I interviewed my mom about her views surrounding death and after-death. Of my mother's experiences with death, my grandma's death and her grandmother's death stick out to her the most. She never discussed death when she was young, so she infers that whatever she learned about death was probably from the media. She did not express strong feelings or have ideas about what influenced her current views on death. When she thinks of funerals, she remembers sadness. When the casket opens the deceased look horrible and "I don't want to remember them that way....I know there is an embalming practice and people at the funeral home try to make the deceased look as natural as possible. The person in the casket usually doesn't look anything like what you remember."
My mom would like to be cremated. "The thought of being buried and decomposing slowly I find kind of creepy. Whoever survives me can do what they want with my ashes. It doesn't matter what they do because I feel like it wouldn't be me anymore. I would like people to remember good things and not be sad but that's unrealistic I guess." One big problem with funerals, to my mom, is that people spend way too much money. "Thousands and thousands of dollars on embalming and caskets just to be put in the ground. You'd be much better off putting the money towards those who are alive." Another problem involves cremation. My mom thinks that to be cremated a body must be embalmed and put in a casket, according to law. She finds this to be incredibly stupid. To my mom, when someone is elderly and they have lived for a long time the funeral can be joyful because it marks the end of a life well lived, but when someone dies young it's simply sad. Additionally, "there is a huge difference in mood when someone is a Christian; it is more joyous. If they are unsaved or young, it is tragic and makes for a difficult funeral."
My dad's first reaction to the concept of death was a sense of wrongness. Although many think of it as a natural part of life, it seems to him like part of a "broken world, somehow or another." He has experienced the unexpected death of many close friends, most of whom were young and/or healthy when they died. He was the last close person to speak to his grandfather before he died. He had a heart attack and my father called and ambulance and waited with his grandfather. As they heard the sirens approaching, his grandfather said "I reckon that would be them here directly." These were the last words my dad heard him utter. This death and several shocking deaths of younger, more physically optimal friends have left my father with the impression that everyone has a part of their mind that goes into a mode of denail or numbness. "You are going through the motions of life without really letting the emotions of loss hit you fully. There is something about you that does carry through that, but it seems like you shouldn't be able to. You see someone carry through and smile at the funeral for their wife and you kind of wonder 'How could you?'"
My dad knows that after death bodies undergo embalming in funeral homes. This process entails "draining the blood in the body and pumping this other stuff in." After his death, my dad would like "just whatever the standard morticians do in terms of embalming, putting me in a box, and burying me." He would rather not be cremated because there is a notion of "becoming part of the universe" that often accompanies it, and that he doesn't believe in. My dad noticed that at funerals, people muse over the morbitidy of the fact that there is a dead body on display and that they are visiting over it. They seem to think that the situation would be far more "tidy" if the body just disappeared. My dad thinks this is perhaps a problematic view because that practice "is a way of honoring that person and facing thier death. I think it's a healthy thing as part fo the mourning practice to do what we do."
In the face of death, my family values respect of the dead as well as the family of the dead. When my father wonders at the behavior of someone related to the deceased, he internalizes it and draws inferences about coping mechanisms. He did not critisize my grandfather for laughing and smiling during my grandma's funeral, even when my father wondered "how could you?" My parents do not encourage repressing grief or maintaining a wooden-faced appearance for the general public. I have found that some of my peers see grief as a weakness. I once had a close friend who advised me to avoid my sadness at a tragic period in my life and make myself think of happier things, because once the damage is done, so to speak, there is nothing I can do about it. My family sees grief as a means of respecting and remembering that which has been lost, and denying the emotions as a defense mechanism. It remains unclear whether that defense mechanism is harmful or useful or necessary, but it certainly is popular.
The interviews with my peers were far less centered around emotions. They thought of blackness, void, funeral, heaven, hell, burial and cremation. I suspect that the fundamental ideas were predominant in the peers' interviews because they had much fewer first-hand experiences with death than my parents had. The repetition of loss left the predominant memory of emotion in my parents' minds.
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