By Dr. William G. Hoy, FT, Clinical Professor of Medical Humanities, Baylor University

  Like most of you, I attend annual continuing education courses in order to keep my funeral directors license active. Several years ago I had the great fortune to hear Dr. William G. Hoy, FT speak and was so impressed I asked him to share his insights with you. I know you will enjoy what Dr. Hoy has to share. He would like to hear your thoughts and comments about his column. He can be reached at Bill_Hoy@baylor.edu.

  Because I have given my research career to understanding the role of funerals in the grief process and the ways various people groups utilize them, I am occasionally asked to share a perspective on what I see happening in this regard. Nearly two years ago, Chris Kuhnen made exactly that request and so here is what I see happening in this world you and I co-inhabit.

  Those who know me and my work are aware I have had a long and abiding respect for the funeral service profession. It started when I was a church organist during high school and college, and continued in seminary training, pastoral care internship, and congregational leadership. That respect for what you do for families persisted through my clinical training, 16 years at the helm of a hospice bereavement program, and now, for the last five years, as a university professor teaching the next generation of physicians about the realities of death and bereavement.

  My respect has never been higher, however, now that in the space of eight weeks, two of your number running very different businesses 500 miles apart have cared for my family, first in the death of my father-in-law on July 30 and then my own mother on September 19. The staff of Donnelly’s Chapel in Irving, TX and Rabenhorst Funeral Home in Baton Rouge, LA made me proud in every respect to be associated for so many years with the work you do. In fact, I wrote these words 39,000 feet above the globe the day after her funeral.

  In both cases, our family chose “full traditional funerals” followed by burial in a cemetery plot where numerous family members had already been buried. Both funerals involved not only large extended families but a network of friends whose grief was also real and needed a place to be shared in appropriate ways. In both cases, these consummate funeral professionals provided the space, the equipment, and the leadership to help us do things we would not otherwise have thought to do, even though I have been closely associated with funeral directors for more than three decades. That is one of the things that makes your work truly magical in the lives of bereaved families, even when they do not readily recognize it.

  In the last five decades, some North American families have figured that the “tried and true” rituals have no place in their family narrative. Perhaps because they are not connected to a faith community or the faith community of which they are a part does not highly prize the role of “ritual,” these families have been cast adrift or have set themselves adrift in a bereavement process with few safe harbors. And that is exactly what funerals provide for us in the early chapter of grief: a safe harbor with solid anchors.

  For this reason, in the book I wrote a few years ago entitled Do Funerals Matter? The Purposes and Practices of Death Rituals in Global Perspective (Routledge, 2013), I set out to analyze what I am seeing across the global landscape. Here are a few pieces I am pondering now, more than a decade and a half into this “new century:”

  The rush to “no memorialization,” or “simpler memorialization” is a largely North American phenomenon with occasional appearances in other English-speaking countries; the idea of “ritual lite” appears to be unheard of in the developing world, Eastern Asia, or Eastern Europe. Rather, these people groups, who I might add are the poorest of the world’s poor, are as committed to traditional funeral rituals as ever.

  While I have no scientific data to support my observation (because it has not been studied yet), I have heard numerous stories of families across the United States and Canada that tried “doing nothing” the last time there was a death, and finding that approach wanting, have returned to a more elaborate type of memorialization this time. Interestingly, I am hearing most of these stories from college towns and the West Coast, who were among the first adopters of the “ritual lite” culture a generation ago.

  Contrary to popular notions, the embracing of “simpler” memorials and/or direct disposition without ceremony does not appear to be driven by economics. In the United States, for example, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans are among the poorest people groups with relative poverty in these communities at levels three- or four-times higher than among their non-Hispanic, White counterparts. Yet, it is we Caucasians, and in my experience, we upper and upper-middle socio-economic status whites, who have driven cremation and especially direct cremation. It is not generally a phenomenon seen in poverty-stricken communities.

  Honestly, these trends give me pause. As a social scientist, I am more comfortable with offering observations and studying hypotheses than I am in making assertions about causes. I don’t honestly know why families make the choices they make, but I suspect their reasoning is complex and it is likely far more complex than what they answer when we ask simple questions. I do believe you have some important tasks ahead of you, however.

  First, you must redouble efforts to help families enter into conversations about memorial preferences before there is a death in the family. However, remember that most older adults do not want to “be a burden” to their families and at least if culturally appropriate, will likely tell their kids, “Don’t make a fuss over me.” It may only be the well-trained advance planning counselor or funeral director who has the opportunity to point out that a memorial gathering is not making a fuss and that on the contrary, “doing nothing” appears to create more of a psychological burden (see my book for the details on that research).

  Second, you must focus attention on being community educator instead of just caretaker of the dead and their families. Providing continuing education programs for community caregiving professionals, offering printed or electronic educational resources, and employing a liaison to help forge relationships with these professionals are important places to begin. Almost no caregiving professionals heard anything about funerals in their professional training and just a few more got any specific training related to end-of-life and bereavement counseling. That is why they embrace the opportunities to interact with colleagues under the direction of an “expert” in the field. I frequently hear professionals say they got more training in a one-day seminar than in all of their professional training combined. That is a huge gift to your community that helps reinforce the value of what you do.

  Third, you must communicate at every turn that memorialization is about more than the dead person and in fact, it is even about more than the family. Communities grieve, too. At my mom’s visitation just a couple of days ago, one of her 90+ year old friends told me, through tears, what a friend to her my mother had been. Not only did that minister healing to my brothers and me but it also provided an outlet for this dear woman not likely too many years from her own death. Clergy need to hear that message as do civic and social clubs.

  All of this means you need the best trained pre-need counselors and funeral directors you can hire. Being excellent at embalming and restorative art are essential skills for every funeral home to have in its employ, if not a skill each individual funeral professional must possess. In fact, my mother often said, “When I am dead, take me to Rabenhorst; they make you look the best when you’re dead.” Highly developed skills in creating services are also vital for those working in your profession. But perhaps more than ever, staff must be skilled educators who can utilize the skill of weaving together stories of families helped, of creative approaches to memorials, and of the ability to ask probing questions about what the factors are that help us make our decisions. I think the future of your business and the well-being of a generation of bereaved people depends on it.