The Family Plot Blog
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
http://youtu.be/eiOyWNvgsek At a talk I gave on Monday to a group of seniors, four of them preceded my presentation with this rendition of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" was first written by Wallis Willis, a Choctaw freedman in the old Indian Territory in what is now Choctaw County, near the County seat of Hugo, Oklahoma sometime before 1862. He was inspired by the Red River, which reminded him of the Jordan River and of...
How Long Should a Widow(er) Mourn?
Dear Abby recently ran a column on how long a widow or widower needs to wait after the death of a spouse before starting another relationship. It used to be considered scandalous for a widow to start dating before a year after a spouse dies. Now it's up to the individual as to how soon they feel ready. We are getting ready for a special wedding this weekend. My father-in-law Norm died three years ago in April, leaving Myra, his wife of almost...
Historic Cemetery: Woodland Park, Stamford CT
Woodland Park Cemetery in Stamford, Connecticut has graves dating back to the early 1800s. While visiting this town for Wendy Lipton-Dibner's Move People to Action seminar, I took a long walk to find this green restful oasis. While New York is known as the city that never sleeps, this charming little cemetery is a city where the residents never wake. At the entrance to the mausoleum of John W. Leed and family from the 1800s, the gate was...
Reform Jews, Cremation and Burial
Recently did a short YouTube video discussing some of the finer points of Reform Judaism, cremation and burial. In Congregation Albert's cemetery, we have put in a new section between the drive and the historic section to provide resting places for the growing number of individuals choosing cremation. Check it out! http://youtu.be/U02XLfJ9_5A
When Mortality Smacks You In The Face
Josh Slocum, Executive Director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance (FCA), spends his entire day on a soapbox telling people why funeral planning, advance directives and discussing your choices are important. You’d think he of all people would have his affairs in order. Imagine his surprise in December 2010 when a heart attack struck him at the age of 36. Mortality rudely slapped his face and he was not prepared. Given his lifestyle, a heart...
Five Funeral Planning Tips
Today my guest blog post for the American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys (www.aaepa.com) is about five tips to help start the funeral planning conversation. You can read all the details at the AAEPA blog. In a nutshell, the five tips are: 1. Shop Before You Drop 2. Watch a Funny Film 3. Watch a Serious Video 4. Lead By Example 5. Play The Newly-Dead Game® Of course, A Good Goodbye: Funeral Planning for Those Who Don't Plan to Die also...
Forging a Lasting Unseen Marker for a Friend
The photo below is a work of art in iron that no one will ever see. It's a forged metal cover for an urn that was buried. The urn holds the cremated remains of Joe Whiton, one of the founding members of the Southwest Artists Blacksmith Association and a volunteer fire fighter who donated his body to science. Joe Whiton retired from a career with the Air Force and became a blacksmith and an independent businessman. He was generous, intelligent,...
A Home-Directed Funeral
At the Funeral Consumers Alliance (FCA) biennial meeting, I met Gail Margush, who arranged the funeral and burial for her husband Tim without the involvement of a funeral home. Her 14-year old daughter Kayla did a very thorough documentation of the process as a project for a speech class. You can learn a lot about home funerals through her video, shared below. Tim Margush had small cell cancer in the prostate. After cancer treatments ceased to...
Lights, Camera, Action! Toastmasters Talk
Recently did a talk at Albuquerque Challenge Toastmasters which serves as an introduction to my Funny Films for Funeral Planning talk. It's titled "Lights, Camera, Action!" I share how my love of films has translated into a great avenue to open the door to funeral planning conversations. You can also learn a bit more about my personal history. Local folks who want to become better speakers can check out this advanced club which meets the second...
William Shatner Says: You’re Gonna Die
The song is officially titled "You'll Have Time" but it should really be called "Live Life Like You're Gonna Die." It's from William Shatner's 2002 album,"Has Been." Great bluesy theme song and reminder for all human beings. http://youtu.be/snEcAdbGXTY Live life Live life like you're gonna die Because you're gonna I hate to be the bearer of bad news But you're gonna die Maybe not today or even next year But before you know it you'll be saying...
Aetna Insurance Teams with Everest Funeral Planning
Here's news regarding Aetna Insurance teaming up with Everest Funeral Planning & Concierge Services, a great group life insurance benefit at companies with 51 or more employees. Aetna announced today that it has added funeral planning as part of its innovative Aetna Life Essentials(SM) program, a suite of value-added benefits and services included in Life insurance plans for all customers. Through a strategic agreement with Everest Funeral...
Million Dollar Patients
How much money would you spend to keep your elderly parents alive in the hospital? Because of Medicare, most families don't have to ask themselves that tough end-of-life question. Perhaps families should start to consider how they would respond. This eye-opening story that originated in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch traced the six-month decline of an 89-year-old woman. She had Alzheimer's, was placed on a feeding tube when she could no longer...
How To Scatter Ashes
The top of Sandia Mountain, on the eastern side of Albuquerque, is a popular place for ash scattering. I'm guessing the cremated remains of hundreds of people must be scattered up there. Seeking relief from the 100-plus degree heat in Albuquerque, my husband and I went up to the crest for a cool 74 degree respite. While up there, I recorded this video with tips on what to do and not do when ash scattering. http://youtu.be/qOcs1MdjgCE Ash...
Animated Video on Funeral Costs
Here's an educational and amusing animation on "The Business of Death." It covers funeral costs, cremation, resource usage, and creative options. While it was created in 2007, much of the information is still pretty much up to date. They list a traditional funeral at $6,500, not including the cemetery plot and the services to open and close the grave. One amazing figure: Japanese funerals cost an average of $40,000 - and 98% of Japanese are...
When Ash Scattering, Be Considerate
Scattering ashes or cremated remains can be done in plenty of places, but please don't do it on tribal lands. At the Four Corners National Monument, a Navajo tribal park, a woman dumped human cremains near the point where the four states of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah meet. This is very bad juju. The Navajo tradition prohibits cremation. They consider it taboo. And it is against the Navajo's cultural beliefs to scatter human remains...
Dead Stop on NPR Adds Other Resting Places
NPR's summer road trip series "Dead Stop" continues to add to a great collection of interesting cemeteries and the stories they tell. The final resting places are strange, funny, historic and notable, as are the stories. There's the story of humorist writer Dorothy Parker and how her ashes came to rest in Baltimore, at the headquarters of the NAACP. My favorite quote from her is "Drink and dance and laugh and lie, love the reeling midnight...
Green Burial and Home Funerals
Green burial and home funerals, also known as family-directed funerals, were the hot topic of discussion at last week's meeting of Doorways of Santa Fe. In 1800, every burial was a green burial and almost every funeral was a home funeral. How times have changed! Home funeral guide Marlow Morrison outlined the steps a family would need to take when someone dies at home. She suggests making sure bodies are accepted directly from the family...
Answering the Question: Do Corpses Defecate?
"It doesn't matter how much money you make or how much power you have or how much control you feel, when you die, you're likely to end up naked and pooping. That's just the way it is. And that's very egalitarian, and very equalizing, and I really like it." So says Caitlin Doughty, a funeral director, creator of OrderofTheGoodDeath.com, and star of the “Ask a Mortician” YouTube videos. She's a very funny lady to boot! Check out her video on the...
FCA Helps Funeral Consumers Shop Before You Drop
“It’s not right to rough up a kid for his lunch money, and it spits in the face of God to exploit the grieving for a buck.” These strong words from Ed Howard, a lawyer and consumer advocate, were spoken at the recent Funeral Consumers Alliance (FCA) biennial meeting. When Howard’s father died, it took him eight hours of calling funeral homes to get a rough outline of costs. Imagine the billable time he lost to a search for financial information...
Another Book on Saying Goodbye
There's a new book out on the ways we say goodbye. In Exit: The Endings That Set Us Free, author Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot explores endings through the stories of people in transition. Too often "we tend to ignore and diminish endings," she writes, while celebrating beginnings. Instead, we should "develop the habit of marking the small goodbyes to help us master the larger farewells." NPR's Neal Conan spoke with Lawrence-Lightfoot about her book...
Greetings from Corpus Christi!
http://youtu.be/oqjHe226B3U Howdy from the 18th floor of the Omni Hotel in Corpus Christi, Texas! I'm here to speak at the Texas Funeral Directors Association annual convention. The name of my talk is "The Funeral Director on Film," and it includes the presentation "Funny Films for Funeral Planning." The presentation is tomorrow morning, 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. Also on the schedule tomorrow is a talk at the Jewish Community Center of Corpus...