“Final Rights: Reclaiming the American Way of Death” by Joshua Slocum and Lisa Carlson
Joshua Slocum’s and Lisa Carlson’s book, Final Rights: Reclaiming the American Way of Death, is one part in-depth expose of all things deplorable and funeral, and two-parts step by step manual detailing the different states’ laws regulating this shadowy industry, which in some instances are so ill-conceived and ripe for exploitation as to verge on parody. The authors intend to prepare their readers fully for the choices and hazards they will face when dealing with the funeral industry, but this might be an even harder task than they give credit for. After all, how many people go through their daily lives even aware that there is a “funeral industry”?
Until the worst happens, or seems will inevitably happen, price-inflating funeral homes and dishonest burial insurance salesmen remain far and unfortunately removed from the average citizen’s comfort zone. This is perhaps easily forgotten by those as involved in the funeral industry as Slocum and Carlson. The book sometimes suffers from an overly glib tone, employing such phrases as, “It’s time to bury the status quo in an unmarked grave,” and terming mausoleums, buildings in which dead bodies in caskets are entombed, “posthumous high-rises.” One can’t easily imagine a person casually interested, or, even worse, a person anticipating a death, finding this sort of dark humor ingratiating.
That being said, any reader who thought of the funeral industry as a wholesome, semi-religious, semi-legal entity will be instantly and lastingly disillusioned of this notion. From the National Preneed Sales standard training guide (which advises the door-to-door salesman, after gaining entrance to the home, to “move to the kitchen,” and spend about 30 minutes there “developing a relationship that is warm and sincere” before pitching unnecessary and over-priced “burial insurance plans”) to the pricing shell games of standard funeral packages (which often come with a mandatory service charge, which is often arbitrarily marked up to a number of the funeral homes’ choosing), this is an industry that offers works such as these no lack of material.
“…any reader who thought of the funeral industry as a wholesome, semi-religious, semi-legal entity will be instantly and lastingly disillusioned of this notion. “
Final Rights is not the first in this genre. The most famous example is Jessica Mitford’s 1965 book The American Way of Death, which caused a sensation at its release, and largely precipitated the rise of what consumer protection there is now, and increased attention to, and membership in, advocacy groups such as the Funeral Consumers Alliance, of which Joshua Slocum is the Executive Director. This book was revamped and re-released in 1997, with new chapters detailing the FTC’s woeful attempts at regulating this industry, and the rise of a disgustingly exploitative handful of large-scale funeral home chains. Today, the American funeral industry offers an example of an almost stereotypically cutthroat corporate capitalism, an example of what can go wrong in the absence of regulation. The large chains, with innocuous, stock-market-esque names such as Services Corporation International, Stewart Enterprises, and the Loewens Group, are often the worst offenders.
“…the American funeral industry offers an example of an almost stereotypically cutthroat corporate capitalism”
In 2009, investigators discovered that a cemetery in Florida run by SCI was disinterring old graves, stacking the moldering coffins like cords of lumber in one corner of the property in order to make room for new burials. In July of the same year, a state audit found that one of California’s largest prepaid funeral trusts, the California Masters Trust, mis-spent millions of its customers’ dollars that had been set aside for eventual funeral or cremation expenses. Scandals like this erupt with surprising regularity. They are usually quickly forgotten.
Author Josh Slocumb. Credit: Natural Transitions
For many readers, this is a relatively untold story, but as each of us is likely to have to deal with funeral providers at some point in our lives, it is vital knowledge for the general public. Unfortunately, the general public just doesn’t like to think about this sort of thing. Perhaps this explains the vacuum of effective regulation that has allowed such unsavory business practices to flourish.
“Unfortunately, the general public just doesn’t like to think about this sort of thing.”
Slocum and Carlson are not uncomfortable with this subject matter. Most readers, however, will be. This is not exactly the fault of the authors. Our country’s death dialogue, at least what passes for it, is defined by religiosity and squeamishness. Books like Final Rights could contribute to a changing perception, could lead to a new discussion, such as that which followed the publication of The American Way of Death. Mitford knew instinctively that, if she hoped for any number of readers at all, her approach must be calibrated to appeal to their sensibilities, through wry humor and a degree of prologue, an easing into the territory. Joshua Slocum and Lisa Carlson were unable to pull this off. Final Rights contains an undeniable wealth of valuable informative material. Sadly, this reviewer fears that few consumers outside of the death industry are likely ever to read it.
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Three comments, first on humor. I was invited to give a talk at an old folks retirement home on funeral planning some years ago. The woman who invited me was chagrinned that only a few people showed up. I said not to worry at all and did my schtick, with lots of old-folks and funeral jokes including some pretty risque ones. The next day someone called to see if I could come back: Not only had they learned a lot, they’d had a good time, too. At an Agency on Aging workshop, we found people sneaking out of other sessions and into mine because of all the laughter rolling out of the room. It’s for these reasons that I also wrote the book “I Died Laughing: Funeral Education with a Light Touch.” There is a time and place for humor when dealing with funeral issues, surprisingly even at a time of death in some cases. It has a tendency to lighten the tension and remind us that we’re all human. Laughter has a healing quality.
Secondly, the funeral consumer movement began not with Jessica Mitford but back in the 30s after the depression when a radical Unitarian minister in Seattle started the first “memorial society,” sort of a funeral buyer’s coop. Decca, as some of us knew Mitford, often described these groups as “Unitarians, Quakers, egg-heads, and old farts who are nothing more than a middleman for the industry and a cheap funeral.” Yet it was the socially conscious in some of these groups that banded together on a national level to do more than being just a buyer’s club and who began the work for consumer advocacy that brought about the FTC Funeral Rule. Decca was thrilled to see the national FCA office gaining in stature and consumer advocacy while she was working on the second edition of her book. When she died before it was finished, I was asked to pitch in and help, writing two of the chapters.
Lastly, the first incarnation of “Final Rights” was published in 1987, “Caring for Your Own Dead,” 10,000 copies sold. In 1998 came the next edition, “Caring for the Dead: Your Final Act of Love,” with another 10,000 copies sold. While this can’t compete with Harry Potter sales, as the only book on funeral law for consumers state-by-state it’s made a major contribution to the home funeral movement. The Boomer generation is an information generation that took control of critical life events, that wrote their own wedding vows, blended families in new ways, demanded the right to natural childbirth, home schooling and alternative medicine, and the Boomers are creating their own funeral rituals, a logical extension of the hospice ideas. It is the home funeral folks who are eager to get this updated edition. Library Journal gave it a(nother) rave review, so it will surely see some circulation in the general public, as well. Alas, I wish Mr. Polony were right about industry folks reading the book. It is always nice to see the conscientious ones trying to clean things up, embarrassed by the kinds of things Josh and I report. But, given the state of affairs in, say, Louisiana where the funeral board is suing to keep the monks from building and selling caskets, it’s a grim outlook to expect change any time soon, let alone any readership from that direction.
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Lisa, first of all thanks for reading. I do appreciate your feedback. I very much apologize about the slip up where I imply that Mitford’s book caused the founding of the FCA. I meant to say that her book led to more widespread public discussion about funeral industry accountability, and helped to spread the message of the FCA and memorial societies (or their equivalent in the 1960’s) and increase their membership. I’ll make the necessary corrections.
My critique about the humor was my own personal opinion. Of course every one else is entitled to their own.
Again, I think it is a valuable book with a wealth of fantastic information which can’t be found anywhere else, and I do truly hope that it gets the kind of attention that it deserves.
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What a very interesting discussion. As someone who recently wrote a guidebook to funerals in the UK I understand exactly what you are talking about. I adopted an emotionally neutral tone and tried to weed all the jokes out. Some got through, and I am delighted when I am commended on them. For all that, a leading church newspaper described my book as ‘not for the faint-hearted’. When you write about death without being patronisingly presumptuous about how the reader is feeling, folk can tell you that you’re too hard-boiled. I can’t be doing with pussyfooting. This is not a soft-focus area.
You talk of Mitford’s ‘wry humour’. I have always viewed it as typically British aristocratic hilarious mockery. She doesn’t make us smile wryly, she makes us hoot. And splutter. But to me hers is a work of anthropology written by a cultural outsider.
I’ve read Final Rights. I greatly admire the authors, their minds, their skill with words (why, they make em talk) and their humour, which is the real deal because it comes from all the things that humour helps us to cope with, particularly grief and rage. Only serious people can be truly funny and, by jingo, they are. But the humour is not the main event of their book.
I suspect that Ms Carson is right in predicting that iconoclastic boomers are going to read this book. Well, some of them. My own sales tell me that there is little appetite for good books about death. Having said which, the funeral industry in the UK is dully blameless, for the most part, our obsequies bleakly low-key. We have few of your egregious practices and practitioners over here.
This is a very well-written review. And I think Final Rights to be an informative and a toothsome read. I very much hope it will do well. But, as I have already demonstrated, what would I know?
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I constantly spent my half an hour to read this website
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