Mothers of Invention

Mother’s Day arrives this week, and so I start it off with a post dedicated to our lovely mothers of invention.

I will look at three different experiences involving mothers that signify why our national relationship to traditional funeral practices is radically changing. The traditional funeral practice is going away due to its failure to offer peace of mind, instead bringing up painful memories. Mothers are our wonderful emotional caregivers, and by nature they seek to cushion our relationship with death, as best they can. I will begin with a story of my own mother’s reflection on a past funeral experience.

Česky: Madonna English: Madonna (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Years ago my uncle Dick was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. My mom immediately flew to California to be at her sister’s side. Dick lived less than a week following his diagnosis. After he passed away my mom made the funeral arrangements for her sister. Although my aunt is agnostic, she requested that the funeral director say only the Lord’s Prayer because Dick had always liked to say it. My mom relayed these specific instructions to the funeral director; yet at the service, the funeral director proceeded to add his own share of embellished religious thoughts. My mom was very disturbed that he took this liberty and did not follow my aunt’s exact wishes. This stuck in my mind. I pondered why a funeral director would do this to a family – to not abide by their wishes in a time of such extreme difficulty. Additionally, why would the funeral director jeopardize his reputation and future business practice? By having taken such liberty, the funeral director impacted the memories of family members in an inappropriate way.

Next I will visit some celebrities who have spoken out on their funeral experiences. As many people may already be aware, Madonna lost her mother as a child. According to Wikipedia:

Her mother died of breast cancer at the age of 30 in 1963. Madonna later acknowledged that she had not grasped the concept of her mother dying. “There was so much left unsaid, so many untangled and unresolved emotions, of remorse, guilt, loss, anger, confusion … I saw my mother, looking very beautiful and lying as if she were asleep in an open casket. Then I noticed that my mother’s mouth looked funny. It took me some time to realize that it had been sewn up. In that awful moment, I began to understand what I had lost forever. The final image of my mother, at once peaceful yet grotesque, haunts me today also.”

Sadly, Madonna now lives with her final memories of her mother as “grotesque”. Last year, Angelina Jolie was interviewed on “60 Minutes” and gave her thoughts on her own personal funeral experience.

“It sounds like this very strange, eccentric, dark thing to do but in fact I lost my grandfather and was very upset with his funeral,” she told Bob Simon “How somebody passes and how family deals with this passing and what death is should be addressed in a different way.”

Angelina Jolie 2003 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Angelina Jolie is one of the most glamorous and sought after actresses and yet she expressed her interest in being in the funeral industry to change what we know as a “funeral.” Addressing the industry was her fall back plan, had she not become an actress.

These are only three stories of so many I’ve of heard from others. It’s why there’s an ongoing movement towards cremation and natural burial, away from the traditional service of the past. As mothers seek to have good death memories and we seek to have peaceful memories of our mothers, our mothers of invention are indeed reinventing the funeral service as we know it.

Do you have a story to tell?

• Read a son’s story about losing his mother and how funeral practices impacted his memories.

Learn some of the ways we are creating new practices:

• An interview with Joe Sehee, founder of the Green Burial Council, about natural or green burial.
• How cremation in the U.S. has risen and most are scattering ashes.
• How some are having a funeral in their home, called a home funeral.