The Cremains of the Day: A look at words in funeral service

Euphemisms abound in funeral service. As Hugh Rawson explains in one of my most favorite books, Euphemisms & Other Double Talk (Crown Publishers NY, 1981), words that are used to describe unpleasant things begin to take on an unpleasant connotation themselves. Before long, the word itself seems to be the bad thing. This is the case with many of the four letter words we try not to utter, innocent words of great age and provenance that honestly describe their subject are eventually considered derogatory, and are then replaced with obscure quasi-latin and semi-medical terms or with flowery hints at the real subject.

An example of the flowery would be 'passed away'. This term is used when what is really meant is 'died'. By not actually saying 'died', but meaning it, we think we are being gentle. What we're also doing, however, is adding to the unhealthy denial of death that our society suffers from (and by we, I certainly include myself - most obituaries I draft contain that euphemism). A quasi-latin example of a euphemism is 'deceased'. Clearly we mean 'dead' or 'the dead'. If we all know what we're talking about, why must we substitute a vague obscurity instead of plain language? Well, we think we're being polite, and perhaps no profession is more concerned with the niceties of language and avoiding offense than the 'death care industry'.

The simple fact is that feelings are effected and affected by one's choice of words, especially in mourning. Funeral Directors are correct in using the most polite and least offensive words to describe an often delicate situation. What matters emotionally is not where the word came from etymologically, but how it feels to the person hearing it. I might feel that a certain four letter word has unfairly been painted as a derogatory term because it describes something that our culture is uncomfortable with, but I don't use that term when it will hurt the feelings and sensibilities of others.

A funeral director is similarly bound by consideration to avoid words that will injure or upset, but what should not be lost in all of this, is that at some point we need to use the words that force us to confront the unpleasant reality. At some point the grieving need to say 'died' 'death' 'dead' and leave the flowery and the obscure behind.

Speaking of funeral directors, the names of some professions take on a negative or derogatory connotation because of society's squeamishness about the work they do. Examples of this are sanitary engineer (garbage man), janitor (cleaning woman or man), and mortician. These terms can change pretty rapidly as the taint of the occupation seeps rapidly into it's title. Hugh Rawson gives the term 'mortician' credit for being the first to ape the glamor of 'physician'. It inspired others such as 'beautician' and 'cosmetician' which in turn dragged 'mortician' down from it's lofty heights. I'm sure you can guess which term I prefer- 'undertaker'. 'Undertaker' is an interesting title and often misunderstood. Most assume that it comes from taking the dead under (the ground). In fact, we learned at 'Mortuary' school that it originates from contractors undertaking to provide the goods and services desired for funerals. I prefer 'undertaker' because of it's history, but even more because everyone knows what you mean when you say 'undertaker' (even if they don't know the word's origins).

Calling a heart a heart, and a club a club, brings us to another type of word that abounds in funeral service- jargon. Jargon describes technical words that are generally only used and understood by those in a certain trade or profession (where you want to draw the line between trade and profession is a particularly ticklish subject in 'the dismal trade'). Jargon is used in place of plain English outside of professional circles out of laziness, and sometimes a desire to impress the common folk with 5 dollar words. Neither of these are desirable in funeral service, so we are taught to avoid terms such as 'DC' for death certificate, 'post' for postmortem examination (autopsy) and 'cremains'. The term 'cremains' is a particularly despicable combination of euphemism and jargon and means 'cremated remains'. I don't know who came up with this term- probably the same ad-man who coined 'cran-tastic', but it purports to be a gentler way to refer to cremated remains. Since it's funeral director jargon, though, many people don't even know what it means.

I was taught not to use the terms cremains (which like ain't, really is in the dictionary) or 'ashes' to describe cremated remains. 'Ashes' was to be avoided because the term might lead people to believe that the cremated remains they receive will have the consistency of ashes, and then may be shocked into legal action when they discover that, in fact, they have the consistency of dry cement. 'Ashes' are not ashes, but in fact are the skeletal remains left behind after cremation. This material is processed into a more uniform consistency that approximates dry cement. Please forgive me, Professor Malcom, but I have finally taken to using the term 'Ashes' because people are comfortable with it, and like 'undertaker' everyone knows what you mean when you say 'Ashes'.

(Euthanism is a term I have coined for polite words regarding death)

Obituaries of Note: Gus Kovats

http://picasaweb.google.com/mpranav/California#5140323612546434418

Gus Kovats, 1915 to 2008
Janet Fang2008-12-18
Gus Kovats, who worked as a radio technician in Point Reyes Station and overseas during World War II and once dined with Howard Hughes, died Friday, December 5. He was 93. Gus was the husband of the late Adele Kovats who—along with his family and radio—was one of the three great loves of his life. “He wasn’t gonna go another Christmas without her,” said Father John O’Neill of Sacred Heart Church in Olema. “That’s why he checked out.”Gus was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey on November 17, 1915 to Hungarian immigrants. He weighed 15 pounds at birth. “The world was at war, the first time,” said Justin Salaun, one of Gus’ eight grandchildren. He was raised in New York, where his mother and stepfather ran a boarding house, and in West Virginia, where his uncle was a butcher. He was a champion wrestler in high school, but he quit school because he couldn’t see the blackboard due to his cataracts.“Around this time, the world fell into a depression, a real one, where people actually sacrificed,” Justin said. After he got his glasses, Gus went to night school. One day, a neighbor asked him if he’d like to help build a radio; from there, Gus found a direction and calling that would shape the next 60 years of his life. In 1938, he graduated at the top of his class from the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in New York City. By June he had his first job, receiving and transcribing weather data for Howard Hughes’ flight around the world. “He used to tell everybody how he was the only person who told Howard Hughes to shut up,” said Gus’ daughter, Mary Sanchez. “So Dad was taking down all the information for the flight, and Howard Hughes stood in the doorway, talking really loudly with his friends. Dad couldn’t hear, so he said, ‘Shut up, goddammit!’ When Howard Hughes realized what he interrupted, he actually apologized.”Gus, 22 at the time, was invited to dinner at the Terrace Club during the World’s Fair in honor of Howard Hughes and his gallant crew. The 70-year-old ticket stub is now only slightly yellow with age. A picture of Gus operating a radio at the World’s Fair headquarters, keeping regular two-way communication with Hughes’ ship, still hangs in the Spruce Goose—or the Hughes H-4 Hercules, the largest flying boat ever built. Shortly afterwards, Gus moved to California—first to Palo Alto, then to Point Reyes Station—with a letter of recommendation from W.C. Rockefeller, Hughes’ meteorologist. In 1940, Gus became an RCA technician in Point Reyes Station, operating a shortwave radio system of international communication using dot and dash messages in Morse code. When World War II began for America, Gus was not accepted into the service because of his eyesight. But since the war department needed communication services, he volunteered as a civilian and held the rank of Major. “Grandpa liked to remind me that he outranked me,” said Justin, a staff sergeant. “If I called him on the phone, he would say, ‘You’d better be standing in a position of attention!’ He’s funny like that.”Gus received army training in weapons, grenades, and hand to hand combat in Newport News, Virginia, and in December of 1943 went to North Africa. From there, his troop of 17 boarded the Richard Rush bound for Naples. Two troop ships left North Africa; one went left and the other went right. There were no survivors from the ship that went right. By June 5, 1944, Gus was in Rome, where he helped set up two radio stations—Castel Malnome and Villa Borghese—which were capable of transmitting information directly to New York. “You know people who were in parts of history, but you don’t know many people who made history,” said Jeanell Salaun, Justin’s wife. “Who knows what information we would have gotten from Italy straight to the U.S. if it weren’t for him and some of his friends. If he wasn’t around, how would history have changed?”When Lieutenant Neil Carpenter asked Gus to find some wine, they came upon a farm house near the mobile station at Villa Borghese. According to a transcript of his experiences in WWII, Gus wrote, “Bravely I knocked on the door. A very pretty young lady came to the door, woweeee!!!! I spoke no Italian so all I could say was, ‘vino??’ Man o man, she glared at me and said in no uncertain tones, ‘No, no vino!!!’ She turned and went into the house. I was fatally struck. When I got back into the jeep, Neil was laughing his head off. ‘Very funny,’ I said. ‘I’m going to marry that girl.’”Gus met Adele in August of 1944. “It takes five or more words to say something in Italian, that only takes two in English. At that rate, it was going to take too long for me to get to the courting area,” Gus wrote. “I bought an Italian/English dictionary, and began picking words, verbatim. Boy!! What a surprise that turned out to be. All my sentences were backwards!! Oh well, I pressed on and did make some headway.” After he broke the ice, Gus was invited to a Sunday dinner. “I had never eaten a real Italian dinner, and I really blew it,” he wrote. “I didn’t know that several courses of food was forthcoming, so I stuffed myself on what I thought was the main course. Hell, the best part was yet to come, and I’m full. Everybody laughed because I couldn’t eat anymore. Believe me, that did not happen again.” Gus was sent to France, but by April 1945 he had returned to Rome and married Adele. Gus brought his newlywed back to Point Reyes Station. “Communications went out on the troop ship he brought Mom down on. Dad went in, fixed it, and the captain was so appreciative, they got to eat at the captain’s table,” Mary said. “But Mom was expecting my brother and she might have also been sea sick, so she never left the room.” Back in West Marin, Gus was the driving force that merged the Point Reyes, Olema and Inverness school districts into the West Marin School District, and a school was built close to his home. He remained an active parent with the school, staying 16 years on the school board. “They used to tease my dad,” Mary said. “‘Sure you built it across the street from your house so your kids didn’t have to take the bus.’”When Mary was 6 years old, she went to Italy for the first time to visit her mother’s family. “Dad stayed home for most of it. Prior to him coming, he made the mistake of sending a picture to us in Italy of him kissing the Western Weekend queen on the cheek when they crowned her. My mom opened it, and her mom said, ‘See, I told you you shouldn’t have left him that long, he’s already found another woman,’” Mary said. “When Dad met my mom, they were very leery of American GIs, the whole love them and leave them, war stories whore stories. They always said, ‘If your intentions are honorable, you can come back and marry my mom,’ which he obviously did.” In 1954, Gus was transferred to the RCA transmitting station in Bolinas and remained there until the station closed around 1970, after he had been promoted to manager. For a couple years, Gus was transferred to San Francisco, and in 1972 he went to Guam to set up China’s first earth-satellite station for Nixon’s visit. In 1973, Gus was in charge of converting RCA’s shortwave station on Point Reyes into a satellite station. He became manager in 1975 and, after 41 years with RCA, retired in 1980. Gus continued to transmit messages around the world from his garage where he had an amateur, or ham, radio station. He was a ham operator for 50 years, longer than he had worked for RCA. It was both a hobby and a form of emergency communication. “During the 1982 mudslides, police and fire department communications were jammed, so I was on the ham radio bands, sending messages that so and so were fine. Gus was traveling around, setting up power generators to keep people going with heaters and lights,” said Gus’ friend, Dick Flint. “I had been talking to him on ham radio for several years before I came to Inverness and went to work for RCA.” The two met around 1955 at a ham radio gathering. “He was technically inclined. He could almost be called a nerd.”Gus, who received his license in 1962, taught a ham radio course conducted by the West Marin Amateur Radio Society. Paul Phelps, who received his license in 1956, dropped amateur radio in the 1960s until he met Gus at Sacred Heart Church around 1989, when Gus talked Paul into becoming an active radio amateur again. In turn, Paul helped another 75 students get their license. “He was always an inspiration,” Paul said. “Radio amateurs save the day during disasters,” added Paul’s wife Lu. “Gus should get that claim to fame.” Paul and Lu Phelps called Gus from Arizona and sang him “Happy Birthday” just a few days before he died. After retirement, Gus and Adele traveled around the country and spent time with all of their grandchildren. “Grandpa and Nonni came to our games, to the fairs to watch us show our animals, and all the different places we’ve graduated from,” Justin said. “He was known for his sandpaper hugs,” Mary said. “He’d rub his stubble against your face.”For over 40 years, Gus and Adele enjoyed swimming and fishing in Blue Lake near Mendocino. “He loved to fish, but never caught anything,” Mary said. “He did get a couple, and my mom didn’t want the fishy smell on the inside of the travel trailer, so she’d have him clean the fish outside, and then he’d go ‘Yes, dear.’” Gus’ “Yes, dear” were his most famous words. “No matter what my mom said, he never argued. He just said, ‘Yes dear,’” Mary said. Around 2004, Gus became forgetful. “His long-term memory was fantastic, but his short-term wasn’t,” Mary said. When Gus broke his hip, the family had to put up a note that read, “You have a broken hip, don’t get up.” Jeanell is pregnant with Xander Salaun, Gus’ ninth great-grandchild. “He would ask me, ‘Why are you getting fat?” and I’d say, ‘Because I’m pregnant’ and he would just have this great face and say, ‘Oh! You’re pregnant!’ and then 15 minutes later, he’d ask again, ‘Why are you getting fat?’ And he’d have that same great reaction again,” Jeanell said. When Adele became sick, Gus seemed to be confused. She died on June 17, 2004 from bone cancer. She was 79. “He lived to 93 because he never had a worry in his life,” Mary said. “Mom took care of everything for him. He had a wonderful life, and he wanted to be with my mom. I know he’s where he’s happiest. It’s comforting.” Gus went to visit Adele at the cemetery every day after her death. A photograph shows him, smiling, with his arms draped over her headstone—which will also be his. Underneath Adele’s name, “Cara Mia” is inscribed. Below his name are his call letters, “W6RSI.” She was on the right, and he’ll be on the left. That’s how they slept in bed. The entire family celebrated Gus’ 93rd birthday over the Thanksgiving holiday. On Thursday morning, December 4, his caretaker, Valerie O’Connor, found him lying on the ground. When his eyes weren’t focusing, she called the paramedics. The ambulance passed Mary’s car on its way to Marin General Hospital. “I asked Grandpa, ‘How you doing?’ and he said, ‘Not so good, I can’t flirt,’” Justin said. Gus passed away the next morning. “The last thing I said to him was, ‘Dad, it’s okay, you can go. Mom’s waiting for you. She’s soaring with the angels. On second thought, you could put a dent in her soaring,’” Mary said. His casket was covered by an American flag and it held a wooden plaque that read, “W6RSI.”“He had more pizzazz and zap than half the teenagers I know,” Father O’Neill said. “What matters most is the dash. For Gus, that dash came between 1915 and 2008. He put so much into his dash.”Gus wore a navy blue suit with a light blue shirt. “When the mortician went to close the casket, he asked me, ‘Do you want his tie clasp or glasses?’” Mary said. “‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘He needs those if he’s gonna go see Mom.’ In fact, Mom’s gonna be mad because he doesn’t have a hanky in his back pocket, folded.” Gus is survived by his children Charles Kovats and Mary Sanchez; his grandchildren Shannon Selstrom, Justin Salaun, Kelly Furlong, Johnny Sanchez, Geraldine Kovats, Charles Kovats Jr., Tom Kovats and Elizabeth Kovats; and his great grandchildren Jeanette Furlong, Liam Selstrom, Haylee Furlong, Abby Sanchez, Timmy Furlong, Brady Selstrom, John Kovats, Ellen Kovats, and soon-to-be Xander Salaun. -from the Point Reyes Light http://www.ptreyeslight.com/cgi/latest_news.pl?record=272

Undertaker Tries to Save a Young Man's Life

http://www.kansascity.com/637/story/859600.html

Here is an inpiring story of undertakers giving back to their community and trying to save a young man from a life of violence.- from the KansasCity Star

http://www.kansascity.com/637/story/859600.html

Morticians try to save a young man’s life by making him face death
By MARY SANCHEZ The Kansas City Star
Frank Harvey absently picks a speck of lint from the forehead of his childhood friend. A parting gesture for yet another familiar corpse.
His 16-year-old counterpart, one of two black teenagers killed by gunfire in Kansas City, is lying faceup on the embalming table at the Duane E. Harvey Funeral Home.
Frank is 18 and spends much of his time at the south Kansas City funeral home, his days carefully overseen through the tutelage of a cadre of older black men. So similar most of their lives, now the two teens couldn’t be more distant: One his chest splayed open post-autopsy, the other standing at the foot of the stainless-steel table in a white shirt, tie and suit vest.
“The young people who come through here,” Frank says, “I know the majority of who they were and what they were about.”
He’s not boasting. The adage that six degrees separates all people must be adjusted for Kansas City. More like three degrees here, a town where people seem less apt to move away. Winnow it to one degree among black people born to the city’s East Side.
Frank has just covered his friend’s body with a velvet maroon drape and ushered the young man’s father and other family members in for a viewing. Frank’s mother used to date the young man’s uncle.
If Sunday is the most racially segregated day of the week for church services, funeral homes are an extension of that separateness. The Harvey funeral home also marks a class division. This is where the vast majority of black murder victims are taken.
And Larry Love is the mortician who for nearly 20 years has seen to their final care. It used to be that Love prepared the bodies of former classmates from Southeast High School, crossing out their pictures in an old yearbook. Now he’s busy burying those people’s children.
Love, 40, is among the men attempting to keep Frank from winding up on the table. But don’t assume it’s the gore of embalming that Love is banking on. Autopsied murder victims don’t faze Frank — [He] has seen his share of blood and guts, some of it caused by his own hands. He was certified as an adult, served two years on an involuntary manslaughter charge and was released in July. A far-too-old-for-him girlfriend had bought a gun, and Frank’s cousin ended up dead.
No, something far less tangible is what Love and the other men at the funeral home are counting on to save Frank: their caring concern, displayed minute by minute through the day. They form a force field of admonishments, running commentary and, most importantly, geographic distance from the urban core. Frank stays with Duane Harvey at night in his Raytown home and has even begun using the Harvey last name.
And so a recent Monday began a familiar routine: Love preparing the bodies of two more young black men killed in violence, Frank as his assistant.
Embalming is hard physical labor. Formaldehyde comes in gel, powder (mixed with sawdust) and liquid forms. Love will use all of them that day.
Frank wheels the gurney carrying the body into the room. It is the 17-year-old whom his friend was near when he also got shot.
Love tosses off the remains of the heavy black body bag, talking to Frank as he fills the empty chest cavity with water from a half-inch hose. He has long wished that viewing the impact of gunshot blasts would affect young people. “Do you think seeing this would help?” he says, putting his index finger into bullet holes, counting, “One, two, three, four, five … .”
“Nah, they’d glorify it. Put it on their MySpace page or something,” Frank replies.
“Let’s just say this young man had some sort of job — would he be here?” Love asks as he forces a long metal wand through the corpse, injecting liquid embalming fluid.
Love believes in work for teenagers. Like the “Joy Jobs” he had as a youth, an old city program that gave him cash for cool clothes and kept him busy and out of trouble by hauling trash. Another urban connection: The husband of the woman who taught Love much of what he knows about embalming helped design that job program.
“ ‘If a man don’t work, he shouldn’t eat,’ that’s what my mother used to say,” Love says.
Willie Love, Larry’s uncle, pops his head into the room, just checking. He’s sharply dressed in a suit.
“If anything ever happened to Frank, it would kill us all,” the older man says, making sure he catches Frank’s eye. Then he reaches out and shakes Frank’s hand, a gesture he will do three times in the next five minutes. A gentleman’s love touch to a young man.
“Give me two more,” Love calls to Frank. Frank goes to the cabinet, retrieves the pint bottles and pours formaldehyde into what looks like a Crock-Pot atop a stainless base.
The talk turns to the lost generations in some black families; mothers teaching their daughters to be prostitutes, others sharing drugs with their kids, the adults telling the kids to retaliate when a family member is murdered. Frank pipes in with examples.
“I don’t care how bad your parents are, that should not make you want to go out and have the life of crime,” Love says.
Love scissors a long piece of linen cord from a spool and holds it high above his head as he double-threads it through a long, curved needle. He’s ready to sew up the body, taking long, carefully drawn-under stitches.
“The streets are calling him,” Love says of Frank. “They already took his father.”
Frank shrugs, looks to the floor, his easy grin gone. Frank was 8 when his father died, 1998’s 21st murder victim. “His father was a nice guy, but he was involved with the gangs, and it cost him his life,” Love says.
His eyes scanning the floor, Frank says he never really knew what happened. The cops never said.
The conversation shifts to drugs. Frank has examples there, too. Young kids popping Ecstasy, later graduating to other drugs.
The advent of crack cocaine in the mid-’80s coincided with the young people beginning to kill one another, Love says.
“Johnson County just thinks this is all Jackson County’s problem,” he says, his voice rising. “But it’s all our problem. If you come down here to get high, to get your drugs, you’re just as complicit. Ain’t no guns manufactured at 39th and Prospect, either.”
He is washing the body now, taking care to rinse thoroughly, then patting it dry with a cloth. He knows family soon will be hugging and kissing this young man at his funeral.
“I’ll never give up hope on my people,” Love says. “Us as a people, this stuff isn’t our nature. We could have quit in the hull of that ship coming over toward slavery, but we didn’t.”
Frank has taken the wrist portion of a rubber glove and made a band he plays with as he sways back and forth in a swivel chair. But he’s listening.
“When Frank makes it, it will be his job to reach back and save someone else,” Love says, looking toward his young charge. “That’s how you save a community, one person at a time.”
He nods to Frank, motions to a gurney in the hall and says, “I’m ready for the next one.”http://www.kansascity.com/637/story/859600.html