In the U.S., prior to the 20th century, death had always been tended to in the home, by the family. Family members took care of the dying person, washed and dressed the deceased, dug the grave in the ground, and carried the body in the coffin. Life and death were closer as death was openly visible and required the family’s work and participation.
Now, the after-death care movement returns the sacredness of death to the family and home, where it initially began centuries ago. Americans are increasingly opting for home funerals and wakes as ways to honor the deceased and support the grieving process.
Even if a loved one has died in a hospital or nursing home, the person’s body can be brought home for an in-home funeral or wake, says Ann Elizabeth Barnes who has lived in Great Barrington since 1981 and been a home funeral guide for 20 years. Barnes has helped nearly 100 families in the Berkshires and neighboring Columbia County, New York take care of loved ones’ bodies after death.
Instead of immediately calling a funeral director, you have the option of keeping your loved one’s body at home; and grieving in your own way at your own pace
People need time to process and integrate the loss. And the soul of the dead person needs time to leave the body as death is a transformation of energy. “Death isn’t merely a medical experience,” asserts Barnes. “It’s a spiritual experience in which we move from one plane to another.”
Some religions and traditions believe it takes three days for the soul to completely disengage from the body, says Barnes. So the deceased person’s body may be in the home for up to three days before burial or cremation. Mourners can light candles, pray, adorn the body with flowers, share stories, or read poetry as farewells and gratitude for the deceased—which also help the departed soul transit to the afterlife.
By the third day, says Barnes, people are ready to say goodbye to the loved one.
When Joanne Cooney’s mother died, she enlisted Barnes’s help. Cooney, a Great Barrington resident, wanted to honor her mother’s life and help the soul fully release so it wasn’t “lingering.”
She chose a home wake for her mother.
Barnes came to the house and spoke to the deceased, explaining that she would be “preparing her for the next part of her journey.” Then Barnes lit a candle and talked the deceased through each step of what she’d be doing as she began her after-death care work on the body.
Cooney, who had been caregiving for her mother during her final years, had picked out a blue suit to dress her mother and a purple sheet to wrap around the body. So after Barnes ceremoniously washed the body and anointed it with oil, she fit the suit on the deceased and then shrouded it with the loose flowing purple sheet. Every six hours, Barnes returned to the house to replace the ice around the body.
Seeing and spending time with her mother’s body had a therapeutic effect for Cooney. “I would have felt a terrible emptiness and loss if my mother’s body had been taken away,” Cooney says. “I wasn’t ready to let go.” But the additional time normalized death, embedding it as a natural part of life’s transition.
For three days, family and friends gathered at Cooney’s house around her mother’s body; people read Shakespeare’s poem “Seven Ages of Man” and recited prayers; children played and picked flowers in the yard to place on the body; and people brought casseroles, sandwiches, salads, cheese and bread, and shared meals together at the dining room table.
To help usher the soul on its path, everyone formed a circle near the body and recalled fond memories of the deceased.
“On the third day, I knew she had really crossed over,” recalls Cooney. “The energy felt different… it felt like more of just a body, I knew she was really gone,” she adds. “And I felt so peaceful that we had given her a warm, beautiful send-off.”
You can’t have that kind of releasing and letting go if the body is removed quickly, says Cooney. “I wish I had known about home wakes when my father died,” she notes, adding that grieving was harder and longer because the body had been hurriedly whisked away.
Joe Roy, owner of Birches-Roy Funeral Home in Great Barrington, says home-based funerals and wakes can help to fulfill a family’s emotional and spiritual needs. Barnes’s work is a type of “ministering,” Roy says. Just like a rabbi or pastor or priest, there’s a healing quality to it, he notes. “Families are grateful for the option.”
Don’t shy away from the body—which comes from the spiritual world, says Barnes, the home funeral guide. “Everything you see is a manifestation of the spiritual world.”
