The Family Plot Blog
How Rental Caskets Work
Gerald Davis, President of Starmark Funeral Products, shows the features of a rental casket that allows families to hold a funeral with a viewing and cremate the body afterward. These rental caskets save the family money while affording the healing ritual of a funeral. The casket has a door that drops open at the foot of the casket. After the funeral, at the crematorium retort, the combustible tray that holds the body, with connected fabric...
NFDA 2014 Opens in Nashville
The National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) convention kicked off last night with a welcoming party at the Wild Horse Saloon in downtown Nashville. A total of 1,150 funeral directors, exhibitors, and other industry folks crowded the iconic three-story nightclub in an old warehouse building. It was quite the scene! The first continuing education session I sat in on was "Breathing Life Into Funeral Home Marketing with Facebook, TV ... and a...
“The Loved One” – A Dramatic Reading
Gail Rubin, CT, The Doyenne of Death®, is an unconventional death educator who’s available for speaking engagements. In this short speech, she reads passages from "The Loved One," Evelyn Waugh's satirical novel about the funeral and cemetery industry. Waugh's full name was Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh. His first wife was also named Evelyn, leading their friends to call the couple "He-Evelyn" and "She-Evelyn." (The name Aurthur plays a role in...
Event: National Funeral Directors Association Convention
The National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) convention and expo offers the biggest collection of goods and services related to funerals, memorials, cremation and end-of-life you’ll ever see. Gail Rubin, The Doyenne of Death®, will be at the convention in Nashville, Tennessee to document interesting new developments on display at the expo. It's the Greatest Funeral Show on Earth. Look for YouTube videos and blog posts in the Tools of the...
Event: Oct. 23 Jewish-Christian Dialogue on Religion & Medicine
Thursday, October 23, 4:30 p.m.: As the president of the Jewish-Christian Dialogue of New Mexico, Gail Rubin facilitates a talk by Dr. Aroop Mangalik on "Discussing Religious Aspects to End-of-Life Decision-Making." Dr. Mangalik is an oncologist who is one of the plaintiffs in the New Mexico physician aid-in-dying lawsuit. The meeting takes place at Congregation Albert, 3800 Louisiana Blvd. NE. Call 505-265-7215 for more information. Aroop...
Event: October 25 Albuquerque Death Cafe
October 30 is Create a Great Funeral Day - why not discuss mortality concerns at the Albuquerque Death Cafe on October 25 as a warm-up? The Death Cafe, a worldwide movement started in the U.K. in 2011, is designed “To increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives.” At these free events, people come together in a relaxed, confidential and safe setting to discuss death, drink tea (or your...
News and Notes: NFDA Coverage to Come!
Next week, the Greatest Funeral Show on Earth opens in Nashville, Tennessee. The National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) expo offers the biggest collection of goods and services related to funerals, memorials, cremation and end-of-life you'll ever see. I'll be there to document interesting new developments on display. Look for YouTube videos and blog posts in the Tools of the Trade category of The Family Plot Blog (you can also check out...
Video of Jardineros de Placitas Talk – A Good Goodbye
In this talk to the Jardineros de Placitas, a women's club in Placitas, a lovely little village north of Albuquerque, you'll learn: Why people hesitate to consider or discuss end-of-life issues How humor helps break down resistance to anxiety-provoking topics like death and funeral planning What will happen to your stuff if you don't have a will The status of physician aid-in-dying in New Mexico Fun facts about cremation, green burial and body...
Hemlock Society Founder Gerald Larue Obituary
Gerald A. Larue, co-founder and first president of the Hemlock Society, died on September 17 in Newport Beach, California. He was 98. Death certificates do not list old age as a cause of death - he had a stroke. Larue was an ordained minister who eventually became an agnostic, a scholar and an early and leading advocate of giving the terminally ill the option to end their own lives. In a New York Times news obituary, his son David Larue said,...
October 30 is Create A Great Funeral Day
October 30, Create a Great Funeral Day, first appeared on the media’s go-to holiday guide, Chase’s Calendar of Events, in 2000. Over 15 years, Create a Great Funeral Day founder Stephanie West Allen’s approach to funeral planning has evolved. Allen, the author of Creating Your Own Funeral or Memorial Service: A Workbook, originally viewed funeral planning as an autonomous, solo activity. She wrote the book in response to seeing her husband’s...
A Good Goodbye Radio Interview with Gale O’Brien
A Good Goodbye Radio is back online, now featured on FuneralRadio.com. The first program on FuneralRadio.com features an interview with Gale O'Brien, author of Transformation: Creating an Exceptional Life in the Face of Cancer. Gale O'Brien faced both skin cancer and breast cancer over two decades. While undergoing treatment for breast cancer, she took a long hard look at how she was living her life and resolved to make changes for the better....
Garden Lore and End-of-Life Issues
The 1979 film Being There starred Peter Sellers as Chance the Gardener, a simple-minded man, and an excellent gardener. Outside the garden, he learned everything he knew by watching TV. "I like to watch" was a repeated theme. The morning the film opens, he learns from the housekeeper Louise that The Old Man has died. We don’t know if Chance is related to The Old Man, but he wears The Old Man's suits and looks quite dapper. Attorneys for the...
Participants Sought for Anticipatory Grief Study
Do you have a family member on hospice care? How are you coping with the anticipation of that loved one's death? Would you be willing to participate in a confidential, anonymous study to help a university researcher better understand anticipatory grief? Kylie Rogalla is an assistant professor at Indiana University South Bend in the Counseling & Human Services department. Her primary area of research interest is in grief and loss. She's...
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty
If you are a fan of Caitlin Doughty, the star of the "Ask a Mortician" YouTube video series and founder of The Order of the Good Death, you know the humorous touch she puts on the discussion of death. That same humor shines throughout her new (and first) book, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory. We follow our heroine through the doors of Westwind Cremation & Burial, a Bay area low-cost disposition provider. She's...
Mortality Salience and End-of-Life Planning Avoidance
Funeral directors see it all the time – adults who nervously say, “I don’t need to come in and pre-plan my funeral just yet.” Even if we knew exactly when we would die, I doubt very many people would voluntarily go pre-plan their funeral without some compelling incentive. Why is it so hard to get folks to do funeral planning, or any other end-of-life planning for that matter? The tendency to put off writing down advance medical directives,...
Remembering September 11
Here are two videos from past September 11 commemorations in Albuquerque.
Joan Rivers Death Can Help with End-of-Life Conversations
Joan Rivers' death provides a great example for others in terms of advance medical directives and end-of-life conversations. While she frequently joked about her eventual demise, she did name her daughter Melissa as her health care decision maker should Joan not be able to speak for herself. As Joan herself famously said, "Can we talk?" In this Forbes article, Joan Rivers Can Help With Difficult End-Of-Life Conversations, authors Danielle and...
Event: Sept. 27 ABQ Death Cafe
Did you know Albuquerque was the first U.S. city west of the Mississippi to hold a Death Cafe? It's a worldwide movement that started in the U.K. in 2011. Gail Rubin, The Doyenne of Death®, hosted the first one in Albuquerque in September 2012. The Death Cafe objective is “To increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives.” At these free events, people come together in a relaxed, confidential and...
Joan Rivers’ Funeral Vision
Joan Rivers' death provides a good example for others to follow on end-of-life and funeral planning issues. She made clear to her daughter Melissa that she did not want to be kept alive on life support should there be no hope of recovery. In her book I Hate Everyone... Starting With Me, she stated what she wanted her funeral to look like. Okay, perhaps this is a bit over-the-top for comic effect. She wrote: "When I die... I want my funeral to...
Over Our Dead Bodies: Undertakers Lift the Lid
The squirrel in the casket was the first thing I noticed about the cover of Over Our Dead Bodies: Undertakers Lift the Lid. Did this mean the book was meant for those with short attention spans? ("Squirrel!") No, it relates to one of the behind-the-scenes at the funeral home stories you'll read in this lively collection by Kenneth McKenzie and Todd Harra. They are the funeral director duo who authored an earlier collection of true life tales,...
News and Notes: A Good Goodbye Radio Returns
Exciting news! A Good Goodbye, my Internet radio show, is back in production. The program is now carried on FuneralRadio.com, "The Voice of Funeral Professionals." My program is designed to appeal to both the general public and funeral professionals. The first program podcast will be posted online for download this week. The first guest on the new network is Gale O'Brien, author of Transformation: Creating an Exceptional Life in the Face of...