Many moons before the HBO series Six Feet Under was a phenomenon, I had picked up a book called The American Way of Death by a woman called Jessica Mitford (no relation to Nancy). Published first in the 1960s, it was a book-length expose of the criminalities in the until-then-unregulated American funerary industry. Mitford went undercover and exposed the depraved lengths to which American undertakers and funeral parlous exploited the grieving. They would guilt the bereaved into paying for expensive coffins, grief counselors and unnecessary ceremonial ads that left many families in crippling debt. The funeral business was, in short, a money-making scheme like any other. Some argued that since it was a capitalist venture it should be treated like one, but the one thing Mitford successfully argued was that to take advantage of people at their most vulnerable – at deaths or times of extreme distress – was tantamount to a criminal act. Once the book came out a congressional hearing was announced and the previously unregulated industry saw some serious laws being imposed on it.
This week a dear American friend of mine lost his father in a mysterious boating accident. He received a call: they had found his father’s body drowned at sea, alone, after his boat was seen unmoored along the docks of an island. Now I am not religious, but I said a prayer for his soul in my heart and later sent my condolences. Another friend of ours sent a letter to a group of us who knew him and asked if everyone wanted to chip in for something called a “Sympathy Basket”. Attached was a link to 1-800 flowers and a small description of the gift:
“Send a heartfelt expression of your sympathy. This tasteful gift includes juicy Royal Verano Pears from our orchards, sweet baklava and indulgent chocolate chip button cookies from our bakery, and savory cheeses like Colby Jack and sharp white cheddar. The gourmet treats arrive in a reusable, whitewashed seagrass basket adorned with a “With Sympathy” tag and topped with a hand-tied bow.”
Sorry your father drowned alone in the ocean, here is some sweet baklava from 1800Flowers
I know that in times of grief people send over food. I get that. I also understand that you want to send your condolences in case the funeral services are so far away that you can’t be there in person. But there was something so commercial about the idea of a pre-packed ‘sympathy basket’, something so…well, white! Part of me wanted to shout: “No! For the love of God let’s just send over food to his house when he gets home. Better yet go over and listen to his stories of his father. But a sympathy basket? What can this basket possibly say? Sorry your father drowned alone in the ocean, here is some sweet baklava, sharp white cheddar and pears from the orchards of 1-800Flowers.com to make you feel better?” I did not obviously say this. White people send sympathy baskets, and since everyone on the email chain was white I decided to say “Sure” and then cringed in awkward silence at the back-and-forth emails about what the Sympathy card should say.
Depiction of a funeral by artist Jack B. Yeats
Death is, when you think about it, the most important subject in the world. It is the fact around which our religions revolve, a central tenet to all cultures and the eventuality which we all know we will face. Perhaps it is because of its terrifying inevitability that we don’t spend much time talking about it. We talk about life before it, and indeed life after it, and spend a considerable amount of time talking about what monument we want to commemorate us (FYI: I want a pyramid riddled with so many booby traps that they are forced to make a movie about me in 1000 years). But we rarely actually talk about the logistics of dying.
I was 14 the first time I saw a dead body. My grandfather had died in his sleep, and as I went over to his house I found myself dreading the moment I would actually see the body. Would he look different? What color would his skin be? When I entered his room it was cold, colder than it should have been even though it was winter. Maybe it was I who felt chilled. There was no reason to be scared: He was lying peacefully on his bed, his eyes closed so casually that you’d think he had just drifted off to sleep. I approached his body and my mother, seeing me hesitate, said it was alright to touch him I wanted. I put my hand on his. His skin was like ice, and on that first frosty touch I realised viscerally what we all know to be true: death is the absence of life. He was not in that body anymore. It was him – his bushy eyebrows, his nose, his hair, his lips – but all somewhat different, as if someone had made a good facsimile of the man who used to pick me up from school.
I didn’t like the actual burial. It was noisy and crowded, and I thought that there should be some preparation to the lowering of the body in the ground, some kind of measured acknowledgement. A desi burial seemed so ad hoc, and in that way I respect Western funerals. Maybe the chaos of the burial, the noise and constant socialising of the quls and memorials and barsis, maybe these make the passing slightly more bearable. My friend was back in New York and at a gallery opening a week after the funeral. But he looked different, like a facsimile of himself. He looked like his childhood had died. And in that moment I’m glad we sent the basket. Peaches may not make him feel better, but they aren’t supposed to. They are supposed to show we love. And frankly, who am I to say that love doesn’t include some sharp cheddar?
