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And I found myself whistling "Birdland"
[This is actually an academic paper I just wrote for The Psychology of Death and Dying, but it turned into a cross between a magazine article and a journal entry. Some of the beginning may be familiar to you because I lifted it from an actual journal entry. (If you can't plagiarize from yourself, who can you plagiarize from? Anyway, Oscar Wilde did it all the time.) Do not judge my paper-writing abilities on this; it's supposed to be touchy-feely and center on "personal growth." ::chokes back amusement::]
One of my earliest memories takes place in a cemetery. It was the burial of my grandfather, who happened to be a schizophrenic pianist named Romie; I was all of three at the time, and had only a vague idea of what it meant to be named after him. To me, he had been the dispenser of Hershey's Kisses who spent hours a day staring out of the window, one of several behaviors that I would later realize indicated flattening of affect; I am the only grandchild with any first-hand memory of him. It was a bright Texas day, leaving the funeral party clad in pale sundresses and insect repellant. Throughout the service, my one-year-old cousin and I happily danced around the grave and tucked the flowers behind our ears, to the applause of our older relatives.
A nonchalance regarding the trappings of death is not unusual in my family; during open-casket viewings, you can always tell which guests belong to our clan because they are the ones crowded around the casket joking about the makeup job. My grandmother collects genealogies; my uncle collects skulls. I was raised on Edward Gorey, Edgar Allen Poe, and the Grimm version of fairy tales. When out-of-town guests come to visit, we take them on the Oswald tour, and then to Clyde Barrow's grave.
Cemeteries have never been a subject of fear. We used to live across from a Revolutionary burial ground which we used in the way other kids used parks and playgrounds; we had picnics there and watched the fourth-of-July fireworks. With our fingers and our noses we traced the bullet-holes left by centuries-old musket drills. Everyone had a favorite tombstone, and we competed to find the strangest name.
When my sister was learning to drive, we taught her in the cemetery a few miles away from our current house – the only time any of us have been frightened in a graveyard. As we wound through the twisting paths at fifteen miles per hour, my mother clutched the door handle in terror, convinced that the car would somehow be embroiled in a horrifying wreck, despite the slow speed and the complete absence of other vehicles. I think most mothers possess a deep-down fear that their daughters will be overcome by an irresistible Thelma-and-Louise urge to drive off a cliff, even if no cliff seems readily available.
As for me, I've always had a particular affection for burial grounds of any sort; I went through a long obsession with pyramids and mummification, and another with Viking burials. I've visited dozens of battlefields both at home and abroad, hundreds of old church cemeteries, and quite a few reliquaries. When I have to stretch my legs during a road trip, I usually stop by a historic graveyard; my favorite is The Old Saltillo Cemetery, approximately one-hundred miles east of Dallas. The sign on the gate reads: "WARNING $1000.00 penalty for using backhoe or other heavy equipment in this cemetery." I am tempted to search the town records for the incident that prompted this clarification.
By sheer coincidence, I seem to accumulate friends who are coroners and forensic anthropologists.
In any case, it seemed natural for me to seek an interview with Cindy Foster, a funeral arranger at Restland – one of the largest cemeteries in the country, and by far the biggest I have ever seen. I am late to my appointment because I get lost on the grounds, which are hundreds of acres large – one third the size of Dallas. (They even have their own water tower.) The rolling lawns feel like a cross between an English manor park and a well-endowed seminary school. Nearly everything seems to be some kind of garden – "Colonial Garden," "Sunset Garden," "Garden of Whispering Waters." I find myself wondering whether it is a deliberate connection to Eden.
When I finally find the right building, I am warmly greeted by half a dozen aggressively made-up women who immediately shepherd me into a conference room and provide me with hot coffee. All of the furniture is dark and heavy, as if to convey a stable permanence that people must find comforting when confronting death. Again, the feeling is faux-English: stout table lamps, thick carpeting, solid tables, and large pictures of fox-hunting scenes. While I wait for Ms. Foster, I take the time to browse the multitude of leaflets scattered about the table – payment plans mixed with titles like "helping a homicide survivor heal" and "talking with young children about death" – which happens to be published by Fred Rogers, of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.
I do not have long to wait before Ms. Foster enters with a broad smile and a solid handshake. She is in her mid-thirties, blonde, and conservatively dressed. At all times during the interview, she looks deeply into my eyes and seems to exude waves of sympathy. A thoroughly pleasant woman, she seems quite happy to answer whatever questions I have, perhaps gratified that someone not immediately involved in a funeral takes the time to appreciate what she and her colleagues do. After a few minutes of chit-chat, we cut to the chase.
Romie: So, how did you get involved in this industry?
Cindy Foster: I got into this industry on career day, in high school. I was eighteen and at that time there were not many females in the industry, so it was difficult for me to actually get into the industry. It took me two and a half years to actually get my first job as an apprentice, and when I got into it, it was everything I thought, plus more. It's very rewarding. If you can pull everything off and make it perfect like it should be, it's the best feeling that anyone could ever have, because you're helping the family when they're at their absolute lowest point in their life – if they lost a child, a spouse, a mother, a father, a brother, a sister. And you've done everything you could to make their experience what it should be. Which. . . . Mistakes do unfortunately happen, sometimes. [But when everything goes right,] that's just the absolute best feeling that you can ever get. It's very rewarding.
It's a lot of work; it's very stressful, as I'm sure you can imagine, dealing with death every day, and the people that I work with in this industry usually have to have a sense of humor to keep yourself going. We keep each other going. It's a very large funeral home here, so fortunately there are a lot of us to keep each other going when someone is mentally down – we all step in and help the person come back to where we should be, and keep going for the next day.
R: Have you always worked at Restland, or have you been at a variety of funeral homes?
CF: Variety. I've done small funeral homes and large funeral homes both.
R: How would you say that the experience compares between a small funeral home and one like Restland? What kind of person tends to seek out which?
CF: [At] smaller funeral homes, you usually do everything. You make your own removals, do your own embalming, see your own families, and work your own funerals. At Restland, we're so large that we have which ever we decide – or whichever the management sees – that we do best -- in other words embalming, cosmetizing, funeral arranging, or funeral directing -- that's kind of where you're placed. I'm a funeral arranger. I make the arrangements. Then the next person, the funeral director, actually steps in and does the funeral itself.
R: So, what does that involve – making the arrangements?
CF: Well, today's funerals are changing a little bit. They're not as traditional as they used to be. We're actually getting families to personalize the funerals a little more. There are some family members that bring in their motorcycles, some family members bring in their barbecue pit. . . Of course, we have a lot of dogs involved; they're family members that come to the visitations and funerals. Just whatever that particular person did in life, we're asking that family to bring it to the funeral home and make it a very personal visitation and funeral, and so that's changing quite a bit, trying to teach families that it's okay to do this, and it's okay to play not the traditional funeral hymns but the funeral music as that person wanted it played in life. So it's changing quite a bit in that, but it's hard to teach families that it's okay to do it.
R: You said that when you first tried to get into the industry that there weren't very many women in it, and it was difficult to become an apprentice. Is that still true?
CF: No. We're about half female now. That was about 14 years ago. So we're coming up – more and more of us are females. But of course, my personal opinion on that is that females have a bigger heart and are more open to listen to what family members are saying and make that happen. Whatever they want to happen, we make that happen.
R: Do families tend to have a preference as to whether they're dealing with a woman or with a man?
F: Not really. I have had a few of the older generation request for a man. Once they see that I am the funeral director, they don't want to deal with a female, but that's been a couple of years ago. So, not much really anymore. They really don't mind.
R: How long are ceremonies, usually?
CF: That depends on the services, but usually about 20 minutes is pretty normal.
R: What would you say are the biggest changes that you've seen in the 14 years that you've been a funeral director?
CF: The customizing of the funerals.
R: Has it been. . . Is it just that people are more aware that they can, or has there been a relaxation of rules, or is there just more stuff that you can get?
CF: Well, it's probably a combination of all of that. To be honest, a traditional funeral really wasn't very personable, and a lot of the families who left after a funeral didn't really feel that they'd gotten what they needed to continue with their grieving process. They heard a minister stand up there and give a very generic eulogy, and that could basically go for anybody, and not the particular person that they're there to grieve for.
R: What do you think motivated the change, or do you know?
CF: The baby boomers are the ones making the funerals now, and the baby boomers are wanting to pay for value. They want value in their money, which makes a lot of sense, and we decided to give them that value, which is very important.
R: Do most people plan their funerals well ahead of the date, or is it normally afterwards – a family scrambling to get it together?
CF: A lot of families do prearrange. Of course, if it was unexpected, that's a different story.
R: How long is it usually between the death and the burial?
CF: Usually two days. But it can be however long the family wants it to be. Some families want to wait until . . . you know, they have other family members out of the country; they need to wait about two or three weeks.
R: Also, does this specific funeral home have a position on embalming? I know there have been some burial plots [where] it's required, and in others it's not.
CF: The only requirement on embalming is if you want to have an open casket visitation with the public. Then that's a funeral requirement that we do embalming, and we must have permission to do so.
R: Who counts as the public?
CF: Anyone who is not an immediate family member.
R: What did you have to actually do in order to become a funeral director?
CF: There's a school in Dallas; it's called Dallas Institute of Funeral Services, and at the time when I went, I was able to do my funeral-directing apprenticeship prior to going to school, which is twelve months, and then to school which is twelve months, and then my embalmer's apprenticeship after I graduated mortuary school, which is another twelve months. So, at the time it was a three year program; now it's two – you do your apprenticeships together after graduation
R: What are the requirements to getting accepted?
CF: To the school? Depends on what state you're from. In the state of Texas, there's not [any special requirement] – you can just apply to the school.
R: What kind of turnover was there? I mean, what kind of dropout rate? Do most people who decide they want to go into funeral directing stay with that decision, or are there a lot of people who decide it's not for them?
CF: To be honest, it's been a little while since I've graduated, but it was probably about 20 percent.
R: And what kind of turnover rate is there here?
CF: A lot of our directors, probably about eight of them, have been here about twenty years. I've been with the company nine and a half – not just here in Restland, but with Stewart Corporation, and with three other firms – but it's all the same company.
R: What's your general work schedule?
CF: I work. . . I'm on a three week rotation. I usually work. . . I have one weekend off a month, and then one Sunday, and then I have a three day weekend. So it just rotates every three weeks. Some days I work six days straight, some days I work three days straight. I work from nine to five. I work holidays, Sundays, all of that.
R: How often do you take a vacation, and how important is it to have time away?
CF: Well, to me it's very important. I probably take my families a little bit more personally than I should, but I feel that that's what makes a good funeral director, and the day I stop doing that is the day I need to stop doing this. That's what they need; they need someone to listen to them and actually care what they're saying and continue on . . . you know, follow through with their wishes.
R: I think that's everything. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.
CF: Well, you're welcome.
After the interview, Ms. Foster asks if I felt anxious about coming to the Funeral Home.
"Only when I was lost and running late," I laugh. "I must admit, I've been to a lot of funeral homes, but never one of this size. Is it okay if I wander around for a while?"
She assures me that it is; Restland is open every day from 8 A.M. to sunset. She leaves me with a another smile and an admonition to contact her if I have any more questions, and I head out onto the grounds.
My first stop, of course, is the florist's next door – which is also a part of Restland. According to one of my fliers, it is among the top 250 florists in the country. It smells heavily perfumed; the aroma is almost overwhelming, as are the dozens of shelves crammed with teddy bears and porcelain figures. Again, the staff is entirely women with caked-on makeup. During my tour of the staff-only rooms, I walk by a woman making plastic-flower wreaths while listening to a murder mystery book-on-tape. Red and blue are the prominent colors; whether this has to do with the recent attacks of 9/11 or the four veterans' cemeteries on the premises, I do not know.
Rapidly overcome by the prominence of the perfume, I beat a path for the door and start touring the grounds in my car. Very quickly, I realize I am better off on foot, despite the sheer scope of the funeral park; being in a car, or even a coat, feels somehow inappropriate here. I ditch it at the side of the road, and set off with just a pen and my notebook. I do not go far before I come across a sign from the Texas Historical Commission. Although Restland itself was not founded until 1925, it was built up around the Floyd Pioneer Cemetery, which dates back to the 1860s. Cynic that I am, I note that there are only three authentic grave markers – the rest have been replaced by the flat plaques most modern graveyards require for ease of lawn mowing.
A thought suddenly occurs to me, and I go back to my car to look through the Restland "Rules & Regulations" flier. Yep. Not only was Restland the inventor of those plaques, but they do not allow artificial flowers, wreaths, potted plants, baskets, or toys to be placed on the graves – again, out of concern for the lawnmowers. Those toys and the plastic wreathes I saw being made are the florists' way of gearing up for mothers' day, one of the handful of holidays when they are allowed. With this in mind, I stroll over to Babyland II.
Babyland II is one of five Babylands – areas where the ground is blanketed with tiny brick-sized plaques. If anyone doubts that death is a universal constant which affects young and old alike, he will quickly change his mind; most of the markers bear only a single year – the year of both birth and death. After reading the names of a dozen ex-children, I move on.
The next historical site I run across is a Masonic cemetery. Apparently, the first Freemasons' lodge in Texas was founded here in 1835, before even the Floyd Pioneer Cemetery. According to the marker, it was a major target of Santa Anna during Texas' War of Independence and most of the early documents were burned during a Mexican raid. It would seem, appropriately enough, that Restland was once both battle ground and burial ground.
After about an hour of browsing, I return home to read what is left of the information I collected. Aside from inventing the in-ground plaques I so despise, Restland made several other innovations in mortuary services – it was the first cemetery to offer Dallas families the option to choose between ground burial, mausoleum entombment, and cremation. From what I can tell, Restland is a little like the Disney World of funeral parks – gigantic, tightly regulated, nationally recognized, and completely self-contained. "Funeral park" is a thoroughly apt name – one is always left with the feeling that there is a dog catching a Frisbee just out of sight. I admit that I found it a little startling to wander into the Mecca of Death Denied; I only saw four non-staff-members during my visit, and three of them were together. If you looked toward the horizon instead of down, the inset headstones disappeared until it looked as though there were no graves at all. I had the inexplicable urge to play croquet, or bocce ball.
Aside from being huge and impersonal, Restland is expensive; general services, (including embalming, viewing, and transportation of the body,) run $4070. That does not include the casket, which can run up to $8,340, the cemetery-required outer burial container, which varies between $750 and $7900, or any "extras" like programs, acknowledgement cards, balloons, and crucifixes. Moreover, one flier warns me that funeral costs double in price every six to eight years.
Death might not be scary, but that is. I am more determined than ever to seek out an alternative means of body disposal.
On the other hand, I am delighted to have found a new hangout. Hundreds of acres of wooded lawns with funny names and very few people. . . .
One of my earliest memories takes place in a cemetery. It was the burial of my grandfather, who happened to be a schizophrenic pianist named Romie; I was all of three at the time, and had only a vague idea of what it meant to be named after him. To me, he had been the dispenser of Hershey's Kisses who spent hours a day staring out of the window, one of several behaviors that I would later realize indicated flattening of affect; I am the only grandchild with any first-hand memory of him. It was a bright Texas day, leaving the funeral party clad in pale sundresses and insect repellant. Throughout the service, my one-year-old cousin and I happily danced around the grave and tucked the flowers behind our ears, to the applause of our older relatives.
A nonchalance regarding the trappings of death is not unusual in my family; during open-casket viewings, you can always tell which guests belong to our clan because they are the ones crowded around the casket joking about the makeup job. My grandmother collects genealogies; my uncle collects skulls. I was raised on Edward Gorey, Edgar Allen Poe, and the Grimm version of fairy tales. When out-of-town guests come to visit, we take them on the Oswald tour, and then to Clyde Barrow's grave.
Cemeteries have never been a subject of fear. We used to live across from a Revolutionary burial ground which we used in the way other kids used parks and playgrounds; we had picnics there and watched the fourth-of-July fireworks. With our fingers and our noses we traced the bullet-holes left by centuries-old musket drills. Everyone had a favorite tombstone, and we competed to find the strangest name.
When my sister was learning to drive, we taught her in the cemetery a few miles away from our current house – the only time any of us have been frightened in a graveyard. As we wound through the twisting paths at fifteen miles per hour, my mother clutched the door handle in terror, convinced that the car would somehow be embroiled in a horrifying wreck, despite the slow speed and the complete absence of other vehicles. I think most mothers possess a deep-down fear that their daughters will be overcome by an irresistible Thelma-and-Louise urge to drive off a cliff, even if no cliff seems readily available.
As for me, I've always had a particular affection for burial grounds of any sort; I went through a long obsession with pyramids and mummification, and another with Viking burials. I've visited dozens of battlefields both at home and abroad, hundreds of old church cemeteries, and quite a few reliquaries. When I have to stretch my legs during a road trip, I usually stop by a historic graveyard; my favorite is The Old Saltillo Cemetery, approximately one-hundred miles east of Dallas. The sign on the gate reads: "WARNING $1000.00 penalty for using backhoe or other heavy equipment in this cemetery." I am tempted to search the town records for the incident that prompted this clarification.
By sheer coincidence, I seem to accumulate friends who are coroners and forensic anthropologists.
In any case, it seemed natural for me to seek an interview with Cindy Foster, a funeral arranger at Restland – one of the largest cemeteries in the country, and by far the biggest I have ever seen. I am late to my appointment because I get lost on the grounds, which are hundreds of acres large – one third the size of Dallas. (They even have their own water tower.) The rolling lawns feel like a cross between an English manor park and a well-endowed seminary school. Nearly everything seems to be some kind of garden – "Colonial Garden," "Sunset Garden," "Garden of Whispering Waters." I find myself wondering whether it is a deliberate connection to Eden.
When I finally find the right building, I am warmly greeted by half a dozen aggressively made-up women who immediately shepherd me into a conference room and provide me with hot coffee. All of the furniture is dark and heavy, as if to convey a stable permanence that people must find comforting when confronting death. Again, the feeling is faux-English: stout table lamps, thick carpeting, solid tables, and large pictures of fox-hunting scenes. While I wait for Ms. Foster, I take the time to browse the multitude of leaflets scattered about the table – payment plans mixed with titles like "helping a homicide survivor heal" and "talking with young children about death" – which happens to be published by Fred Rogers, of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.
I do not have long to wait before Ms. Foster enters with a broad smile and a solid handshake. She is in her mid-thirties, blonde, and conservatively dressed. At all times during the interview, she looks deeply into my eyes and seems to exude waves of sympathy. A thoroughly pleasant woman, she seems quite happy to answer whatever questions I have, perhaps gratified that someone not immediately involved in a funeral takes the time to appreciate what she and her colleagues do. After a few minutes of chit-chat, we cut to the chase.
Romie: So, how did you get involved in this industry?
Cindy Foster: I got into this industry on career day, in high school. I was eighteen and at that time there were not many females in the industry, so it was difficult for me to actually get into the industry. It took me two and a half years to actually get my first job as an apprentice, and when I got into it, it was everything I thought, plus more. It's very rewarding. If you can pull everything off and make it perfect like it should be, it's the best feeling that anyone could ever have, because you're helping the family when they're at their absolute lowest point in their life – if they lost a child, a spouse, a mother, a father, a brother, a sister. And you've done everything you could to make their experience what it should be. Which. . . . Mistakes do unfortunately happen, sometimes. [But when everything goes right,] that's just the absolute best feeling that you can ever get. It's very rewarding.
It's a lot of work; it's very stressful, as I'm sure you can imagine, dealing with death every day, and the people that I work with in this industry usually have to have a sense of humor to keep yourself going. We keep each other going. It's a very large funeral home here, so fortunately there are a lot of us to keep each other going when someone is mentally down – we all step in and help the person come back to where we should be, and keep going for the next day.
R: Have you always worked at Restland, or have you been at a variety of funeral homes?
CF: Variety. I've done small funeral homes and large funeral homes both.
R: How would you say that the experience compares between a small funeral home and one like Restland? What kind of person tends to seek out which?
CF: [At] smaller funeral homes, you usually do everything. You make your own removals, do your own embalming, see your own families, and work your own funerals. At Restland, we're so large that we have which ever we decide – or whichever the management sees – that we do best -- in other words embalming, cosmetizing, funeral arranging, or funeral directing -- that's kind of where you're placed. I'm a funeral arranger. I make the arrangements. Then the next person, the funeral director, actually steps in and does the funeral itself.
R: So, what does that involve – making the arrangements?
CF: Well, today's funerals are changing a little bit. They're not as traditional as they used to be. We're actually getting families to personalize the funerals a little more. There are some family members that bring in their motorcycles, some family members bring in their barbecue pit. . . Of course, we have a lot of dogs involved; they're family members that come to the visitations and funerals. Just whatever that particular person did in life, we're asking that family to bring it to the funeral home and make it a very personal visitation and funeral, and so that's changing quite a bit, trying to teach families that it's okay to do this, and it's okay to play not the traditional funeral hymns but the funeral music as that person wanted it played in life. So it's changing quite a bit in that, but it's hard to teach families that it's okay to do it.
R: You said that when you first tried to get into the industry that there weren't very many women in it, and it was difficult to become an apprentice. Is that still true?
CF: No. We're about half female now. That was about 14 years ago. So we're coming up – more and more of us are females. But of course, my personal opinion on that is that females have a bigger heart and are more open to listen to what family members are saying and make that happen. Whatever they want to happen, we make that happen.
R: Do families tend to have a preference as to whether they're dealing with a woman or with a man?
F: Not really. I have had a few of the older generation request for a man. Once they see that I am the funeral director, they don't want to deal with a female, but that's been a couple of years ago. So, not much really anymore. They really don't mind.
R: How long are ceremonies, usually?
CF: That depends on the services, but usually about 20 minutes is pretty normal.
R: What would you say are the biggest changes that you've seen in the 14 years that you've been a funeral director?
CF: The customizing of the funerals.
R: Has it been. . . Is it just that people are more aware that they can, or has there been a relaxation of rules, or is there just more stuff that you can get?
CF: Well, it's probably a combination of all of that. To be honest, a traditional funeral really wasn't very personable, and a lot of the families who left after a funeral didn't really feel that they'd gotten what they needed to continue with their grieving process. They heard a minister stand up there and give a very generic eulogy, and that could basically go for anybody, and not the particular person that they're there to grieve for.
R: What do you think motivated the change, or do you know?
CF: The baby boomers are the ones making the funerals now, and the baby boomers are wanting to pay for value. They want value in their money, which makes a lot of sense, and we decided to give them that value, which is very important.
R: Do most people plan their funerals well ahead of the date, or is it normally afterwards – a family scrambling to get it together?
CF: A lot of families do prearrange. Of course, if it was unexpected, that's a different story.
R: How long is it usually between the death and the burial?
CF: Usually two days. But it can be however long the family wants it to be. Some families want to wait until . . . you know, they have other family members out of the country; they need to wait about two or three weeks.
R: Also, does this specific funeral home have a position on embalming? I know there have been some burial plots [where] it's required, and in others it's not.
CF: The only requirement on embalming is if you want to have an open casket visitation with the public. Then that's a funeral requirement that we do embalming, and we must have permission to do so.
R: Who counts as the public?
CF: Anyone who is not an immediate family member.
R: What did you have to actually do in order to become a funeral director?
CF: There's a school in Dallas; it's called Dallas Institute of Funeral Services, and at the time when I went, I was able to do my funeral-directing apprenticeship prior to going to school, which is twelve months, and then to school which is twelve months, and then my embalmer's apprenticeship after I graduated mortuary school, which is another twelve months. So, at the time it was a three year program; now it's two – you do your apprenticeships together after graduation
R: What are the requirements to getting accepted?
CF: To the school? Depends on what state you're from. In the state of Texas, there's not [any special requirement] – you can just apply to the school.
R: What kind of turnover was there? I mean, what kind of dropout rate? Do most people who decide they want to go into funeral directing stay with that decision, or are there a lot of people who decide it's not for them?
CF: To be honest, it's been a little while since I've graduated, but it was probably about 20 percent.
R: And what kind of turnover rate is there here?
CF: A lot of our directors, probably about eight of them, have been here about twenty years. I've been with the company nine and a half – not just here in Restland, but with Stewart Corporation, and with three other firms – but it's all the same company.
R: What's your general work schedule?
CF: I work. . . I'm on a three week rotation. I usually work. . . I have one weekend off a month, and then one Sunday, and then I have a three day weekend. So it just rotates every three weeks. Some days I work six days straight, some days I work three days straight. I work from nine to five. I work holidays, Sundays, all of that.
R: How often do you take a vacation, and how important is it to have time away?
CF: Well, to me it's very important. I probably take my families a little bit more personally than I should, but I feel that that's what makes a good funeral director, and the day I stop doing that is the day I need to stop doing this. That's what they need; they need someone to listen to them and actually care what they're saying and continue on . . . you know, follow through with their wishes.
R: I think that's everything. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.
CF: Well, you're welcome.
After the interview, Ms. Foster asks if I felt anxious about coming to the Funeral Home.
"Only when I was lost and running late," I laugh. "I must admit, I've been to a lot of funeral homes, but never one of this size. Is it okay if I wander around for a while?"
She assures me that it is; Restland is open every day from 8 A.M. to sunset. She leaves me with a another smile and an admonition to contact her if I have any more questions, and I head out onto the grounds.
My first stop, of course, is the florist's next door – which is also a part of Restland. According to one of my fliers, it is among the top 250 florists in the country. It smells heavily perfumed; the aroma is almost overwhelming, as are the dozens of shelves crammed with teddy bears and porcelain figures. Again, the staff is entirely women with caked-on makeup. During my tour of the staff-only rooms, I walk by a woman making plastic-flower wreaths while listening to a murder mystery book-on-tape. Red and blue are the prominent colors; whether this has to do with the recent attacks of 9/11 or the four veterans' cemeteries on the premises, I do not know.
Rapidly overcome by the prominence of the perfume, I beat a path for the door and start touring the grounds in my car. Very quickly, I realize I am better off on foot, despite the sheer scope of the funeral park; being in a car, or even a coat, feels somehow inappropriate here. I ditch it at the side of the road, and set off with just a pen and my notebook. I do not go far before I come across a sign from the Texas Historical Commission. Although Restland itself was not founded until 1925, it was built up around the Floyd Pioneer Cemetery, which dates back to the 1860s. Cynic that I am, I note that there are only three authentic grave markers – the rest have been replaced by the flat plaques most modern graveyards require for ease of lawn mowing.
A thought suddenly occurs to me, and I go back to my car to look through the Restland "Rules & Regulations" flier. Yep. Not only was Restland the inventor of those plaques, but they do not allow artificial flowers, wreaths, potted plants, baskets, or toys to be placed on the graves – again, out of concern for the lawnmowers. Those toys and the plastic wreathes I saw being made are the florists' way of gearing up for mothers' day, one of the handful of holidays when they are allowed. With this in mind, I stroll over to Babyland II.
Babyland II is one of five Babylands – areas where the ground is blanketed with tiny brick-sized plaques. If anyone doubts that death is a universal constant which affects young and old alike, he will quickly change his mind; most of the markers bear only a single year – the year of both birth and death. After reading the names of a dozen ex-children, I move on.
The next historical site I run across is a Masonic cemetery. Apparently, the first Freemasons' lodge in Texas was founded here in 1835, before even the Floyd Pioneer Cemetery. According to the marker, it was a major target of Santa Anna during Texas' War of Independence and most of the early documents were burned during a Mexican raid. It would seem, appropriately enough, that Restland was once both battle ground and burial ground.
After about an hour of browsing, I return home to read what is left of the information I collected. Aside from inventing the in-ground plaques I so despise, Restland made several other innovations in mortuary services – it was the first cemetery to offer Dallas families the option to choose between ground burial, mausoleum entombment, and cremation. From what I can tell, Restland is a little like the Disney World of funeral parks – gigantic, tightly regulated, nationally recognized, and completely self-contained. "Funeral park" is a thoroughly apt name – one is always left with the feeling that there is a dog catching a Frisbee just out of sight. I admit that I found it a little startling to wander into the Mecca of Death Denied; I only saw four non-staff-members during my visit, and three of them were together. If you looked toward the horizon instead of down, the inset headstones disappeared until it looked as though there were no graves at all. I had the inexplicable urge to play croquet, or bocce ball.
Aside from being huge and impersonal, Restland is expensive; general services, (including embalming, viewing, and transportation of the body,) run $4070. That does not include the casket, which can run up to $8,340, the cemetery-required outer burial container, which varies between $750 and $7900, or any "extras" like programs, acknowledgement cards, balloons, and crucifixes. Moreover, one flier warns me that funeral costs double in price every six to eight years.
Death might not be scary, but that is. I am more determined than ever to seek out an alternative means of body disposal.
On the other hand, I am delighted to have found a new hangout. Hundreds of acres of wooded lawns with funny names and very few people. . . .
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And then on top of that, if they can find some kind of use for my body... like... seeing what it does if you drop it in a pressure tank and crank the PSI up SERIOUSLY high (for the sake of science of course).
If they refuse to do that, I think maybe I might ask someone to scatter my ashes...
in someone's garden.
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Sounds like the antithesis of the place you visited. I like the sound of the woodland burials although ideally I'd like to be buried at sea.
My cousins in Canada's house backs on to a cemetary; they're just too big over there, too impersonal. My Opa's planted in one but I've never been to see him; all I can recall of his funeral is that my mother was dressed like a bumble bee and the organist fell asleep and smacked his head on the keys.
I used to play in the local churchyard when I was growing up because it was closer than the park. We used to try and find plague victims and the tunnel that was reputed to run from the manor house to the church. One of my houses actually backed onto the churchyard come to think of it. Ramblings, sorry.
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as to the disposal of my remains, i probably will go with cremation. burial just seems a rather expensive proposition, and i rather prefer the idea of my body's ashes being tossed into the ocean. i've always been happiest there, so that's what i think i'd prefer.
i also expect all of my friends to gather together and have a party in my honor, drink, be merry, trade stories about me, sing songs, and basically be happy that they knew me. i also think it would be appropriate for them to roast me (ala dean martin, not pork roast) since i would do the same for anyone of my friends or family who had passed on.
and i still have hopes that i can arrange some kind of viking funeral to incinerate my remains.
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-Romie
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