Funerals and tech -evolution?

Having now outlived both my parents, I find myself wondering more about funeral arrangements in a more personal way. And it is notable to me, being involved as I am, from time to time, in the funerals of university students, that funeral practices are changing. And then covid-19 arrived and introduced further changes, which may be to some degree permanent. it is poetically expressed by an Episcopal priest, Padre Angel of Boston, Ma.

 A smartphone is no longer an intruder into the numinous, but an acolyte in service of the sacred. The tablets have transubstantiated into pallbearers: holders of the moment, and not transgressors of it.

It has been a forced development, but now it's happened, perhaps it will mean that it will not feel so odd or sacriligious for remote viewing or even more active participation to take place.

On the other hand...

Mr Collier watched a ceremony live-streamed from Kerstin’s garden. “I feel like I witnessed it,” he says. “I don’t feel I took part.

On the other hand, some notice that the reduction in numbers being able to attend personally has meant a return to something that has been downplayed in recent years.

During the pandemic — particularly during lockdown, when numbers were so small — funerals got back to their original purpose of being allowed to grieve. And we’d almost forgotten that in funerals before then. The interesting thing will be what the long-term impact of that is, whether we’ll hold on to that. We want ritual, but we’ve got to reimagine ritual,

It seems to me that it is still too early to tell how this will play out. It is plausible that a hybrid might emerge: funerals becoming normally smaller, more immediate, affairs where bodily action is at a premium: being able to touch one another and perhaps the coffin or the body being more central possibilities. But those smaller events might be 'attended' also virtually by more people whose relative emotional distance means that it 'feels' okay to pay respects by viewing online. It may even be that others, more distanced by geography, could participate more actively by video interaction.

My question is about how this would all play out into ritual and the staging of memorial events. I suspect that the recent trend towards foregrounding the 'celebration of the life of...' someone may continue in later events. This life-celebration has probably had the effect of moving the grieving elements out of public view (understandably) and into more private spaces. Perhaps more intimate funeral services are allowing ostensible mourning back into the now-semi-public space of a church building.

My concern in it all is that what happens enables people to mourn. It is important that people are allowed and given supports to enable them to recognise their own grief and losses and to express them helpfully. 

I do still worry that the unspoken conspiracy to keep public things positive and upbeat is not doing us any favours in relation to processing loss, grief and even rage.

Drawing initially from this article: Funerals in 2020: better for mourners?:

Funerals should affirm the reality of death

I think that this is in the same ballpark as a post of mine from a couple of years back.

current practice seems determined to deny both the fact and the solemnity of death. We say “We are sorry for your loss,” and talk about the deceased’s “passing”.

I'd just invite Angela to consider the place of 'customer is always right' capitalism in reinforcing and maintaining this unhealthy situation. And don't get me started on this new euphemism 'passing'! I guess it's derived from 'passed away' but somehow even the 'away' was felt to be too final, so it is cut off in its prime. Passing is the new dying.



Angela Tilby: Funerals should not deny the reality of death: 'via Blog this'