Casket Visits Class to Ease Fear of Death

The end came without warning for the students in Speech 121.

Teacher Mary Duxler was delivering the semester’s last lecture on interpersonal communication when she stepped to the edge of the classroom and abruptly pulled a sheet off a coffin.

Her Pierce College students gasped as she opened its lid. A small figure lay inside, and Duxler gently adjusted the frilly white linen lining that framed its face.

“Oh, my God!” exclaimed Sylvester Mitchell, a 19-year-old freshman who shot straight up in his second-row seat. “Oh no!”

“Most of you have never faced death,” Duxler told the class of 25. “When you do, it will be a shock to you. But it is the epitome of an interpersonal relationship with another person.”

Some of the students squirmed uncomfortably as their professor explained that the casket was real, but that the figure inside was a mannequin. Most kept their eyes riveted on the child-sized white coffin as Duxler briefly traced the history of the funeral rite.

‘Ritual of Denial’

“In America, we have a ritual of denial of death. We don’t bring children to funerals. We call cemeteries ‘memorial gardens.’ But all of a sudden, the child grows up. He’s 40 and his mother dies and he doesn’t know what to do.”

Students glanced nervously from Duxler to the mannequin as she outlined the embalming process and how funeral services are arranged. They listened silently as she told how feelings of guilt sometimes lead families to select elaborate coffins and burial ceremonies.

There were looks of surprise when she suggested that funerals serve the living, not the dead.

“The individual in the casket is not coming back. It is the mourner that you’re dealing with. It’s OK to cry at funerals. When you go to a funeral, you’re serving a purpose. We’re all humans.”

Different ethnic groups have different traditions, Duxler said, suggesting to students that they take their cue on the proper way to behave from members of the deceased’s family.

At an open-casket ceremony, she said, “If the family wants you to walk by the body, do it. It is for them that you are doing it. Close your eyes if necessary.”

Duxler has taught at the Woodland Hills campus for 19 years. She said she has tried to dramatize each semester’s lectures by using props to demonstrate lessons.

The idea of using a casket as a teaching aid came when she recently made arrangements for the funeral of a relative. She said finding one for the classroom proved to be difficult, however.

“Morticians in the Valley wouldn’t talk to me,” she explained between classes. “Two of them hung up on me when I called to see about buying one.”

A Los Angeles undertaker finally agreed to sell Duxler a model at cost after a Pierce administrator interceded through his sister, who works at the funeral home. The bill came to $191 for a casket that is small enough to be stored in a corner of Duxler’s college office. The Broadway department store donated the mannequin.

“I figure if you’re a good teacher, you buy books. So this is a $200 book,” she said, fingering the soft white velour that covers the outside of the wood-framed box.

During each of the four class periods that Duxler used the casket last week, she also discussed ways that her students should deal with friends or relatives who are terminally ill.

“Don’t say, ‘You look good, Grandma.’ Instead, say, ‘Do you remember the time we went to the beach?’ and she’ll take it from there. They are dying, but they have lived.”

Duxler urged against saying “I’m sorry” to the dying or to survivors.

Took Closer Look

Some students were in tears by the time the lecture ended and they were invited to step to the front of the classroom for a closer look at the casket.

“It was such a shock when she removed the sheet. We’d all been wondering what was underneath it,” said sophomore Tami Ellman, 19.

Agreed Elizabeth Anderson, also a 19-year-old sophomore: “The casket surprised me. But it made the lesson hit home. A lot of people don’t deal with death well.”

Classmate Jon Wasser said Duxler’s advice would have been helpful in February, when his best friend committed suicide. “It was extremely tough emotionally,” said Wasser, 21.

Wasser admitted that when he arrived at Duxler’s final lecture and saw the casket, “I was kind of regretting coming to class. But I was glad afterward that I did; it helps not being nervous about funerals.”

The usual wisecracks and banter were missing as the students filed--almost reverently--out of Duxler’s classroom.

Their semester-ending test was still a few days away. But they had already sampled the real final.