sterile exam room — she despised vet visits.”

by

The end was near.

In her final weeks and months, our old dog, Daisy, had trouble with her legs, struggling painfully to stand up or lay down and occasionally getting her front feet tangled. The vet theorized that she had a tumor on her spinal column, but at her age (16 or so) surgery was too dangerous.

The focus turned to comfort care and the looming question of when.

Then Daisy — always a bit of a neat freak — started losing control of her bowels and bladder. Her hip and leg pain seemed to be worsening. Eyesight and hearing were going. It was clear that she was suffering.

I hated the idea of saying goodbye to our beloved shelter pup in a sterile exam room — she despised vet visits. I also didn’t want to leave her body with strangers, albeit kind ones. After seeing our family through 14 years of good and bad times, I felt a duty to honor Daisy by caring for her body myself.

We booked a home euthanasia appointment with a licensed vet. I started poking around the internet for information on postmortem care.

When the day came, the vet was wonderfully calm and kind. Daisy laid on a cherished blanket taken from my late father-in-law’s house. It was a beautiful day, the March sun melting a recent snowfall, birds chattering in the trees.

She passed so quietly. I’d given myself permission to let it all out, so once the vet confirmed she was gone, I held her and wailed.

Then the work began. It was hard. It was scary. It was terribly sad. But I also felt like I did right by our beautiful friend.

If you have an animal companion you’d like to honor with a wake of your own, here are a few tips I can pass along.

Learn About The Euthanasia Process

The basic order of events is basically the same, whether at home or at the vet clinic. The vet administers a sedative that puts the pet into a deep sleep. Once they’re out, another drug is injected that stops the animal’s heart. And that’s it.

It costs more to have the vet make a house call, but it was totally worth it for us. Daisy fell asleep with the taste of steak in her mouth and with my husband and me at her side. We petted her and whispered in her enormous ears the whole time. Her breathing quickened a bit after the fatal drug went in, then it slowed, then it stopped.

Talk It Over With The Family

We have two kids, ages 4 and 8, who’ve never experienced a loved one’s demise. They knew Daisy was old and would probably die soon, so we explained a couple of weeks prior that the visiting vet would speed her transition to prevent further suffering.

From there, I let them decide how — and if — they wanted to participate. My 8-year-old son preferred to stay out of it. My 4-year-old didn’t want to attend the procedure (a relief), but she helped decorate Daisy’s body with flowers afterward, and gently petted and kissed her as we sat with her that afternoon.

Not everybody wants to get this close-up to death, and that is absolutely understandable.

Get Childcare If You Can

I was fortunate my mom and sister were available to help out that day. We didn’t have to worry about what the kids were up to while we said goodbye, and I think having some extra family at home was a comfort for everyone.

If the kids will be around, consider scheduling the euthanasia appointment for later in the day — that way bedtime won’t be too far off and you can (hopefully) have some space to grieve.

It Won’t Be Gross

There’s a misconception that dead bodies are instantly grotesque, all leaking fluids and lolling tongues. Not true. The body still looks like your loved one. Fur is soft. Ears are floppy. The body stays warm for a while.

The only slightly yucky thing that happened: When my husband hoisted Daisy up to move her body, a little pee dribbled out. Nothing we hadn’t seen before.

You Have Time

After your pet passes, there’s no need to rush. Rigor mortis — the phase of death that causes tissues to stiffen —  takes two to three hours to set in. You have that time to hold your dearly departed, cry, snuggle, say a prayer, whatever you want.

Keep Ice On Hand

Ice keeps the body cool, staving off the beginnings of decomposition. We filled an old plastic baby pool with bags of ice, covered that with a tarp, then put a blanket on top for a cozier look. Daisy laid on the blanket, appearing to be in a deep slumber.

It helped that it was cold in the garage, too — warmer temps require replacing ice as it melts.

Plan For Your Needs

Once the novelty of having a dead dog in the garage wore off, our kids were back to their usual snacking requests.

I hadn’t thought much about the, uh, catering, so I was left trying to arrange meals for people between bouts of tears. Have frozen stuff ready to go, get something delivered, whatever works — just make the plan in advance so you’re not trying to create menus while in the throes of new grief.

Go Easy On Yourself

There’s no wrong way to do any of this. If the idea of an at-home dog wake is bizarre to you, that is totally fine. If some parts sound nice, but others don’t? Also fine. The key is to lock into what works for your family and go from there.

Daisy’s home wake felt like the grieving equivalent of ripping off a Band-Aid. I cried more, and harder, in those 24 hours than perhaps I ever had. But it also helped me, on some primitive level, truly accept her loss.

Taking care of her on her last journey took a little of the sting out of it all. She had a good life — and a good death.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

Finding someone to handle your end-of-life, after-death affairs when you have no friends or relatives

Without friends or family, you’ll need to find support. And you may need two different kinds of help, because you could potentially have a situation where you need one type of assistance while you are alive and another after you have died.

By Ilyce Glink and Samuel J. Tamkin

Q: I was wondering if you can help me. I thought you may know of a business firm, not an attorney or health-care provider, that can act as my “end-of-life-agent.” I want to be prepared as I have no family to ask or friends young enough that I would trust. My attorney says that he can draw up trust documents, but he can’t be my “end-of-life” agent.

It seems that no attorney can (be my end-of-life agent) due to it being against their liability insurance. So, what I’m looking for is a business person who can read my end-of-life wishes and carry them out. I need someone who agrees by contract to carry out my specific written wishes. Of course, when that is needed, they will be compensated for this in my estate. Do you have any suggestions?

A: There are two parts to your question. First, you may face end-of-life decisions while you are alive, which may pertain to your health or financial matters. Second, you have decisions to make now as to what happens to your estate once you have passed on and who will carry out those wishes.

While you are alive, we can understand how your attorney would see a conflict in making health-care decisions for you or even deciding when to tell the doctors that they should no longer provide medical assistance. In this situation, your attorney would like to know that you have chosen a friend or relative to make those decisions.

We’ll start by saying that most estate attorneys would advise you to have a last will and testament, a power of attorney for health care, a power of attorney for financial matters, and a living will.

The last will and testament lets people know how you wish to distribute your money and personal property after your death. The power of attorney for health care lets a family member or friend make decisions about your health care, if you cannot, and work with your doctors to carry out your wishes regarding your health.

The power of attorney for financial matters allows someone other than you to attend to your finances, including paying bills, selling assets and taking care of your financial affairs when you are incapacitated. Finally, a living will is a document that lets the medical community know your wishes as to what medical treatments should be given to you to keep you alive and when to stop any treatment.

If you can’t find a friend or family member to help you with your health care and financial matters if you become incapacitated, your attorneys won’t want to draft those documents and also name themselves in those same documents. Family and friends are key parts of our lives, but some people either don’t have family or the kind of friends they wish to ask this of (it can be a significant ask, depending on what happens) and prefer to have a neutral party handle their affairs when they either become incapacitated or they are at the end of life but have not yet passed away.

These sorts of decisions about when to stop lifesaving medical treatment (even if you have a living will) are emotionally fraught. You want someone to be able to separate emotions from making a tough call, who will be willing and able to carry out your final wishes while you are alive: decisions about your health care, your living situation, and managing financial affairs.

Without friends or family, you’ll need to find support. And you may need two different kinds of help, because you could potentially have a situation where you need one type of assistance while you are alive and another after you have died.

While you are alive, you can still set up a living will. You can deliver a copy of that living will to your personal physician or primary care person. They, in turn, can deliver a copy of the document to a hospital if something happens and you wind up there. You don’t need to appoint anybody on a living will. You just have to make it readily available. Can your local hospitals keep it attached electronically to your file? Perhaps. What happens if you are traveling abroad and you need to go to that hospital? In that case, you might need to carry a copy in your wallet or with your passport.

If you become incapacitated for a longer period of time, you will need someone to step in and handle your financial affairs. While your attorneys can’t help you, they may be able to recommend a different attorney, accountant, financial planner or financial adviser who could assist you. Take care, because this individual (or firm) will control your money when you can’t, and you take a big risk if you don’t know who they are and haven’t thoroughly vetted them.

You should know, once you have passed away, there are companies that can help you with estate issues and assist your estate, such as estate settlement and wealth transfer advisers. For example, if you set up a trust, they can act as the successor trustee and proceed to follow your wishes relating to your estate plan after you die.

Trust companies are also set up to perform the services you’re asking for. These companies usually work with high or higher net worth people. If you fall into that category, you can call on them to help you out.

You won’t have to deal with a particular person, as the company will act as your trustee and whoever is assigned to your estate when you die would work to follow your estate plan. They can be expensive, but perhaps this sort of solution would work. We don’t make specific recommendations, but you can look for a bank or other financial institution in your area that has a trust and estate services department. You can talk to them and see if it’s right for you.

Having said that, if you don’t want to or can’t spend the kind of money that some of these companies charge, you may find an estate planning firm that can work with you in taking care of your estate and follow your wishes after you have passed.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

New ‘green’ burial option turns humans into fertiliser in just a month

Popular Youtube channel, Ask A Mortician, went behind the scenes to find out how one company is turning corpses into compost

By Emily Sleight

It’s a well-known fact that conventional burials and cremation can have high environmental costs.

‘Green burials’, which is where the body is put directly into the soil with just a shroud, could be seen as the ideal solution.

But with land at a premium in highly populated areas, green burial cemeteries aren’t always the first choice and that’s where ‘human composting’ comes in.

In her YouTube video, Caitlin Doughty (also known as Ask A Mortician) discusses the process, which is a practice many farmers have been doing with livestock for decades.

In 2015, the first donor bodies were composted in prototype studies at the department of forensic anthropology at Western Carolina University.

Now, the process is a lot more established. Caitlin’s friend, Kristina, is the founder of Recompose – a public-benefit corporation offering a natural alternative to burials. It is where Caitlin volunteers to explain what happens during composting.

In the video, Ask A Mortician places herself in a ‘vessel’ where she is covered with greenery with her favourite music playing in the background.

It is explained that families often bring clippings from their own garden, and are fascinated by the process itself, likening it to a ‘melding of science and spirituality’.

The composting ‘ritual’ involves laying wood chips and plants on top of the body with the belief that the body is ‘taking a new place in the carbon cycle.’

Next, the body is loaded into the vessels where microbes break it down in about a month.

When talking about the vessels themselves, Caitlin describes them as looking “kind of like a Japanese capsule hotel.”

She added: ”You’re actually probably pretty warm and cosy, comfortable, and with plenty of air.

“We have these microbes on us right now, but the only thing that makes them work on your body is if you’re dead.”

In a nutshell, the body is covered with wood chips and straw for 30 days to really get the microbes working, and eventually, you become soil.

Don’t worry though, if there are still a few bones after the 30 day period, they will be placed into a cremator.

The soil is then allowed to cure before it can be used in gardens, forests or conservation lands.

Of course, the soil is tested to ensure it meets the requirements, and families can take some of the soil home and donate the rest if they’d prefer.

And if you’re wondering how much an average person makes of soil, it’s around two wheelbarrows worth.

In the video, Caitlin even visits a compost heap of 28 people. The impressive mound was eventually donated to Bells Mountain conservation forest.

Washington has recently become the first US state to legalise human composting and UK funeral directors are also seeing a surge in requests for green burials and sustainable alternatives to burial and cremation.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

We Need to Talk about Mortuary Makeup

Societal beauty standards follow us to the grave.

By

It’s impossible to aestheticize death, but we still try. Shortly before the pandemic reached lockdown level last year, my 101-year-old grandmother died. When my mom proposed that I help her dress the body for the viewing, I obliged despite the fact that I creep out with ease. My grandmother was such a central figure in my life and I wanted a more private opportunity to say goodbye.

The experience fulfilled that expectation, but it also taught me that the process of prepping a body for burial is a vivid reflection of our relationship with societal beauty standards—an interminable dance that continues even after we die.

When we arrived at the funeral home the day before the viewing, the staircase leading us to the room where her body was kept felt like it spanned miles. What if she suddenly reanimates? If I tugged on a limb too hard, would it detach from the rest of her body? Once we got started, my anxieties were assuaged but my curiosity piqued. I knew that mortuary makeup was a common practice, but I didn’t anticipate how thorough the grooming would be; her skin had to look supple, her cheekbones had to look lifted and her complexion had to appear even and, at minimum, rosy-adjacent, given the circumstances.

The most shocking sight, though, was seeing the funeral director stuff my grandmother’s bra. After eight children and 101 years, the jig on perky breasts had long been up. So, what was the reason?

“I don’t know how I feel about stuffing bras, but it’s definitely something that embalmers do,” says L.A.-based funeral director Amber Carvaly. “It’s very commonplace and the idea is that people will look different laying down. But they’ll obviously look different because they’re dead and they’re lying in a casket.”

In a 2018 episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Carvaly gave Kim Kardashian—who is, by many standards, an archetype of the eternal fascination with youth and beauty—a step-by-step on mortuary makeup. To elucidate the idea behind the practice to me, Carvaly compared it to the philosophy behind Kardashian’s controversial Balenciaga Met Gala look. Basically, we each have distinct signatures that we like to be known by while we’re alive and ideally, these become the attributes that we’re remembered by after we’re gone. Which means that it’s never ideal for a dead person to actually look dead.

“Kim’s image and who she is and what she looks like is so iconic that you don’t even have to see her face or an article of clothing. She can just be draped in black and you know exactly who she is. Like that’s her brand and her icon.”

In the funeral industry, this would be likened to a “memory picture”, a term Carvaly introduced me to during our chat. In essence, it refers to the lasting image of a decedent that’s ingrained in the minds of their loved ones. “It’s a memory of who they used to be,” she explains.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to liken our desire to make the dead look life-like to the ongoing obsession with looking younger, or to attribute the latter to a society-wide fear of dying. This is something that can’t be color-corrected, concealed, or glossed over.

“We are obsessed with image as society and as individuals,” Carvaly says. “But this idea is implanted while we’re alive. As women, we’re so obsessed with anti-aging and it sort of emerges from a fear of death.” Carvaly says that this even shows itself in how beauty trends evolve. “They change to keep us looking younger and if you wear a trend that’s from the past, it dates you,” she says.

We want the memory picture to capture our loved ones at their best, so the measures that we go to to bring corpses to a perceived standard are just symptoms of the widespread idea that younger is always better.

“We’re a death-denying society,” Carvaly adds. “We don’t like to talk about it, we don’t like to accept it, we don’t like to look at dead bodies because all of it just reminds us of our own mortality. We do so much of that while we’re alive, so of course it carries into death. We don’t even want to look at old ladies on screen—we only want to see people when they’re young and beautiful.”

But while this is a reflection of Western culture’s image-conscious underbelly, the process itself was therapeutic for me. My grandmother died overnight and I slept through my mom’s calls and texts to come to the hospital. Helping to dress her felt like an atonement for not being there, beckoning back to times when I would paint her nails, help to pick her church hats, or watch her apply baby powder with a glamorous, fluffy powder puff. It’s how I cared for her and how she cared for herself. “I think that from a standpoint of beauty as a ritual and beauty as a way to care for people, it’s something different. It’s grooming as a form of love instead of beautification to suit industry standards,” Carvaly tells me.

When Carvaly’s friend Maria passed away, applying makeup to her corpse was a way of honoring how she liked to be seen; while she was alive she was seldom seen without a red lip. “If someone had been like, ‘Don’t put lipstick on her!’ or, ‘She’s dead. Don’t glam her up,’ she would have haunted us,” Carvaly recalls.

Both my experience and the concept itself are multifaceted: I was comforted by the ritual, but alarmed at the extent to which it was practiced. We beautify the dead mostly with the living in mind: to filter the intensity of seeing a corpse, to create a comforting pre-funeral ritual, and to pacify the most pressing reminders of our own mortality. But our discomfort with aging and death is tampering with how we live, and that’s something that no amount of makeup can mask.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!