Last Rites, Tailored to Immigrant Customs

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Preserving Traditions at Life's End
Just as immigrants have transformed the way of life in the Washington area, they have also influenced the way of death.

"I was running around. I had to borrow. I went to the temple for the Buddha picture, the bell, everything," Le said.

In 1999, Le approached the new National Funeral Home and offered advice. Three years ago, Le drove by Fairfax Memorial Park and saw that it, too, had opened a funeral home. Inside, she approached funeral director Archer Harmon.

He told her, " 'You answered my prayers,' " Le recalled.

Harmon, who belongs to a Buddhist meditation group, had worked in funeral homes for several years. He had often seen Buddhists arrive with "carloads of stuff" because the home did not have what they needed.

Harmon and Doherty met with monks and nuns at Le's home, where, over tea and Vietnamese sweets, they learned about Buddhist funeral customs. Later, Le bought supplies and framed portraits of Buddha from a large temple in Houston and presented them to the home. She made a reference folder for funeral directors so they could advise second- and third-generation Vietnamese families that might be unsure of the rituals.

"You've got to have somebody to help you," Harmon said. "She recommended us to her temple and her people, and all of a sudden it took off."

About 15 years ago, All Dulles Area Muslim Society leaders met with Loudoun Funeral Chapel directors to discuss Muslim funeral rites. Now it is one of two funeral homes the Sterling mosque recommends on its Web site, and it hosts about 40 Muslim services a year, funeral director Bill McDonough said.

"It took me 20 years to set up all those things," Amar Nath Gupta, chief priest at Rajdhani Mandir temple in Chantilly, said about his efforts to educate funeral homes about Hindu traditions. He has worked closely with Arlington Funeral Home, which, he said, now offers discounts for Hindus and stores ashes until families can return to India to scatter them in the Ganges River.

As they have adapted, funeral directors have evolved into lay anthropologists, said Laderman, the Emory religion professor.

"These funeral directors, in addition to all these other things they provide, are sort of these . . . cultural repositories, in the sense that they know these traditions," Laderman said.

Even so, dying in the United States can require compromise on the part of immigrants.

Hindus and Muslims prefer to complete services within 24 hours. But getting a death certificate or a slot at the funeral home in that time is not always possible. Mohamed Magid, imam of the Sterling mosque, said many recent Muslim immigrants struggle to understand why they cannot take a body from a hospital to their home.