The Family Plot Blog
Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition
In America, death is often regarded as the classic Monty Python routine about the Spanish Inquisition. "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapons are fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope." Death surprises and scares us. Despite the fact that humans have a 100% mortality rate, we don't expect to die. If you don't expect to die, you're unlikely to pre-plan a funeral. And that leads to...
Vital Statistics for Death Certificates
Whether you are pre-planning a funeral or planning after a death in the family has occurred, this is information you will need to provide for a death certificate. If you don’t have easy access this information, the process will be much more stressful. It’s better to pre-plan and pull the facts together before you need it! Legal Name: first, middle, last A.K.A.: other names the person was also known as Sex: male or female Date of Birth: month,...
Funeral Planning Circa 1909
Yesterday's New York Times featured a short piece that originally ran December 10, 1909, one hundred years ago, on a woman with the foresight to pre-plan her funeral: Gives Party; Goes to Death Springfield, Mo., Dec. 9 — Determined that none of her social obligations should remain unpaid at her death, Mrs. Alma Dodson, a social leader and the only woman lawyer in this county, invited all her friends to a farewell card party and reception...
Jewish Mourning Customs
How often when we hear the news of a death, the first impulse is to prepare food to take to the mourners’ home. This custom of preparing a meal for others is a very old tradition, for both Jews and Christians, to show concern for their neighbor’s grief. After a funeral, the immediate family returns home to a “Meal of Condolence” prepared by neighbors and friends. At this stressful time, it’s helpful to have one family member or close friend...
Jewish Funeral and Burial Customs
In ancient times, a family was responsible for burying their own deceased, and burial involved an earthly grave or a tomb. In Jesus’ time, bodies would be stored in tombs until the flesh deteriorated to the skeleton, then the bones transferred and stored in an ossuary, which is an urn or box. How times have changed! Today’s families are no longer personally responsible for preparing and burying the body; instead they pay a funeral home to...
Jewish Treatment of the Body
In the Jewish tradition, the body of the deceased is treated with care and respect, extending dignity to the earthly vessel that the human spirit has left behind. This task is often undertaken by the local Chevra Kadisha, a volunteer organization that cares for the bodies of the dead according to Jewish law and ancient custom. Funeral homes that conduct Jewish funerals can make arrangements for the services of the Chevra Kadisha or you can get...
Jewish Traditions Regarding Death
Jewish ritual strives toward kadosh, or holiness. Ironically, that term also translates to “separateness.” Jewish observances are designed to show reverence for those who die, concern for the welfare of those who mourn, and reinforce the daily holiness of our actions. While other religious traditions also incorporate these strivings, Jewish practices are very different from Christian observances. In morning prayers, Jews are reminded of these...
Carpet Kingdom
If you can find it, check out the short film, Carpet Kingdom, shown at the 2009 Telluride Film Festival. This 17-minute gem by Michael Rochford was his Master's of Fine Arts thesis. "Love. Death. Carpet." is the promotional tag line. The story involves Owen, a young scion of the family carpet business, and the funeral of his great-uncle Grover, who became an eccentric black sheep of the family in his later years. Grover dies unexpectedly at the...
Smoker’s Lounge
For those with a sense of humor about these things...
Dying the Way One Lives
There's a great blog post on Psychology Today's site, in The Mystery of Happiness written by T. Byram Karasu, M.D., Silverman Professor of Psychiatry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He has some very good observations about humans and their perceptions of death. Most importantly, he said, "One can fully live one's life by recognizing its end, by focusing on death at the healthier times." Here's the intro: Freud said that we do not...
Pet Hospice Service
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram ran a major feature about new trends in pet end-of-life care on Monday, November 30. It focused on Beyond the Rainbow, believed to be the first business of its kind in Texas. Beyond the Rainbow offers complete end-of-life care for pets, including in-home hospice, funerals, cremation and burial. The company is owned by licensed funeral directors Kate Moore and Terry Branson, who have a combined 60 years in the human...
Crows and Cemeteries
I went to the Congregation Albert cemetery today to help show some burial plots to a couple seeking to find their perfect final resting place. While driving through Fairview Cemetery to get to the congregation's section, I was struck by the number of crows that flocked around the grounds. Remember the opening to the HBO series "Six Feet Under"? That focused on just one crow. Today, there were at least three dozen sauntering around on the grass,...
Wayne Dyer on Life and Death
ABC News did a story yesterday about Wayne Dyer, best-selling author and lecturer, and one of the world's preeminent proponents of the power of positive thinking. Dyer's central theme is that you can attract whatever you want, be it money, love, even improved health through your thoughts. He was recently diagnosed with a rare disease, chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Yet in spite of this diagnosis, Dyer is upbeat, saying, "First of all, I'm not...
Burial Disaster Story
The news in the paper on Thanksgiving Day was headlined "Casket Breaks Open at Burial." The story focused on a lawsuit filed by a suburban Phoenix family after their father's body slipped from a shattered casket when it was dropped into a grave during a burial ceremony. Some highlights: The funeral home didn't have the solid wood casket the widow wanted, but "upgraded" her to another model for free. The upgrade turned out to be made of...
The Cremation of Sam McGee
In honor of the start of the cold weather holiday season, here's a poem about keeping warm. "The Cremation of Sam McGee" was written by Canadian Robert W. Service and published in 1907 in The Songs of a Sourdough. There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did...
60 Minutes on the Cost of Dying
If you missed last night's 60 Minutes story on the cost of dying, I recommend you visit their web site to see the story and all the web extras on this page. Steve Kroft introduced the piece saying, "Every medical study ever conducted has concluded that 100 percent of all Americans will eventually die. This comes as no great surprise, but the amount of money being spent at the very end of people's lives probably will. Last year, Medicare paid...
Memorial Options for Pets
Many service providers have developed to address a need for memorializing deceased pets. You can find more products and services to honor your deceased pet than you thought possible by searching online for "pet memorials." There are memorial stones and markers for pet graves, garden statuary, urns of ceramic, stone, wood, cloisonne, metal, and other materials for display. You can get beautiful biodegradable urns of paper, fabric, hemp, or wood...
What To Do With Pet Remains?
Pet owners can process their grief in many different ways, starting with disposal of the body.
Grieving Pet Loss
Santa Fe grief counselor Janice Barsky decided there was a need for a pet loss support group when a woman who had been hospitalized from traumatic grief over the death of her dog showed up at a hospice grief support group meeting she was facilitating. The group was outraged at the woman’s attendance, along the lines of “How dare you sit there and talk about the loss of your pooch, when I lost my husband of 50 years,” said Barsky. The woman...
Burying a Pet
It’s rare that headline news strikes our families directly, but the big news in 2007 about tainted pet food from China hit my family hard. My brother Glen had to put down his 12-year old Great Dane, Abby, because her kidneys were failing and she couldn’t hold her bladder. He had switched three months earlier from feeding her Alpo to Iams Canned Chicken & Chunks, one of the recalled foods, thinking at the time it would be better for her...
Pet Loss
How we treat our pets, and how we treat the people we love, reflect our individual approaches to end-of-life care.