The Dead & the Quick

Have a nice trip and all that, but with an estimated 2,000,000 tourists going abroad this year, statistics indicate that some 6,000 may well qualify for what has been termed "horizontal repatriation." When death occurs abroad, the problems for the family are complex. The cheerful note is that no country serves its dead as quickly and as well as the U.S., whose consuls abroad are the envy of Europe in their ability to get the deceased homeward bound with a minimum of delay.

Deep Freeze. "Where a European will consult the concierge, Americans seem to turn naturally to their consuls," notes a leading Belgian mortician. It is well that they do, for repatriation is bound up in bewildering red tape and conflicting customs. In Catholic Portugal, for instance, there is no cremation, and embalming must be done by a physician (for fees ranging up to $800). In Italy, where burial customs are still an antiquated lot, the wooden coffins must be a hard-to-obtain three centimeters thick. In France, the coffin must be sealed in the presence of the police, and no fewer than six documents are required to move the body to another town. In Spain, there is an acute shortage of cemetery space for non-Catholics.

To expedite just such matters, U.S. consulates have specially trained personnel. Standard procedure calls for working with members of the family, if they are present, or cabling them for instructions if they are not (all passport applications list next of kin). The family is requested to deposit money with the State Department to defray the expenses (minimum cost from Europe, $1,100 including embalming and transportation). In most instances the deceased is homeward bound within three to four days. Delay does occur, however, when the deceased has left a will specifying how and where he wishes to be buried. One U.S. visitor who died in Cairo was kept in deep freeze for 13 days until the reading of his will.

Dry Ice. For Europeans, national boundaries can often be formidable obstacles. To repatriate a British body from Poland, for example, took three weeks. Representatives of 11,000 undertakers from eleven European countries have organized the European Thanatological Association, and last month Belgium and Germany signed the first of many proposed bilateral agreements. They hope to establish uniform codes and costs, so that home delivery never takes longer than four days. Experienced travelers are skeptical. A U.S. resident recently deceased in Paris was kept on dry ice in her hotel bed throughout the lengthy New Year's festivities until a city hall official could be found to issue the death certificate.

Sighed the U.S. vice consul in charge: "There's simply nothing we can do on French holidays."

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