The Family Plot Blog
Life, Death & Everything In Between: Substack Live with Karen Salmansohn
What happens when a death educator sits down with a behavioral change expert? We’re about to find out! On Tuesday, September 15, I’ll be joining bestselling author and behavioral change expert Karen Salmansohn for a live conversation on Substack. Karen is the creator of the Substack columns, The Stand Up Philosopher: Weighty Musings, Lightly Served, and Some Things Worth Sharing. And there's her website, NotSalmon.com. She shares smart, funny,...
In the Funeral Home Prep Room: Mortality Movies Episode 13
The preparation room of a funeral home is a mystery to most people. It's a place the public rarely sees. This is where funeral professionals wash, embalm, dress, groom and otherwise prepare deceased people for viewing, burial or cremation. Because most of us have little firsthand experience with what happens there, movies and television can have an outsized influence on what we imagine goes on behind those closed doors. Episode Thirteen of...
Making Meaning by Personalizing Funerals: Mortality Movies Episode Twelve
Personalizing funerals helps answer this question: What would you want people to remember at your funeral? Your career? Your sense of humor? Your favorite music? Your devotion to Star Trek? A funeral can follow a familiar formula, or it can tell the story of the person who died. Episode Twelve of Mortality Movies explores how films and television portray personalizing funerals. Sometimes they're touching, sometimes they're outrageous, and...
Cremation Ceremonies Can Help Heal Grief: Mortality Movies
For many families, cremation marks the end of a practical process. But it can also be the beginning of an important emotional one. As cremation has become the most common form of disposition in the United States, families are increasingly asking how they can create meaningful rituals around it. According to the Cremation Association of North America (CANA), 62.8% of Americans who...
Death Conversation Findings on Funerals, Grief and End-of-Life
Death Conversation Pioneers Met in London to Rethink Funerals, Grief and End-of-Life Planning International group calls for better conversations, meaningful funeral rituals and new approaches to engaging the public with mortality A group of leading death educators, academics, funeral professionals and end-of-life advocates gathered in London to explore how society can become more comfortable talking about death. They also discussed how...
Processing Grief in Episode 10 of Mortality Movies TV Series
Grief isn't something we "get over." It's something we learn to carry. After exploring different types of grief in the previous two episodes on understanding grief and the many types of grief, Episode Ten of Mortality Movies shifts the focus from recognizing grief to processing grief. Host Gail Rubin, The Doyenne of Death®, is joined by death doula Danielle Slupesky and grief coach...
Mushrooms and Mortality: Can Psychedelics Improve How We Face Death?
What do mushrooms have to do with mortality? Potentially, quite a lot. On a recent episode of The Doyenne of Death Podcast, I spoke with Donna Gareis, founder and head minister of the Church of Our Earth, about psilocybin, psychedelics, grief, spirituality, and end-of-life care. It was a fascinating conversation about a subject that sits at the intersection of science, spirituality, medicine, and one of humanity’s oldest questions: What happens...
Mortality Movies TV Series Episode Nine: Understanding the Many Types of Grief
Grief refuses to fit neatly into a box. Some people cry openly. Others throw themselves into work. Some anticipate a loved one's death long before it happens. Others are blindsided by emotions months or even years after a loss. The many ways people experience grief can leave family members wondering if they're grieving "correctly." They may question why someone else's reaction looks so different from their own. Episode Nine of Mortality Movies...
Mortality Movies Episode Eight: Understanding Grief
Grief is one of the most universal human experiences, and one of the most misunderstood. People often expect grief to follow a predictable path, complete with recognizable stages and a clear endpoint. But anyone who has experienced a significant loss knows that grief rarely works that way. It can be messy, surprising, exhausting, and deeply personal. Episode Eight of Mortality...
Mortality Movies TV Series Episode Seven: The Viking Funeral on Film
Ask people what kind of funeral they would want, and sooner or later someone will say, "Give me a Viking funeral." The image is instantly recognizable: a warrior's body placed aboard a wooden ship, pushed out to sea, and set ablaze by a flaming arrow. It is dramatic, heroic, and undeniably cinematic. There's just one problem. Most people's ideas about Viking funerals come from movies rather than history. ...
Mortality Movies TV Show Episode Six: Funeral Shopping Tips
Funeral shopping? You must watch episode six of the Mortality Movies TV series! Most consumers spend more time researching a new television or family vacation than they do shopping for funeral services. That isn't surprising. Funeral purchases, when there's been no advanced planning, are often made during a time of grief, stress, and emotional upheaval. Many families have little...
A Poem Pondering Food in France versus America
A poem about what you might see in the grocery store. As part of the creative nonfiction writing class I took at the American University of Paris this summer, we had several writing assignments. The prompt for this piece was to create a list of what you would see at a grocery store. Grocery List by Gail Rubin Eggs are not refrigerated in grocery stores in France. The music played for shoppers makes me want to dance. Strawberries, so red and...
Mortality Movies TV Show Episode Five: Putting the Fun in Funeral Planning
Mortality Movies on Funeral Planning Most people know they should make funeral plans someday. The problem is that "someday" often becomes "not today." As a result, families frequently find themselves making important decisions during one of the most emotional and stressful times of their lives. Questions about burial or cremation, ceremonies, music, readings, and final wishes can...
Mortality Movies TV Show Episode Four: Medicine and Mortality
Mortality Movies and Medicine Modern medicine can accomplish extraordinary things. Doctors can transplant organs, replace joints, treat once-fatal diseases, and extend lives that would have been cut short just a generation ago. Yet for all of medicine's advances, one reality remains unchanged: every life eventually comes to an end. We still have a 100% mortality rate. Episode Four...
Mortality Movies Episode Three: Discussing Death Won’t Kill You
Mortality Movies can help us when we ask: Why is it so difficult to talk about death? Everyone knows it will happen eventually, yet many people avoid discussing it altogether. Conversations about mortality, funeral plans, grief, and end-of-life wishes are often postponed until a crisis forces the issue. Unfortunately, by then, families may be left guessing about what their loved ones wanted. Episode Three of Mortality Movies tackles this...
Mortality Movies Episode Two: Woody Allen on Death and Humor
Mortality Movies by Woody Allen Death has been a recurring theme in Woody Allen’s films for decades. Sometimes it appears as a punchline. Sometimes it triggers a full-blown existential crisis. And sometimes it lurks in the background while characters worry about love, sex, illness, God, meaning, and whether anyone really knows what they are doing here. In Episode Two of Mortality...
Mortality Movies Episode One: Cultural Landmark Films About Death
Mortality Movies Episode One Death has always been one of humanity's favorite subjects to avoid, and also one of its most enduring topics in art and storytelling. The first episode of the television series Mortality Movies examines three films that have become cultural landmarks in how we think about death, the afterlife, and what gives life meaning. Host Gail Rubin, known as The...
The Complicated Legacy of Last Tango in Paris, A Landmark Mortality Movie
Last Tango in Paris: Examining grief and the complicated legacy of this landmark film As I continue my cinematic journey through France in preparation for my summer trip, I recently revisited Last Tango in Paris (1972) with a friend. After the film ended, we agreed on one thing: it is not an easy watch. Where we differed was in what we took away from it. My friend felt the film had not aged well. Given what we now know about its production, and...
Mortality Movie Chocolat: When the Dead Still Tell Us How to Live
As I prepare for my summer trip to France, I've been revisiting movies set in the French countryside. One of my favorites is Chocolat (2000), starring Juliette Binoche, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, and Alfred Molina. On the surface, Chocolat is about temptation. A free-spirited woman opens a chocolate shop in a conservative French village during Lent, upsetting the social order one truffle at a time. But watching it again through my Mortality...
Skeletons, Romance, and Paris: Mortality Themes in the Film Amélie
In anticipation of my trip to Paris this summer, another French Mortality Movie I recently rewatched is the 2001 film Amélie. This film is included in the Mortality and Living Fully chapter of 98.6 Mortality Movies to See Before You Die. Set in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris, Amélie follows a shy, imaginative young woman who quietly devotes herself to improving the lives of others through small anonymous acts of kindness. While she...
Paris, Je T’Aime: Love, Loss, Laughter, and Vampires in the City of Light
I’m going to Paris for three weeks this summer to attend the American University of Paris for a creative nonfiction writing course. To revive my long-dormant French, and to get myself in the mood for strolling along the Seine with a baguette in one hand and a notebook in the other, I’ve been watching movies about the City of Light. That’s how I ended up discovering Paris, Je T’Aime (2007, Rated R, 2 hours), a cinematic treasure I found on DVD...