Speaker 1: From how Stuff Works dot com. This is the Stuff
Speaker 1: of Life. Welcome to the Stuff of Life. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Julie Douglas, and today we have a companion to the
Speaker 1: previous episode Life at the Death Cafe and our discussion
Speaker 1: about what makes a good death and what we can
Speaker 1: learn from a study on end of life dreams and visions.
Speaker 1: And this companion episode will look at how as the
Speaker 1: bereaved we find solace in ritual death can feel monumental,
Speaker 1: and the ceremonies around it are an attempt to acknowledge
Speaker 1: this immensity, particularly when the person is a beloved public figure.
Speaker 1: From his beloved second home at Warm Springs, Georgia, the
Speaker 1: body of Franklin Delano Roosevelt moves on the first stages
Speaker 1: of a journey to his final resting place. Scores of
Speaker 1: sufferers from infantil paralysis sorrowfully bid farewell to their great
Speaker 1: friend and the factor. Not all funeral rights need to
Speaker 1: be grand. There's comfort in small gestures, and some of
Speaker 1: these rituals seem kind of commonplace to us. One thing
Speaker 1: I really like about American mortuary rituals or practices is
Speaker 1: this idea that somebody dies, people bring them food, it's
Speaker 1: a very American thing, and I think that sometimes it
Speaker 1: becomes this like really weird thing where people are like
Speaker 1: expanded with so much food that they don't know what
Speaker 1: to do with it. But it's the gesture of like
Speaker 1: performing solidarity and support for somebody who is in distress.
Speaker 1: Other rituals to a Westerner may seem exotic. When we're
Speaker 1: looking at something like China or Taiwan, we have a
Speaker 1: rise of professional mourners that are for higher often actors
Speaker 1: or Chinese opera performers. That's Dr liv Nielsen Studs of
Speaker 1: Emory University, a bioarchaeologist and archaeologist special rising in funerary
Speaker 1: practices and burials. We talked to her about the idea
Speaker 1: that rituals are critical in both their ability to allow
Speaker 1: for the expression of chaos and death and to regain
Speaker 1: our footing and life. All along the seven mile route,
Speaker 1: people gather to honor President Roosevelt and his ideals. One
Speaker 1: hallmark of death rituals is the public display of brievement.
Speaker 1: And whether these displays or food offerings, crying or dancing,
Speaker 1: there's a performance aspect to them. Like the New Orleans
Speaker 1: Jazz funeral, it's a great example of of marking this
Speaker 1: time especial and kind of like creating uh a form
Speaker 1: of celebration around this transition. The jazz funeral is based
Speaker 1: on the European fraternal society model, benevolent societies formed to
Speaker 1: take care of the sick and bury the dead. Members
Speaker 1: of these clubs parading down the street are participating in
Speaker 1: a rite of passage, lamenting mourners who walk with the
Speaker 1: casket accompanied by a sad tune, only to return from
Speaker 1: the cemetery dancing in a celebratory song. This may be
Speaker 1: because in that first hurdle of overcoming death, the body
Speaker 1: has been dealt with, at least symbolically. Across from the
Speaker 1: White House in Lafayette Park, the men, women, and children
Speaker 1: whom Franklin Roosevelt served so well watch in tearful silence.
Speaker 1: After all, the body is the physical representation of the
Speaker 1: person to whom we still have ten drills of connection to,
Speaker 1: and the cadaver is a stark reminder of the loss
Speaker 1: we feel. It's chemical breakdown signals an emotional breakdown that
Speaker 1: we're teetering on the precipice. There is an anthropologis Mary Douglas,
Speaker 1: who who talks about anything that is that when she
Speaker 1: defines the dirt, it's matter out of place, things that
Speaker 1: are not in their place. So, for example, a hair
Speaker 1: on the head is perfectly fine, but a hair in
Speaker 1: your soup, it's really disgusting because it's not in this
Speaker 1: right place. Doctor cites French psychoanalysts. Surely a Kristava's concept
Speaker 1: of abject a thing or an idea that sits on
Speaker 1: the boundary of society as a threat to its structure.
Speaker 1: The cadaver, then is the ultimate abject. It's that matter
Speaker 1: out of place. So we need to take care of
Speaker 1: this body in one way or another. And the very
Speaker 1: very great majority of mortar practices and different culture as
Speaker 1: there is a crucial component of the mortar ritual that
Speaker 1: has to do with handling the body. And it's this
Speaker 1: handling of the body that gives us the idea that
Speaker 1: we can reclaim it from uncertainty and disorder. The way
Speaker 1: in which we then handle the body has to reston
Speaker 1: it in some ways, with our ideas about what death is,
Speaker 1: what life is, how to treat a human body, and
Speaker 1: by doing that we don't only kind of transition this
Speaker 1: individual into another existence, but we also make ourselves believe
Speaker 1: that we can control uncontrollable death. To this end, we
Speaker 1: go to great pains to arrange the body. We like
Speaker 1: to see our loved ones. In our culture, we like
Speaker 1: to see them the last time. We like to see
Speaker 1: them at peace, clothed in some kind of like sleeping arrangement.
Speaker 1: They're usually contained in a coffin. All these things that
Speaker 1: are may seem as really banal, are like perhaps the
Speaker 1: most important to us. So the way that we produce
Speaker 1: a good death says a lot about what we believe
Speaker 1: death should be right. It should be peaceful, should be
Speaker 1: without pain, it should be an eternal rest. It's often
Speaker 1: a more or less explicitly articulated idea that there's something
Speaker 1: that comes after death. This preoccupation with order is perhaps
Speaker 1: the reason why funeral homes thrive in the United States.
Speaker 1: We want a sense of preservation, of stopping death in
Speaker 1: its tracks. The rights of the funeral home as a
Speaker 1: kind of home away from home, where you're no longer
Speaker 1: having people die at home and then the wake, but
Speaker 1: rather a place of transition. If I compare to European
Speaker 1: morture practices that are in some other ways similar to Americans,
Speaker 1: I think the embalming makes the funeral home necessary. I
Speaker 1: think that has something to do with the rise of
Speaker 1: this profession of like treating corpse is in in surgical
Speaker 1: ways that requires a lot of professional know how that
Speaker 1: the rest of us can't do. And and that and
Speaker 1: that is a really I think it's a very very
Speaker 1: interesting phenomenon because it's it seems for an outsider, so
Speaker 1: profoundly unnecessary. Now home again to the garden of his
Speaker 1: family home in Hyde Park, New York, comes President Roosevelt.
Speaker 1: Here in the old and lovely Hudson River estate which
Speaker 1: several years ago he bequeathed to the people of the
Speaker 1: United States. The mortal remains of a man whose career
Speaker 1: has known no parallel in our time will rest forever.
Speaker 1: The work that some of these professional undertakers are doing
Speaker 1: in communities and with bereaved people, and the way in
Speaker 1: which they are kind of like clergy um helping people
Speaker 1: through this process. I must say that that is also
Speaker 1: something that is profoundly important. I mean, we have no
Speaker 1: problem hiring doctors or to to care for our our
Speaker 1: loved ones. And I think that there is still some
Speaker 1: a lot of discomfort with undertakers in our society and
Speaker 1: they do such an important work. So yes, it is
Speaker 1: definitely possible to do that critique of like how we
Speaker 1: have distanced ourselves from from death, but when it's our
Speaker 1: own parents that dies, I think that we that we
Speaker 1: still feel that in a way that's very intimate, and yes,
Speaker 1: we hire services to help us through this, but ritual
Speaker 1: specialists have existed since at least the Bronze Age. So
Speaker 1: I have a lot of sympathy and love for what
Speaker 1: people need at this time, and I think that good
Speaker 1: undertakers do amazing work in helping people through something that
Speaker 1: we need help through. So much of what we do
Speaker 1: is held up to ridicule, but it's just how you
Speaker 1: blur your eyes, whether you want to see the silliness
Speaker 1: of what we humans do when someone dies, or if
Speaker 1: you look at it carefully and seeing it something deeply
Speaker 1: supply that's undertaker and poet Thomas Lynch from The Undertaking,
Speaker 1: a documentary that dr shows her students to illustrate the
Speaker 1: importance of funeral directors in their role as guides through ritual.
Speaker 1: These rituals help individuals in societies transition from one state
Speaker 1: to another by putting a kind of fence post around
Speaker 1: the experience of death, and for a moment in time,
Speaker 1: we suspend normalcy, and during that period in time, things
Speaker 1: can be different, and often are explicitly different. If you
Speaker 1: doubt the power of ritual is a transformative thing, giving
Speaker 1: us permission to go a little crazy. Consider this example
Speaker 1: becoming a member of a fraternity on a campus or
Speaker 1: a sorority. So when you rush, or when you manifest
Speaker 1: your interest in becoming a member, you get selected, and
Speaker 1: at that point you are no longer just any student,
Speaker 1: but you're not yet a brother or a sister of
Speaker 1: the fraternity. You are between and betwixt categories. And during
Speaker 1: that period that you are kind of trying out and
Speaker 1: like being initiated into, you're going to do stuff and
Speaker 1: experience things that are not really part of your daily
Speaker 1: life and often explicitly break the rules of society. So
Speaker 1: it could be things like, well, we know about all
Speaker 1: of these kinds of hasting rituals that include like alcohol
Speaker 1: or sex or violence, and a lot of traditional societies
Speaker 1: do this as well. You kind of go through this
Speaker 1: period that often is where you're no longer not yet classified,
Speaker 1: you're kind of outside of social order. It makes you
Speaker 1: both very vulnerable, to being humiliated, to being tested. But
Speaker 1: it's also period during which you learn about what the
Speaker 1: expectations are going to be, and it builds community among
Speaker 1: everybody else who goes through this bad time with you.
Speaker 1: It's called communityAs so you build that in this anti structure,
Speaker 1: and then when you come back into society, when you
Speaker 1: are kind of initiated into becoming uh brother of that
Speaker 1: fraternity you aren't, you kind of shed that ambiguous status
Speaker 1: and become a real member of that society. In the
Speaker 1: same way death, the ultimate initiation to life, allows us
Speaker 1: to upend expectations. We often see that, for example, a
Speaker 1: very hierarchical society can during this period of transition flip
Speaker 1: the hierarchy or allow things that wouldn't otherwise be allowed,
Speaker 1: because when you do that, you can create a chaos,
Speaker 1: or you can create a difference that marks this period
Speaker 1: as having a beginning and an end, and in an
Speaker 1: interesting way, that kind of like confines its un controls
Speaker 1: it even with chaos. So you can have these piers
Speaker 1: that are marked, for example by like carnivalesque behaviors, whether
Speaker 1: it's sex or alcohol or other vices, kind of like
Speaker 1: playing that up and then bracketing it off as special
Speaker 1: time allows the social structure to be reinforced. Actually, at
Speaker 1: the end of it, it's a push and pull between
Speaker 1: anti structure, the chaos of death, and structure the desire
Speaker 1: to control death, and different cultures deal with the back
Speaker 1: and forth in different ways. At an Irish wake, there
Speaker 1: could be an outpouring of emotion, anger or confusion, joy,
Speaker 1: and a good amount of alcohol to go along with it.
Speaker 1: But in China or Taiwan, family may outsource the expression
Speaker 1: of grief to a professional mourner, often actors or Chinese
Speaker 1: opera performers that are have realized that this is a
Speaker 1: much more lucrative and and easy way to support yourself,
Speaker 1: and when that kind of performer shows up, they can
Speaker 1: be they can show up to create that kind of
Speaker 1: like huge moment of display of mourning and lass. And
Speaker 1: if I understand it right, it's also intimately connected to
Speaker 1: kind of like a piece the spirits, because usually during
Speaker 1: these kinds of liminal times are also bracketed off in
Speaker 1: the sense that this is the time when the spirits
Speaker 1: are either susceptible for contact or sometimes they are kind
Speaker 1: of like more present. They're making their way into the afterlife,
Speaker 1: so they're going to need all sorts of things um
Speaker 1: and so by showing giving a good show, you kind
Speaker 1: of like show the afterlife administration that these people are important.
Speaker 1: And in a society where people are migrating a lot
Speaker 1: and working a lot of really long hours and are
Speaker 1: not able sometimes to travel back to their village where
Speaker 1: they might have lost somebody, they can also actually supplement
Speaker 1: their own presence by hiring somebody to be there in
Speaker 1: their stead. So it's it's both kind of like it's
Speaker 1: an interesting combination of actually how this ritual has kind
Speaker 1: of like molded itself onto new needs because of a
Speaker 1: changed sort of social economic reality. There are also professional
Speaker 1: mourners for hire in Essex, England, who, for seventy dollars
Speaker 1: an hour, can help bolster a thin turnout and converse
Speaker 1: knowledgeably about the dearly departed. Elsewhere in the world like
Speaker 1: western Kenya, populating your funeral with a stranger who will
Speaker 1: cry on demand, well, that's just tradition. And just like
Speaker 1: traditions can morph to suit the changing needs of a society,
Speaker 1: so too can the job of a professional mourner. You
Speaker 1: also have these Taiwanese funeral strippers that start to manifest themselves,
Speaker 1: I think in the nineteen eighties. Uh and at the
Speaker 1: time also when uh decency laws were kind of cracking
Speaker 1: down on nudity. Uh. This becomes like a new arena
Speaker 1: for strippers to come and distract and celebrate the spirits
Speaker 1: and bring a lot of people to the funeral because
Speaker 1: it's really again, it's really really important. You know, the
Speaker 1: more people show up to during this period of transition,
Speaker 1: you send this message onto the next ext like to
Speaker 1: the next world, that this is somebody who's really important.
Speaker 1: And and this is also the moment when you kind
Speaker 1: of like transfer spirit money and all these kinds of
Speaker 1: things that the that the that the soul of the
Speaker 1: dead will need to basically pay their way in the
Speaker 1: next life. So the more people that show up and
Speaker 1: the more of a big deal it is, the more important, UM,
Speaker 1: this deceased is considered to be. So you kind of
Speaker 1: give them a boost into the into the next life.
Speaker 1: And so if you bring in strippers, you will bring
Speaker 1: in a lot of people. But you're also going to
Speaker 1: add to this kind of like sense of anti structure.
Speaker 1: M Here we see flashes of skin gyrating bodies and
Speaker 1: we hear the thumping of music, all while revelers celebrate
Speaker 1: the transition of the body, the betwixt in the between
Speaker 1: of the person who was their friend, their family member,
Speaker 1: or their spouse. In this ritual, there's a nod to
Speaker 1: the madness of death, the sense of being hurled out
Speaker 1: of time and place. It's the anti structure, the permission
Speaker 1: to explore the boundaries between life and death. Knowing that
Speaker 1: these times of exploration are limited, order will come rushing
Speaker 1: back in. Matter will be put back into place. On
Speaker 1: the afternoon of April twelve, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was signing
Speaker 1: papers at his home in Warm Springs, Georgia, when he
Speaker 1: suddenly complained of a headache and slumped forward, losing consciousness.
Speaker 1: The nation was stunned. For twelve years, f DR had
Speaker 1: served as the Chief Executive. He was an emblem of stability, steadfastness,
Speaker 1: and the only way to bridge what felt like the
Speaker 1: treachery of death was through ritual. A good funeral is
Speaker 1: one that gets the dead where they need to go
Speaker 1: and the living where they need to be. FDR's body
Speaker 1: was carried back by train to Washington, d C. Where
Speaker 1: full military honors were rendered in a procession to the
Speaker 1: White House, the public mourned, The casket was returned to
Speaker 1: the President's Hyde Park home, where it was buried in
Speaker 1: the rose Garden. His family mourned, and in the end,
Speaker 1: the dead and the living all took the journey to
Speaker 1: where they needed to go and where they needed to be.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Dr Live Nielsen Studs for guiding us
Speaker 1: through the fascinating world of funerary rituals. You can find
Speaker 1: out more about Dr Studs at Emory University. The Stuff
Speaker 1: of Life is written and co produced by me Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: Original music and sound design is by co producer Mill Brown.
Speaker 1: Editorial oversight is provided by Head of production Jerry Rowland.
Speaker 1: If you have thoughts on rituals, you can email us
Speaker 1: at The Stuff of Life, how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: and you can find us on Facebook and Twitter.