Victor M. Sweeney, a licensed funeral director and mortician, answers the internet's burning questions about burials and the interment of dead bodies.
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00:00 I'm Victor M. Sweeney, licensed funeral director, and I'm here today to answer questions from
00:04 Twitter.
00:05 This is Burial Support.
00:07 [Theme Music]
00:11 DZ1B21.
00:13 Why the different shapes of caskets?
00:16 Typically in the United States, when we're talking about a receptacle to bury a dead
00:20 body, we talk about a casket.
00:22 A casket is rectangular.
00:24 Oftentimes in other parts of the world, you're going to see what's called a coffin.
00:29 So a coffin is what we might call anthropoid shape.
00:32 Narrower at the top where the head is, wider at the shoulders, and then narrow down at
00:37 the feet.
00:38 Other countries around the world tend to use coffins, and we use the term even colloquially
00:42 here in the United States.
00:43 So when you hear someone talk about "Grandma's in the coffin," odds are good she's in a rectangular
00:48 casket.
00:49 Lamia233.
00:50 Can you spread ashes anywhere, or are there legal restrictions on that?
00:55 This is such a good question, and it's one I'm asked all the time.
00:59 Typically a state does not really have a vested interest on what you do with human cremated
01:04 remains.
01:05 So you could scatter them essentially anywhere you like.
01:08 In my state, a family has visitation rights where a person is scattered.
01:12 So if you scatter Grandma in the bed of her garden, you end up with visitation rights
01:19 to that flower bed in perpetuity.
01:20 You can also do other things with cremated remains.
01:23 You can have them made into jewelry.
01:24 You can buy small keepsake urns.
01:27 I've heard that you can press them into records.
01:29 There are all sorts of things that you can do with cremated remains because they are
01:32 simply pulverized bone dust, and they're inert carbons.
01:37 Everything that is organic in them is gone.
01:39 It's not going to feed a tree, as people commonly like to think, but you can do with them mostly
01:45 whatever you wish.
01:46 Here's a question from Plucky Duckling.
01:48 Are funeral pyres and Viking funerals a thing anymore?
01:52 There is one place, Creststone in Colorado, that does allow a funeral pyre.
01:58 So that does exist, but you have to live in a very specific locale.
02:01 A funeral pyre, as we're thinking of it here, is usually a large pile of wood or other flammable
02:07 material that a body is set on top of, and then the whole thing is set alight.
02:12 As far as Viking funerals, this is kind of a misnomer.
02:15 You're probably thinking of putting your loved one in a boat with their hands on the pommel
02:20 of their sword and pushing them out into the lake and shooting flaming arrows at it until
02:24 it goes up in flames.
02:26 Viking funerals actually weren't like that.
02:28 They were buried with their sword in boats and all sorts of grave goods, but the boat
02:32 was dragged on land and buried intact.
02:36 Here's a question from Signature.
02:38 Why do people take photos of the dead in a casket at funerals and post it on social media?
02:42 Please stop doing that!
02:44 Interesting thing.
02:45 In most places, the right to take a picture of the deceased falls to the family.
02:50 So they can either allow it or disallow it.
02:53 But I agree.
02:54 Don't put it on social media.
02:55 That's something that should be kept just for your own personal use.
02:59 Next up, we have a question from Stancombe Wills.
03:02 Who gets to decide who gets invited to my funeral?
03:04 The short answer is your family.
03:06 They can decide who will come and likewise who is not allowed there.
03:10 Fun fact, you do not need an invitation to attend a funeral.
03:13 You can just show up.
03:15 Funeral crashing is a thing.
03:17 There was a gal that I used to know back at one of the funeral homes I worked with.
03:20 Her first name was Bunny.
03:21 And Bunny would come to every funeral, regardless of denomination and location.
03:25 And I am certain she didn't know that many people.
03:27 She came for those sweet, sweet scallop, potatoes and ham.
03:31 Our next question is from Nate Bones.
03:33 How come cemeteries never run out of space?
03:37 Sometimes cemeteries do run out of space.
03:38 In larger metropolitan areas, sometimes it's the case where families will actually bury
03:43 their loved ones on top of existing graves.
03:45 In certain other countries and in other parts of the world, you actually just rent a grave
03:49 space.
03:50 For instance, in Germany, your grave space is not your mom's or dad's forever, but for
03:56 a period of years after which your rent expires, they dig up the dead and they put them elsewhere
04:01 in a common grave usually.
04:03 Here's a question from Dr. Bumforfire.
04:06 What is sky burial?
04:08 Sky burial is a practice that takes place in Tibet or Nepal, where bodies are actually
04:13 left out and hacked apart for condors and vultures to eat.
04:18 The way that they render a human body to just bones is by letting animals do the work.
04:23 We have a question here from Teaspoon.
04:26 Do funeral homes have busy times of the year or is it just dead all year?
04:30 Fall and spring are going to be the busier times of year.
04:33 Fall, because the weather change has something to do with there being more deaths.
04:37 And spring is usually busier, especially where I'm from, where it's cold.
04:41 We have a normal workload and then all sorts of burials that we had to delay over winter.
04:45 That end stretch of winter into spring when everything starts to melt, the ground is simply
04:49 too soggy to even set foot in the cemetery, let alone bring a whole line of cars and a
04:55 casket.
04:56 From Kai Schwa.
04:57 Why are funeral homes always family owned?
04:59 Interestingly enough, more and more we're seeing funeral homes get bought up by corporate
05:04 entities.
05:05 So it could be that your local funeral home, despite being called the Smith family funeral
05:10 home, is actually owned by a larger conglomerate who might operate five, six, ten funeral homes
05:15 in your area.
05:16 I think you'll always find that the business where you know the owner and they live in
05:21 your locality and they shop at your stores are generally going to be more caring and
05:25 more transparent than the ones that are there simply to turn a profit.
05:30 From Harvey180.
05:31 So I'm completing my organ donation form.
05:34 You can literally donate everything, including skin, bones, and tendons.
05:38 So how do funerals work?
05:40 Because there will be nothing to put in the box.
05:43 Most organ donation companies, those procurers, they don't take everything.
05:48 They'll take the femur, they'll take some of the muscle, they might even skin the whole
05:52 thing so it looks like one big nasty roast beef.
05:56 But then they also will provide us with a large wooden dowel that's the exact shape
06:00 of the femur.
06:01 So we can kind of rebuild the shape of the leg.
06:05 From Amy Bell.
06:06 How do you talk to your children about death?
06:08 Would love to hear from parents who have tackled this tough topic.
06:11 Probably my best piece of advice for parents when they talk to kids about death is don't
06:15 say it's like grandpa fell asleep.
06:17 I think little kids can conflate the two.
06:20 I would say be honest with children about death.
06:22 Tell them the reality that someone is no longer living.
06:25 Kids typically, I think, have a better handle on death and really, especially elementary
06:30 school aged children, I think they have a want to be involved when they come to a funeral.
06:35 There's so many times where I see families come and they kind of shuffle the kids off
06:38 somewhere else and say that death is for adults.
06:41 But really, death affects every single one of us.
06:44 Here's a question from CurlGirl62.
06:47 What is a green burial?
06:48 So there are a lot of things on the green spectrum that we can do with funerals.
06:52 It could be something like we bury the body without a casket and without a vault straight
06:56 in the ground.
06:57 It could cover something like having what we call resumation or decomposition instead
07:02 of cremation.
07:04 It could be something like using a wooden casket instead of metal or even using what
07:08 they call eco-embalming fluids.
07:10 So embalming fluids made out of methyl alcohols instead of carcinogens like formaldehyde.
07:14 All right, here's a really good question from Katerade.
07:17 It is too cold to go for a walk, so I went to the mausoleum, as one does.
07:23 Why anyone would want to spend eternity in a safe deposit box is beyond me.
07:27 One distinction to make, mausoleum generally refers to a large building that houses full
07:33 caskets above the ground.
07:35 Another thing that looks similar to a mausoleum is what we might call a columbarium.
07:39 These are typically standalone structures above the ground that have shelves or what
07:44 we call niches to place urns.
07:46 So mausoleums are for caskets and columbaria are for urns.
07:51 Oftentimes when I talk to families that have entombments rather than burials in the ground,
07:56 usually their primary concern is water.
07:58 If you're along a body of water, like a lake or a river, maybe spending eternity in a wet
08:03 cooler is worse than spending it in a safety deposit box.
08:06 Next we have a question from Brain Rot Batty.
08:09 Had to break up a fight at the funeral home today.
08:11 Why are y'all swinging on each other?
08:13 I have had to break up a couple fights at funerals or go into dad mode and scold some
08:18 people.
08:19 It's a highly emotional situation.
08:21 Sometimes there are a lot of unresolved issues between the deceased and their family or maybe
08:26 other members of the family.
08:27 Talk about inheritance.
08:28 Those things can be a mess.
08:30 Our next question is from Bob White.
08:33 Are funeral expenses tax deductible?
08:34 The short answer to that is no.
08:37 Here's a question from SJ Drowsky.
08:40 Why are Irish wakes always so loud and poppin'?
08:43 It's actually one of those things that led me into funeral service in a way.
08:47 I'm from an Irish family and we're very proud of it, but when my grandma Sweeney died, my
08:52 cousins smuggled in a whole bunch of coolers of booze into the funeral home and all the
08:57 older ones proceeded to get absolutely wild.
09:00 But seeing people have fun at a funeral and kind of embrace life at a funeral was one
09:04 of those things where I saw it as a young man and realized that a funeral doesn't have
09:09 to be entirely dour.
09:11 From our friend GB.
09:13 So really, there are professional mourners, people getting hired to cry at funerals?
09:18 That does exist in some cultures and it does exist right here in the United States in some
09:22 places.
09:23 Some cultures put a premium on outward expressions showing how much we loved the dead.
09:29 In Ireland, for instance, they have what are called keeners.
09:32 So it's a particular type of musical lilting wail.
09:36 I don't know if I'd want to hire professional mourners for my own funeral.
09:39 I would kind of like the idea that people can show their emotions.
09:43 I think that is a very good thing and maybe it's the case that having those professional
09:47 mourners kind of move those sorts of emotions forward.
09:50 Here's a question from M.
09:51 Why is extreme embalming a thing?
09:54 Please make it stop.
09:55 I kind of agree with you.
09:56 It is wild.
09:57 For those of you that don't know what extreme embalming is, typically that's referring to
10:02 preparing a body in a lifelike vignette.
10:05 So if he's a boxer, you have the gentleman propped up in the corner of a boxing ring.
10:09 Or if your cousin is a gamer, we have her in a gamer chair holding an Xbox controller.
10:14 If someone asked me, I could do it.
10:16 It would take an awful lot of ingenuity, but I kind of agree.
10:19 Make it stop.
10:20 Here's a question from Powerslave.
10:22 Why do funeral homes look so creepy?
10:24 They should have a tropical cabana vibe that would make funerals a lot less drab.
10:29 I think the primary reason is oftentimes they're very old establishments.
10:34 So they've been in a community for a very long time.
10:37 You might hear the term funeral parlor.
10:39 When funerals moved out of a person's home, held in their parlor, and into somebody's
10:44 business setting where everybody could gather and pay their respects.
10:48 So when you have the prerequisite of being a parlor, you do tend to have 19th century
10:55 accoutrements like big drapes and overstuffed chairs, and maybe some of those haunted mansion-esque
11:01 things that you might think are creepy.
11:03 Here's a question from Pal.
11:05 Do morticians need to take a mental health and stability examination to get their certificate?
11:09 And do you have free access to therapy?
11:11 We do not have to take a mental health and stability exam.
11:14 I do think something like that would actually be helpful in the future for people in my
11:18 position.
11:19 I also do not have free access to therapy.
11:21 When you work around a great deal of death, you learn to kind of handle death.
11:25 And I say handle because I've never really actively coped.
11:28 Being that it's so ever-present in my daily life, it's a part of life that I'm really
11:33 comfortable with.
11:34 So in the same way you probably don't see OB nurses going through existential crises
11:38 when babies are born, I'm not going through existential crises when somebody dies.
11:42 One in, one out, and I'm just here to help serve you guys.
11:45 Lo Josimo.
11:47 Why do people plan funerals before someone dies?
11:50 #GrandmaStillKickin' I would say we're seeing more and more people
11:54 pre-plan their funerals, simply for the reason that people want things done the way that
11:58 they want it.
11:59 The best thing a person could probably do, short of talking to your local funeral home
12:03 and doing formal planning, would be to write down what you want, at least the basics.
12:08 Whether it's cremation or burial, or maybe a mix between the two.
12:12 Write that down somewhere and make sure your loved ones have it.
12:14 From CarlyStar82, "Why are funerals so expensive?
12:19 Feels like a scam."
12:20 Usually when we're planning a funeral, there may be three subsections that a family has
12:25 to pay for.
12:26 The first one is professional services.
12:28 That would include things like setting up the funeral and going to it, and bringing
12:32 a body from the place of death.
12:34 Maybe embalming the body or taking the body to the crematory.
12:37 Another subsection would be merchandise.
12:39 Things like a casket or an urn, maybe a burial vault.
12:43 And then the third section are what we call cash-advanced items.
12:47 So things like your gravedigger, your funeral lunch, flowers, newspaper obituaries, all
12:52 the other odds and ends that are tangentially related to the funeral will get conglomerated
12:57 into one big bill.
12:58 So usually when a family receives, let's say, a $10,000 funeral bill, it will include part
13:04 that goes to the funeral home, but a lot of it's going to be paid out to everybody else
13:08 that participates to make the thing possible.
13:10 Our next question is from SOS Fitness, "Do funeral homes charge extra for plus-size coffins?"
13:17 The answer is yes.
13:19 Being that there are more materials that go into a plus-size or what we call an oversized
13:24 casket or coffin means the price goes up.
13:27 Here's a question from Tyranee1, "Is wearing black to funerals still a thing, or can I
13:32 wear any neutral color?"
13:33 You can wear any color you want.
13:35 I've had families where they want the funeral to be more of a celebration.
13:39 I've had families come wearing all Hawaiian shirts or all sports jerseys or everybody
13:44 wears purple because that's grandma's favorite color.
13:46 Next up, we have a question from Sabru Atik, "How to write a eulogy?
13:50 I'm not good with words."
13:52 I actually had to give the eulogy at my best friend's funeral when he took his own life,
13:56 and that's an extremely challenging thing.
13:59 My goal with that was to talk about my friend's life, but then talk about kind of those universal
14:04 values that we all share.
14:06 So things like unconditional love and what he taught me about patience.
14:11 Those are all universals that I think we can all understand, and those are really, really
14:15 good topics for eulogy.
14:17 Here's a question from Return of the Goth, "Is it a Southern thing to pull over out of
14:21 respect for the dead for a funeral procession, or do you all who are elsewhere do it too?
14:25 It has always confused and irritated me.
14:28 They're dead.
14:29 I don't know them.
14:30 I'm on my lunch break.
14:31 Move it."
14:32 It really depends on where you live in the country.
14:34 Where I grew up in the state of Michigan, it was very customary when you saw a hearse
14:38 go by, you pull over and let them through.
14:40 Where I live now, that's not usually the case.
14:43 In fact, I've been in trouble often enough for driving the hearse down the very middle
14:47 of the road on the dotted yellow line to get people to pull over, only because I have a
14:52 place to go to, and typically it's a little more time sensitive than your lunch break.
14:56 Maybe instead of being irritated, you could think of it as a gift you could give to the
14:59 family of your time.
15:00 It's usually only a little bit.
15:02 Why would you have a luncheon for a funeral anyway?
15:05 Hashtag doesn't make any sense.
15:06 There is something really nice about getting together after the fact when the work is done
15:12 to just sit and relax and fill our bellies.
15:15 I think inside all of us, there is this certain caveman aspect.
15:19 We bury our dead and we put them away for a time, and then we also gather together and
15:25 eat and drink and make merry.
15:26 I found that having that opportunity to gather and to eat and to drink and to share is really,
15:32 really valuable.
15:33 And that's all the questions.
15:34 I hope you learned something.
15:36 Until next time.
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