They may wail and rent their garments. They might toast their good fortune with my best Scotch. No matter how my family marks my passing from the scene, however, this much is clear: they have every legal right to handle what's left of my mortal remains.
Lisa Carson documents those last rights in the Pennsylvania chapter of Caring for the Dead. The PA State Association of Township Supervisors does the same, in more detail, in this summary of state funeral laws (to wit: "Nothing in state law requires a family to use a funeral director.").
I'm adding copies of each of these documents to an end-of-life file I'm preparing for my family. I have a good idea of what I want to happen with my remains upon my final exit, and I want to make sure my family has all the information they need to follow through (after they've finished raiding my liquor cabinet, of course).
They may need it. Officials in charge of post-death affairs in this corner of the Keystone State have an uncertain grasp on the legalities of the DIY funeral and burial, I'm finding. When time comes, my family may have to educate the Powers that Be that, yes, it does have the right to essentially serve as my funeral director. The documentation I'm collecting now will go a long way to prove the point then, if need be.
Interestingly, no Pennsylvania law I've turned up explicitly states that right. The state has enacted all manner of laws for funeral directors; it does not, however, reserve post-death matters solely to the dismal trade. Who, then, has those rights?
According to the Vital Statistics Law of 1953 (P.L. 304) -- another document that's going into my family file -- that somebody would be a "person."
Section 501, which deals with death certificates, reads: "The person in charge of interment or of removal of the dead body . . . shall file the death certificate . . . ." Another section further on emphasizes the point, stating that the "local registrar shall issue the permit [to 'dispose' of remains] only after the person in charge of interment or removal has filed with the local registrar a certificate of death . . . ."
Legislators probably assumed that the unnamed "person" in their law would be a funeral director. A funeral director has so consistently been that person on my home turf that officials here may assume he's the required one by law to handle final affairs.
Yet by leaving that person unidentified, unnamed, Pennsylvania legislators are allowing non-funeral personnel to fill the role: like my wife, children and parents.
To find documentation on DIY rights in your state, start with Carlson's book. Then go online. Google "state legislature" and the name of your state. The results should bring you to your state laws. At the home page of my state legislature, for example, I clicked on "Session Information" and then entered "funeral" in the "Find By Legislation" search box. The search led to amendments that had been made to the Vital Statistic Law, which I then tracked down.
Alternatively, you can search for your state funeral board, whose web pages often link to state funeral laws. Also, consult the pages of your state affiliates of the Funeral Consumers Alliance. Many of them post information about state funeral laws.
Next time: Claiming a body from the hospital.
The video above offers more proof of the value of a home funeral and why it's becoming more popular. The video features Beth Knox, the founder of Crossings whom I profile in the home funeral chapter of Grave Matters.
Mark Harris Author, Grave Matters (www.gravematters.us)
In the coming weeks I'll return to the topic I started but flagged on early last year: a step-by-step plan for my own eventual green burial.
Planning in advance for a standard sendoff via the local funeral home can be an involved affair. The green goodbye can be ever harder to arrange, as I discovered when I went to do it myself.
I tell you why and then walk you through the process I'm charting to set my own affairs in order. My goal? To not just record my final wishes but to make it as easy as possible for my family to follow through on them. The steps will be specific to my Pennsylvania hometown, but I'll work to make them broad enough to apply elsewhere.
Back with step one next week: documenting the legal right my family has to care for its own dead.
And speaking of passings, here's Emily Dickinson giving us a gentle and seductive view of death's arrival in her famous poem, "Because I could not stop for Death." Death not so kindly stopped for Emily in 1886 (she died of Bright’s Disease). But the Cyberage has resurrected the Belle of Amherst in this eerie but oddly fascinating "recording" of the poem, in the video above.
Because I could not stop for Death Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away My labor, and my leisure too, For his civility.
We passed the school, where children strove At recess, in the ring; We passed the fields of gazing grain, We passed the setting sun.
Or rather, he passed us; The dews grew quivering and chill, For only gossamer my gown, My tippet only tulle.
We paused before a house that seemed A swelling of the ground; The roof was scarcely visible, The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each Feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horses' heads Were toward eternity.
Mark Harris Author, Grave Matters (www.gravematters.us)