Thread: Home Funerals Grow As Americans Skip The Mortician For Do-It-Yourself After-Death Care

-A little over five years ago, Alison and Doug Kirk held their 9-year-old daughter's hand as she lay on a futon in their Nashville living room, told her they loved her, and watched her take her last breath.

The Kirks had known for a long time that their little girl, Caroline, would die. In her last weeks, she was under hospice care, lived off an oxygen machine, was fed through a tube, and spoke only in small murmurs. It was the normal course for a child born with Niemann-Pick, a terminal disease that gradually leads to the breakdown of the nervous system, brain and lungs.

What happened after Caroline's death was anything but typical.

Alison and Doug carried Caroline upstairs to the bathtub, where they washed her skin and hair, dried her limp, 45-pound body with a towel and placed her head on a pillow on the bed in her old room. Alison slipped a white communion dress on Caroline, turned up the air-conditioning and put ice packs by her daughter's sides. She put pink lipstick on the child's paling lips, and covered up Caroline's toes and fingers, which were turning blue at the nails, with the family quilt.

Caroline stayed in her bedroom for 36 hours for her final goodbyes. There was no traditional funeral home service, and no coroner or medical examiner was on hand. Caroline's death was largely a home affair, with a short cemetery burial that followed.

"We had taken care of Caroline her whole life," recalls Alison, whose other daughter, Kate, has the same disease and will also have a home funeral. "Why would we give her to someone else once she died?"

Each year, 2.5 million Americans die. For the majority, about 70 percent, deaths happen in a hospital, nursing home or long-term care facility. What happens afterwards is nearly always the same, with few exceptions for religious traditions: A doctor or nurse will sign a death certificate and the body will be whisked to the funeral home, where it's washed, embalmed, dressed, and prepared for a viewing and burial. A family usually sees the dead only a few times: when they die, if there's an open-casket viewing and in the rare case when a casket is opened during burial.

But a small and growing group of Americans are returning to a more hands-on, no-frills experience of death. In the world of "do it yourself" funerals, freezer packs are used in lieu of embalming, unvarnished wooden boxes replace ornate caskets, viewings are in living rooms and, in some cases, burials happen in backyards...

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/...n_2534934.html

First time hearing about homes having the deceased with family was being told of a story that took place when a 60ish woman in our church was a little girl, I’d guess this may have been circa 1940 in the mountains of Virginia. She spoke of her deceased grampa lying “in state” and days after being dead, sat up and started talking about his visit with Jesus. The lady said in her childhood days she would crawl up onto grampa’s lap and say “grampa, please tell me about when you saw Jesus”. It was a real life miracle that got the attention of their close-knit mountain community.

My dad was a pastor and as a kid I can remember going to funerals in the home. The casket would be laid out in the living room. This was in Tenn.... Perfectly normal for the time...

As far as I know, we aren't doing funerals for the other. Either way, our ashes are going to Ft. Sill Nat. Cemetery. Home funeral care sounds like a good idea for those who can do it.

I live in Virginia, and I also remember seeing people "laid out" in a coffin in their homes on a couple of occasions - Seemed perfectly normal...

As a little girl, I recall going into a home where there was a black wreath or some kind of "shrouding" on the door, and seeing everyone dressed in black, speaking in hushed tones, and looking very sad - The dining room table was full of food, and after the body was seen, we ate and chatted for a while, and then left.

I didn't find "viewing" the deceased scary or weird or spooky at all - I just thought that's how families handled the death of a loved one.

"Home Funerals" certainly would save a lot of money in funeral expenses - Just sayin'

Originally Posted by Romans828

I live in Virginia, and I also remember seeing people "laid out" in a coffin in their homes on a couple of occasions - Seemed perfectly normal...

As a little girl, I recall going into a home where there was a black wreath or some kind of "shrouding" on the door, and seeing everyone dressed in black, speaking in hushed tones, and looking very sad - The dining room table was full of food, and after the body was seen, we ate and chatted for a while, and then left.

I didn't find "viewing" the deceased scary or weird or spooky at all - I just thought that's how families handled the death of a loved one.

"Home Funerals" certainly would save a lot of money in funeral expenses - Just sayin'

Unless smith wigglesworth shows up and throws the body up against the wall and tells it to live... True story...

A friend of mine's teenage son died from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. He then built his son's coffin. I remember thinking at the time what a hard thing for a father to do. I couldn't do it. I'd be blubbering all over the place.

Originally Posted by wheeze

Unless smith wigglesworth shows up and throws the body up against the wall and tells it to live... True story...

Didn't he throw the body a few times? Regardless, it worked.

I think the home wake used to be the rule not the exception, I know they still do this in Ireland.