Coming to Rest: A Guide to Caring for Our Own Dead, an Alternative to the Commercial Funeral - Softcover

Wiskind, Julie; Spiegel, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0965759369 ISBN 13: 9780965759366

Publisher: Dovetail Pr, 1998

Synopsis

This down-to-earth and groundbreaking manual provides simple instructions and encouragement for private family funerals. Families can bring their own loved ones for burial or cremation without a funeral director. The non-commercial funeral is a practical alternative, a profound family ritual, and a way to save thousands of dollars.

About this title

About the Author

Julie Wiskind was educated at the University of Wisconsin and at Barnard College. The mother of three sons - Joey, Adam and Gabriel - she has made her home in New York, Cleveland and Oakland and now on the Big Island of Hawaii.

When she was eleven years old, Julie was sent away to the country for a few weeks to protect her from the trauma of her mother's death. She returned home only "after it was all over". This unceremonious and abrupt encounter with Death changed her life. Since then whenever Death has been near, which it has been all too often, Julie has tried to remain present. She makes every attempt to show up for Life, too, when possible.

Julie is President of Dovetail: Resources for a Family Funeral a company that supports families facing death by providing information and well designed reasonably priced funeral accessories. She is a Hospice volunteer. Contact her at Julie@funeralresources.com.

Richard Spiegel left his small "storefront" law practice in Washington, D.C. He arrived on the Big Island of Hawaii in 1974 where he became a beekeeper, started a community mediation center and, with Laura, raised their two daughters, Kristin and Shaina. After Laura died in 1993, Richard left his position as executive director of West Hawaii Mediation Services to get his feet back on the ground. He is now a full time beekeeper and owner of a small family apiary that supplies gourmet stores in Hawaii, California, New York and London with Rare Hawaiian White Honey.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

For her last months of life Laura had made it clear that she would like to be at home, not in a hospital. While she was home, her friends and family became a daily part of her struggle for strength and clarity as her body declined from cancer. With the help of hospice, we took care of her physical needs and she allowed us to share her most intimate experience, the death of her body.

After personally caring for her and sharing the intimacy of her death it felt inappropriate and unnecessary to hire someone to take Laura's body away. In one sense the hard part was over. All that was needed now was for us to bring the body to where it could be laid to rest. For our own benefit, for the completion it would allow us, we wanted to continue this final part of her care in the personal, hands-on way we had been doing. It was a way for us to bring closure to what had been the focus of our lives for the past weeks and months, and a way for us to honor someone we loved.

Fran, the hospice nurse, came to pronounce death and to offer moral support. We began to call close friends and family. Some of them came to the house with their children and many came with food. A police officer came and sheepishly asked some questions. We answered the phone and straightened the house and talked and cried together. There was time for solitary walks and meditation. We looked at old photos and at Laura's fondest possessions and we described the events leading up to her death to those who had just arrived.

A friend called the crematory to schedule a time for our arrival. Another friend built a beautiful wood pallet. He also brought the station wagon we would use to bring her body to the crematory. It was good to be together and to have something useful to do.Some of us chose to spend time and say our personal good-byes and prayers at Laura's bedside, others did not. In our own time and in the informal, familiar surroundings of Laura's home, the shocking and abrupt reality of her death was brought home to our everyday lives.

The doctor came with the death certificate and Richard, Laura's husband, filled out the family history section of the form. When it was completed it was brought to the Health Department office in town. For some of Laura's friends it was natural to prepare her body since we had been caring for her at home for weeks. Her face had relaxed into a peaceful expression. Far from being repelled, washing her body awakened a tenderness in us that we had rarely experienced before. We wrapped her body in a clean white sheet and her favorite shawl, gathered Hawaiian ti leaves and flowers for the pallet and laid her gently on it. When all was ready, a few of us including Richard, their two daughters, Kristin and Shaina, and Kristin's husband Stbon, carried Laura's body to the station wagon and drove in a small procession to the crematory. The crematory staff waited while we carried the body one last time.

This funeral, which cost $300, enabled us to respond privately and informally to our own need to say good-bye. We began our grief together, each of us feeling the simple direct, hands-on support of friends and family. There would be a formal memorial service for the larger community in a few days time. But the funeral, itself, without any planning, was a powerful occasion, useful to us emotionally and spiritually. Perhaps because it was our own occasion, personal and familiar, we could begin to sense the balance between activity and quiet, friendship and solitude that we would need to find peace, eventually, with Laura's death.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dovetail Pr
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0965759369
• ISBN 13: 9780965759366
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 101