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Emily Post Eliminates a Funeral Tradition

Friday, November 27th, 2009

U.S. President Herbert Hoover and film star Mary Pickford in 1931.

U.S. President Herbert Hoover and film star Mary Pickford in 1931.

Recently, I wrote about Emily Post’s thoughts on funeral flowers. But, she devoted a whole chapter to funerals in her 1939 book, Etiquette. On this go-round, you’ll learn how Ms. Post viewed mourning, how she dispelled the “sitting up” tradition, and how she viewed servants who would not help during a time of need.

First, it was required that the affected family have “women friends” who followed similar taste and fashion. They could be relied upon to poke through a closet to find appropriate black dresses for the female mourners in the house. That friend also would make a list of any other items, such as gloves, that “will have to be procured.” All dressmaking establishments at the time must have been very competitive, as Ms. Post stated that they provide precedence to mourning orders and “will execute a commission within twenty-four hours.”

Additionally, clothing stores at the time would send a selection of clothes to a house on approval (this is providing that the house was firmly established in the neighborhood). With that said, Ms. Post does state that lending mourning materials, such as veils and wraps, is appropriate so that clothing that needed to be purchased could be kept to a minimum.

As for men, she writes:

As men’s clothes are standardized, most men can go to a clothier and buy a ready-made black suit. Otherwise they borrow one from a friend or wear what they have with a black band put on the left sleeve.

The tradition of “sitting up” with the deceased was popular before the practice of using embalming and funeral homes. Ms. Post stated that – by 1939 – this practice no longer was necessary unless the deceased “be a prelate or personage whose lying-in-state is a public ceremony, or unless it is the particular wish of the relatives.” She also stated the following, which may have been some relief for families who were not wealthy:

Nor is the soulless body dressed in elaborate trappings of farewell grandeur. Everything is done to avoid unnecessary evidence of the change that has taken place. In case of a very small funeral the person who has passed away is sometimes left lying in bed in night clothes, or on a sofa in a wrapper, with flowers, but no set pieces, about the room, so that an invalid or other sensitive bereft one may say farewell without ever seeing the all too definite finality of a casket. In any event the last attentions are paid in accordance with the wish of those most nearly concerned.

The above explanation could answer the question previously asked about how to get a casket through the door of a home in the article, Notes on the Old-Fashioned Home Funeral. If no casket was required, then the door would not be an issue. Remember, also, that she wrote this book first just as the Great Depression hit and the last edition was rendered immediately before World War II. During that entire decade, even the wealthy watched their pennies. Death’s pomp took second place, perhaps, behind groceries for the living.

Yet, Ms. Post felt the need to talk about servants and their duties during mourning. Although she began this section kindly, with a note that “kindness of heart is latent in all of us, and servants, even if they have not been long with a family, rise to such an emergency as a funeral,” at the end of this section, she wrote:

Family and intimate friends occupy all available accommodations, but it is a rare household which does not give sympathy as generously below stars as above; and a servant who did not willingly and helpfully assume a just share of the temporary tax on energy, time and consideration would be thought very heartless by the others.

Although I have not read this entire chapter about funerals in full detail, I have glanced through it. Not once — at least not yet — have I seen Ms. Post write about how to conduct oneself during a funeral for a servant. That said, Etiquette offers details on how the end of life was observed almost seven decades ago in this country. It is a perspective that is both curious and amusing in some details, as most citizens today are far removed from that lifestyle. At the same time, her work shows how outward details may have provided a hint of denial about death itself.

To get a grip on what 1930 might have looked like in regards to fashion, visit the Fashion in 1931 page at Wikipedia.

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Debate Continues over Shanidar Cave Burial Flowers

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
A view of Shanidar Cave

A view of Shanidar Cave

Between 1957 and 1961, Ralph Solecki and an archeology team from Columbia University discovered the first adult Neanderthal skeletons in Iraq. Known as the Shanidar Cave site, the two most famous skeletons include Shanidar I, an elderly male aged between 40-50 years, and Shanidar IV, otherwise known as the “flower burial.” It was once thought that Shanidar IV provided the best evidence for Neanderthal burial ritual, but debate continues over the evidence of flowers found at this site.

Shanidar IV was an adult male between 30-45 years, and found in a fetal position. The team gathered routine soil samples to analyze the vegetational history of the site, and clumps of pollen outside the normal range of pollen were found from those soil samples. Originally, scholars believed that flowers were used in a burial ritual, as the samples yielded plants that contained medicinal properties.

Some of the site samples included: Yarrow, Cornflower, Bachelor’s Button, St. Barnaby’s Thistle, Ragwort or Groundsel, Grape Hyacinth, Joint Pine or Woody Horsetail and Hollyhock. These plants are known among many as having curative powers as diuretics, stimulants, astringents and anti-inflammatory properties. This knowledge led to the belief that Shanidar IV might have had shamanic powers or that he was a medicine man, since no other burial site contained this pollen.

Since that time, more scholars have analyzed the Shanidar site and its resulting hypotheses and have offered some debate over earlier conclusions. One such argument centered on the introduction of pollen by native rodents. The Persian Jird is known to store seeds and flowers, so the site might have had natural and not cultural orgins.

Timothy Taylor, in his book, The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death (pgs 32-33), wrote:

The ‘grave of flowers’ was one of a number of remarkable finds at Shanidar. Among nine skeletons recovered was one of an adult who had sustained crippling injuries and who could not have survived without the constant attention of a close-knit community. In Shanidar: The First Flower People, published in 1971, Ralph Solecki argued not only that his Neanderthals had a kind of spirituality, but that they had belonged to a peaceful, loving society, hwere even the disabled wree valued. Solecki provocatively implied that Neanderthals were morally superior to us – or at least to those modern humans who were at that time leading the United States in its bloody losing battle over Vietnam.

Taylor also stated that even Solecki admitted that the ‘burials’ were not clear-cut, as the bones were discovered in an area where many people were killed by cave-ins or roof-falls. The absence of obvious grave goods other than the pollen at many sites, including Shanidar, opens the possibility that the excavated skeletons – many of which were incomplete – “were no more than the result of random preservation following accidental death.”

Scholars study burial habits to learn more about a culture, as scholars often believe that burials point to spirituality, which – in turn – might point to a more intelligent population. However, as Taylor argues in his book, burials sometimes do not point to spirituality or even to humane situations.

With that said, flowers have become a ritual for modern burials in many cultures. But, seldom do you see herbal plants in funeral flower arrangements. Perhaps by adding the Shanidar plants listed above to your next funeral arrangement, you can alter history – or, at least encourage debate among future scholars.

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Historical Burial Traditions: Bahamian Burials III

Saturday, October 17th, 2009
Nassau cemetery with a mix of memorials and transient grave sites.

Nassau cemetery with a mix of memorials and transient grave sites.

In the first blog entry about Bahamian burials, you may have learned that there was a distinction among social classes and between races in life as well as in death in the Bahamas. In the second article, you may have witnessed how both Europeans and Africans influenced each other in the types of memorials reserved for the dead and the designation of a burial as permanent or transient. This article, the last in the series, shows how class defined the Bahamian burial; however, cultural influences also shaped the Bahamian burial scene.

Many Europeans who served in the military or who stayed on the Bahamas’ islands after the American Revolution often purchased gravestones from England or Europe. The marble and granite stones that you might see in Nassau or on Paradise island represent wealthier Europeans who had the means to afford these stones. Even today, in less populated Bahamian islands such as San Salvador, you may find machine-carved polished granite stones. But, these stones were delivered to the island, just like Christmas trees, beer and any other commodity consumed on that latter island.

More commonly, you can find a mix of grave styles within Nassau’s cemeteries as shown in the image below:

A mix of social class and culture in this cemetery.

A mix of social class and culture in this cemetery.

In the image immediately above, taken in Nassau, you can see a polished granite stone, a hand-carved headstone and a pile of carved limestone rocks in the far right background. All three are graves, and the least permanent grave site is the one surrounded and covered by the limestone blocks. The cement borders designate the difficult-to-dig grave sites, and many of them do not contain headstones. A simple pine box lies just feet under the earth.

But, what you cannot see in this image are objects left on many graves. In San Salvador, a custom of leaving plates, vessels, bottles and other objects is more common than in Nassau, but those objects can be found at almost any cemetery or grave site, no matter whether its in a church yard or on town property.

James Deetz writes in his book, In Small Things Forgotten:

…there is a clear pattern in the types of objects used by African Americans to decorate graves. Bottles and jars predominate, sometimes broken in such a way that they appear to be whole. This was often accomplished by breaking a hole in the bottom, invisible when the object is set upright on the grave. Such breakage could be seen to be done to prevent theft, but [John} Vlach cites extensive evidence that such is not the case, since the community will not disturb grave offerings, even coins, as a result of customs which had their origin in the African past. Similar grave ornamentation is known from all West and Central Africa, where, as in America, graves and their decorations are seen as inviolate, not to be stolen from.

A quick look at graves in a more remote grave yard on San Salvador Island shows little of this African influence. But, if you sit for a while and concentrate, you can begin to see a shard of glass here, a nail there, a small vase and a shell there. After a while, you might begin to see entire plate sets, bottles and a series of glassware set along the barriers that mark the grave site. Some of these same objects are found in African-American grave sites throughout the southern U.S.

While many scholars have put forth theories about these symbols, only one may make sense – that of the slave who wants to return home and who finds that way home after death. Many death rituals, symbols and stories about death that have emerged from slavery centers on a watery symbolism. But, it is a dangerous thing to assume a belief system. For instance, in one headline in a story about a Bahamian grave site found recently in Miami, the writer asks, “Graves without grievers?” Some people may be confounded about how a cemetery filled with dozens of people in the early twentieth century could go undocumented and unnoticed.

Without understanding a culture, it may be difficult to understand that, at times, it can be easy to walk away from a cemetery. And, as an African American in this country, until recently, it could be very easy to die without documentation. Part of the reason for this ability to hide after death is found in the way European and American cultures clung to the slave culture over the centuries. Another reason is found in the African culture itself, one that may want to keep some personal points private. Deetz points to a William Faulkner quote in Faulkner’s book, Go Down, Moses, that might sum up the issue:

“…the grave, save for its rawness, resembled any other marked off without order about the barren plot by shards of pottery and broken bottles and old brick and other objects insignificant to sight but actually of a profound meaning and fatal to touch, which no white man could have read.”

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Historic Funeral Traditions: Bahamian Burials II

Saturday, October 17th, 2009
Bahamian vault graves on San Salvador Island

Bahamian vault graves on San Salvador Island

Are you appalled by the idea that a family or community might re-use grave sites as mentioned in the previous Bahamian burial article? Or, perhaps the condition of the Bahamian cemeteries and grave sites might disturb you. If so, pick up the book, In Small Things Forgotten, by James Deetz to learn more about earlier American burials. On page 23, Deetz states:

“…it is not unusual to find single stones, from earlier in the eighteenth century, that mark the resting places of husband and wife as well as children. Group interment of this type is typical of earlier periods, and the contemporary concept of the churchyard was consistent with such a practice. Registers of churchyards invariably list far more interments than there are stones to account for them. Not everyone received a gravestone in the earlier periods, but unless we are able to conduct excavations in these cemeteries, the exact relationship between the numbers and groupings of the deceased and the markers in the cemetery will remain unknown. What is known is that the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century concept of a burying ground was that of a finite space that would hold all the deceased members of a parish regardless of how congested the space became. Diarists of the period mention bets of bone and teeth seen in the earth excavated for a new grave…”

The Bahamas presents such a burial environment, one that was reinforced after the American Revolution and continued even today. In earlier processes, however, graves also reflected the European tradition of memorial, and in many churches throughout Nassau, you can find memorials along a church’s inner walls and even along walkways:

Memorial plaques to the dead along a church wall.

Memorial plaques to the dead along a church wall.

An old stone embedded in a church walkway.

An old stone embedded in a church walkway.

Many of these memorial plaques represent the deaths of military men who were embedded in the Bahamas during and after the Revolution. Although at least one plaque is dedicated to a man lost at sea, many more memorials are dedicated to those who came to the islands and who lost their lives to diseases such as yellow fever.

Like memorial plaques, the vaults shown at the top of the page are part of what could be a resistance to the transient grave site in the islands. These two vaults are created from cement, and they resist any attempt to re-use the graves, unlike the temptation to reuse graves made more available by identifiable concrete borders and piles of rock. The islands, however, can support only so many graves of a permanent nature because of space limitations. You can find many graves throughout the southern U.S. like the ones shown at the top of the page. These types of graves are particular to African-American church cemeteries.

Once you visualize the church formality with the memorials shown above for Europeans who died in the Bahamas, the African influence seen in Nassau’s graveyards seems to bend to that European memorial influence in a more basic way:

Broken stones lean against a church wall.

Broken stones lean against a church wall.

The stones above may have been removed to re-use a grave. Showing deterioration, they resemble the same intent as memorials on the inside walls of the previous church. But, the exposure to weather tends to reduce those memorials to general deference, unlike a plaque devoted to a specific person.

The following grave shows more modern style, as sometimes it takes a bit of creativity to memorialize the dead and to make a grave site permanent when the culture leans more toward a transient burial site…

Bathroom/kitchen tiles as memorial.

Bathroom/kitchen tiles as memorial.

The grave site shown immediately above might send the same message as the vault graves shown at the top of the grave. Although the tiles seem less formidable than concrete, the message is the same – some effort went into this grave site, and to tear it apart might show more disrespect to the creator of that site than to the person buried there. After all, this grave has no identifying marks to let anyone know who might be buried here.

There is one more section to go in this series, as the African burial tradition is explored further in both the Bahamas and in the States.

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Historic Funeral Traditions: Bahamian Burials I

Friday, October 16th, 2009
Bahamian Grave with Cross

Bahamian Grave with Cross

At the beginning of month-long graduate school archaeological dig in the Bahamas, one student asked what the class would do if a body were found during the digs. One professor responded, “Call the authorities, because that body would not be an antiquity.” In other words, any bones found in the Bahamas would be fresh bones, not historical objects. The reason behind this oddity is that the limestone found throughout the Bahamas acts as an agent to quickly dissolve flesh and more slowly to dissolve bone and teeth. But, in most cases, a body buried in the Bahamas can disappear within a decade.

This is one reason why Bahamians can re-use graves, which is convenient considering that the islands don’t hold many people, let along cemeteries. Additionally, limestone can prove to be difficult to carve, depending upon the limestone type. Therefore, digging one grave by hand (as most were dug this way during the early years of European and African occupation) can be labor that could last for generations if needed. From The City Rocks! Web site:

Limestone is a sedimentary rock that consists mostly or entirely of the minerals calcium carbonate (CaCO3) or magnesium carbonate (MgCO3). Most of the limestone on the planet forms in the ocean. Tiny, floating plants and animals called plankton take dissolved calcium, carbon, and oxygen from seawater and use it to make shells. When the plankton die, their shells drift down to the seafloor and collect in a sediment called ooze. Over time, the ooze hardens to limestone. Shells, bones, and corals can also form part or all of a limestone. Limestones tend to form in warmer, shallower water and to dissolve in colder, deeper water. Limestone can be very hard and take carving and polishing well, but it is vulnerable to acid precipitation. Calcium carbonate dissolves easily in acid. In fact, if you drip a little dilute acid on a piece of limestone, it will fizz.

The Bahamas are nothing but limestone formations contained within a ridge of shallow, warm water. Shells abound, and limestone and shells were used throughout this archipelago for buildings, paths, fences and graveyards.

Our group studied post-Revolutionary War life at the Gerace Research Center on San Salvador Island, and included some studies on Nassau/Paradise Island. All the images shown in this article and in the next article were taken on San Salvador, where Christopher Columbus made his first landfall in 1492. When images from Nassau are included, this information will be included in the image information.

While cemeteries exist on San Salvador, some older grave sites also are situated on property where the deceased lived. One such grave is shown at the top, and it shows a Christian leaning with the cross. But, this grave also includes shells, limestone rocks and is ‘cradled’ by a bed of carved limestone. In many cases, graves bear no identification, since the sites may be re-used. But, the locals always remember who is buried in any given spot on San Salvador, and this information often is passed down through generations. With that said, grave sites are less important than having a space to bury someone, and gravestones even are less important.

While death is important within this culture, where and how a person is buried seems to have little impact on the importance of that person’s afterlife. Wishing a person “home” is important, though, and symbolism helps with this transition for the living.

The history of the culture on San Salvador is African and European, depending upon who was the slave and the slave owner throughout the first decades of this island’s inhabited existence.  During and after the American Revolutionary War, Europeans brought their influence to bear upon burial traditions, and this mix of island geography, European influence and African culture is seen in a San Salvadorian cemetery that includes European grave sites and sites that were used for slaves who had become native to the island since the Revolutionary War:

One cemetery's contrast between European influence...

One cemetery's contrast between European influence...

...and African influence.

...and African influence.

The two images above were taken at the same cemetery, and it shows the difference between the European burial influence and the African influence. The former contains headstones, an attempt to ‘corral’ the body with cement and/or limestone containment barriers and fences. The latter influence contains stones that emulate grave stones, piles of rocks and other artifacts that symbolize the attempt to help the soul into an afterlife.

In all cases, note the deterioration prevalent among the grave sites in a cemetery that is located in the middle of an island town. Cemeteries created in an environment conducive to tropical storms, salt air, water and limestone are difficult to maintain, and these issues contribute to the overall condition of grave sites and cemeteries throughout the islands.

Deterioration is prevalent, even among grave sites that seem important.

Deterioration is prevalent, even among grave sites that seem important.

The next blog entry will show how some churches handle their burials, and you can learn more about symbolic gestures made for the dead and found among grave sites throughout the Bahamas as well as in many U.S. cemeteries.

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Notes on the Old-Fashioned Home Funeral

Saturday, October 10th, 2009
Some thoughts about the home funeral

Some thoughts about the home funeral

When the family Bible was passed down to me, I discovered a black flattened rose and a piece of black lace within the pages of that book. When I asked my aunt about these tokens, she responded, “Oh, those are from grandma’s funeral.” She began to tell me about how my great-grandmother’s casket was draped with roses and about the black lace dress that she wore to her grave.

That’s when I learned about how my father’s side of the family conducted their funerals. In every death from the time the house was built in 1900 to when my great grandfather died in 1953, the viewing for the body was held in my grandmother’s parlor, or ‘front room.’

The front room of most houses at the time were not used for television or any other entertainment except, perhaps, for the occasional piano recital. My grandmother’s front room contained two couches, a coffee table and a piano, along with a side table that held said Bible. It was in this room where the dead lay in state for loved ones to visit before the burial. For all intents, this room served as the family funeral parlor.

While I learned much about my great-grandmother’s death and funeral from this exchange with my aunt, other questions remain. These questions were brought to mind with an article that was published this year in Funeral Home News. In this piece, the author interviewed Douglas Ferguson, a man who worked in the Prince Edward Island, Canada, funeral industry since the mid-twentieth century.

Ferguson recalled that when he took ownership of the former Claude Jelley Funeral Home in O’Leary in 1958, that nine out of ten visitations were conducted in people’s homes. At the time, he recalls that people felt it was disgraceful to leave a body at the funeral home. He also mentions the “parlour,” much like the one in my grandmother’s home.

But, Ferguson also brings some other points to light, things I never considered:

“I’ve seen them go into houses and put beams underneath to hold the floor. If you put 50 extra people in a house, you know the weight that’s there,” said Ferguson, the senior member of the P.E.I. Funeral Directors and Embalmers Association.

Sometimes, because of the way the home was laid out, carrying the casket in and out, was no easy undertaking. “So you had to go in through a window. Take a window out, shove the casket in and carry a battery for light,” Ferguson commented.

I had to think about the width of my grandmother’s front room door when I read those comments. How did they get my great-grandmother’s casket in and out of that house? Did they need to supply supports for the front room floor?

Fortunately, my aunt still is among the living and her memory remains clear, so I’ll pose those questions to her and report back with my findings if she knows the answers. But, for those of you who are considering a funeral at home, you might think about these issues as well.

In the meantime, you can read more about Mr. Ferguson and his lasting legacy on his community, as he seeks to serve families in their times of need as he recounts how he and his family lived above the funeral home he purchased in 1963 (shades of Six Feet Under!).

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Funeral Director, Mortician and Undertaker: Any Difference?

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
The Undertaker was borrowed from European tradition.

The Undertaker was borrowed from European tradition.

Unless you work for a funeral home, or unless you have an obsession about death and dying practices, you may wonder if there is a difference between a funeral director and a mortician or a mortician and an undertaker. For all intents and purposes today, there is no difference – especially if the funeral home is a small family operation. But, in larger funeral home operations, you might see a slight difference in what each job traditionally entails.

The “Undertaker” is a traditional European term that described the person who would transport the body, prepare it for burial and interact with the survivors on funeral preparations. When the colonies were formed in the New World and burial services were needed, often church and family members would take over the job of the undertaker. During the Civil War, when embalming practices became popular among the growing funeral profession, the title of the person handling the affairs became the “Mortician” over the last decades of the nineteenth century:

“The word ‘mortician’ is a recent innovation due to a need felt by undertakers for a word more in keeping with, and descriptive of, their calling.” ["Literary Digest," Jan. 16, 1915]

A mortician often carried out all the duties of the undertaker as the body was transported and prepared for burial. As the funeral profession grew with the U.S. population over the following century, the term, “Funeral Director” became popular. The funeral director, however, often dealt directly with the family as they developed burial plans. The mortician, on the other hand, handled the body of the deceased and prepared that body for the funeral.

Today, a funeral director may deal with families, take care of the body with an assistant’s help and handle the business as well. Or, the funeral director may operate from an office in another location as managers and morticians work in various funeral homes operated from the home office. But, in most cases, each funeral home has a funeral director who interacts directly with the bereaved family.

So, to answer the question about which term is correct to use today, in most cases, you would use the term, “funeral director” – at least for the person who deals directory with the family.

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Germany’s Burial Traditions

Sunday, September 13th, 2009
The Invalidenfriedhof Cemetery, with the remains of the Berlin Wall in the background.

The Invalidenfriedhof Cemetery, with the remains of the Berlin Wall in the background.

Deathcare.com already offered a short article on American-German funeral traditions, which have become assimilated – for the most part – in American traditions based upon religious beliefs. But, in Germany, burial traditions often are different than those in other parts of the world, and have been so for generations. But, changes are in the works, and some of the following traditions also contain explanations of changes when known.

  • Cremation and embalming have, traditionally, been handled by the state rather than by funeral homes and survivors had no choice on what to do with cremated remains as they had to be buried in a cemetery. Germany has relented in some cases recently, as ashes may be scattered in cemeteries or taken out to sea beyond the three-mile limit and scattered.
  • Almost half of eastern Germany’s burials are what is known as “anonymous burial,” something unknown in the U.S. outside the Potter’s Field. Although the Catholic Church believes that anonymous burials are a trend away from religion, most opinions lean toward the expense of a grave marker and other funeral expanses as a reason to avoid traditional markers and other burial accouterments.
  • With the above said, German cemeteries now set aside a grassy plot for anonymous burials with one monument that states the purpose of this field without headstones. In opposition to the purpose of saving money through an anonymous burial, these cemetery plots cost more than the average plot, as it include perpetual care by employees rather than surviving family members.
  • Germany does allow two to four urns in a space that is required for one casket. In the U.S., you would be hard pressed to find a cemetery that would allow more than two urns in one burial space. Additionally, unlike the U.S., most German cemeteries currently do not require precautions to prevent contamination of groundwater by cremains.
  • German cemeteries are almost exclusively state- or church-operated, though exceptions are occasionally made for people with special religious needs. Muslims groups, for example, are permitted to have their own cemeteries. However, Germany has some of the strictest burial laws, many of which clash with Islamic burial rituals.
  • Plots are usually rented for a certain period of time, usually 20 to 30 years, with the possibility of an extension. Eventually the plot will be used for another burial, once the mourners themselves have passed away. In other words, don’t expect to remain buried in Germany for more than a generation.
  • Finally, German corpses seem to be obtaining revenge for re-using graves…the corpses are not rotting in some cases. The corpses are turning into mummified artifacts or grave wax, otherwise known as “adipocere.”

Sources:

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Historic Funeral Traditions: American Germans

Sunday, September 13th, 2009
Many early German grave stones contain elaborate hand-carved lettering.

Many early German grave stones contain elaborate hand-carved lettering.

Did you know that Americans of German descent outnumber those Americans of Irish and English descent? The first Germans to arrive in the New World were those who settled in Jamestown, Virginia in 1608. However, the most significant influx of Germans to American occurred during the nineteenth century, with settlements in New York and Pennsylvania.

When Germans arrived in America, like any other ethnic group, they brought their customs and beliefs with them. Some religious traditions have remained in place, such as those practiced by the Amish, Mennonites, Moravians and Hutterites, groups that were formed in the early years and that remain in existence today. While we have covered Amish funeral traditions, this article expands on those traditions to include some practiced in the past and that may be continued today outside the Amish community.

Because there are several different nationalities of German Americans, burial customs vary. But, outside the plain and simplistic logic of the Amish funeral, observers today can view the sadness and loss reflected in German cemetery markers located throughout the U.S. Symbols chosen include angels and females in mourning, urns, wreaths, drapery or shrouded figures in elaborate Gothic style. Early markers also include symbols, or hex signs, intended to ward off evil spirits such as rosettes, stars and stars within circles. Many of these symbols can be seen today, as those symbols may be painted on barns that belong to German ancestors.

Often, you can find German epitaphs such as:

  • Hier Legt (Here Lies)
  • Hier Ruhet (Here Rests)
  • Zum Andenken an (To the Memory of)

On the other hand, many Germans who migrated to the U.S. did so for religious freedom. As Lutherans, or Reformers, many German immigrants regarded death as a new beginning in an eternal life with God. Other traditions might follow along Catholic lines or as Methodists. Today, many German Americans have assimilated to the point that many people do not recognize their German ancestry – but they do recognize their religious affiliation, if any, and follow the advice of their religious advisers for funerals and death practices.

On the other hand, some U.S. funeral directors exist today who are proud of their German heritage and who have studied under German undertakers. Many of these funeral directors are members of the German National Funeral Directors Association and they speak English as well as fluent German. But, in Germany, death took a back seat until the 21st century. In 2007, Germans started the initiative to develop EosTV, a 24/7 show that talks about death and dying and geared mainly toward the elderly.

Death as a topic among Germans is largely suppressed or ignored until it happens. Then, survivors are often at a loss over what to do with their feelings, or how to navigate the practical matters around funerals and estates. To generalize, Germans in Germany today are similar to many other populations around the globe who fear death, yet who must inevitably face it individually.

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Funeral Music: Henry Purcell and the Death of Queen Mary II

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

A funeral and the attached loss of life to death often is characterized through music. Although many people today do not have music composed specifically for a death, this effort was not uncommon a few centuries ago, especially when music was called for during the death of a Queen who was beloved by her subjects. Hence, the “funeral Music for Queen Mary,” written by Henry Purcell (1659-1695), music that remains popular even today.

Queen Mary II, wife of William III (also known as William of Orange), died from smallpox on 28 December 1694. Her body lay in state for public observation until her burial at Westminter Abbey on 5 March 1695. This long wake period provided plenty of time for Purcell to create the music for that somber occasion. In fact, some of that music was performed for Purcell himself later that year when he died in November.

Although Purcell’s music was decidedly Baroque, he wrote a few anthems during his lengthy musical career. Most notable of these anthems is “They that go down to the sea in ships,” which provided a range of two octaves written specifically for the voice of the noted singer, Rev. John Gostling. He also composed operas and semi-operas, and the entire range of his life’s work went into composing the music for the anthem (”Thou know’st, Lord”), march and two elegies included in Queen Mary II’s funeral music arrangements.

Although you can purchase a CD with what seems to be an entire range of the music included in Queen Mary II’s funeral arrangements, it remains a point of argument that no one can be sure what was included in the original arrangements. No autograph scores exist, and Purcell did not leave an account of the ceremony. However, it is known that drums and trumpets participated in the event and that no tympani were used for the brass movements – although many modern arrangements include tympani (kettle drums).

However, a selection of CD music or downloads can reveal the bent behind the composer, who used his vast experience at a fairly young age (he was born in 1659 and died in his mid-thirties) to accomplish a wide selection of chorals and music that not only pleased the mourning public at the time, but that continues to hold fascination to listeners today. Purcell’s arrangements are very formal, somber, melancholy and expressive, as noted in the video above.

Purcell is buried adjacent to the organ he was fond of playing in Westminster Abbey. His epitaph reads, “Here lyes Henry Purcell Esq., who left this life and is gone to that blessed place where only his harmony can be exceeded.”

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Posted in Funeral Arrangements, Funeral Songs, History of Funerals | 1 Comment »

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