Nobody Talks About You at Your Own Funeral | How Hutterites Bury Their Dead

When somebody dies on a Hutterite colony, the body does not leave. He lies in his own front room for three days while people come in and out and sing over him. And if he went suddenly — in his sleep, no warning, no pain — you will not hear anybody here call that a mercy. You will hear it said as a complaint. I keep the books on a colony in southern Alberta. In this video I explain why a slow death is the good one here, what happens across those three days, what is said at the funeral — which is almost nothing about the man in the coffin — how four hundred people sing with no instrument under them, what a person leaves when he has never owned anything, and what happens to a burying ground when the colony that dug it gets up and moves eleven hundred kilometres away. SOURCES · Peter Stephenson, "'He Died too Quick!' The Process of Dying in a Hutterian Colony," Omega 14(2), 1984 — the preference for a slow death · Joanne Cacciatore, "Through the Touch of God: Child Death and Spiritual Sustenance in a Hutterian Colony," Omega 64(3) — the wake, the minister as the only speaker, walking around the family, attendance of 400–600, the headstones, and the work relief given to the bereaved · Cacciatore and Thieleman, "We Rise Out of the Cradle into the Grave," Omega 69(4), 2014 · Tim Smith, documentary photography of Decker and Deerboine Colonies, Manitoba — the wake, the carrying of the coffin, hand-dug graves, and the singing at the graveside · GAMEO, "Cemeteries" — colony-owned burying grounds and homemade stones · Hutterites.org — church services, and the lining out of the hymns · Encyclopedia of World Cultures — no personal property, and therefore no inheritance · GAMEO and Find a Grave — Wolf Creek Colony's 1930 move from South Dakota to Alberta, and the forty graves left at Old Wolf Creek One thing I should flag. The account of the coffin being built on the colony comes from a single study of one colony. I know what is done here. I do not know that every colony still does it, and I say so in the video rather than pretending to a rule. If you find an error, put it in the comments and I will pin the correction. I would rather be right than look right.