Amish Funeral Services Differ Dramatically From More Common Farewells Among the English

In visiting my hometown in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I had the opportunity to sit down with an Amish woman and her family.

She was kind and generous, even having her daughters harmonize and sing us a song. It was beautiful.

A simpler life was felt.

There was no television blaring in the background, no telephone ringing off the hook, and no video games being played by children. It was simply a beautiful atmosphere of a family working together with nature and using limited technology to get the jobs of the day done. The sewing machine was running by generator. No electricity, of course, for the Amish.

Asking her about funeral services for the Amish, she chuckled saying, "We recently went to an English friend's funeral service. He was a fine man, but the pastor and family kept saying how great he was. We had to laugh because we couldn't believe what was being said. You would never hear that in an Amish funeral."

"Amish funeral services are two hours long," she explained. "They're like a church service. There's no singing or harmonizing. It's simple. At the end of the funeral, they say the person's name, birth date and death date. That's it."

Fascinated with her take on our English funerals compared to simpler Amish funerals, I looked around at her lifestyle. Certainly, it was less complicated than my life and reflected a simpler way of life. Her 15-year-old daughter's school education had just ended. The Amish only attend school through eighth grade. Now, her daughter's new education was in the home focused on cooking, sewing and learning to care for the baby in the family.

My 14-year-old son, who recently finished eighth grade as well, is not ready to devote his life to work on the farm as Amish boys are required. My son wants to pursue higher education and attain his own dreams. He could never assimilate into Amish society because he's been raised with technology from electricity to telephones. Beyond that, he said he could never embrace a funeral service that only mentions the name of the decedent once at the end of a two-hour service. Millions of people would agree with him.

Case and point: One of my relatives sat through a confusing service at a funeral home recently. The elderly pastor delivered a fire and brimstone sermon that dismissed the decedent's life. He told the crowd to get right with God or they would face judgment and go to Hell. The crowd was not happy with his approach. As the pastor said he was searching for something he wanted to read from Ephesians in the Bible, the crowd grew restless. After enduring the funeral for far too long that didn't meet the family's needs, someone in the front row told the pastor out loud to skip ahead to the Lord's Prayer and end the service because the group had heard enough. The pastor snapped back loudly saying he wouldn't end a thing until he read Ephesians, implying it was his funeral service not the family's farewell.

The fact of the matter is that for most English funerals to be healing and heartfelt, they need to include the family in the planning process. Services that are personal and share life stories are poignant and memorable. Even if the message is focused on the Bible and God, the message in the funeral service should be guided with the family's input. If a family asks for a decedent's life story to be shared, that request should be honored. We can learn so much by how someone lived their life and how they treated others.

The Amish have a way to personalize their farewells and it's meaningful. In fact, when it comes to home funerals, the Amish have it right and involve the family.

The Amish funeral service may be traditional in its focus on God and the Bible, but truly the Amish take part in every other part of saying goodbye as funeral services are held at home. The Amish often help in bathing and dressing the body, even if a funeral home is involved. They also dig the grave for final casket placement. This is a personal approach. We can learn so much from the Amish in the simple way they live their lives and the way they treat their dead with respect and caring hands.

It just goes to show you that there are many rituals to choose from and many ways to get involved and personalize a farewell. No matter what, the choices belong to the family.

Pictured: An Amish horse and buggy ride past an English cemetery in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.