Obituary Guide dot com, August 30, 2007
David McConkey
The
article “The Way We Mourn,” in the latest issue of
Maclean’s magazine, certainly
has some interesting points about modern ways of observing death.
Pulling no punches, writer John Fraser takes aim at what he asserts are
over-the-top obituaries and funerals.
Fraser starts by
noting the absence of death in most newspaper obituaries. Citing the
announcements in a recent Globe and Mail, he found that only four out
of 24 used the word “died.” All the others employed
a euphemism. He
attributes this to “the spirit of the age,” amidst
the departure of
traditional religious faith. With the end of “the confidence
in an
afterlife, the reality of death has been increasingly and perversely
obscured,” he says. (Actually, euphemisms for the word
“death” have
been around for centuries.)
He also takes aim at many
newspaper obituaries which he says are too long and “so far
over the
top they almost reach Pluto.” He blames these “epic
sagas” both on
newspapers wanting to sell more advertising space and perhaps on
“the
egos of surviving family members.”
He finds disturbing
another trend in funerals: “self-important, self-serving
eulogies.” He
notes that he has attended services where the eulogists simply forgot
the dead person they were supposed to remember. Instead, they
“recited
their own interesting journeys through life.”
Fraser
laments the replacement of the traditional religious funeral with more
modern approaches. His ideal is a non-personal service which would be a
“moving, solemn and beautifully spiritual
farewell.” He contrasts that
to the “appalling eulogy” made at the funeral of
Princess Diana by her
“lounge lizard of a brother Earl Spencer.” Or, with
what he calls the
Oprah-inspired “banal, sentimental, embarrassing”
attempts at 15
minutes of fame at the funerals of more ordinary people.
Fraser
pays considerable attention to the deaths, funerals, and reactions to
them, among Canada’s cultural elite. Names mentioned by
Fraser include
opera director Richard Bradshaw, tenor Michael Schade, author Christina
McCall (along with her former colleague Allan Fotheringham and former
husband Peter C. Newman), novelist Robertson Davies, journalist and
social activist June Callwood, and television critic John Doyle. Fraser
ruffles some feathers of the chattering classes. For example, he says
that Doyle’s written reaction to Callwood’s death
is “most
cringe-making.”
Fraser sums up his thesis by saying that
modern personalized funerals have resulted in the loss of a
“certain
decent reticence and restraint “ as well as the loss of awe
in the face
of death. “Death itself is largely diminished in the
hoopla.”
“Our
grandparents understood death so much better than we do,”
Fraser says.
“They understood its arbitrariness through disease, poverty
and war.
They understood the particular tragedy of the young dying, from any
cause; they also understood the beauty of death coming after a long
life well lived.”
In “The Way We Mourn,” John Fraser does
make some good points. For example, there are often too many
clichés
and euphemisms in obituaries. As well, I also have heard eulogies that
revolve around the person giving the eulogy, instead of being about the
deceased. I have experienced clergy who did this, too.
Fraser,
however, is off-target in his overall assessment. He certainly has the
right to his own preference for a funeral, but not everyone needs to
share his choice. There can be different ways to observe a death that
are honest and faithful to the life of the deceased. Just because a
funeral is more personal in nature does not mean it should be labeled
as mere “hoopla.”
While Fraser objects to overly personal
funerals, many others object to just the opposite: overly formal events
that seem to be completely divorced from the life of the deceased.
Instead of putting down others’ tastes, why not celebrate
diversity,
and empower everyone to make the choices that are appropriate for them?
A
non-conventional – as well as a traditional - marking of a
death can
still inspire a sense of awe, reverence, and wonder of living and
dying. A death is an occasion to commemorate a life, including noting
the importance of an everyday life. In fact, Maclean’s itself
does this
very effectively in its obituaries of ordinary people in the
magazine’s
regular feature,
The End.
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