The American Way of Death*

In the news...Wal-Mart launches an online funeral range.

Death is an $11 billion industry in America. With the ever-evolving brutal weapons, funky viruses and random cataclysms, dying seems to be easier than ever. And so does grief - with the multitude of creative, innovative ways to show how much we care for our dead. If shooting your beloved's ashes out of a canon or using them as fertiliser for endangered coral reefs isn’t quite your style, then you can always opt for the traditional mood-setting flower arrangements and status-appropriate caskets, complete with blood drainage and macabre theatrical make-up (also knows as embalming) for that special someone. In the attempt to parade our mourning appropriately, the funeral industry has gone to great lengths - using such props as the Successful Mortuary Operation Service Manual or the basics of sales psychology - to lead us into a false comfort that we are paying exactly for what our loved ones would have wanted on their last day on earth. And now, in a whole new strike of cynical genius, Wal-Wart has decided to make things easier for everybody and launched its online coffin line.

The world’s largest retailer, with its 3,600 stores and over one million employees in the US alone, already caters to such basic human consumer needs as childbirth and marriage, so death was only a natural progression. The memory of entering an American supermarket for the first time and thinking ‘God, do they really sell everything?!’ is still very fresh from my Soviet teenage years. And now indeed the dream that you can have it all, nay - buy it all, and yea! - in one place - has finally become reality. An American dream or a nightmare - that is not for my foreign self to decide. But the remarkable opportunity to buy a bicycle, baby clothes, an engagement ring, a coffin and some bubble gum with a few swift clicks has been granted to our laziness. Life, which has for long resisted postmodern consumerism prophesies, has finally caved in and become one large supermarket, to the sound of Foucault turning in his grave.

Now, Wal-Mart has not broken the cynicism barrier on its own. Costco.com has been selling a range of grief-paraphernalia for some time now, offering charming products such as the ‘sympathy wreath (patriotic)’ and the ‘In God’s Care’ casket, as well as pet urns. It delivers to a larger number of zip codes than does Wal-Mart, but it has a somewhat smaller, more pricey range and you must have someone die by 12 p.m. so that you can place your coffin-order on time. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, prides on its 14-piece collection of quality American-made caskets that are available for less. For example, Costco’s ‘Mother Casket’ is $924.99, while Wal-Mart’s ‘Mom Remembered’ is only $895. Now, if your mother has taught you well, you’d know the sense of good economy. Also, Wal-Mart’s Bill Me Later! policy secures interest-free 12-months credit. Unfortunately, the offer is only valid until Dec. 31, 2009. So if someone you know and love is looking frail, you could take the chance and pay in advance. But you won’t be able to return the product. Sensitive issue, this.

The BBC has quoted Pat Lynch, of the National Funeral Home Directors Association, saying that ‘There's no question in my mind as a funeral director for nearly 40 years that the most critical element is the human contact.’ Surely, if you prefer, you might dig up your NFDA membership and login and peruse the Grief Resources section to find ‘information about the various aspects of grief and suggestions for coping with the death of a loved one’. It is strange that there is no semantic section that explains the retailers’ preference for the word ‘casket’. For surely someone attempting to buy an appropriate death receptacle on Walmart.com wondered why the search for ‘coffin’ produces a selection of Steven Seagal DVDs, a guitar case and an inflatable vampire available in-store only. For me, at least, that was slightly misleading. Much as the 4.5 star customer rating on the ‘Lady de Guadelupe’ steel casket, where the link still implores for someone to be ‘the first to review this product’. Someone should tell them.

‘To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;/For in this sleep of death what dreams may come...?’ asked Hamlet. In the philosophical abstraction of one of life’s most chilling unknowns, the Prince of Denmark could hardly have envisaged such developments - dark and broody as he was. Four hundred years on, the world spins faster on the hardened axis of healthy cynicism. But just because we like to simplify things (again, thank you postmodernism), doesn’t necessarily mean that we stopped caring. We are just harder to shock, and ever more shocking.

* In 1963 Jessica Mitford published The American Way of Death - a journalistic investigation into the American funeral industry that disclosed the unimaginable cynicism with which our deaths are sold to us. After the publication of Mitford’s book, cremations rose by 8% in the US, as did membership in non-profit funeral agencies. I have dared to borrow her brilliant title.