The Body of Evidence

The bumper sticker threatened: “Give me chocolate and nobody gets hurt.”  Given a new undertaking by an undertaker in South Carolina, a morbid twist might now read ‘Hand over my money – with interest - or you don’t get the body.’

In the interest of grief therapy of course.

S.C. Rep. John King, a Democrat, who also happens to be a funeral home owner and director, wants a law on the books to prevent dead bodies from being released to loved ones until they fork over what they owe for transporting and embalming the dearly departed, according to Rick Brundrett as reported in “The Nerve” and reflected in “Watchdog.org” this December 6th.

A grave warning indeed by a mortician-slash-lawmaker whose proposed legislation is most certainly “not self-serving,” King said.

Of course not.

But an autopsy of the body of evidence is not complimentary to the funeral industry.

Jessica Mitford’s 1963 “The American Way of Death” is “one of the most important investigative books ever written, exposing the exploitation of the American funeral business, whose profiteering was, until then, an apparently untouchable scandal,” according to John Pilger who provides an excerpt in his compilation “Tell Me No Lies – Investigative Journalism That Changed the World.”

Mitford writes:

“A friend, knowing I was writing on the subject, reluctantly told me of her experience in arranging the funeral of a brother-in-law.  She went to a long-established, ‘reputable’ undertaker.  Seeking to save the widow expense, she chose the cheapest redwood casket in the establishment and was quoted a low price.  Later, the salesman called her back to say the brother-in-law was too tall to fit into this casket, she would have to take one that cost 100 dollars more.  When my friend objected, the salesman said, ‘Oh, all right, we’ll use the redwood one, but we’ll have to cut off his feet.’”

Often drawn feet first to the funeral home to begin with, mourners only by virtue of necessity drag themselves – guilty perhaps, remorseful certainly, and susceptible worst of all – to conduct a most difficult and even macabre business, paying for services not even required by law but for which they are led to believe they must.

And that includes embalming according to Mitford:

“Popular ignorance about the law as it relates to the disposal of the dead is a factor that sometimes affects the funeral transaction.  People are often astonished to learn that in no state is embalming required by law except in certain special circumstances, such as when the body is to be shipped by common carrier.”

Other than what unnecessarily happens then behind “the formaldehyde curtain,” what else consumes the gold of those consumed with grief as revealed by Mitford’s research?

More.  Much more.  Let the buyer beware the burier.