Hw - 52 Third Third of COTD Book

Mark Harris, Grave Matters: A Journey Through The Modern Funeral Industry to A Natural Way of Burial, 2007, Scribner, New York, NY.

Precis: If you had wanted to pay your last respects to Mary Barnsley, you'd have to had come to her apartment in Austin, Texas, to do it. Home Funerals has been one long-held tradition in America where people care for the dead, usually woman overseeing the dead, washing, dressing and laying out the body. Another method of choice to choose from in the process of caring for the dead is to make your own coffin and there is no federal or state law that is opposed of you doing so. A simple coffin made from pine or other inexpensive, common material is just fine. Third to these types of methods is "Backyard Burial" which entails exactly what the name's meaning is. The Nicholson family which chose to have this kind of burial was once a common feature of the early American landscape especially in the rural south. Last but not least, the "Natural Cemetery" which is a form of burial whose purpose is to return the body to the natural environment as directly as possible.

Quotes:
"...The after-death care of one...a once long-held tradition in this country. For more than a century Americans cared for their own dead as a matter or course. Mostly the women of the house who advertised themselves as professional Layers Out of the Dead washed, dressed, and laid out a body in the dining room...where it lay in repose for any number of days when under constant vigil." (104)

"There's a comfort and healing that comes from physically caring for the dead and from spending quiet, private time in the presence of death. It's a tremendous help in the bereavement process, and helps you see death as a natural part of the cycle of life."(105)

Analysis:
My final thoughts on reading Mark Harris's "Grave Matters" is a prompt that most of the books before presented themselves. Reading these books act like rebels in my thoughts problematizing what I use to know to what I know now. Most of these books are laid out in a sequence of pro's and con's that provide a thought process that challenges what I thought I knew to what is commonly known. For example in Tina Cassidy's "Birth" she provides a focus on particularly safe/unsafe procedures, methods, preparations and tools used during a woman's pregnancy versus the role of midwives and the contrasts between the two giving you both perspectives. Grave Matters also follows a similar lay out, by going into precise detail about the methods of burial and showing the pro's and con's of each method giving the reader a chance to decide.