Jan Lightner knows how she wants to go.
“Put me in my cotton summer nightgown and my winter flannel robe, barefoot, and with something from nature on my body,” she said.
“I want my grandchildren to comb my hair - if they want to. I want my daughter to take off my earrings. I want my husband to use the same oils he uses now. And I want my son to lift my body like I used to lift his.
“It will be messy and awkward, but wouldn’t it be wonderful?” she asked.
The Rev. Lightner is an interfaith, interspiritual minister in NorthwestArkansas. She spoke Sunday about funerals and burials at Unity Church of the Ozarksin Bentonville.
Lightner holds ordination as a thanatologist, one who studies death and dying. She began her journey 17 years ago.
“I was a very hands-on kind of mother,” she shared. “I wanted a natural birth. I breastfed my children. I wanted to get all out of the experience that I could.”
Then, she brought her husband home to die with pancreatic cancer, after just 10 months of treatment.
“I thought that was the best and most loving way to let him die: to bring him home.
“The family all climbed up on bed with him and told him we loved him and that it was all right to leave. After hedied, I laid down and memorized his face and came to live with the realization. It took me three days.”
Lightner, however, doesn’t think this opportunity is open to most people in Northwest Arkansas.
LAWS CONFUSING
Various state laws govern the ways of which a body can be disposed.
“The funeral home has to be sure the final dispensation is done according to law,” said Jason Engler, a local funeral director. Engler also serves as secretary and treasurer for the National Funeral Directors and as the historian for the NorthAmerican Cremation Association.
“Funeral homes are willing to direct home funerals and green burials, but they must follow the law,” Engler continued.
Lightner, however, said most people aren’t sure what the laws require, and no one is available to suggest options or guide them through the process. Many feel they must stick with the traditional forms of funerals and burials.
The Northwest Arkansas Funeral Consumer Alliance gives advice on options, said Mary Schreibman, a board member for the alliance. For example, a body does not have to go to a funeral home - and it can be picked up from the hospital in the family car, shesaid. A body doesn’t have to be embalmed; it can be packed in dry ice and kept at home for 48 hours. And anyone can deliver a eulogy.
Engler agreed, but he added that the laws are in place for sanitary conditions in the interest of public health.
Arkansas does not require a body to be buried in a casket placed in a vault-lined grave, but most cemeteries require this. A body can be buried in a green cemetery - although there are none in Northwest Arkansas - or in a private cemetery without restrictions, but that cemetery must be registered with the state as such.
Both Lightner and Schreibman advocate alternative dispensation because of the cost of a traditional funeral - which Engler estimated at $7,000,Lightner at $9,000 to $10,000.
A funeral is the third-largest expense to the family after a home and car, Lightner said. But most people do little research, rely on impulses to buy and worry because “they want to do the right thing,” she said. “Most people plan only one or two funerals in their lifetime and those are about 15 years apart.”
“The No. 1 reason people choose cremation is cost,” Engler said.
Schreibman tells families to insist on a price list from the funeral home; funeral directors must provide it by law.
A funeral home will charge for transportation, storage, embalming, viewing, a hearse, a family limousine and a funeral director at the grave, Schreibman said. “You don’t need allthose things, and you may not want them,” she said.
And not all items necessary to burial must come from the funeral home. For example, Walmart.com and Amazon.com sell caskets online, Lightner said. Schreibman suggested Caring Caskets in Fayetteville for another option.
Engler said funeral homes are willing - and required by law - to accept caskets from any third-party company. But he encouraged families to at least look at what the funeral home has to offer because prices are competitive.
Schreibman said she wished people would call the Funeral Consumer Alliance before death is imminent. She can advise them on dealing with preplanning, Medicaid, fundraising and other options fordispensation, including donations for research.
Direct cremation - in which the family deals directly with a crematory - is probably the cheapest option for disposal available in Northwest Arkanas, Schreibman said.
Membership in the alliance - $35 per person per life - makes members eligible for discounts on services through partnerships with area funeral homes, Schreibman added.
Funerals can be preplanned and prepaid through an insurance program offered by funeral homes, Engler said. That insurance policy ensures that any funeral home will honor what has been paid, he said. And the policy can be paid in installments and transferred to other funeral homes.
“Even in 20 years, the service and merchandise that you paid for will be honored,” Engler said.
“Cost is a huge issue with the recession or depression - or whatever you call it,” he said. “We all are keeping an eye on our pocket books.”
“But the value outweighs what you pay to get what you want, what the deceased wants.”
Lightner sees it diff erently.
She sees people paying for loved ones’ funerals until they die themselves.
“There’s not enough money in the world to equal love for those lost,” she said.
THIS IS THE FIRST STORY IN A SERIES ABOUT FUNERAL AND BURIAL PRACTICES IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS.
Religion, Pages 8 on 08/17/2013