The Barbarians

During the 1930s, Katharane E. Mershon, an American modern dancer affiliated with the Pasadena Community Playhouse, became enamoured of Bali. She and her husband lived there for 10 years, immersing themselves in Balinese culture.

One day a priest requested her presence at a funeral service where other women were washing the corpse. When she arrived, the women handed her sandalwood oil to prepare the body, flowers to be placed in the deceased’s nostrils and bells for the ears.

Mershon felt faint and had to sit down as sweat poured off her. Alarmed, the priest asked what was wrong. “I’ve never touched a dead person,” she confessed. Then she explained that in the U.S., when someone dies, the family calls the undertaker, who takes the body away and makes all the preparations for the funeral. With great compassion the priest exclaimed, “Oh, it’s so good that you’ve come here after the barbaric way in which you’ve been raised.”

To many traditional communities, turning death preparations over to strangers seems uncivilized. However, in the U.S. that is changing somewhat with newer immigrant communities requesting more participation in funeral rites.