The American Way of Death Revisited - Jessica Mitford [40]
I know of no evidence to support the view that “public” viewing of an embalmed body is somehow “therapeutic” to the bereaved. Certainly there are no statistics known to me comparing the outcomes of such a process in the United States with the outcomes of England where public viewing is seldom done. Indeed, since the public viewing of the corpse is part and parcel of a whole complex of events surrounding funerals, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain either its therapeutic or contra-therapeutic effect.
The phrase “grief therapy” is not in common usage in psychiatry, so far as I know. That the loss of any loved object frequently leads to depressions and malfunctioning of the organism is, of course, well known; what is not well known or understood are the conditions under which some kind of intervention should be made, or even the nature of the intervention. My general feeling is that the phenomena of grief and mourning have appeared in human life long before there were “experts” of any kind (psychiatric, clerical, etc.) and somehow most, if not all, of the bereaved managed to survive. The interesting problem to me is why it should be that so many modern Americans seem more incapable of managing loss and/or grief than other peoples, and why we have such reliance upon specialists. My own hunch is that morbid problems of grief arise only when the relevant laypersons (family members, friends, children, etc.) somehow fail to perform their normal therapeutic roles for the bereaved—or may it be that the bereaved often break down because they simply do not know how to behave under the circumstances? Very few of us, I think, would be capable of managing sustained, ambiguous situations.
Demonstrably flimsy and absurd as the justifications for universal embalming and “viewing” may have been, these patently fraudulent claims of undertakers for their product remained immune from government intervention until 1984, when the Federal Trade Commission’s funeral rules were adopted. These provided, among other things, that:
It is a deceptive act or practice for a funeral provider to:
• Represent that state or local law requires that a deceased person be embalmed when such is not the case;
• Fail to disclose that embalming is not required by law except in certain special cases.
The rule went on to provide that prior approval for embalming must be obtained from a family member.
The howls of dismay that greeted these seemingly innocuous rulings were pitiful to behold. They echoed, indeed, the eruption, five years earlier, that followed the introduction of a similar requirement at a meeting of California’s State Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers. I had special reason to take note of it at the time, because the proposer was my husband, Bob Treuhaft, who had been appointed to the board by then governor Jerry Brown.
The proposed regulation required that a responsible party confirm that he or she understood that:
Arterial embalming requires cutting into an artery and draining the blood, which is replaced by chemical preservatives for the temporary preservation of the body while awaiting interment. I understand that embalming is not required by law.
Bud Noakes, an editor of Mortuary Management, responded emotionally in a leading editorial:
I thought I had reached a time of life at which I do not shock easily, but I realize now I had not fully plumbed the depths to which Mr. Treuhaft is capable of descending. I was shocked that an individual, who is sworn to act in the best interest of California, could be so wholly insensitive to the emotional state of bereaved families.
Anyone who wants to know how embalming is accomplished can easily find out simply by asking funeral directors. But the answer will be given in a tactful and diplomatic manner,