The Family Plot Blog
Article in Entrepreneur.com
Entrepreneur.com just posted an article about "Weird Companies That Work," and yours truly is featured as the first weird company. Here are the first few paragraphs: A Good Goodbye Description: A funeral event planning firm Founder: Gail Rubin Founded: March 2010 Location: Albuquerque, N.M. Think of Gail Rubin as a modern-day Maude (from the cult film Harold & Maude). A breast-cancer survivor and former PR professional/event planner (as...
Dear Abby on Living Memorial Services
Today's Dear Abby column addresses the idea of living memorial services or life celebrations while a terminally ill family member is still alive. Rabbi Albert Slomovitz wrote in that he had been asked by a funeral director to talk with the family of a terminally ill woman. He was impressed by her bravery and sensitivity in confronting her disease. The family move up their celebrations of all holidays, secular and religious, plus birthdays and...
Monday Radio Interviews
This Monday, October 25, you can listen to some interesting conversations about funeral planning for those who don't plan to die, not once but twice! At 5:40 a.m. Mountain Time/7:40 a.m. Eastern Time, I'll be speaking with Bulldog and The Dude on the Rude Awakening program on WOCM-FM out of Ocean City, Maryland. Click on the station call letters to listen live online. I have many fond childhood memories of summers in that seaside town. Then in...
Life Insurance Survey Says We Don’t Talk About Death
The economic downturn of the past two years has impacted family budgets in some unexpected ways - such as couples not talking about death and life insurance. Maybe if we pretend to ignore death, it will leave us alone. Not that it's a topic couples usually discuss with any regularity, but according to a new survey by State Farm® Life Insurance Company, couples are avoiding the awkward conversation even more with the stresses of recent economic...
30 Funerals in 30 Days Challenge
Starting October 30, 2010, the 11th annual Create a Great Funeral Day, event planner Gail Rubin will launch the “30 Funerals in 30 Days Challenge.” Rubin, the author of A Good Goodbye: Funeral Planning for Those Who Don’t Plan to Die, will attend 30 funerals or memorial services in 30 days and write about each on her blog, The Family Plot (http://TheFamilyPlot.wordpress.com). The 30 Funerals in 30 Days Challenge is designed to bring light to a...
Upcoming Radio Interviews
In advance of Create a Great Funeral Day and the launch of A Good Goodbye: Funeral Planning for Those Who Don't Plan to Die, Gail Rubin will be interviewed on a number of radio programs in markets across the country. Here's a listing of current interviews scheduled, with links to the stations as available. Most of the interviews will be in the 10-15 minute range, unless indicated otherwise. Hope you'll tune in for some interesting...
Tao Te Ching Passage
Here's a lovely passage from the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu... a meditation on living and dying. Empty yourself of everything. Let the mind rest at peace. The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return. They grow and flourish and then return to the source. Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of nature. The way of nature is unchanging. Knowing constancy is insight. Not knowing constancy leads to...
Don’t Plan to Die? A Good Goodbye is a Must-Read!
People will plan their finances, their families, their retirement, just about everything except their funerals. Without end-of-life planning, life’s other plans can come undone, and the forthcoming book, A Good Goodbye: Funeral Planning for Those Who Don’t Plan to Die (Light Tree Press), will help get the conversation started. “Just as talking about sex won’t make you pregnant, talking about funerals won’t make you dead – and your family will...
Radio Interview on CKNX Radio
This morning I'll be talking about funeral planning for those who don't plan to die with Bryan Allen, host of The Talk Show on CKNX Information Country, AM920, based in Wingham, Ontario. We'll take phone calls as part of the 20 minute interview that starts at 10:15 ET/9:15 CT/8:15 MT/7:15 PT. Click here to listen live online!
Fun Funeral Facts
iMortuary.com, an online directory for funeral homes and cemeteries, created this infographic called "Grave Curiosities." Thought you might enjoy some of these fun funeral, burial, and cremation facts. (My apologies if the whole thing doesn't show up on the screen - you can jump to their site if needed.) Via: Funeral Flowers at iMortuary.com
US Funeral Protests – A British View
The current Supreme Court consideration of funeral protests as protected free speech has one funeral blogger in the UK "Relieved to be British." After the Westboro Baptist Church, an anti-gay group based in Topeka, Kansas, picketed the 2006 funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder bearing signs that read "God Hates the USA," the serviceman's father, Albert Snyder, sued for infliction of emotional distress, winning an $11 million judgment in...
Funeral Flowers are Gifts
In yesterday's Dear Abby column, a widower wrote in to say that at his wife's funeral, many of their friends returned to the mortuary to collect the flowers they had sent. He said that some of the attendees were very rude, insisting that because they had sent them, the flowers belonged to them. He asked "Are those people just rude?" Can you believe this? Has funeral etiquette and thoughtfulness for our fellow humans fallen to such a low level...
Radio Interview Monday October 4
"Whassup with Weddings and Funerals?" is the topic I'll be discussing with Bonnie D. Graham aka RadioRed on her BlogTalkRadio program this coming Monday, October 4. She interviewed me years ago when my first book came out, A Girl's Pocket Guide to Trouser Trout: Reflections on Dating and Fly-Fishing. I guarantee you'll hear a very interesting discussion! Here's her description of the show: READ MY LIPS' RadioRed welcomes GAIL RUBIN, author of...
Ironic Deaths
There's an ironic obituary in the paper today. Jimi Heselden, 62, a businessman who bought the company that makes the Segway scooter, died from a fall off a cliff in northern England, apparently while riding one of the vehicles on his estate. Local media reports said he was to believed to have lost control of his scooter Sunday on a wooded path that ran perilously close to a 30-foot drop into the River Wharfe. Heselden was a coal miner who lost...
Other Reasons People Avoid Funeral Planning
Ever notice most people are hesitant to even talk about funeral planning? The thought occurred to me, we have a fear of funeral planning, because to do so, we would have to admit that this joy ride called life has an end. We'd have to look at how we've lived our lives, examine how we've acted and review what we've done with our time on Earth. We'd be forced to look at how we've treated others, and think about what others would say about us at...
The Bubblegum Film
Back in the day before digital media, instant video feeds, and DVDs, people made movies with film. Little did I know when I was a communications major at the University of Maryland in 1980, that the seeds of a future career direction were being sown. In a film production class, all the students were assigned to create a short movie called "The Bubblegum Film." Requirements included making it three minutes long using black-and-white 8mm film,...
Everest Funeral Concierge Services
Remember the news regarding The Hartford Group Life Insurance and Aetna Life Insurance offering expedited payment on life insurance claims within 48 hours and access to round-the-clock funeral planning services? How can they do that? Both companies work with Everest Funeral Planning, an independent consumer advocate providing funeral planning and concierge services. Everest works with big group life carriers like The Hartford and Aetna and...
Albuquerque Journal Mature Life Story
Today's Albuquerque Journal Mature Life section has a great article titled "Books help families plan ahead for final goodbyes" by Jane Mahoney. It features yours truly and starts out: Imagine trying to plan for a wedding in two or three days' time - the notifications, the site, the clergy, the flowers and the reception. Sound impossible? The logistics are really not so different from what families face when someone dies and a funeral must be...
Finding Love After Loss of a Longtime Spouse
Today's Dear Abby column is all about couples who find love after a long-term marriage ends with the death of one spouse. The letters were in response to "Just Wondering in the Bay Area" (July 26) who asked about proper protocol regarding dating after a spouse's death. Our family has a great story to add to the conversation. My husband's father Norm died a year and a half ago, leaving his wife Myra a few months short of what would have been...
Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die?
Today is the first day of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana. The Unatana Tokef prayer, recited and sung in synagogues around the world today, provides an appropriate reflection regarding living and dying. This is the version found in Gates of Repentance, the New Union Prayer Book for the High Holy Days. Let us proclaim the sacred power of this day; it is awesome and full of dread. For on this day Your dominion is exalted, Your throne...
Emotional Displays at Funerals
Yesterday's Dear Abby column featured one letter about displays of emotions at funerals. The author (not clear whether it was a man or a woman) wrote that s/he doesn't cry at funerals, being a Christian with a deep conviction that the deceased is in a better place. This person had been criticized by a sister-in-law for not crying and was chided about it at his/her father-in-law's funeral. The father-in-law had been sick and in constant pain for...