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Webcast Funerals Growing More Popular
HughPickens.com writes: Lex Berko reports in The Atlantic that although webcasting has been around since the mid-1990s, livestreamed funerals have only begun to go mainstream in the last few years. The National Funeral Directors Association has only this year introduced a new funeral webcasting license that permits funeral homes to legally webcast funerals that include copyrighted music. The webcast service's growing appeal is, by all accounts, a result of the increasing mobility of modern society. Remote participation is often the only option for those who live far away or have other barriers — financial, temporal, health-related — barring them from attending a funeral. "It's not designed to replace folks attending funerals," says Walker Posey. "A lot of folks just don't live where their family grew up and it's difficult to get back and forth."
But some funeral directors question if online funerals are helpful to the grieving process and eschew streaming funerals live because they do not want to replace a communal human experience with a solitary digital one. What happens if there's a technical problem with the webcast — will we grieve even more knowing we missed the service in person and online? Does webcasting bode well for the future of death acceptance, or does it only promote of our further alienation from that inevitable moment? "The physical dead body is proof of death, tangible evidence that the person we love is gone, and that we will someday be gone as well," says Caitlin Doughty, a death theorist and mortician. "To have death and mourning transferred online takes away that tangible proof. What is there to show us that death is real?"
But some funeral directors question if online funerals are helpful to the grieving process and eschew streaming funerals live because they do not want to replace a communal human experience with a solitary digital one. What happens if there's a technical problem with the webcast — will we grieve even more knowing we missed the service in person and online? Does webcasting bode well for the future of death acceptance, or does it only promote of our further alienation from that inevitable moment? "The physical dead body is proof of death, tangible evidence that the person we love is gone, and that we will someday be gone as well," says Caitlin Doughty, a death theorist and mortician. "To have death and mourning transferred online takes away that tangible proof. What is there to show us that death is real?"
Get used to it, you'll have more of them as you get older.
One thing I hadn't really thought about before my mother-in-law's funeral was that, if you die when you're old, most of the people at your funeral other than your family will also be old - mobility and transportation were difficult for some of her friends, there were more people with wheelchairs than the restaurant we went to afterward really knew how to handle, and there were people who didn't come because it's just too difficult, and this might have helped them some. It's not the same as being there, but sometimes you can't.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
For some others, however . . . well, I make it a point not to dance in public.
Good point. The visibility of death has been completely abstracted away. The most anybody sees now is the few minutes hospital staff barely allow before forcing you out of the room. What pisses me off more than the joke that funerals have become is how family is treated in a hospital. The basic grieving process is removed, as you're not even permitted any decent amount of time with the body. Your right to grieve no longer exists.
I dunno, they need to up the lack of class if they ever hope to top drive through funerals
A bunch of people who make their living off of dressing up dead bodies and charging people to view them is concerned about people not wanting to come see dead bodies in person. Of course, saying it that way would be crass, so we get a bunch of ramble about the grieving process and how important it is to see dead bodies in person as part of that.
"To have death and mourning transferred online takes away that tangible proof. What is there to show us that death is real?"
Maybe the fact that Aunt Tilly no longer calls/emails you once a week to check up? Do you really need to see a body to know somebody died.
The real fear is that if showing up to an online funeral becomes popular, then people will start to question why they are spending so much money on dressing up dead bodies and propping them up for viewing. If everybody is just looking at an image of them anyway, why not just show a slideshow of photos of the deceased? And if you do that then you can dispense with the funeral services almost entirely. There might still be a gathering, but it could be anywhere. There might still be a religious service, but it might not include tens of thousands of dollars worth of embalming and equipment.
My girlfriend couldn't go to her grandfather's funeral in China, so the family made a DVD and had it sent to her. There are companies in China who specialize in filming funerals and making them into DVDs for relatives overseas.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
...and grown-ups will remember "Funeral for a Friend" and "Love Lies Bleeding" as two songs from Elton John's 1973 Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
"I remember them, too."
"Tell me about them."
Funerals aren't for the dead - they're for the living. Try giving the eulogy at your parents' funeral, with your sisters and your uncles and aunts there. You'll "get it."
Just like the drunken party^Wwake afterwards is also for the living. 'Cuz it sure won't wake the dead, but it takes the edge off of people standing around like a bunch of stiffs, not knowing how to say how they feel.
Me, I just want them to donate my body to science and go directly to the wake.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I'm pleased to hear about this, because I've been considering a career change. Nice to know there are some new options:
DJ = Death Jockey -- provide color commentary
Emcee - Mortician of Ceremonies ("Hi, I'm Ebeneezer Grimsuit, and this is "Good Mourning America....")
...it's a very slow day at the office.
Most of them include the deceased's last words, "Hey! Watch this!"
Have gnu, will travel.
If you go to a funeral, it's to comfort those who have lost a loved one; these people will often travel to make it. Sometimes they can't. If there is a way to pay your respects when you can't travel, then a webcast is better than hearing about it, at least you hear the eulogy and the next time you see the family you can at least talk about the service.
One could argue we're taking away the personal aspect, but I doubt anyone who would have went to the funeral would skip it if the webcast were available. This is a good thing for those in bad times.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."