Author: John

Categories
Cemeteries Death + Art / Architecture Death + Humor

No Sexy Time Allowed in Japanese Cemeteries

Nude Cemetery Photos Result In Charges
Renowned Japanese photographer faces up to six months in prison
Associated Press (May 20, 2010)

What is it about cemeteries, coffins, and all manner of death objects that makes people want to rock the sexy time? I know I know. I’ve read plenty of Freud and Lacan too, but still…What I like about this story is that the Japanese photographer in question has taken the ‘I admit that I messed up’ route and that he will pursue other venues for his creative expression.

I haven’t seen the calendar in question, this would be the calendar that the models were posing for, but this entire story reminds of a post Meg posted in February. That particular news item involved a series of ‘Sexy Coffin’ calendars from Italy and Poland. The Italian calendar is particularly (in)famous and has been around for a while. I actually own a few years worth but keep them hidden in a discreet brown paper bag….

But this Japanese incident also reminded me of the photography work by Spencer Tunick, who creates massive tableau shots featuring hundreds of naked bodies. What I admire about Tunick is that he keeps coming up with new ways to make his photos interesting.

So the lesson, I think, for Japanese photographer Kishin Shinoyama is that he should have brought 300 nude models to the cemetery thereby using the sheer force of nakedness to shut down any complaints. Ok…this isn’t really a feasible plan but I’d be curious what hundreds of naked people in a cemetery might look like in a photograph.

Categories
Death + the Law Death Ethics Suicide

Doctors Should Talk with Patients about Death

Doctors Should Talk To Patients About How They Want To Die, Says Regulator
James Meikle, The Guardian (May 20 2010)

The last month’s worth of news coverage in the UK has focused on nothing but the May elections so it was good to see an old fashioned death and dying story in the Guardian. My first take on these new guidelines, that doctors should speak with dying patients about, um, dying, was a smirk.

I do know, however, that frank and candid conversations about dying are not everyone’s forte, so I appreciate what the UK’s General Medical Council has done. As the Guardian reports,

While the guidance does not address assisted suicide, the GMC says it is still illegal and doctors have to remain within the law. However, it says there is “no absolute obligation to prolong life irrespective of the consequences for the patient, and irrespective of the patient’s views.”

This has been causing some real gnashing of teeth today. And it should. While it is absolutely true that the prolongation of life is never absolute, it’s still something which most doctors will do. Enter, then, patients and their end-of-life wishes. At a certain point during medical treatment, a patient may very well say “I’ve had enough and I want to stop all this.” Patients also expect (as well they should) that doctors will continue to treat them without giving up. The whole situation, then, can be a real bind for doctors and patients alike.

What these new guidelines want to do, it seems, is say to UK doctors that it’s ok when patients die, assuming the patient has a terminal condition and that the patient has accepted death. Negotiating the end of life is a complex task, especially when it comes to medical care, so I think that what the GMC has done is a good thing.

Here is a stripped down list of what the new guidelines entail:

• Doctors must give patients approaching the end of life the same quality of care as all other patients.

• Decisions must start from a presumption in favour of prolonging life.

• Doctors may recommend particular treatment options they believe best for patients, but must not pressurise them to accept advice.

• Patients who feel under pressure from families or carers to accept or refuse treatments must be helped to reach their own decisions.

• Doctors must not base treatment decisions involving significant risk to patients solely on constraints of money, staff or equipment.

• Doctors must respect “as far as possible” wishes of patients who do not want to know in detail about their condition or treatment.

• Doctors can withdraw from providing care if religious, moral or other personal beliefs amount to a conscientious objection to a patient’s decision to refuse treatment.

Paula-Westoby-DNR-TattooThe new guidelines also reminded me, for some odd reason, of a funny and poignant story from late 2008. A 79 year old New Zealand woman, Paula Westoby, had Do Not Resuscitate tattooed on her chest. She did this so that in the event she unexpectedly died, her wishes would be known.

This is what I call a real commitment to the End of Life.

Categories
Death + the Law Death Ethics

Governor of MN to Gays and Lesbians: You Cannot Claim Your Partner’s Corpse

Pawlenty Vows Veto of Same-Sex Measure
Jason Hoppin, Pioneer Press (May 13, 2010)

Oh Tim Pawlenty, Governor of Minnesota. I know that you think you’ve got a chance at the 2012 Republican Presidential ticket but, alas, you’ll be disappointed. In all honesty, I don’t know who will be the GOP candidate but it won’t be you, that much I know. So instead of helping gay and lesbian Minnesotans in committed, long term relationships cope with a partner’s death you go ahead and veto a completely practical, sensible bill.

I am referring here to Minnesota Senate Bill No. 341 which, among other things, would allow same-sex domestic partners to claim their dead partner’s body in order to make funeral arrangements. Here is the bill’s language:

Subd. 2. Determination of right to control and duty of disposition.
(a) The right to control the disposition of the remains of a deceased person, including the location and conditions of final disposition, unless other directions have been given by the decedent pursuant to subdivision 1, vests in, and the duty of final disposition of the body devolves upon, the following in the order of priority listed:

The list includes 1.) Wills and Legal Instruments 2.) Spouses 3.) Domestic Partners and other groups such as children. It is the third group, domestic partners, which Bill 341 added and it is the reason Governor Pawlenty (by his own admission) vetoed it. Pawlenty’s rationale was that since same-sex couples can establish Wills or Health Directives in which a same-sex partner is named as the sole decision maker then the law was unnecessary.

In a sense Governor Pawlenty is correct but only so far as this means same-sex couples have to jump through a hoop that married straight couples do not. Furthermore, this law would have made the entire funeral arrangement process and final disposition of the dead body a lot simpler. As the law currently stands in Minnesota, any same-sex couple without explicit legal documents stating the couples’ final disposition wishes faces a potential legal challenge from next of kin. If the family of a gay man or lesbian woman does not like or even acknowledge the same-sex partner then that person can be legally excluded from the entire funeral.

This is a situation that funeral directors confronted quite a bit during the 1980s and 1990s, during the height of the AIDS epidemic. It’s a terrible scenario in which the body in the casket can literally become a dividing line. The Minnesota Senate Bill would have gone a long way towards simplifying how same-sex couples can claim their deceased partner’s body.

One day, and it will be in my own lifetime, these legal forms of discrimination and the individuals who supported them will look absolutely barbaric. This much I also know.

So there you go Governor Pawlenty. You’re not going to get the GOP nomination and you’re acting like a completely intolerant, insensitive brute. But at least you’re in good company: the Governor of Rhode Island did the same exact thing last November and he too will never be President of the United States of America.

Categories
Cemeteries cremation Funeral Industry

Humans and Pets Cremating Together

Cremation Association of North America (CANA) and International Association of Pet Cemeteries and Crematories (IAOPCC) Announce new Guidelines for Pet Cremation
Press Release, March 2010

Pet cremation is big business for human funeral homes looking to branch out into other industries. And normally I wouldn’t just trot out a press release for a Death Reference Desk post but this newly announce initiative about human and pet cremation groups coming together to produce guidelines really intrigued me.

Chicago, IL – The Cremation Association of North America (CANA), an international organization composed of cremationists, funeral directors, cemeterians, industry suppliers and consultants, and the International Association of Pet Cemeteries and Crematories, an international organization recognized as the authority in the pet aftercare industry, have been working together to develop industry guidelines for pet cremation practices.

The Press Release has two quote from each organization:

“There has been significant growth in pet cremation over that past ten years as families seek ways to appropriately memorialize a cherished pet,” said IAOPCC President Scott Hunter, “and at the same time owners want reassurance that the cremation facilities they use provide high quality services for their pets. By working with the Cremation Association of North America, we seek to establish standard industry terminology and practices for the proper respectful care of pets in memorial services.”

And:

CANA President Bill McQueen noted, “As the premiere organization focused on all aspects of cremation service, CANA has been pleased to work with the IAOPCC to extend our knowledge and experience into developing broad-based guidelines for pet cremation. CANA’s highly regarded crematory operator certification program and model laws for cremation have significant application to practices in pet memorialization. CANA takes pride in being the cremation solutions community and is pleased to work with IAOPCC to extend the reach of our community.”

So there you have it. Pet Cremations and Human Cremations will finally find common ground. And new terms will be invented too. That’s even better.

Actually, I totally support pet cremation and I think that people should handle the death of a pet as they see fit. The death of a pet can be more heart braking than the death of a human relative. My only concern is that these new agreed upon standards don’t create higher prices. That seems to happen too.

Categories
Death + Biology Grief + Mourning

Chimpanzees and their Dead Relatives

Chimps’ Emotional Response to Death Caught on Film
Ian Sample, The Guardian (April 26, 2010)

 

Chimps ‘feel death like humans’
BBC News (April 26, 2010)

We humans have a peculiar relationship with chimpanzees. On the one hand, we like to understand ourselves in terms of chimp behaviors: tool making, group cohesion, even DNA. On the other hand, we humans don’t like it when chimps become aggressive and harm other animals, including humans.

We here at the Death Reference Desk have actually discussed chimps and death before.

It makes complete sense, then, that two different academic journal articles on chimpanzees mourning other dead chimps would attract human attention. The articles, which are discussed in The Guardian and the BBC News, engage in heavy doses of anthropomorphic desire, so much so, that I almost feel bad for the chimps. While it’s true that some of the mourning behavior shown by one group of captive chimps is similar to some human behavior, I’m not so sure that it says anything about either species.

The two videos from the journal articles show the first group of chimps surrounding a dying and then dead chimp. The second video shows a young chimp playing with the mummified carcass of a chimpanzee which the mother has hung onto.

Video one is what humans love to watch because that’s what we do. Video two is a different story altogether and clearly demonstrates a difference between the species.

But maybe video two is what we humans should really be watching. Maybe the chimp playing with the mummified corpse is what we should pay more attention to since that behavior seems so inhuman. Playing games with dead bodies seems ghastly and is actually, depending on the location it occurs, criminal. But what prevents humans from doing what these chimps, our closest primate relatives, are doing? I’ll go a step further and say that maybe the chimps offer humans a lesson in not forgetting about the materiality of death…but now I’m anthropomorphizing too.

Video 1: Chimps mourning

Video 2: Chimps with mummified corpse

Categories
Death + the Law Death Ethics

Rationing End-of-Life Care Debate

Debating the Ethics of Rationing End-of-Life Care
The NewsHour (April 26, 2010)

The NewsHour on PBS ran a short piece on a recent end-of-life care debate at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs. A video from the debate, which was much longer and must be available somewhere on the interweb, is embedded below.

Susan Dentzer, editor-in-chief of Health Affairs and NewsHour commentator moderated.

Here are the panel members:

Ira Byock, a doctor and director of palliative medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH
Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania
Ken Connor, chair of the Center for a Just Society and a lawyer in private practice
Marie Hilliard, director of bioethics and public policy at the National Catholic Bioethics Center and a registered nurse

Categories
cremation Death + the Economy Monuments + Memorials

Man Dying of Cancer Sells Ad Space on Urn

Springfield Man Selling Ad Space on His Urn
Laura Rillos, KVAL News

I have read many, many ridiculous death and dying stories over the years but this one is really amazing. The backstory itself isn’t ridiculous– it’s actually really sad and tragic.

On the one hand we’ve got an inspirational story about a guy with terminal cancer trying to make sure that his wife isn’t stuck with an expensive funeral bill. On the other hand, and this is the part of the story that you have to dig a little bit to find, Aaron Jamison is also using the money to cover his medical bills. The medical bills that he can’t afford to pay because his health insurance doesn’t cover the costs.

Think about this for a minute. A person with cancer needs to sell ad space on his urn to pay off his medical bills. This is what I meant by ridiculous. The whole situation is also slightly infuriating.

What Jamison is doing reminds me of a conceptual art piece by The Art Guys, entitled SUITS: The Clothes Make the Man, in which they wore identical suits covered in corporate logos for a year (1998-1999). The Art Guys’ point was how commodified everything, including fashion, had become and it was funny.

Selling ad space on your future urn is clever but it isn’t particularly funny. And now that it’s clear a portion of the money will cover medical costs, I think that the whole situation is terrible.

Aaron Jamison has a website which he uses to update his ad space plan. I suggest checking it out.

Finally, here is a short video piece by KVAL News about Jamison and his urn:

Categories
Cemeteries Death + the Economy Death + the Law

Backyards Aren’t Just for Dead Pets Anymore

Did I Mention the Graves Out Back?
Wendy Carlson, The New York Times (April 18, 2010)

 

Home Funerals Restore Intimacy to Grieving Rituals
Adriana Barton, The Globe and Mail (April 20, 2010)

April showers bring May flowers and, apparently, a deluge of articles on home burials and backyard cemeteries. The New York Times article on backyard cemeteries was spotted by my dad (the funeral director) who dutifully sent it along. And then this Globe and Mail article popped up a few days later. The Globe and Mail article is about home burials but it’s also about a screening of the PBS film A Family Undertaking. The film, which was released in 2004, is a good one and I recommend trying to see it when possible. I wrote about A Family Undertaking and other home burial issues last July. This weekend, the Vancouver Mountain View Cemetery is hosting a daylong seminar entitled The Final Disposition: De-Mystifying Death, Funerals, Cemeteries & Ceremonies and it kicks off with A Family Undertaking.

The seminar looks extremely interesting and I give Mountain View Cemetery credit for sponsoring the event. Public interest in home funerals, green burials, and backyard cemeteries is clearly growing and this interest isn’t going to subside anytime soon.

Interest in backyard cemeteries brings me to the New York Times article. As it reports, home burial was once common but has fallen in practice because, among other things, the effect on real estate resale value.

Now I, for one, would be totally cool with a cemetery in my backyard ESPECIALLY if it meant the house price was a little lower. I’m not bothered by the concept in the least. I have a hunch, too, that more and more people will pursue home funerals and burials as a joint venture. It makes sense.

Just make sure and get those permits signed!!!

Categories
Death + the Economy Death + the Law

Home Funerals (clap clap clap) Deep in the Heart of Texas

Meeting Offers Information on Home Funerals
Jeffrey Weiss, The Dallas Morning News (April 12, 2010)

When the Death Reference Desk formally launched in the summer of 2009, it became clear that economic issues related to death and dying would continually pop up. Earlier this week, The Dallas Morning News ran an article on home funerals which echoes a July article on the same subject in the New York Times.

And the Death + the Economy section of Death Ref contains a wide array of related articles.

In a nutshell, all of the articles on home funerals explain that many people are interested in taking care of the dead body (without the assistance of a funeral director) because it is cheaper. While that’s true, and I am the first to say that funerals are too expensive, I’m not so sure that money is a huge force behind the interest in home funerals. From what I can gather, it seems as if the people exploring the idea of a home funeral are middle income earners and higher and that the interested parties want a more personal service. This all makes sense too. Indeed, the return of home funerals isn’t so much an innovation as a throwback to 19th century funeral practices. This is a historical point often missed by reporters working the home funeral beat.

The article sums up the Texas home burial workshop this way:

But why would someone want to take charge of his own funeral? The most obvious reason is price. Depending on how much of the preparation is done at home, the family could save thousands of dollars. But there are emotional reasons as well, Bates said.


His mother died in 2000 in Arlington. And while a funeral home dealt with much of the preparation, the family wanted her buried where she grew up, in Tulia. So they rented a van, put the coffin in the back and stopped at places along the way where she had visited.

“It was good for all of us,” Bates said.

So there you have it. A nice combination of funeral thrift and personalized memorialization. In the event that combination seems too poigant here is a predictably over-the-top CNN video about a graveyard offering a buy-one-get-the-second-grave-for-50%-off sale. The classy title sums it up.

CNN: “Sometimes you gotta think outside the box”

Categories
Death + Humor Death + Popular Culture Death + the Law

How Dead Bodies are Supposed to be Repatriated

How Do You Repatriate A Body from the UK?
BBC News (April 7, 2010)

In response to last week’s incident at Liverpool John Lennon Airport wherein two women tried to take a dead man’s body on the plane because he “…was sleeping…” the BBC has helpfully explained the proper dead body repatriation procedure. I wrote about this case in all its Weekend at Bernie’s glory here.

There isn’t much more to say about this situation other than it is a bad idea to just show up at an airport with a dead body. A really bad idea.

The BBC helpfully asks and answers its own question:

But what is the proper procedure if the unthinkable happens and the body of a loved one needs to be transported from the UK? The most important step is to consult a doctor to confirm the person is deceased and provide a death certificate. This fulfils the need for the death to be registered in the country where the person passed away, which is a legal requirement.

So there you go. Make sure and get a note from the local doctor. Somethings never change.

Categories
Death + Humor Death + Popular Culture Death + the Law

Weekend at Bernie’s at Liverpool John Lennon Airport

Women Try to Take Body on Plane at Liverpool Airport
BBC News (April 6, 2010)

Two Women Arrested with Dead Relative at Airport
Pair told staff at Liverpool John Lennon airport that 91-year-old dead relative was sleeping
James Meikle, The Guardian (April 6, 2010)

Straight out of the Dead Body Stories You Can’t Make Up (DBSYCMU) file comes this gem. Two women tried to board a dead relative, sunglasses-clad and propped in a wheelchair, onto a plane at Liverpool John Lennon Airport. According to The Guardian, the women told anyone who asked that the man was sleeping.

Now, anyone with a keen sense of history will automatically recognize the uncanny similarities between this news item and the HILARIOUS 1980’s film Weekend at Bernie’s. And since the interweb is always there when you need it, even Weekend at Bernie’s has its own Wikipedia page. Again, DBSYCMU.

For those who don’t remember the movie, it goes a little like this: Bernie Lomax is a crooked CEO who invites two unsuspecting employees (Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman) to his beach house to have them killed by mobsters because McCarthy and Silverman are snooping around the company’s finances. Bernie is double crossed by the mob, ends up dead himself, and the two low level employees party hard with Bernie’s corpse. The film was so funny that it warranted a sequel and, apparently, a third installment is in the works.

I’m going to guess that what happened at John Lennon Airport had nothing to do with mobsters and partying at beach houses but it never hurts to dream.

In all honesty, what this entire Liverpool incident needs is a little Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman action. Least of which to help revive their film careers.

But I digress. Perhaps the moral of this most recent dead body story can be located in the tagline for Weekend at Bernie’s: He may be dead…but he’s the life of the party!

Here is the movie’s trailer to help jog some memories:

Categories
Death + the Law Death Ethics

Terri Schiavo Five Years On

5 Years After Schiavo, Few Make End-Of-Life Plans
Matt Sedensky, Associated Press (March 30, 2010)

Five years ago today, Terri Schiavo died in Florida. March 31, 2005. I can’t believe that five years have already elapsed, in part because I was in the middle of finishing my Ph.D. dissertation on the dead body and also because the chapter I was working on dealt with Schiavo’s case. I had already decided to write on the right-to-die issues surrounding Terri Schiavo (in 2003, actually) but then events took a turn and the entirety of America watched her death unfold.

There is a lot more to say about Terri Schiavo and the court case(s) which surrounded her eventual death. No other human death has ever been so litigated in the American court system. In place of an indulgently long essay, here is an extremely useful Schiavo case timeline put together by the University of Miami Ethics Program.

And now, five years later, it’s hard to know how anything has really changed as it regards End-of-Life issues. What I do know is that the political battle which the Schiavo case caused has gotten less media attention but it remains a constant battle all the same.

More than anything what I think the Schiavo case demonstrated was the overwhelming sense amongst many Americans that they should be able to die as they wanted without governmental intervention. These sentiments made a mess of supposedly clear cut political ideologies, so much so that many conservatives and liberals found an issue upon which they agreed. Pro-life conservatives remained the most vocally opposed to letting Terri Schiavo die and that point has not changed.

This is death in the 21st century. And it isn’t going to get any politically simpler.