End Games

How the celebrity funeral became the new royal wedding.

- Bob Morris

It was a perfect day for a burial Mass—cool, not cold, poetically overcast but not raining. The traffic on Fifth Avenue had been stopped for blocks around St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and I was part of a small crowd taking in the imposing occasion of the death of Cardinal Edward M. Egan, the retired archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. We stood behind barricades while an endless line of priests in white processed past TV cameras. Two bagpipe troupes in capes, kilts, and plumed hats played “Going Home,” a favorite dirge that brought a lump to my throat and reminded me of the purpose of the grand and colorful spectacle.

“Rest his soul, he was a nice man,” one woman said, sighing.

“What a waste of money,” I heard another say.

I didn’t think so. Heads of state and religious figures, after all, are supposed to have imposing funerals. What surprises me more these days is how ornate death has become for private citizens, with one dazzling service after the next as if it were ball season in Vienna.

Not so long ago funerals for most people were somber affairs. Now death has joined weddings, bar mitzvahs, and fundraisers as another showcase for vanity. Welcome to the world of competitive dying, in which the urge to personalize and customize in a camera-ready, self-aggrandizing culture inspires spectacles that are putting the more in mourning.