Ignoring the Request for "No Funeral"

William G. Hoy
Medical Humanities Program
Baylor University

There is a lot of talk these days about "no funeral." However, it isn't so much because we do not want to have them as it is because we cannot have them in the ways we had become accustomed. That has created a strange paradox in that some folks are realizing now how important this set of ceremonies can be for the grief process. A couple of days ago, I came across an article I wrote eight years ago that I reworked here. This topic still has relevance, I think, because as we "ramp up" our return to the kinds of ceremonies we used to have, we will once again be faced with the choice of how highly to value death-related ceremonies. I hope you will offer your comments, ideas, and rebuttals in the comments section below. You can even remain anonymous if you want.

In the midst of people determining in advance that they want "no service" upon their death or telling family members to just "throw me in a ditch when I'm dead," I came upon an interesting historical artifact. I guess that is what happens when a grief counselor teaches the History of Medicine!

George Washington, the “Father” of our nation, made a similar request–and it was summarily ignored by his family, community and nation. Near the end of his Last Will and Testament, Washington wrote, “It is my express desire that my Corpse may be Interred in a private manner, without parade, or funeral Oration.” After 35 years taking care of dying individuals and bereaved families, I have found that such a simple “stroke of the pen” will not so easily dissuade communities of mourners, who, from time immemorial have gone to great effort to do what we need to do with our dead.

Ignoring the expressed “wishes” of the deceased, Washington’s family allowed the Masonic Lodge to coordinate the service of burial at Mt. Vernon. Though hastily arranged, apparently it was quite an affair, described by Gerald E. Kahler in The Long Farewell:
 

“In the long and lofty portico, where oft the hero walked in all his glory, now lay the shrouded corpse…. There those who paid the last sad honors to the benefactor of his country took an impressive, a farewell view.

“Three general discharges of infantry, the cavalry, and eleven pieces of artillery, which lined the banks of the Potomac, back of the vault, paid the last tribute to the entombed Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the United States…The sun was now setting."

In recent years, the funerals of the famous and not-so-famous have been broadcast by television and internet, allowing a vast community of mourners opportunity to quasi-participate in the services. Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, we have become more accustomed to "participating from a distance" as Facebook Live and Zoom transmitted the rituals. Almost everyone has touched more people than he or she realizes, witnessed by the manifold times the funeral for a homeless person is attended by many dozens of community members or even orchestrated by high school students completely unknown to the deceased.

When George Washington died in 1799, communities across the land staged “mock funerals” to help them cope with their loss. These staged funerals for President Washington foreshadowed what Scott Trostel  described as the dozen separate funeral events  for President Lincoln as his body was transported  by train from Washington, DC to Springfiled, Illinois after his assassination more than six decades later.

One of the largest mock funerals for President Washington seems to have been the one two weeks after his death in Philadelphia, the city that had served as the nation’s temporary capital while Washington, DC was built. People came from all around to observe “the splendid and somber march, accompanied by the sounding of muffled drums (as the funeral cortege) proceeded through Philadelphia a little past noon.

“A riderless horse, escorted by two marines wearing black scarves, preceded the clergy. The Pennsylvania Gazette reported that the horse carried an empty saddle, holsters, pistols, and boots reversed in the stirrups. The horse also was ‘trimmed with black–the head festooned with elegant black and white feathers, the American Eagle displayed in a rose upon the breast, and in a feather upon the head. In the midst of the procession, pallbearers carried an empty casket," is the way National Park Service Ranger Jerry Hawn described the mock funeral.What relevance for us is a dead president’s funeral 212 years ago? This relic of history, in part serves to remind us that the dead should only be partially allowed to dictate the terms of their own funerals.  

As I have written in my books, Road to Emmaus and Do Funerals Matter?  when faced with death from earliest times and around the world, we humans utilize significant symbols, gather with our communities, ritualize our actions, connect to our heritage, and transition the dead from “here to there.” In my experience, no one’s “final wishes” should be allowed to trump those basic needs of the living.

And if one declares his “corpse…be interred in a private manner, without parade, or funeral oration,” he must understand the reality that a grieving family and community may just go to great extremes to respectfully ignore his wishes.