Why embalm a dead body

The details are grisly: Fedyaeva complained that she was dying as her organs failed, according to The Washington Post. Formalin is 40 percent formaldehyde, says Caleb Wilde , author of Confessions of a Funeral Director and a sixth-generation funeral director in Pennsylvania. The Verge spoke to Wilder about the process of embalming, his skepticism over the details of the Russian case and the history and future of the technique. And how long does embalming last? I think funeral directors would say that the primary purpose of embalming is restoration , and the secondary purpose is preservation.

So, preservation is the second order of importance. That said, if the body is buried in a dry place, I think you could dig up a lot of embalmed bodies and — as long as they were embalmed well — they are still going to be recognizable 50, 60, 70 years later.

Of course, there are a lot of other factors at play. Roughly speaking, what are the steps o f embalming? The basic idea is that you inject the arterial system with embalming fluid. We tend to use the right carotid artery [a major artery on the side of the neck]. You make an incision, and you inject it with embalming fluid.

The injection pushes out the blood and pushes in the embalming fluid, distributing it throughout the body via the arteries. So we inject the abdominal area with a trocar , which is like a large syringe.

The fluid we use in the trocar is very strong and, for the most part, is able to preserve the entire abdomen and chest.

The chemical formaldehyde is used to preserve bodies. What does it do exactly? You could say it tears apart the constructs of your tissue. The embalming fluid that we use is a conglomeration of a bunch of different things. It has the formaldehyde, but it also has some disinfectants, so not only does it render the tissue unable to be fed on by bacteria, it also kills the bacteria itself.

What about formalin, the solution given to the Russian patient? Formalin is formaldehyde dissolved in water. For context, we use two types of fluid for embalming. One is arterial and one is for the cavities or the abdomen. The arterial fluid we use at our funeral home is about 30 percent formaldehyde, and we mix that in with water and that together creates the embalming fluid. The cavity fluid is about 20 percent formaldehyde. If a teaspoon gets spilled on the floor, that whole section of the funeral home will stink and cause a burning sensation.

Formalin is double that. The heart probably pumped the formation through the arterial system, and so it would have spread all throughout her body. I can only imagine that it would have felt like a burning sensation. In general, how long does embalming take? And how do you know when the process is finished? The challenges an embalmer faces for such cases are numerous, but the work enables a family to see their loved one one last time.

Time and time again we hear from our families how helpful and healing it was to see their loved one laid peacefully for viewing with an expression of serenity. Recently, a woman testified she was so anxious about seeing her mother again.

Their mother had been embalmed, dressed, and laid in her casket in our funeral parlor, just as she would be for her funeral the following day. The siblings spent almost an hour with their mother. When they came out of the viewing parlor, the woman had a soft smile on her face and told us that her mother looked the way she did when she still had the energy to go have her hair done. Grief studies demonstrate over and over the important role viewing plays in accepting the reality of a loss.

That denial must be overcome in order for healing to progress. When a body is viewed, the death is confirmed.

Seeing is believing, and seeing the body of a loved one is an important means of breaking through the natural impulse to deny death. The same grief studies that highlight the importance of viewing a body also address the possibility that choosing not to view a body can leave someone with feelings of regret. He or she might wonder if their loved one is really deceased or if their loved one is really the one in the casket.

There is some comfort in certainty. There are some who argue that we funeral directors place too much importance on viewing a body. They argue that it would be better to remember the good times with a loved one rather than see them dead.

No one should be forced against his or her will to view the remains of a loved one. No one. Forcing someone to view human remains against his or her will can be incredibly damaging and traumatic. Each person must decide for his or her self what feels appropriate in a given situation. Muslims and Jews, whose religious laws forbid embalming, embrace natural burial , the way billions of bodies have been buried for eons — without preservation. More than twenty years after my mother died, my best friend, Carol, also died of breast cancer.

Carol was not embalmed. She looked dead. She felt dead. At the viewing, her skin was very cold and hard when I kissed her goodbye. We wrapped her in a muslin shroud and buried her in a meadow. It was a necessary farewell.

Later, her husband planted a tree there. My father bought a waterproof coffin because he knew that the same thing happens to all bodies, no matter what we do. He pretended to himself that steel could stop it. But nothing can stop it.

To contemplate death is to contemplate our own denial of it. Perhaps we beautify corpses or hide them from our sight not out of wanting to remember people as they were, but because we know that someday we will be as they are. We all feel resistance to death. To see a dead body — a plain, real dead body, without decoration — is to see the world as it really is, and this makes all the difference. A dead body is not like any other object in the world.

The muscles of the face relax into expressions never seen in life. Whatever you believe has happened, you know when you look at it that it is not the person you knew, that something profound has happened and cannot be undone, and this allows us to take a step toward the new world in which we live, where the person we love no longer exists. Contact us at letters time. By Sallie Tisdale. TIME Ideas hosts the world's leading voices, providing commentary on events in news, society, and culture.

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