Eric Karns

In the opening sequence of PBS’ latest Frontline episode, an undertaker by the name of Thomas Lynch eloquently expressed what I felt is a very sad, recent cultural trend in America. He said:

I think we’re among the first couple generations for whom the presence of the dead at their funerals has become optional, and I see that as probably not good news for the culture at large.

Up until a couple generations ago, humans were the species that dealt with death, the idea of the thing, by dealing with their dead, the thing itself, so that the way we processed mortality was by processing mortals from one place to the other, one station to the next in this little pilgrimage between as they were to how they are to what we hope they’ll be. And this movement, emotionally, is mirrored by a physical movement. The bearing of it is so very, very important.

Sometime in the mid-60s, probably having a lot to do with Jessica Mitford’s book [The American Way of Death] and a lot to do with other social factors, there was sort of the triumphalist American sense that we didn’t have to deal with any discomforts. We saw people start organizing these commemorative events to which everyone was invited but the dead guy. The finger food was good, the talk was uplifting, the music was life-affirming; someone, usually the reverend clergy, could be counted on to declare closure, usually just before the Merlot ran out, and everyone was there but the one who had died.

And we come away from these memorial events, these celebrations of life, with the increasing sense that something is missing. And something is. What is missing is the corpse: the thing itself, not the idea of the thing.

It sort of makes you wonder if this trend isn’t partly to blame for the escalating violence and disregard for life in this country over the past 30 years or so. You can watch the entire Frontline episode online here.