Missives from the Mortuary | Transgender Awareness Week
By Sarah Barry
This week, November 13 - 19 is Transgender Awareness Week.
At Life Rites Funerals we are staunch allies for trans people in life and also in death. We will go out of our way to protect the dignity of our clients at every step of the process.
One thing I wish for when planning for end of life services, whether it be a large funeral, a simple ‘no service, no attendance’ cremation or anything in between, is for people to give more consideration to what level of care they want to be given to their own body, or the body of their person for whom they are making the arrangements.
So often I hear people say, “I’ll be dead! I don’t care what happens to my body!”. I’m here to tell you that it actually does matter. That the liminal space between the last breath and ongoing transformation through burial or cremation, is sacred. I say this as a person who strives to live their life without attachment to any belief system. For me, being gentle with a person’s deceased body and treating them respectfully is an absolute necessity.
Your body/the body of your person is so vulnerable at that time. Unable to advocate for ourselves when dead, we have to trust that we have chosen funeral directors who treat their clients as they would treat their own friends and family.
At Life Rites we often work with people who have suffered trauma in their lives, people who have experienced prejudice due to lack of understanding and dissemination of incorrect information.
So, choices in the mortuary such as having a gender match for who looks after our clients, having queer people look after LGBTIQ people, and most importantly only ever having compassionate and kind people look after all our clients, is vital to us.
During a conversation at the ACON Honour Awards in August I mentioned that Life Rites has the only guaranteed queer and trans safe mortuary in NSW. The person I was speaking with told me that they felt a little shiver when I shared that, and they said that they were relieved to hear that there are people in the funeral industry who know the importance of this level of care and respect. In a world where queer and trans bodies can be targeted with hate and violence, it becomes even more imperative to hold guaranteed safe space for them in their after-death and funeral care.
When we care for the bodies of those who are LGBTIQ, we always use the pronouns they used in life. We call them by the name they gave themselves, and we maintain their modesty at all times. We guarantee absolute respect for their bodies, as all of us at Life Rites are either queer or staunch allies.
A big motivator for Victoria Spence in shaping Life Rites over the past 20 years was her witnessing the ways in which some people who died of HIV/AIDS had their end of life care and funeral rites mismanaged through stigma and homophobia. We built Life Rites to be the antidote to these times and a shining light for all our people.
I want everyone to be able to think without fear about what they want to happen to their body once they have taken their last breath. You aren’t going to ‘bring it in’ sooner by considering such things - rather, you will likely feel more grounded and connected to life. Death comes for us all. Thinking about, planning and communicating our desires around bodily autonomy as we are dying and once we have died, can make the grieving process much richer, more potent and easeful for those who will survive our death.
Trans people deserve to have absolute bodily autonomy in life, as is their human right - and the freedom to exist and to experience love in all its forms.
My wish is that our society at large becomes less prejudiced and more focussed on connection, love and understanding, so that we can avoid the tragedy of transgender people ending up on our mortuary table long before it is their time.
________________________________________________________________________
Reach out if you need support
If you need immediate support or information you can contact the following services and resources:
Lifeline: 13 11 14
Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467
NSW Mental Health Access Line: 1800 011 511
QLife (3pm to midnight): 1800 184 527
Beyond Blue: 1300 224 636
Further Education
www.minus18.org.au/campaigns/trans-awareness-week
@twenty10glcs
@minus18youth
@transhub_acon
@aconnsw