Where is Thy Sting ?
The American Way of Death. By Jessica Mit- ford. (Hutchinson, 25s.) FUNERALS are a big and profitable business in America today, but the field is not without its own built-in hazards. For one thing, no matter how wet a grief-therapist you are, a customer only calls once. For another, while rivals are opening here, there and everywhere, the death rate, dammit, it on the decline. In fact, competi- tion for corpses is now so keen that at least one funeral director has taken to the radio. His bouncy commercial, set to the tune of 'Rock of Ages,' runs:
Chambers' caskets are just fine, Made of sandalwood and pine.
If your loved ones have to go Call Columbus 690.
If your loved ones pass away, Have them pass the Chambers way.
Chambers' customers all sing: 'Death, o death, where is thy sting?'
The American Way of Death, by Jessica Mit- ford, is a sharply written, amusing study, burst- ing with outlandish fact and detail. The cost of the funeral, Miss Mitford reveals, is the third largest exp.enditure, after a house and a car, in the life of the ordinary American family. In fact, your last ride is likely to be the most ex- pensive of your life. The total average cost for an adult's funeral in America today runs to $1,450. Trimmings, however, will run you into something more.
Specials can include anything from Fit-A-Fut Oxfords to women's exciting lingerie (from Prac- tical Burial Footwear, this), a de luxe package, gold-embossed, that includes vestee, pantee and 'strikingly smart' nylon hose. Also available, for the style-conscious, are the 'new Bra-Form, Post Mortem Form Restoration, only $11 for a pack of fifty—they accomplish so much for so little.'
Funeral homes work on a twenty-four-hour- call basis and it is the industry's boast that no American is more than two hours away from a licensed embalmer. Two hours away, too, a tempting choice of caskets awaits. You can have a Transition Casket, styled for the future; a Valley Forge, for the military type; and, for the rakish corpse, a Monaco, 'with Sea Mist Polished Finish and an interior richly lined with 600 Aqua Supreme Velvet.' Having settled on your 'eternal home,' you are then likely to lie in a Slumber Room for three days at the Chapel of Memories or the Little Chapel of Flowers. Such slumber is costly. But when Miss Milford protested about the price to one funeral direc- tor he came back with, 'How much would it cost you to stay in a good motel for three days?'
American families spend more burying the dead than they do educating the living. The national cost of dying comes to $2 billion for 1.7 million dead while personal expenditure on education amounts to $1.9 million for 3.6 million
students. Funeral directors say, disarmingly, they are not to blame, they only give the public what it wants. But cheaper caskets are invariably con- cealed in a back showroom, only to be seen on demand, and are made to look as nasty as pos- sible. Furthermore, most funeral directors dis- ingenuously lead buyers to believe that embalm-. ing is required by law for hygienic reasons.
John H. Eckels, president of the Eckels Col- lege of Mortuary Science, sensitive to fears of premature burial, says the sooner a corpse is em- balmed, the better. Of course, the blood is removed first and, as the astute doctor observes, this measure quickly dispels any fear of live burial. Another effect, more esthetic, is to create the Beautiful Memory Picture. You are, Miss Mitford writes, sliced, pierced, pickled, trimmed, creamed, waxed and painted. All in the name of grief-therapy.
It is also considered good grief-therapy to soak survivors for a funeral because they, poor wretches, must live on, and overpaying is sure to make them feel less guilty about it. There's only one trouble here. Once a family has blown most of the insurance money on a stunning but comfy casket, there is not much left for a cemetery plot, and this, I'm afraid, has not en- deared funeral directors to cemetery owners. In fact, it is for just this reason that the cemetery companies now saturate town and country with `pre-need' salesmen. These soft-sellers offer newly-married couples a special, anti-inflationary instalment plan deal on romantic double-depth plots. 'Pre-need' sales now outnumber 'at-need' sales four to one, but the hottest item in the funeral world is the mausoleum. Memorial coun- sellers now offer the lucky few crypts that are 'Judgment Proof.' They even manage to sell the outside crypts,. those that actually form walls, as Garden Crypts. 'It's all part of the trend to outdoor,living,' a memorial counseller told Miss Mitford.
• Miss Mitford, 1 must say, has a fine ear for dialogue. In The American Way of Death she has nicely balanced heavy fact against out- rageous anecdote. Never shrill or over-indignant, she lets the vulgar and the ridiculous condemn
itself.
MORDECAI RICHLER
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