Customer Reviews

Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death

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In 2003, author Lisa Cullens was given an assignment by her editors at Time Magazine to look into new trends in funeral services among Baby Boomers in America. This seemed fertile ground for inquiry- after all, around 2.3 million Americans will die in the coming year, and as the population ages, this number will double, if population trends continue, by 2040. Cullens' editor was particularly curious in seeing her write about "wacky" new trends in funerals- NASCAR coffins, artificial diamonds made from the cremated remains ("cremains", in the language of the industry) of loved ones, and that sort of thing. But what she discovered on her journey went well beyond the curious and the strange, although that aspect is represented in this book. She discovered how, as the ethnic and cultural profile of this country continues to change, funeral customs have changed, too, among both the immigrant communities and the native born.

Cullens' journey takes her from the mundane- traditional funeral homes in New York- to the exotic- a Hmong funeral in St. Paul. Minnisota- and the truly bizarre, a pyramid in Salt Lake City where a fellow by the name of Corky Ra prepares bodies in something approximating ancient Egyptian mummification. Along the way she visits schools of Mortuary Science, casket discounters, mourning families, and Dr. Gunther von Hagens, the German scientist/showman, with his traveling exhibit of "plastinated" cadavers. Interwoven with Cullens narration are the stories of a number of recently deceased people, and how they, or their families, chose the celebration that followed their departure. One chapter, on the emerging tradition of "green" burials, in which bodies are buried in such as way so as to quickly decompose and feed the ecosystem impressed me enough that I made a decision to research this for my own (hopefully distant) eventual disposal. The idea of becoming part of a nature preserve sounds much better- and more ecologically sound- than either quasi-permanent internment in a large, and ridiculously costly casket, or being turned into a lot of ash and gas.

"Remember Me" will no doubt be compared to Mary Roach's "Stiff", which is unfortunate, as this is a much better, and much more respectful book; Cullens doesn't treat her subject as something that must be viewed with the postmodern sense of ironic detachment that spoiled "Stiff" for me; rather, she treats all her subjects with deference and with respect, even the fellow making mummies in Salt Lake City. Cullens herself worries that some will also compare it to Jessica Mitford's "The American Way of Death", and makes a point of stressing that her aim is not a debunking of the funeral industry. I don't think to many people will make that comparison- although I suspect a lot of reviewers looking for a point of reference will. The rest of us will simply enjoy a well-written book that manages to be interesting, entertaining, and thought provoking.

This fascinating, fun and quirky book takes death out of its usual context of fear and sadness and explores the modern rituals of death in a way that is emotionally easy to read. I felt a little trepidation reading this book, since my best friend's mother just died last month and I wondered if it might hit to close to home, but Cullen found a way of speaking about death and its rituals that is both respectful and irreverent, and it enriched my thoughts about death rather than cheapening them.

I loved it. I learned a lot about a subject that you really don't want to sit down and discuss with your family and/or friends. Lisa Takeuchi Cullen wrote in such a way that turned a normally sad experience into an elightening journey. I learned I really didn't know as much as I thought I did about the funeral business in America. It is not a depressing book. I laughed at many stories (and the puns...intended, I'm sure). I enjoyed her sort of "journaling" style. I did not want to read a book filled with statistics and business plans. I could not put this book down because each chapter was so interesting. On a recent trip I even got to see the Reef Balls mentioned in the book. A wonderful read and a book that just may change your final decision.

James Joyce knew that there was "fun" in any "funeral". Actually, he called it (in _Finnegans Wake_) a "funferal" or fun-for-all. The pun is an old one, but according to Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, plenty of people nowadays are more interested in fun farewell parties and creative novelties than in the standard weepy postmortem sendoff. In _Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death_ (Collins), Cullen has reported back on a tour of unusual obsequies and memorials. She does give a nod to the traditional funeral (called by one marketer the "greet 'n weep") by dropping in on a class for morticians-to-be, but most of her chapters have to do with less ordinary ways of dealing with the inevitable end. She is not, she informs us upfront, updating the classic 1963 exposé _The American Way of Death_. The funeral industry, perhaps reluctantly, has had at least limited reform since that shocker. The variations on commemorations and dispositions she describes here are not a response to reform, but to demographics and the market. The time has simply come for baby-boomers, having "bulldozed most cultural norms from sex to music to hairstyles" to take on their reforms for the big sleep. Many of the new ways of dealing with the departed are funny, some are very strange indeed, and many are deeply moving, not only for the participants, but also on the pages as Cullen describes them.

One big change in disposition of loved ones is that cremation is much more accepted than it used to be. 56% of those getting a cremation will wind up in an urn. There are traditional marble urns, the sort that would have looked good on a mantel a couple of centuries ago. There are wooden boxes like shoeboxes, but with intricate lid carvings. But then there is the urn in the shape of a giant seashell. It is made to be thrown to the waves, where it floats for a little and then dissolves. A paper urn is embedded with wildflower seeds; after being buried, it blooms, fed by all that calcium within. There are urns made of motorcycle cylinders. There is a line of urns whose selling point is that they go through airport detectors without setting off alarms. If sitting as ash in a container is not to your taste, who says ashes have to go to ashes? LifeGem converts the carbon dust into diamonds. If you would like something a little cheaper, your remains can be mixed into big concrete honeycomb blocks that are to be dropped into the ocean to be the seeds for future reefs. Eternal Reefs offers such a service. If you are one of the traditionalists that refuse to be turned into ash, there are still lots of options. The very simplest is just to get buried in the natural state: "no embalming, no upright tombstones, no fancy caskets." "The point is to nourish the earth, and you don't want to sequester the nutrients," explains the proprietor of a "green" cemetery which doubles as a nature preserve. Cullen says he speaks "as if a human body were only so much Miracle-Gro". If you still into coffins, Cullen takes a look at a lot of fine examples, like the $18,500 Marsellus 700 Masterpiece, solid mahogany, over a quarter of a ton in weight. "It's the Maserati of caskets" and Ronald Reagan is in one. More fun are the FAVs, the Fantastic Afterlife Vehicles, often made in Ghana, in custom shapes: a trowel for a mason, a sneaker for a soccer player, a beer bottle for a bartender. If you prefer practicality rather than whimsy, there is a Canadian business that builds coffins that, before you have to put them to final use, can be sofas, entertainment centers, or pool tables.

Cullen has good fun taking tours of odd places (often with her baby in tow). She declares that she has no death fetish (some people she profiles do) and she is neither ghoulish nor macabre (some of her adventures are). She is archly amused, and her amused tone throughout the book is just right for the subject. There is good journalism here, and meaningful obituaries of people who have decided (or whose families have decided) to take untraditional ways of dealing with the inevitable. None of their plans are for everybody, but most of the creative ways people are using to deal with death are good examples of harmless eccentricity, examples that can only increase our appreciation of the variety of our living fellows.

Lisa Takeuchi Cullen's Remember Me, takes us on a journey to the discovery of new and invasive ways that people are reinventing how they want to be buried all across the country. Throughout her journey she finds the disparity between the individualization of American's and the funeral industry. Cullen's research is very humorous and engaging for all readers, but at the same time it gives people a better sense of the reality of death. The impact of different burials within modern day society is changing and she explains this to her viewers from first hand experience. People who were involved in the Baby Boom are growing and the traditional practices that they followed are becoming uncommon as the norm today. At the end of Cullen's introduction she makes a very powerful statement in regards to the title of the book, it states, "remember me that is all their loved ones asked" (Cullen, xvii). Even though times are changing this is one commonality that is found within her research across the country. The brilliant presence that she brings to her words helps us see our environment and the individualization that each person amongst it brings into the content of this book.

+++++

Consider the common funeral (or funeral with cremation): it is a planned event involving some traditional ceremony but it always ends with the deceased's body being placed in a wooden box and the box being put in a hole in the ground (or the body being burned with the resultant ashes being put in a container and later the ashes being buried or scattered).

What's wrong with this practice? It's BORING. The cure for this boredom? This book by "Time" magazine writer Lisa Takeuchi Cullen.

Cullen takes us on the "dead beat," a "tour [of the new American way of death], one leading toward celebrations and funny trends and sparkly merchandise." Cullen skirts "around the sticky swamp of religion." The people she "encountered along the way...chose to celebrate life even as they mourned a death." She also meets the people involved in the "death business," especially the entrepreneurs whom she calls "end-trepreneurs."

This book is also practical since it answers the following question: "What's it like to be a consumer shopping for after-death options today?"

The key to understanding the majority of this book is that it mentions an improvement, enhancement, or change in some aspect of the typical funeral (and funeral with cremation) process. To fully understand what I mean, I will state the main idea behind each of the book's chapters (not listed in the same order as in the book):

(1) The tour begins with the true story behind each of four real funerals and a real but non-typical wedding. These present five takes on celebrating life.
(2) Confessions of a Funeral Planner. Planned funerals don't always go according to plan!
(3) "Green" or environmentally friendly burials. An improvement in being buried by not harming the environment.
(4) Unconventional containers for a dead body. Enhanced caskets for those who want an "afterlife vehicle" with flair.
(5) Diamonds are forever. Turn your deceased loved one's ashes into jewlery to remember him/her forever. "Here's a way to make a lasting impression."
(6) Ahoy there! Consider making your loved one's ashes a permanent part of the sea.
(7) Don't bury or cremate your body! Consider freezing it instead. In this chapter the author finds "a festival celebrating a frozen corpse."
(8) Do you want to preserve your body for science and show? Then don't bury or cremate your body! Consider "infusing it with a mix of plastics" instead.
(9) Don't just "Walk like an Egyptian." Be preserved like one too! Consider modern mummification instead of burying or cremating your body.
(10) New Americans, old funeral rites. This chapter considers the question: "Which traditions [do new Americans] insist on continuing and which [do] they bend to suit their adopted homeland?"
(11) Funeral rites in the old country. A very personal chapter involving the author's Japanese grandfather.
(12) Undertaking 101. A visit to a modern mortuary school. This chapter answers the following: "Who would become a funeral director today--and why?" (And no, there was not one female mortician-in-training mentioned whose name was "Morticia.")
(13) The tour ends with some of the author's thoughts on what she has seen and learned. This chapter, though brief, is superbly written.

This book is practical, informative, witty, humorous, personal, poignant and in places, opinionated. It is, above all, well-written.

There are interesting black and white photographs at the beginning of the introduction and each chapter (except the last one). My personal favorite occurs at the beginning of the introduction where part of the caption to this photo reads:

"Mika and I check out a vintage hearse at the Frozen Dead Guys Festival."

(Mika is the name of the author's baby that was born in 2004.)

A book I would recommend reading after this one is entitled "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" (2003).

Finally, the only minor problem I had was with this book's chapter order. I read this book in the chapter order indicated above.

In conclusion, this is a book about the new American way of death where "people...want to do death their way." Personally, this is one eye-opening tour that I'll never forget!!

(first published 2006; introduction with sources; 13 chapters; main narrative 210 pages; index)

+++++

Lisa Takeuchi Cullen's "Remember Me - A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death" is a light and entertaining journal of her travels with her newborn daughter exploring the many new options that the Me-Generation can choose to be remembered. She provides personal interjections along with the explanations of these new offerings from their creators - who she has dubbed end-trepeneurs. Cullen then adds intermittent spotlights on people who have chosen or who will choose in the future, to go out with an alternative death-style.

Even though she states that she is not following in the footsteps of Jessica Mitford's 1963 expose of the funeral industry titled "The American Way of Death" Cullen takes many jabs at funeral directors who she calls "the well-armed enforcer of funeral ritual." She, on rare occasion, pedestals funeral directors, but for the most part Cullen uses the wide brush of inflexible, protective, older white male to describe the death care providers. Cullen is right in that these funeral directors exist - those who resist the change in trends - but her book disproportionately accounts for the funeral directors who "get it" and are providing a multitude of options for those they serve. A book about proactive funeral directors would not have the same intrigue as one that can dig up some dirt on the not-so-known industry and take on a hint of fragrance a la Mitford - especially by adopting it into her subtitle.

For funeral directors and cemeterians: "Remember Me" is a great account of the attitudes of baby boomers towards death. There were alternatives that I wasn't even aware of and we as funeral directors must continually be on top of these changes and always be prepared for new requests from families. Although we may not like it when someone like Cullen takes us to task, we cannot hold on to the funeral service industry of past generations, we must embrace the future.

For the general public: Cullen showcases a myriad of options available for someone's final wishes. This however, is not a complete inventory of what is available. Our communities are continually evolving with the immigration of death rituals and the changes in trends. The biggest challenge for funeral directors today is to offer all of the new alternatives while at the same time not to be labeled as a peddler of add-ons and up-sells. If the need arises for the services of a funeral director and you encounter one fitting Cullen's profile, you do have the right to seek the services from another firm as those who are keeping up with the times are slowly squeezing out those who don't.


If "Remember Me" accomplishes one thing - to get people thinking and talking about how they want to be remembered - then it will have been a great service to both the funeral industry and the public. Unfortunately, far too many people do not talk about these end-of-life issues. When the day comes and they are sitting across from the funeral director, it would be very overwhelming (and a little too late) to start the education process of two dozen new alternatives - especially without prior consultation of the deceased. Without prior discussions, the family will usually default back to the previous generation's choices. It is my wish that Cullen's "Remember Me" be the catalyst of many dinner table discussions on this once taboo topic so that when I or my fellow funeral colleagues are sitting with a family upon a death, we can assist them in creating the most meaningful tribute - whatever their wishes may be - to honor a life lived.

When we die we get our last big "showdown." This is our last chance to leave our legacy. From the book Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death, Lisa Takeuchi Cullen describes many ways for us to leave our mark on the world. In this educational, yet humorous tour, Cullen provides many ways to "nix" the traditional burial and really make a lasting impression. Through this book she is able to entice many types of people. She provides ways that the environmentalist can use their body to nourish the earth, and how people can be made to diamonds to be present with they're loved ones all the time. She describes how the cremation industry is booming from about 25% of Americans being cremated in 2003 to the expected 48% in 2025. People can do almost anything with their ashes. Some people like to have them scattered among the sea, in this a much larger part of the earth is a memorial to you rather than just a hole in the earth. "Once a man's family asked for his ashes to be scattered over his favorite golf course" (Cullen p.82). I think everyone should have the option to "go out" doing what they love. Why should we be buried at some cemetery we may have visited a few times rather than our favorite place we enjoy most? She describes the many ways people can personalize their caskets. Anything from a giant lobster, a NASCAR casket, or to use it as a coffee table until you die. My favorite and most entertaining chapter was "Disney on Ice" (p. 113). In a small town in Colorado they have a festival honoring a frozen dead guy. They have different costume contests, prizes, food, and coffin sled races. People from all around the world come each year to see this event. I know I definitely will go one year. People can also donate their bodies for educational purposes in science or be forever maintained as a mummy. She even gets to tour a mortician school and learn how they get into the funeral industry. Lisa Takeuchi Cullen describes death in a way that people can read with ease. Throughout this book she characterizes the many unique ways to be remembered. I think each of our funerals should be as special and individualistic as we want. This book definitely endorses the many ways to this happen.

Funerals per se were once cut & dried. You were embalmed, you were cried over & you were buried in an over-priced casket. But Baby Boomers are having none of that. The choices for 'Remembering' your stint here are on earth are varied & far more interesting.
I loved the examples of the ways people are choosing to be remembered, & have picked up a few ideas for my own 'Transition Celebration'.
An excellent read.

Death. I hate thinking about it. I hate reading about it, I hate discussing it so I certainly never even thought about actually planning for it. After all, as Cullen so eloquently observes, "[d]eath is a big, huge bummer!" However, despite my own trepidation regarding the end of life, upon a friend's recommendation, I decided to read Cullen's book.

What an absolutely delightful journey through so many diverse, interesting and indeed refreshingly bizarre funeral rites! After reading the accounts detailed in Remember Me, I felt strangely empowered. I came to understand that though I may not have control over when death occurs, I certainly have control over my ultimate disposal. Remember Me gave me a new and different perspective on life. More so than ever before, I now realize that with proper planning, my death can actually be my very own final statement on what I, as a person, stood for in life.

Dead set (no pun intended here) on planning for my death, I happened upon Grant Me My Final Wish; A Personal Journal to Simplify Life's Inevitable Journey written by Renata Marie Vestevich. What a treasure. In the first part of this book, Vestevich masterfully guides the reader through the practical part of death providing space to identify all important documents, policies, bank accounts, investments and other important contact information that survivors simply need to have. She also specifically designates an area to discuss the care of my beloved dog in the event of my untimely death; something that never really crossed my mind.

The second dimension to Vestevich's book is far more personal. There is space to share thoughts, feelings, heartfelt memories, momentous events and the photographs that captured them. Through Grant Me My Final Wish, Vestevich gives us the opportunity to pen our very own, unique legacy for the benefit of future generations.

In short, both Cullen and Vestevich take an uncomfortable subject at best and turn it into a positive experience. There is a profound sense of personal empowerment that comes from confronting and planning for the inevitability of death. Through their combined works, Cullen and Vestevich helped me decide that my death will be an exclamation point that I place at the conclusion of my life!