The Family Plot Blog
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.
Caring for Our Own at Death
Elizabeth Knox is not afraid to look death in the face. The founder of the nonprofit organization Crossings: Caring for Our Own at Death has done it regularly since the first time in 1995 when her seven-year-old daughter died after an automobile mishap. The hospital staff told her that the body could only be released to a funeral home. Knox wanted to care for her daughter’s body at her own home before final disposition. Told it was against the...
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
What if a person dies one place but needs to go someplace else in the U.S. for burial? If Aunt Martha dies in Arizona but has a burial plot back east in Massachusetts, what do you do to get her there? You can’t just fly Aunt Martha home in the back seat of your Cessna. Driving her there in the back of a pick-up truck is another story. Shipping a body domestically, while simpler than international shipping, still has many parts to address....
Post-Funeral Thank You Notes
There’s an alarming trend in paid newspaper obituaries, the general thank you note to the public. The family places a notice in the classified obituaries section that reads like this: The family of John Doe would like to thank all of their relatives and friends for the kind expression of sympathy extended to them during their bereavement (then naming specific people) Name of Funeral Home, contact info Or: The family of Jane Doe wishes to thank...
Death We Can’t Accept
There's a wonderful opinion piece in Sunday's New York Times by Thomas G. Long, a theology professor at Emory University. He writes about current funeral fashion trends and how "They illustrate the sad truth that, as a society, Americans are no longer sure what to do with our dead." He writes about the importance of accompanying the dead to their last resting place, and that "Today, however, our death rituals have become downsized, inwardly...
TV Interview!
I was a guest on a Las Vegas television news program this morning. The local ABC affiliate KTNV-TV Channel 13 interviewed me about Create A Great Funeral Day. If you'd like to see the interview, click on this link.
Creating a Great Funeral
So, tomorrow is Create a Great Funeral Day. Have you made any plans? Would you even know where to start? Most people don't have a funeral plan. They don't want to think about it, don't know why it's important, or think they'll get around to it "someday." Newsflash: Just as talking about sex doesn't make you pregnant, thinking about death and funerals won't make you dead. And by discussing these touchy topics, you might avoid a world of hurt....
Obits for Historical Research
Both the paid and the news obituary play a role beyond letting people know the time and place of the funeral or memorial service. The obit can be a valuable record for future generations to trace family history and genealogy, listing details such as mother’s maiden names, names of children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Historians, genealogists, and social scientists also rely on obituaries to collect information. Often, news obit stories...
Classified Obituaries
There are news obituaries, and then there are the classified ad obituaries. There is a difference! The newspaper reporting staff has nothing to do with the classified obituary listings, which the family pays for. “It’s just like a garage sale notice that comes from the funeral home or the family,” said Carolyn Gilbert, founder of the International Association of Obituarists, an organization of professional obituary writers. “The classified...
Your Name In Lights?
The Associated Press recently ran a news story about Iles Funeral Home in Des Moines, Iowa that started using electronic billboards to announce visitations and funeral services. John Wild, the general manager for Iles, compared it to the posting of funeral announcements at shops and post offices in rural communities where the business has funeral homes. "That's how we get the word out about visitations and services in those communities and when...
News Obituaries
The reading of newspapers is declining as the population ages and dies. The old joke goes, if I read the obituaries in the morning and I’m not among those listed, I must be alive and can go about my day. There are two primary types of obituary stories that you see in the newspaper: news articles written about someone famous or remarkable in some way, and paid obituaries that a family places in the section of the newspaper devoted to those...
Emails About Death and Funerals
Emails are helpful for keeping large groups of friends and relatives informed and updated during a loved one’s illness. However, it has its drawbacks for funeral announcements, such as when computers are in the shop or the address you’ve been using for a friend is no longer their primary account and the note is ignored for days. There are different ways to utilize email to inform and invite people. You can send individual notes, one person at a...
Body on the Balcony
Appropriate to the building anticipation of Halloween, today's New York Times has a story headlined "Body Is Mistaken for a Halloween Display." It seems a man may have committed suicide on the balcony of his apartment in Marina del Rey, CA, and his body was slumped on his patio furniture undisturbed for five days. He had been shot through the eye. A neighbor, Austin Raishbrook, said, "It looked like somebody had thrown a dummy over the back of...
Where Everybody Knows Your Name
I've been to many creative funerals and memorial services, but just went to my first celebration of life event held in a bar. The gathering was in honor of William K. "Big Bill" Baldwin, who started a number of taverns in Albuquerque. He died at the age of 80 on October 5. The news obituary in the paper said there would be a celebration of life at the Horse & Angel Tavern. I tracked down a phone number for his son Billy and asked if I could...
Create A Great Funeral Day
Who knew there was such a thing as Create A Great Funeral Day? It's October 30, and this year is the 10th annual observance. It's not a trick or a treat, but it's inevitable. Got any plans? It was started by Stephanie West Allen, a lawyer who wrote "Creating Your Own Funeral or Memorial Service: A Workbook." She is a strong advocate for people planning their own funerals or memorials, and she teaches seminars on creating farewell services. My...