After having attended more funerals than I can count (from an ageing, large extended family), I got disillusioned about traditional funeral rites and practices.
However, for the older generation, they would prefer a wake to be held for them. This is especially so for the elders who I grew up with, who are mostly Taoist. This preference is derived from the beliefs of Taoism, where if the deceased were not properly honoured through holding wakes and having an ancestral tablet, it is believed that they would turn into vengeful spirits that would curse the family. On the contrary, I suspect that people do not hold funerals out of fear but mostly because it has been conditioned in them to follow tradition as a sign of respect and/or filial piety. More often than not, bereaved families would hire someone related to the undertaker industry who knows better about how to settle such a responsibility, from start to finish.
On that note, it brings me to address the dark side of funeral businesses. As from personal experience I have seen Funeral directors who irked me from their disingenuous way of conducting their business. Furthermore, it was a particular funeral director who was introduced by a cousin’s mom who worked in the temple.
It started with a request for a copy of the latest Rolex catalogue from my mom who used to work for the firm. He did this while hosting the funeral for my beloved maternal grandmother. It was absolutely audacious of him to make such a pompous materialistic request in the face of people who were grieving.
I have a large extended family on my maternal side, as my maternal grandmother gave birth to 12 children, some who have already passed. Intuitively, it wouldn’t take much to estimate the large numbers of visitors to the funeral. From a profit-driven point of view, there would be much financial capacity, and the funeral director tried to arrange as many services as possible and made the most out of it. The whole cost of the funeral racked up to about 51,000 dollars.
Sometimes we forget that funeral businesses are just another piece in the capitalist machine, and thus have underlying profit-driven models. I heard from a friend who stays in a bungalow that his neighbour is the owner of a funeral business. Under the guise of preachings about filial piety, we are often blind to those who profit off our grief and sadness. Under the pretence of wanting the best for the customer’s dead relatives, funeral services are perhaps the easiest industry in which one can squeeze more products and services into the customer’s bills. This is especially so when the customers are at their most vulnerable points in their life and as a result, will not be the most rational.
This thus led me to think about whether it is perhaps more important to be concerned and more preoccupied during that period of mourning, with those whom the deceased might have left behind in the waking world.
Of course, there is a common saying that funerals are actually held for the living, not the dead, in order to allow those still alive to ease into the grief and loss and to be consoled. Perhaps that was the agenda at the beginning of time when funeral rites were first created. However as time passed, ingenuous people made it an avenue from which they can earn a sustained profitable income from.
In hindsight, I am sure not all funeral arrangers are just mercenary in nature. At the end of the day it is about knowing where to draw the line with regards to suggestions by funeral directors, and being prepared to whistleblow when the people in charge who are undertaking such an unorthodox task, are doing it ethically –where they can balance between their role to help out the bereaved, and to sustain their services.
In a nutshell, more can be done for families in terms of guarding their finances especially during that unfortunate time. Using the 50,000 dollar example from my grandmother’s funeral, it could have been channelled into helping out with household bills in the long term or help improve the living conditions of family that are left behind. This is especially pivotal for families who have lost their breadwinner, and when there is no life insurance coverage for the deceased.