The Family Plot Blog

This is an insightful piece on the perils of shopping for caskets and funeral planning. The New York Times' My Story: Coffin Shopping for Mom by Judy Bolton-Fasman puts you in her shoes as she goes and meets with "Mort, the aptly named undertaker" for her shopping expedition. She starts out: I have recently planned my mother’s funeral with the clear-eyed precision of an accountant and the organizational skills of the activities director at the...

Dr. David Kessler's 2010 book Visions, Trips and Crowded Rooms shares the personal stories of medical and hospice professionals who witness patient's deaths. Some of the dying see remarkable visions, some speak of going on a trip, and others see people crowding the room. It's a common phenomenon that often does not get discussed. Hollywood films provide a concrete way of looking at this deathbed phenomenon and open the door to discussing...

Another great piece of advice from the Last Words Cemetery in today's Non Sequitur death cartoon! A guy is looking at a grave with a set of dumbbells on top. The epitaph says, "What doesn't kill you makes you stron... umph." Beware: What makes you stronger might just kill you!

A Will for the Woods is a groundbreaking (ha! pun intended) documentary about the growing of the green burial movement in the U.S., focused on one man's cancer journey toward a sustainable final resting place. The highly-praised film is only just starting to become available after its film festival debut in April, 2013. Want to help spread the word for A Will for the Woods in a grassroots marketing effort? A Kickstarter campaign to help finish...

We don't see too many funeral homes and cemeteries using edgy clever ads. These are a refreshing exception! The historic Congressional Cemetery in Southeast Washington, D.C. has come out with a host of funny ads to promote more plot sales. It's the final resting place for notable politicians and ordinary city residents. Love their tag line, "Congressional Cemetery - for presidents and residents alike." As featured on the Connecting Directors...

Today's Non Sequitur is a wonderful Death Cartoon commentary on the question of who gets into heaven. Answer: everyone! Get the joke?

Two fun Death Cartoons from yesterday's newspaper to share with you. In Pickles, Earl says he'll be dead in five years, so why paint the bedroom? Even if he's not dead in five years, he won't care if it's repainted or not. What would you want to do if you knew you'd be dead in one year? Close to Home - You know the ant hotel is working when the ants are carrying a casket past the cookie jar.

By now you've probably seen the wave of news coverage about NPR's weekend host Scott Simon tweeting from his mother's hospital bedside as she lay dying of cancer. His mom said it was okay to do this. His string of tweets presents beautiful raw prose, thoughts about love, the ICU, family reactions. When she died on Monday night, he tweeted, "The heavens over Chicago have opened and Patricia Lyons Simon Newman has stepped onstage." On July 30 he...

Starting Monday at 2:00 p.m. MT, A Good Goodbye TV looks at cemetery questions and answers. The discussion includes: What you need to know about cemetery trends; Breaking down the costs of a funeral home's services and the cemetery's costs; What are QR codes and how are they used in memorialization; The impact of cremation on the uses of mausoleums and cemeteries; How people select their final resting places in cemeteries. The guests...

This past Sunday, I had the honor of delivering the church sermon at First Unitarian of Albuquerque. After the introduction, musicians Tom Wofford and Vance Bass did a stirring rendition of Stan Rogers' 1979 song, "The Mary Ellen Carter." The song is an inspirational hymn about triumphing over great odds. It tells the story of a heroic effort to salvage a sunken ship, the Mary Ellen Carter, by members of her former crew. While the ship’s story...