Home Funerals Add Intimacy
to the Grieving Ritual
By Jaweed Kaleem
A little over five years ago,
MARTIN GEE
Alison and Doug Kirk held their 9-year-old daughter’s
hand as she lay on a futon in their Nashville living
room, told her they loved her, and watched her take
her last breath. ¶ The Kirks had known for a long
time that their little girl, Caroline, would die. In
her last weeks, she was under hospice care, lived off
an oxygen machine, was fed through a tube, and spoke
only in small murmurs. It was the normal course
for a child born with Niemann-Pick, a terminal
disease that gradually leads to the breakdown of the
nervous system, brain and lungs. ¶ What happened
after Caroline’s death was anything but typical.
PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK