Alternate Endings

The new HBO* documentary Alternate Endings: Six New Ways to Die in America, 67 minutes in length, which began airing on August 14, is inaptly named in many ways.  Each of the six vignettes is not really new.  All have been around for at least twenty years, most far longer.  But it is a film worth viewing to see how some dying people, along with their friends and family, accept the inevitability of death and control their endings, all in their own way.

In one segment, a man dying of terminal lung cancer builds his own casket with the assistance of a friend with whom he had completed many wood-working projects over the years.  He lives in California and is able to use the End of Life Option Act to obtain a prescription for lethal drugs.  After spending time with friends and relatives at a party and then a last supper with family, they gather to support his final act–drinking the deadly mixture so that he can have a peaceful death, rather than one that might have included needless suffering.  This coverage of how the use of a self-controlled dying law can play out may be helpful for those who have not gone through the dying process with someone or who have experienced an unfortunate dying process.

The opening segment of the film shows the varied goods and services being hawked to funeral providers at a typical gathering of the National Funeral Directors Association, an event I have personally observed on two occasions.  Many of the products find new ways to help funeral vendors make more money off of families that don’t want what used to be called a traditional funeral.  Now that cremation has exceeded half of all dispositions, funeral businesses need to find new ways to keep the money flowing, so efforts are made to create keepsakes, which use a small amount of the cremated remains of a loved one, and can be given to dozens of people, if desired.  Also, unique receptacles, such as busts for the mantle, which can hold all of the cremated remains, are offered as replacements for Grecian urns or pottery vessels, which serve the same purpose.

Another alternative is to mix cremated remains with concrete to make appropriately-shaped, honey-combed objects, made in a bell or dome shape, that rest at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and other locations, assisting the development of new reefs.  The segment that explains this process does so well.  The involvement of the decedent’s daughter is particularly moving.  

The option to have cremated remains shot into space has been available for awhile and is shown in the film.  It does give new meaning to the notion that “from stardust we came and to stardust we shall return.”

The idea of a dying person having a party with friends before death has been carried out in many ways and in many places for a long time.  The San Antonio location of a segment that could be called “Living Wake” shows that all cultures are amenable to changing some of the old ways.  The honoree in this case was an Hispanic man from San Antonio, Texas.  He was feted by family and friends with mariachis playing and plenty of barbacoa to eat.

In some ways, the most poignant moment was the report that the wish of a dying child not to have a sad funeral was honored.  Instead, his family had a celebration of his life after his death.

The segment about the natural burial cemetery near Austin, Texas–Eloise Woods–was familiar to me for two reasons.  I did the legal work to create the just-under-ten-acre cemetery about eight years ago.  Natural burial is a choice I support, so I donated my services.  In 2012, after both of my parents had died, Ellen Macdonald, the founder of the cemetery, created a garden in the burial park to honor them and other veterans because both had served in the Army during World War II.  We later interred their cremated remains there, along with my younger brother’s, each in separate muslin sacks placed in a rattan basket.  The segment about Eloise Woods showed the selection of a burial space by a woman dying of pancreatic cancer and her subsequent death, preparation of her body by friends and family, and the family-directed burial of her shrouded body in the small cemetery.

Most people don’t connect family funerals, natural burial grounds, cremation disposition alternatives, life celebrations, and self-controlled deaths. But the connection made by the HBO documentary is clear:  increasingly, people of all backgrounds are wanting to have a greater say in what happens as their lives near the end.  And they are finding ways to do so.

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*If you don’t have access to HBO, you can watch the documentary by taking advantage of HBO’s 7-day free trial.

**Another recent and shorter (under 15 minutes) film about Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) in Canada–Dying on Your Own Terms–explains clearly the Canadian self-controlled dying process, narrated in part by a participating Canadian physician.  The film is available on YouTube and was first broadcast on WebMD in January.