Asking Extraordinary Things Of The Undertaker

I got to talking about death earlier today with one of my principal carers. Not in any morbid sense, but we talked about the rituals associated with death, and I suppose the extent to which we have become so much more separated from death and its associated rituals as we have become wealthier, and seemingly more sophisticated.

Death is left to the undertaker these days, whereas once upon a time the laying-out of a recently deceased person would have been something undertaken if not by the immediate family, then by someone in the local community cognizant of the appropriate sensitivities, and perhaps unafraid of the dead and confident of the right kind of dignity to give the deceased person.

My carer explained how when she had worked some years ago in a nursing home context how she had her first experience of the death of one of the residents, and the process that she and another member of the night staff, equally unfamiliar with what to do, had gone through.

It was a fascinating discussion. Perhaps like many people of my generation, the only person I have ever seen in death was my Father. For my carer, this was similarly the case, but when one of the residents died during her shift, the issue first of all was confirming that death had actually taken place.

Of course, a doctor was to be called to certify the death, but deciding that the doctor should be called because someone had died in itself presented the first difficulty. Was that person that had been someone for whom care had been the key relationship actually dead? How does one tell, unless one is familiar with checking the vital signs?

On this first occasion, somebody else was called first, a friend, someone that could show the two members of staff what to do in order to provide that last act of dignified preparation of the body, in the days before it was simply a case of calling in the undertaker.

‘Laying out’ is, I daresay, something that most families would have been familiar with only a couple of generations ago.

My carer soon had plenty of experience of providing those last moments of careful, dignified preparation. Soon after her first learning experience, a severe Winter and a pneumonia spate carried off about a dozen residents in the space of a few days.

The old man's friend, as it used to be referred to. And which these days has so often been banished by the use of interventions that lengthen the span of a life, but not necessarily its quality.

When my father died in 1998, after a long illness, during which my mother had cared for him with great disregard for her own failing health, the end came suddenly when he collapsed one night returning from using the bathroom.

My mother found him that morning, and punished herself for not having been there for him. Though nothing would have been possible to save him, and death had in any case been inevitable.

My mother requested of the undertaker that her husband of 59 years be brought home, rather than remain with the Funeral Director. At first the undertaker was astonished, in 1998 this was not a familiar request, but to the undertakers’ credit he acceded to my mothers’ request, and for the next week my father was laid out in an open coffin in the front room.

It was November, and the undertaker called daily to check that everything was alright. My Father looked resplendent in a good suit, and for every night of that week leading up to the funeral, my mother spent her evenings sitting close by her husband are so many years, no doubt speaking of many things that they had shared throughout their lifetimes.

I had traveled myself with my wife from Edinburgh to the South Coast, and spent that week with my Mother and the rest of my family.

It was my first experience of seeing someone dead, and in spite of the strangeness, that period of sharing that final week in such close proximity eased the pain of losing my Father.

The funeral itself impressed me by the dignified manner with which the coffin was removed to the hearse, which then proceeded for the first couple of hundred yards led at walking pace following an undertaker walking sombrely in a black silk hat.

Tears were shed at the funeral, presided over by my cousin, who is a Church  of England Vicar. He has presided over so many family funerals, because my father was one of 12 brothers and sisters, and my mother one of six sisters and half sisters.

It was a week when the world stopped, when nothing but preparation for the funeral could enter any of our lives. But strange as my Mother's request had first seemed, it was fitting, and a reminder I shall never forget, of the importance of giving due ritual to the process of death, and coming to terms with the life that must continue.