It’s never easy to lose a child, but one woman found a way to say her final goodbyes in a way that helped her morn and honored her daughter. Lucia Maya’s daughter, Elizabeth, became ill while she was at college.
Elizabeth had called her mother complaining of chest pains and swelling.
Lucia said:
“She called me one day in tears because she was in a lot of pain. She wasn’t one to cry or complain. I said, ‘OK, something is clearly wrong.'”
She took Elizabeth to the doctor, and they found a large tumor in her chest. They diagnosed her with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and started treatment immediately. She had six rounds of chemotherapy and ultimately beat the disease. Sadly, it returned a short time later and spread to her brain.
There was nothing that the doctors could do.
Lucia found herself in a situation where she had to plan for her daughter’s death. It was something she never thought she would have to do. Lucia decided that a home funeral would be the best option for the family. She explained:
“I think it has a therapeutic effect, in that when the person you love has died, and they’re at home, you can check in with that reality as often as you need. You can go in that room, you can sit in that room 24 hours a day for three or four days, and you can watch their body, and see that they’re not there.”
She also preferred to take care of her daughter’s funeral on her own.
She dressed and prepared her body with the help of other family members. She felt that it was what her daughter wanted, and it helped her grieve and feel like she was with her daughter throughout the entire ordeal. Lucia said:
“Who better to take care of someone you love so much than you. What was so lovely was that we knew there was no rush to call the funeral home to come pick up her body. We knew that we had time.”
While some people prefer not to have a part is their loved one’s funeral other than attending and helping with some of the small details, Lucia was happy to have a big role in the preparation of her daughter.
She said:
“It felt so healing to be able to do those last things to take care of her. To be the one to bathe her, gently, to be the last one to dress her, to cover her with these beautiful silks that I know she would have loved — it would have felt very, very strange to send her body off and have some strangers doing those things for her, no matter how loving and caring they might have been.”
The loss of her daughter was devastating for Lucia, but being able to have the funeral at home and having some control over the way things went helped her grieve and deal with the loss.
She had cared for Elizabeth her entire life, and she wanted to do so at the end of her life, too.
Until the mid- to late 1800s, most families had the funeral at their homes and were responsible for caring for their loved ones and preparing their bodies. Toward the turn of the century, funerals became something that people paid others to do for them.
To this day, many people prefer to have morticians prepare their loved ones.
Lucia may have chosen a home funeral, but she is aware that others might not agree with it. For her family, it was the right thing to do. A lot of other families are choosing to do the same. It’s a more personal way to stay at a loved one’s side until the very end, and it gives the family more control over the time and cost of the service. Home funerals may become popular once again.
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