The Why of American Deathcare
What do funerals look like in Norway, and how do Norwegians think about deathcare? I can’t say I’ve spent much time pondering these topics. But when I found myself reading a book written by two Norwegians about death, funerals, and memorialization in Norway and throughout the world, it got me thinking about the why of American deathcare.
Why do we do what we do? And why do we do it the way that we do it? These questions are broad, almost uselessly broad, but I suspect that they pop up from time to time in the minds of most funeral directors and deathcare workers. Funeral service is changing; consumer preferences are evolving; and what is legal, possible, and desired are in a state of flux. How do we adapt to these changes while maintaining the essence of what we do?
When I ask these questions, I really am concerned with what “we” do as a society. And that’s a much more complicated question to answer than “why do I do what I do?” I think it’s safe to say that most people enter funeral service out of a desire to help families, to perform important work for the dead, and because they have a passion and aptitude for the work. None of this gets at the deeply embedded societal beliefs that dominate the everyday practices of deathcare workers.
Living with the Dead
I recently read Living with the Dead: How We Care for the Deceased by Vibeke Maria Viestad and Andreas Viestad and it caused me to reflect on my own assumptions about deathcare and American funeral service. She is an archaeologist, and he is a writer and restaurateur. The Viestads live next to a cemetery in Oslo, Norway. The book, originally published in Norwegian as Dødeboka, is an exploration of how people care for the dead across the world and throughout history. (This is a genre of book that will certainly be familiar to many in death care.)
What I found particularly noteworthy about this book is its Scandinavian, and specifically Norwegian, perspective on death. We learn, for example, that the Norwegian climate creates logistical difficulties when burying bodies in the winter and that the Norwegian funeral industry is fairly conservative. (The authors tell a story of a new funeral home that was in business for six months before getting its first customer.) As you might expect, there is a certain matter-of-factness in their assumptions and approach to death: death is simply a part of life. As they write, “When children are born, the only thing we can be sure of is that sooner or later they will die—though we would prefer it to be later.” That’s not an attitude you frequently hear expressed that bluntly in America.
As interesting as these observations are, what was much more intriguing to me was the unspoken assumptions about funeral service that the authors display and elicit from the people they interviewed. In Norway, graves are typically rented for twenty years and then used again. That means coffins are typically made of softer woods that decompose more quickly. They are usually painted white. People are buried in biodegradable clothes or shrouds made from natural fibers. Bodies are not typically embalmed. This is simply the way things are done. Norway is an economically advanced Western nation whose funeral traditions are drawn largely from Christian practices. The same is true of the United States, yet we have developed a significantly different set of rites and rituals surrounding death.
Defamiliarization as Innovation
Regardless of what the authors intended, reading Living with the Dead was a great exercise in defamiliarization. It helped to decenter my own assumptions about and experiences with the American way of death. There’s a great benefit in seeing your own world with fresh eyes. But it can also be scary. The process of defamiliarization can make you question fundamental aspects of your work and business. If things don’t have to be the way they are, that opens up myriad possibilities for new realities, business models, and vocations.
One of the most important benefits of defamiliarizing yourself with something is that it can help to strip away biases and assumptions that are not essential. As the Viestads’ book showed and many others have also demonstrated, there are a few universal (or near universal) human beliefs about caring for the dead, but there is no end to the ways in which these beliefs are put into practice. More or less every human culture throughout history has treated the dead in a special way, making a clear distinction between dead humans and dead animals or household waste. This has often taken on the form of extensive and expensive memorialization and elaborate rituals that show a real value placed on the dead. But these rituals often look nothing like each other. And that should be freeing.
A new perspective can often be the first step in innovating. I don’t know what these innovations will look like or if and when consumers will support them, but it’s safe to say that the future of deathcare will look significantly different than its past. Fifty or seventy-five years ago very few people would have predicted the central role of cremation in funeral service today. In another fifty years, people will likely be amused by both the anxiety and excitement caused by debates around alkaline hydrolysis and human composting, no matter which way the laws and market eventually move.
Innovating from Core Principles
The big takeaway from exploring how other cultures deal with death is that the why of taking care of the dead is remarkably consistent, but the how varies a tremendous amount. At the extreme ends of the spectrum, there are practices that some groups absolutely require and that others explicitly ban. One might think of the radically opposed positions held by many Muslims and Hindus on burial and cremation.
This realization provides an opening for rethinking how we do what we do and how we can better serve our communities. There is very little evidence that one form of commemoration or memorialization is superior or more effective than any other. What really seems to matter is that those involved find it personally and communally meaningful. For example, many Americans find the public viewing of an embalmed body to be an important part of the grieving process. On the other hand, many British tend to dislike this, so they don’t do it. It would be absurd to argue that one group is doing death the right way and the other is foolishly misguided in their ways.
This raises the question: how effectively are we meeting the changing needs of our changing communities? Are the members of our community satisfied with doing things the way they’ve always been done? In some places, the community probably is, but that’s becoming a smaller and smaller part of the market. If people aren’t satisfied with the status quo, we need to better serve this part of the community. There is no single innovation that will make everyone happy, revitalize your business, and allow you to rest on your laurels. This will be an iterative and ongoing process. And it won’t always go smoothly. But, as Living with the Dead illustrates, if we start from the why of funeral service and let that inform the how of our operations, we can experience a newfound freedom to rethink the ways we do things and find fresh ways to serve people.