You should show up for your own funeral.

Something critical is missing from today's tidy little "memorial services" and closed-casket rituals--a dead body, for starters, notes funeral director Thomas Lynch.

The Christian faithful are unequivocally confronted by the mystery of life and death when they are faced with the presence of the body of one who has died.

--The Order of Christian Funerals, 1997

A NEIGHBORWOMAN, AN EPISCOPALIAN, ADMIRING A crucifix we keep in our dining room, said, "Our crosses never have the body on them." We were between the coffee and the crime brulee. Maybe it goes back to the Reformation when Protestants and Catholics divided on indulgences and purgatory, the papacy and statuary. Long centuries since, the fashions hold.

We Catholics are a flesh and blood and bone crowd whilst our Protestant siblings seem more cerebral, satisfied with more modest symbols, somehow "tidier." We Catholics are crazy for pietas and stigmata, sacred hearts and crowns of thorns, relics and reliquaries with bits and pieces of saints preserved in churches around the world, while the rest of Christianity seems pleased enough with a Good Book, good bake sales, and good homilists. Even Orthodox Christians, with their rich tradition of iconography and brilliant liturgies of chant and incense, keep their crosses two-dimensional.

"It's the same for Lutherans and Methodists and Presbyterians," I told the neighbor woman. "We put plain crosses in their caskets and on their vault lids and urns and headstones, but Catholics want their Christ to be there--writhing or risen, tortured or triumphant, dead or dying or alive--they want to see the body on the cross."

My family has been directing funerals now for 50 years--for Protestant and Orthodox and Catholic Christians. It is our "calling." It's what we do.

And in the 25 years that I've been doing it, I've seen some changes in the way we regard the bodies of the dead. Somehow the corpse has been devalued, like a Third World currency, from "the temple of the holy spirit" to something nearer a nuisance or an embarrassment.

The presence of the dead body at its funeral has gone from a "given" to something "optional," like rear-window defrost or tummy tucks or treatment for baldness. We expect the baby at its Baptism, the bride and groom at their wedding, but the dead are increasingly dismissed from their funerals, in the name of convenience or cost containment. In half a century we've gone from the funeral to the "memorial service."

Everyone's welcome but the one who has died.

THERE'S THIS "JUST A SHELL" THEORY OF HOW WE OUGHT TO relate to a dead human body. You hear a lot of it from young clergy, old family friends, well-intentioned in-laws--folks unsettled by the flesh grief of others. You hear it when you bring the mother and the father in for the first sight of their dead daughter, killed in a car wreck or left out to rot by some mannish violence. It is proffered as comfort in the teeth of what is a comfortless situation, consolation to the inconsolable. Right between the inhale and the exhale of the bone-racking sob such hurts produce, some well-meaning ignoramus is bound to give out with "It's OK. That's not her. It's just a shell."

I once saw a churchman nearly decked by the swift slap of the mother of a teenager, dead of leukemia, to whom he'd tendered this counsel. "I'll tell you when it's `just a shell,'" the woman said. "Until I tell you otherwise, she's my daughter." Of course, the woman was asserting the longstanding right of the living to declare the dead. Just as we declare the living alive through Baptisms, lovers in love through nuptials, funerals are the way we close the gap between the deaths that happen and the deaths that matter. It's how we keep track of our little remarkable histories.

So to suggest in the early going of grief that the dead body is "just" anything rings as tinny in its attempt to minimalize as it would if we were to say that it was "just" a bad hair day when the girl went bald from her chemotherapy. Or that our hope for heaven on her behalf was based on our belief that Christ raised his "just a body" from the dead.

What if, rather than crucifixion, he'd opted for suffering low self-esteem for the remission of our sins? What if, rather than "just a shell," he'd raised his personality, say, or The Idea of Himself?. Do you think they'd have changed the calendar for that? Done the Crusades? Burned witches? Easter was a body and blood thing--no symbols, no euphemisms, no half measures. The risen Christ did not appear to them in dreams. He appeared in his body, wounds and all.

The fundamental obligation of the living to witness their dead and dispose of them properly after commending them to Whatever Powers That Be has given way to a more user-friendly set of choices. More and more we get on our cell phones, get out our gold cards, and disappear our dead in a way that minimizes our involvement with their bodies and maximizes our frequent-flier miles. With the corpse out of the way, the service can dwell on the more "positive" and "life affirming" themes. And it is convenient too--once the corruptible body is out of the loop--obsequies can be worked into the busy family's schedule and the busy parish's.

With the body out of sight and out of mind, those difficult, conflicted, sometimes untidy feelings we call grief can be better contained, better controlled. A culture that has always approved of the good laugh has lost sight of the comfort and necessity of the good cry.

More and more we prearrange and prepay for these things so that the people who must live with the decisions never get a chance to make them. We are uniformly told "not to be a burden to our children" and then are shocked when our children seem unable to bear this life's responsibilities. We operate under the hopeful illusion that we can pre-feel the feelings by prepaying the fees.

The prearranged funeral, like planned parenthood and pre-nuptial agreements, and other narcissisms, mistakes planning for meaning.

THE FUNERAL IS AN IMPORTANT RITE OF PASSAGE. AS A vehicle for the expression of grief, faith, fellow feelings, and hope, the funeral should engage both our Christianity and our humanity. It should be a witness to our mortality and our hope for heaven. It should confront both the reality of death and the reality of eternal life. Through its rituals and liturgies it acts out things that are hard to put in words. And the mystery of life and death, indeed, inhabits the dead body. The Christian funeral addresses these glorious and sorrowful mysteries, not because it matters to the dead, but because the dead matter to the living.

That it has been downsized, devalued, and in some cases dispensed with can be attributed to families who regard the funeral as an embarrassment and expense, clergy who regard it as an inconvenience--an interruption of the other more upmarket parish services--and funeral directors who treat it like a retail event having more to do with boxes than bereavement.

But the conduct of the dead from this life to the next, and the care of the living who survive, is, as far as I'm concerned, Christianity 101. If the church can't respond to this predicament, who needs it for catechism and fundraisers, Baptisms, and child care?

Perhaps it is time that we Christians--clergy and faithful and funeral directors--reaffirmed the rights and duties of the living to witness the deaths in our families, our parishes, and our communities; to confront our dead, face to face, faith to faith; to affirm through our liturgies our trust in God; to bury or burn our dead with prayerful tenderness and honor; and to commend their souls to the One who made them.

Advance copies of Sounding Board are mailed to a sample of U.S. CATHOLIC subscribers. Their answers to questions about Sounding Board and a representative selection of their comments about the article as a whole appear in Feedback.

Advance copies of Sounding Board are mailed to a sample of U.S. CATHOLIC subscribers. Their answer to questions about Sounding Board and a representatives selection of their comments about the article as a whole appear in Feedback.

RELATED ARTICLE: Feedback

Q: One good reason why "burying the dead" is a corporal work of mercy is because:

It shows respect to the body, the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Father Joseph Kern

Rockville, Ind.

Many people first come to the church through the beauty of the funeral liturgy and through the support of others in their grief.

Catherine Wedding

Amarillo, Texas 

Like Confession, a funeral brings closure to a part of our life we need to release into God's hands in order to go on with life.

Linda Wraxall

Richmond, Calif.

In burying the dead, we give witness to our belief in the resurrection.

Donald Killips

Blanchardville, Wis.

It used to be that burying the dead actually involved some corporal act--carrying, digging, actually burying the body. Now everyone is too removed from the process.

Ann Hall

Harlingen, Texas 

This prompts me to think of those destitute exiles of society--street people. A ceremonial burial for them is our acknowledgment of their dignity as human beings. Perhaps inherent in any corporal work of mercy is an acknowledgment of dignity.

Mike Sertich

St. Louis, Mo.

Q: My best experience with a funeral was when:

A close friend died and the wake and funeral truly were celebrations of her life and faith, but also occasions where grief was acknowledged and embraced.

Joyce Bibzak

Park Forest, Ill,

As we left the caterer's hall after the luncheon following my father's funeral, another group was just arriving--to celebrate a christening.

James Shemanski

Scranton, Pa.

When a very dear friend died 10 years ago, I reached into the casket and touched his cold, clammy hands and was instantly grounded. He had died suddenly and it caused me to face reality.

Patricia Kraus

Cheshire, Conn.

The family accepted his death as a natural transition to the better, happier life with Jesus in heaven.

Vic Augello

Mount Sinai, N.Y.

At the death of my husband of 47 years, the family became a grieving, sharing unit. All five children and eight grandchildren had a part to play at the memorial Mass; the priest spoke truthfully; and the body was on the way to a medical school to again serve a purpose.

Marilyn Goldsberry

Indian Harbour Beach, Fla.

Sorrow in loss and celebration of eternal life seemed in balance. We wept for ourselves and we rejoiced in the victory of the Christian who had "finished the course" and "kept the faith."

Name withheld

San Diego, Calif.

Q: My worst experience with a funeral was when:

Only a handful of people were present in a very large, empty church. It was a sad sign of the life of the deceased.

Dawne Fleri

Miami, Fla.

They took up secular gifts at the presentation of the gifts, for example, a golf club because he liked golf.

Mary C. Golden

Logansport, Ind.

No one participates in the funeral liturgy. At those times I wonder who is more dead, the deceased or the congregation!

Father John E. Boll

Woodland, Calif.

At a "nonbeliever in anything" service there is no hint of an afterlife or loving God.

David Chamberlain 

Park Ridge, N.J.

Family quarreling over money at the wake.

Helen Czulak

Downers Grove, Ill.

They closed the casket early and I didn't get to say goodbye to a friend of 10 years.

James Tonti

Phoenix, Ariz.

The parish priest of my parents' parish refused to bury them because they were not officially "registered." It was necessary in each instance to have the priest for whom I worked intercede so the Catholic burial to which they were entitled was given to them.

Maureen Fahrenbach

via e-mail

Q: One practice, ritual, prayer, reading, or song that I most want at my own wake or funeral is:

I would want the readings and hymns at my funeral service to emphasize Christ's conquering of death so that we might be reborn to eternal life.

Barbara Mearse

Ithaca, N. Y.

"All I Ask Is to Remember Me as Loving You."

Alice Stark

Chelmsford, Mass.

I want to write something that could be read at the funeral.

Barb Coppol

Louisville, Ky.

I want laminated holy cards at the wake so that they will last for a long time after I have left this earth.

Denise S. Szabo

Jersey City, N.J.

I do want my funeral to be upbeat because I will hopefully be happy with God.

Betty McGrath, S.L.

Lebanon, Ky.

"Amazing Grace."

Audrey Ann McParlin

Toms River, N.J.

I want to be cremated. I don't want to be pumped full of chemical preservatives, sealed into a sanitary vault, and dropped into the ground in a lonely cemetery.

Karen Hawkins

Euclid, Ohio

Table fellowship. Sitting and eating together is a great way to help those who are grieving to begin the process.

Tom Williams

Sandusky, Ohio

"On Eagles' Wings" and "Here I Am, Lord."

Mary Carey,

Leesburg, Fla.

The kiss of peace, to encourage everyone who attends to hug and greet everyone there as true brothers and sisters in Christ.

Susan Callaway

Lucerne Valley, Calif.

The rosary at the wake.

Gerald F. Burr

Eau Claire, Wis.

Anything ecumenical.

Name withheld

Twinsburg, Ohio

I do want a closed casket. Let them visit me while I'm alive!

Karen Mallozzi

Natick, Mass.

General Comments

I've been to funerals with open coffins, closed coffins, urns, pictures of the deceased. Each one has been special in its own way and reflected the personality and needs of the deceased and their families.

M. Higa

Mililani, Hawaii

Sometimes wakes are demoralizing because they take on the sounds, conversations, and laughter of a cocktail party. This does not happen when wakes are held in church instead of the funeral home.

Lois M. Liners

Juneau, Wis.

I feel too much is made of how we should or should not lay our dead to rest.

Jill Pond

Andover, Vt.

As a nurse (now retired) I found the viewing of the bodies of my patients was very comforting after having seen them struggling in sickness and discomfort while living.

Name withheld

Winston-Salem, N.C.

Perhaps some of the funeral industry's extravagances and just the expense of a "standard" funeral may have turned society to memorial services or no services.

Father Tim Dombrowski

Ann Arbor, Mich.

I think seeing the body does help in the grieving process for the family. I'm not sure if it's so necessary for more distant friends and acquaintances to view the body.

Katie Hajde

Castle Rock, Colo.

Wouldn't it be more Christian to donate $5,000 to $10,000 to medical research or a home for abandoned children than to spend it on a gilded casket and perishable flower arrangements?

Name withheld

Orange, Calif.

It seems to me that the presence or absence of the body is not always the issue. Often it is other issues that help or deter people from facing funerals well, such as personal faith, family situations, age of death, or how the person died.

Barbara Reder, S.P.

Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif.

I grew up with mournful black chasubles, the dirge-like "Dies Irae," and doleful black-draped catafalques. While I appreciate the church's wisdom in changing the focus to whiteness, light, life, and resurrection, I think those "old ways" gave me a more realistic, albeit somber, view of death and dying.

Jim Schinstock

Hutchinson, Kan.

AND THE SURVEY SAYS ...

1. I too have noticed a trend at funerals to avoid the human body--or to shun funerals altogether.

agree 50%
disagree 39%
other 11%

2. To say the deceased body "is just a shell" greatly contradicts the significance of Jesus' Incarnation.

agree 73%
disagree 18%
other  9%

3. As a society, we are remarkably uncomfortable with each other's raw grief.

agree 77%
disagree 18%
other  5%

4. I find that viewing the dead body during funerals and wakes ...

72% greatly helps me in the bereavement process, making it easier to say goodbye.

12% doesn't help me much at all.

8% makes me uncomfortable.

8% other

5. Burying the dead and walking with the grieving are two of the most important tasks of the Catholic Church.

agree 85%
disagree 9%
other 6%

All comments used in Feedback must be signed, but we withhold names or request. We regret that space limitations force as to condense letters and that many cannot be used at all. Our thanks to all who wrote. --The Editors

Join the conversation -- online. In addition to a sample of subscribers, all are invited to respond to U.S. CATHOLIC'S.org This month, join U.S. CATHOLIC readers as they discuss the Seven Deadly Sins.

By THOMAS LYNCH, author of three collections of poems and a collection of essays, The Undertaking (W. W. Norton, 1997), which won the American Book Award and was a finalist for The National Book Award. He lives in Milford, Michigan, where he is the funeral director.3