The body of the deceased plays a profound role in meaning-making practices in the face of death. In chapter two we have shown that the care for the body is discussed in the arrangement interview between the funeral director and the family. In these talks we observed the importance of restoring and/or conveying the deceased’s identity, whereby aspects of meaning-making came to the fore.
By taking care of the body, the bereaved, as well as the professionals, shape and preserve, in a literal and metaphorical sense, aspects of the identity of the de-ceased. During one interview, for example, the widow firmly stressed that her late husband not only needed his clothes, but also his glasses as “Without his glasses, it just [wasn’t] him”. In another instance, we visited a man whose mother had passed away. His mother had always looked refined, wearing beau-tiful clothes, and having immaculate hair and make-up, until she had suffered a stroke a few years back. Since then she had been unable to care for her appear-ance as much, and had only continued to wear a particular colour of nail polish.
In making arrangements, not only did the family insist that that particular shade of nail polish had to be found somewhere, but they also wanted to dress her as she used to dress herself, before she fell ill. Thus, by dressing the dead both the reality of death, as well as the process of dying, are challenged.
These two examples show that appearance plays a major role in restor-ing the identity of the deceased. Meanrestor-ing is sought by humanisrestor-ing the corpse, whereby human-like qualities of the deceased are restored and the corpse is treated as if it is a living human being, allowing people to create a sense of con-tinuity in response to death’s disconcon-tinuity.4 Additionally, the senses of the de-ceased are often taken into account in this process. During an arrangement in-terview with two daughters, whose mother had just passed away, we discussed
4 This notion of humanising the deceased is not only found in the treatment of the corpse, but also becomes apparent in the way the buried or cremated remains are cared for. The grave is decorated, often resembling aspects of the home and the social life of the deceased. Also, as we will see in chapter four, the ashes are treated as if they are animate.
the clothes that their mother would wear. Her favourite blue dress and jewellery were easily picked, but when the funeral director added that their mother also needed her undergarments, something interesting occurred in the talk between the daughters. It had to be something pretty but, more importantly, it needed to be something comfortable, something “with a good fit, which feels soft on her skin”. This notion was further intensified when we came to discuss the place where their mother would stay until the day of the funeral. The daughters did not want to leave her all by herself, but neither did they wish to place her in a cooled room with the other dead. “I would like a private room for mum, as she doesn’t like people,” one of the daughters explained. Therefore, it was decided to rent a private ‘mourning-chamber’ in the funeral home, which granted the family 24/7 access. In this instance the corpse of their mother is not only hu-manised, but in the process of taking care of her we can observe an emphasis on her sensory attributes and personal preferences. Whereas accounts of the mo-ment of death illustrate the departure of the soul or spirit in relation to the body, here, an intentional psychology is attributed to the dead body, implying that the dead body has a form of consciousness within (Harper 2010, 317). Thereby, the woman’s lifestyle becomes a source of moral obligation in making decisions re-garding the care for her body (Hertz 1907/1960; Davies 2000, 98). Not only is an image of the deceased created, but a form of physical presence is also estab-lished (Howarth 1996).
Restoring the human-like qualities of the body consequentially has an impact on people’s relationship with the deceased and evokes notions of sym-bolic immortality. Howarth (1996) has illustrated how the created image may continue to live on in the minds of survivors and, as such, evokes a form of, what she calls, psychological immortality. Although we must question the ex-tent to which the humanised corpse continues to influence images of the be-reaved concerning the deceased, in relation to other memories that establish such an image, the act of humanising the corpse and its result, the human-like dead body, influence situational notions of continued existence. In the actual re-sponse to the dead body, it is not only the created immaterial image that contin-ues to be meaningful for people, but particularly the handling of the body itself.
In caring for the physical body of the deceased, it becomes a vehicle for implicit and explicit notions of continued existence, or lack thereof. One of our inter-viewees, for instance, told us about the ways in which he and his children had dressed his wife and brought her home before the ceremony took place:
[After she had passed away] we placed her in the living room. Yes, like she was part of it. In that way, you can keep her close, although her soul is gone.
I didn’t really talk to her. Yes, I’d kiss her, but … And also for the children.
It looked very warm and cosy. They came over and could sit with mum.
(Charles, interview recently bereaved)
Charles’ account shows a distinction between body and soul, but we simultane-ously see that the body of the deceased keeps ‘mum’ in near proximity. Alt-hough the soul “is gone” the body of the deceased is treated as if it represents the deceased in the fullest sense. Charles is not speaking of the body, but of
‘her’, and the children came to sit with ‘mum’, which was something they had always done during life. So through the body, ‘mum’ continues to have ties with the living and their everyday world (Hertz 1907/1960). In ascribing awareness to the body in practice and in the experience of the body as soulless, the liminal qualities of the deceased are emphasised. It furthermore suggests a situational belief in something beyond death, as Charles’ account indicates both an instant and gradual departure of the deceased. As such, it evidences ‘doing belief’ (Day 2010). When we explicitly came to speak of life after death in the interview, Charles, although making use of traditional vocabulary when referring to the departure of his wife’s soul, firmly disagreed with traditional notions of life af-ter death. In this particular situation concerning her body, however, meaning is taken from a notion of ongoing existence and gradual departure. This highlights the importance of the social location of belief, and illuminates that a variety of situational beliefs can emerge in diverse contexts, both in practices as well as in narratives.
Our material also evidences situational beliefs in relation to disagree-ment with a continued form of existence. During an arrangedisagree-ment interview in the region of Amsterdam, we met a man whose brother had passed away. In a specific way this interview was very different from others in which we had par-ticipated, as the family opted for a technical cremation. They did not want to have a funeral ceremony, neither did they wish to view the body, arrange a viewing for others, participate in taking care of the body, organise a coffee-table, or send cards. Technical cremations can take place for various reasons, and they are often related to situations with family disputes, the absence of fam-ily, or funerary costs. However, none of these had occurred in this case. Rather, the technical cremation reflected the funeral wishes and identity of both the de-ceased as well as the bereaved. It was their form of a personal funeral: “Death is death, no fuss.”
The idea that there was nothing after death, and that things instantaneously end-ed once the brother had exhalend-ed his last breath, influencend-ed the funeral and the care for the body. The family had already had the opportunity to say goodbye in the hospital, and “so had his friends if they had wanted to”. As “no one [would]
be viewing the body”, the family told us that he did not have to be dressed in a particular way, but could wear the hospital clothes he was already wearing. Al-so, the notion that a coffin was needed to cremate the deceased was considered
“a waste of wood”. All these notions show how the body was merely being viewed as a residue. To the family the body was no longer connected to their brother, but was an entity that had to be taken care of in a practical sense. This case, therefore, further suggests that the ways in which people take care of the body of their deceased can point towards their situational beliefs regarding life after death, as handling the body in this instance points towards the idea that death is the end.
The dead body is not only a symbol that represents and participates in the identity of the deceased, that keeps the ‘soul’ attached to this world, or that illuminates its departure, nor is it simply a source for continuing or discontinu-ing relationships between the livdiscontinu-ing and the dead. Bediscontinu-ing a carrier of multiple meanings (Turner 1967, 28), because of which it can be different things (Harper 2010, 311), the body also symbolises the core cultural values of a ‘society’ (Da-vies 2015, 5). This clearly came to the fore in the responses of funeral profes-sionals in the case of the technical cremation. The family’s wish to not do any-thing with the body was responded to by the funeral director saying that “we then will only give him basic care, and we will make sure your brother’s body is allowed to rest”. In this way, not caring for the body was transformed into car-ing for the body.
Regarding the above case, after the arrangement interview we went to the morgue to see whether the deceased had been retrieved from the hospital and whether everything had been arranged properly. In the morgue, it turned out things had not been put in order. Because of his illness, the deceased was not in good shape and his clothes from the hospital had already been removed. Where-as the family had said the clothes did not matter, Where-as no one would be viewing the deceased, the actual situation in the morgue, which generally remains hid-den from the bereaved, demanded a response. The two mortuary technicians strongly emphasised that they “could not leave the deceased lying like this”, and that they would wash him and place him in a burial shroud in the coffin. Again, the corpse demanded a “cultured form of human response” (Davies 2015, 24).
Caring for the corpse was not simply a matter of hygiene but, in this instance, neither was it about restoring the individual identity of the deceased. Rather, the way the body was taken care of reflected the core value of dignity. This notion of dignity, expressed and enacted upon by taking care of the corpse, is the most profound in the practice of taking care of the body of the deceased. It reflects what is considered honourable by the bereaved, the deceased – when he has stated this during his lifetime, or what the bereaved think the deceased would consider dignified or fitting – and the professionals. For some this value ensures that the deceased’s appearance is restored, whereas for others it implies leaving the body as it is. The way in which expression is given to dignity thus evidences people’s notions about the meaning of death.