Propuestas Generales y Operativas para el desarrollo de Universidades Inclusivas

The deceased has a central place in the funeral preparations and performance:

the ceremony is shaped in light of his identity, the deceased is both subject and audience at his own funeral, and – as we will see later – the funeral allows the bereaved to create a sense of continuity by transcending the life of the deceased.

However, there is another form in which the deceased is to influence the funer-ary practices of the bereaved, namely, through his bodily presence. The body of the deceased is of great significance during the process of death ritual, and in-fluences the relationship between the bereaved and the deceased (Hertz 1907/1960). Although the deceased may not enact like the living, his body is transitioning between being a person and a physical residue. As such, it evokes a demand for ritual meaning and ritual practice through which the bereaved can accept, challenge, and transcend the reality of death.

When biological death occurs, it is first and foremost the body that con-fronts the living with the reality of death: the deceased has passed away, and is no longer to be looked in the eyes or embraced. To many bereaved, the body has become an empty shell that once held the essence of the deceased. Accounts from our interviews with the recently bereaved clearly illustrate that a funda-mental transition is experienced at the moment of death:

It was good to be with her, the moment she passed away. But then you ly loose her, you know. You can’t say anything anymore […]. I was real-ly… I couldn’t hold her anymore. (Interview bereaved)

My husband said: “I believe that when you die, you only really die when your soul leaves the body”. And now I have clearly experienced that this is the case when someone dies. It is like… It is him all the time, and then sud-denly he becomes a body. Well, how can you describe this? When he ex-haled his last breath, I don’t know, it is something typical. Like he suddenly left me. It was like he was only with me here, in my heart. (Interview be-reaved)

I wouldn’t mind dying right now. I have seen how beautiful it is. He just died peacefully, and then there is nothing left. (Interview bereaved)

In confrontation with the prominent decomposing body, illustrating the reality of death and evoking a sense of danger and impurity, the bereaved intuitively experience a dualism between body and mind (Hertz 1907/1960; Bering 2002;

2006; Heflick et al. 2015). The notion that “it is him all the time, and then sud-denly he becomes a body” shows how something, whether the soul, spirit, iden-tity, or personhood, is irrevocably disappearing, and then there is “nothing left”.

Simultaneously, however, an entity is left, the corpse, and something must be done with it. The corpse of the deceased, and we specifically use the term corpse over body in this instance, prompts a “cultured form of human response”

(Davies 2015, 24). It is something to hide and disguise, but also something to grant privacy and respect (Foltyn 2008, 101). After death, the corpse becomes an object of solicitude (Hertz 1907/1960). It is washed and dressed by profes-sionals and/or the bereaved, and by doing so its human-like qualities are re-stored (Howarth 1996, 147). The corpse is transformed into a body again, which comes to (re-)present the deceased individual. The body of the deceased thus mediates a connection between the living and the dead (Metcalf & Huntington 1979) and, as such, plays a fundamental role in the process of meaning-making, to which we will return in the next chapter.

5 Conclusion

By mapping the ritual actions and ritual actors in contemporary personalised fu-nerals, this chapter has drawn attention to the impact of the changing role of re-ligion and the process of individualisation on death ritual. Illustrating the di-verse ways wherein Roman Catholic, Protestant, and religiously unaffiliated survivors prepare and perform the funerals of their deceased has clarified the re-invention of personalised rites of passage, as well as the roles of the ritual actors that are involved.

Results from our participant observations and interviews have illustrat-ed that the preparation of the funeral is fundamental in order to understand the structure and the meaning of the actual performance of the ceremony. During the ‘arrangement week’, we identified three key elements: the initial arrange-ment interview with the funeral director, the preparations in terms of the content of the funeral, and the practices in relation to the body of the deceased. During the arrangement interview, all practical matters with regard to the forthcoming arrangement week and the actual funeral performance are discussed. Most im-portantly, the bereaved have to decide upon the place, time, and type of funeral, and also have to make decisions regarding the involvement of other ritual ex-perts, as well as the care that must be given to the body of the deceased. Alt-hough most decisions were deliberated upon among the bereaved themselves, in light of the wishes and the identity of their deceased, there was one particular element wherein the funeral director took a presiding role. The decision to in-volve another ritual expert – and also the particular person to be chosen – was strongly influenced by the funeral director. Whereas facilitation was

empha-sised during the arrangement interview, the choices being made also have a ma-jor impact on the ritual meaning of the funeral and, hence, on the meaning-making process of the bereaved, as we will further explore in the next chapter.

In relation to the preparations concerning the content of the ceremony, we have illustrated that both ecclesial and non-ecclesial funerals are grounded in the life story of the deceased, as articulated by the bereaved. The immediate family either prepares the funeral themselves, whereby the proper guidance of the funeral director is indispensable, or co-creates the content with an ecclesial or non-ecclesial expert. In view of the funeral content, the life story is common-ly seen as the glue that sticks the bereaved, as well as the diverse group of fu-neral participants, together. Both ecclesial and non-ecclesial experts have a large toolbox of ritual elements at their disposal to verbally and non-verbally portray the life story at the funeral. Thereby, the importance of persons, speech-es, objects, and music came to the fore during all preparation interviews. The main difference between ecclesial and non-ecclesial ceremonies is the existence of a liturgical format and the (expert’s) additional commitment towards a reli-gious tradition, which determine the extent to which the boundaries of the de-scribed or prede-scribed script can be interpreted, stretched and redefined. Howev-er, as we have emphasised, the ecclesial and non-ecclesial experts fulfil a simi-lar role during the funeral preparations.

Subsequently, it was illustrated that the care for the body of the de-ceased is discussed in the arrangement interview with the funeral director, and that this topic was often the most revealing in terms of ritual meaning. In con-frontation with the dead body, the bereaved not only experience that an irrevo-cable change has occurred in the psychical attributes of the deceased, but also with regards to their shared relationship with the deceased. The reality of death that is experienced in relation to the body is both reinforced and challenged by the fact that the body must be given care during the forthcoming week of funer-al preparations. Therefore, we suggest that the liminfuner-al body mediates a connec-tion and transiconnec-tion between the living and the dead and has an inestimable value in terms of meaning-making, which will be explored in greater detail in the sub-sequent chapter.

The diverse preparation practices cumulate in the performance of the funeral. In relation to the ceremony itself, our survey results showed that the rit-ual actions through which the bereaved can celebrate the life of the deceased, particularly the speeches and pieces of music, together with the actions that al-low the bereaved to pay their last respects, were considered the most important.

Also, the presence of other friends and relatives during the funeral was highly valued, granting the bereaved comfort and support and a sense of shared goals and values. This provides us with a starting point to further examine the mean-ing of the funeral performance.

In addition to the funeral preparations and performance, attention has been drawn to the changed roles of ritual actors in these practices. The rich fu-nerary market that has emerged in the Netherlands has led to the rise of person-alised ecclesial and ecclesial funerals. In view of people’s religious or non-religious presumptions, the choice for a particular type of funeral has become a personal preference. Hence, in the preparation of such personalised ceremonies, the authority has shifted away from ritual experts towards the bereaved. A pro-cess of co-creation or co-guidance occurs, whereby the bereaved ultimately de-cide upon the content and structure of the funeral, informed by the wishes of the deceased and the know-how of the ritual expert. When the bereaved prepare the funeral together with the funeral director, the latter becomes the only external expert to be relied upon, increasing his or her responsibility regarding the funer-al content.

The content of funeral ceremonies thus is no longer the exclusive do-main of religious celebrants as a new group of ‘independent’ ritual coaches has emerged, which has had a profound influence on the preparation and outlook of funerals, as well as on debates regarding ritual roles within the funeral industry.

Although the impact of this group is not to be underestimated, our survey re-sults suggest that it is particularly the funeral directors, together with the family, that take over the role of religious celebrants. In many non-ecclesial funerals, the role of the ritual expert has been reduced to chairing the ceremony, welcom-ing the funeral participants, keepwelcom-ing an eye on the bereaved and the time, and conveying gratitude and practical information at the end of the funeral. Reli-gious celebrants have also experienced a reduction in their role, as a result of the active involvement of the bereaved. Thus, rather than making decisions in the name of the bereaved, the experts are merely guiding the bereaved through the funeral preparations and performance.

CHAPTER 3

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