X-Message-Number: 3403 Date: Sun, 13 Nov 1994 21:22:01 -0500 (EST) From: Subject: SCI.CRYONICS THE Funeral Part 3 date sent: 13-NOV-1994 21:18:18 other to accept it in fact, emotionally, and realistically. (4) The need to face the future, maintain on-going relationships, and establish new relationships and connections. (5) The need for something useful and meaningful to do while grieving. (6) The need for a personal and/or spiritual outlet. The funeral helps one to focus on life's meaning and to draw on one's spiritual strengths, and to apply the beliefs and teachings of one's religious faith. (7) The need for dignity and worth. The funeral honors the dead and recognizes the bereaved as those whose needs must be met, too. According to Paul Irion (humanist and reverend): "It marks with dignity the conclusion of a life and testifies to the life that has been lived as it separates the dead from the living. It provides an opportunity for people who have sustained loss to express their feelings in a pattern of symbolic and community acceptable actions. It offers an occasion for concerned persons to gather in a context of shared loss to support those who have sustained the greater loss and to assist them in their return to normal social existence." (Paul Irion. A MANUAL AND GUIDE FOR THOSE WHO CONDUCT A HUMANIST FUNERAL SERVICE. Baltimore; Waverly Press, Inc., 1971) Another perspective on the purpose and function of the funeral is provided by Austin H. Kutscher, D.D.S., of the N.Y. State Psychiatric Institute Dental Service, Columbia University, N.Y.; and Lillian G. Kutscher, Publications Editor, The Foundation of Thanatology, New York, N.Y. They have pointed out that when funeral rituals--secular, religious, or humanistic--are acted out that they serve to: reinforce the reality of loss; help to dispel forms of potential pathological denial; present dramatic testimony that a death has occurred; show that a loss has been sustained; that people are mourning that loss; and that these facts cannot be changed. This period of acute grief permits the realities of loss to fall into a perspective that relates what has been to what is to what will be in the future. The funeral gives the bereaved a kind of "time-out" and some "time-off." The events of the funeral process provide a different-from-normal set of activities as well as relief from the accustomed routines for the bereaved. (O.S. Margolius, ed., et al. GRIEF AND THE MEANING OF THE FUNERAL, New York: MSS Information Corp., 1975, Intro.) The quotations cited below provide interesting statements and support for the usefulness of the funeral service: "The funeral service is psychologically necessary in order to give the opportunity for 'grief work.' The bereaved must be given the capacity to work through this grief if he is to come out of that situation emotionally sound." (Eric Lindemann, Harvard Psychiatrist) "Mourners should be assisted in their attempts to live with the memory of the deceased; there are several ways in which we give this help. One I believe is through the tasteful showing of the body. I could not bring myself to endorse any sensational display or practices that are not in good taste. However, it can be very helpful for the bereaved family to see their loved one in repose. Viewing the body is another means by which the situation is focused on reality. Often it is helpful in relieving painful memories of a lingering illness of a terrifying accident. The committal service provides as nothing else does so graphically, a symbolic demonstration that the kind of relationship which existed between the mourner and the deceased is now at an end." (Rev. Paul Irion) "It took me a long time to discover the values of a funeral ceremony. I had always abhorred and avoided them as pomposities and as a poor way to say good-bye, a needlessly public way of paying one's private last respects. And then, on one especially personal occasion, I suddenly discovered what everyone else had apparently known all along; that funerals are for the living, that they cause us to come together in a way we otherwise never do, to lean on one another, to feel the communality of emotions, to cry together, and yes, to rejoice together, to rejoice in the one who has caused this coming together." (Leonard Bernstein's eulogy for singer Jennie Tourel.) "I was recently again reminded of how valuable and legitimate a funeral service can be. I accompanied a friend to the funeral of his mother. She had died of a chronic and wasting illness and I had been present at her death bed. My friend experienced a deep and profound consolation seeing his mother with the lines of suffering erased from her face and lying in peace." (Dr. Charles W. Wahl, Chief, Psychosomatic Service, UCLA.) "The use of private or limited types of funeral services diminishes the opportunity to talk about what has happened and thus curtails sharply the whole purpose of the funeral process. The private funeral service limits the opportunity for talking out and so reduces the healing benefits of the process. Anything that is done at the funeral or in the varied events that surround the ceremony can only be for those who survive and must continue to live with their thoughts, hopes, and apprehensions." (Dr. Edgar Jackson) For still another interesting point of view about funerals, the book by Jessica Mittford, THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963) especially her chapter "Fashions in Funerals," pp. 187-201, will provide it. SOCIAL, PSYCHOLOLGICAL, AND THEOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS Many of the functions of a funeral can be grouped or categorized into these areas. To look at functions in this manner may help to illustrate the broad utility of the funeral as a continuing social ceremony. SOCIAL FUNCTIONS - Provide opportunity for the community or group to sh Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3403