2AM Burials & Pricey Used Caskets | 4M #238
Welcome to the two-hundred-and-thirty-eighth edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #238, where we’ll serve up bite-sized, easily-digestible nuggets of the deathcare news you need to crush conversations in the week ahead. Bon appetit!
Funerary fiction … sort of
Archaeologists seem to be uncovering new (actually, extremely old, but whatever …) and interesting embalming methods more often these days — but so far, none are novel enough to replicate in modern prep rooms. This one might fit that “novel” bill, however (pun intended — you’ll see). A recently-discovered 1600-year-old mummified person was found with a papyrus fragment from Book II of Homer’s ancient Greek text the Iliad resting on his abdomen, “completely incorporated into the embalming process.” One source explains that ancient embalmers “frequently reused discarded texts as cheap material to wrap bodies,” but this was the first time a specific literary text was included in a meaningful way.
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Customs, curses, and culture
Picture this … a handful of black-clad figures huddling together on a dark, moonless night, casting about furtive glances as a casket is hurriedly lowered into an even darker open cemetery plot, each hoping that their secret 2:00 a.m. interment has gone unnoticed. If it sounds shady, it is — but not for the reasons you might think. And while it’s super dramatic, the drama is real, and not a scene from a TV procedural. So, it is customary law among the Luo people of Kisumo in Kenya that a burial is a “public communal event that requires the participation of all branches of the family and the adherence to specific rites.” Last week, the second (younger) wife of a wealthy businessman and her “supporters” committed a “potential civil offense” and invited a “cultural curse” by interring her husband under cover of darkness, without the presence of his “first family.” Now his eldest sons have gone to court seeking an exhumation order and a “dignified” reburial. It’s also a good example of the great significance different cultures place on tradition, especially when it comes to funerary practices.
That’s a pretty high price for a used casket …
Still not enough
The heartache and trauma will likely never be over for families who entrusted their loved ones to Jon and Carie Hallford and Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, Colorado. However, at least one chapter of the Hallford’s sordid saga was closed last week as Carie was sentenced to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to multiple abuse of a corpse felonies. Her now-ex-husband Jon was sentenced to 40 years under the same charges earlier this year. These prison terms are in addition to federal sentences of 18 years for Carie and 20 years for Jon, which will run concurrently and are both being appealed. On Friday, Carie cried and basically blamed her actions on her “deceitful and abusive” spouse, but acknowledged that she “was raised to know right from wrong but had lost who she once was.”
