Throughout my career one of the main aspects of funeral service that attracted me was the innate gentleness that is at the core of this great profession.  Funeral service has a gentleness that is an essential part of what makes funeral service what it is.

Certainly I have encountered rough and tumble funeral directors who on the surface have a bark and a scowl, but in most every case in the end these “grumpy” funeral directors have a true heart of gold, and as the ancient saying goes, “the bark is much worse than the bite.”

I worked for a few of these “grumpy” “crabby” old undertakers, and at the time they scared the devil out of me, but over the years I grew to understand that surface appearances are usually not a good assessment of what is in another human being’s character and soul.

It has struck me as both interesting and sad that today the vision of people being gentle and kind, or understanding and generous in business, or in the process of struggling through life’s vicissitudes and ambitions, is seen as weakness, or folly, or old-fashioned, and there are quite a few naysayers in the world who laugh at such concepts and attempt to behave as another “Donald Trump” on their own reality TV program.

I like the gentle, generous, giving side of life.  That is why I always admired funeral directors, and no matter what the naysayers say – and they have their story to tell to be sure – I have just always liked funeral service.  To be sure those critical naysayers are out there and in today’s climate of tearing people down instead of building people up, the naysayers do have an audience. So be it. It is presently the way of the world it appears, but it probably won’t always be the way of the world - at least I hope not.

Here is what I am talking about.  Years ago, as I recently mentioned in another post, when I worked in Wyoming my boss was the county coroner.  My boss was a good man, but he was touchy most times, and his wife could whip him up into a literal lather of frenzy when she took a liking to.  The coroner’s position was for my boss literally protected territory, and when the coroner’s election would eventually come around both sides would hunker down and form their battalions and the declaration of coroner’s war would ensue.  However to his credit, I guess, my boss had held onto the coroner’s position for years.

On a regular day my boss would snap at me about something; I was always screwing something up.  It really didn’t matter what it was, he would just snap.  If his wife was within hearing distance she always had something to add to fuel the fire under my ***, and her comments would set him off once again, and Todd being the easiest target would get shot at once again, and many times my boss and his wife took deadly aim.  Eventually I was shot at and hit so many times that I started taking comfort in the thought of St. Sebastian who said, wisely, “when you are shot with seventeen arrows, the eighteenth one does not hurt much.”  That was basically my relationship with my boss and his wife – daily archery practice. They had the bow and arrows and possessed dead-eye aim, and I was the target.

I concluded that my boss was just a finicky, prickly, moody human being and I did not like him.  Until we received a coroner’s call one afternoon.  Then everything changed.  The other point I need to make is that I was 22 years old when this happened, and while I am sure that everybody else in the world was mature and insightful and judicious and wise at 22 – but Todd was NOT!

It was summer in Cheyenne, and really Cheyenne and the whole area of Southwestern Wyoming is beautiful. I believe Wyoming has to have the bluest skies I have ever seen in my life, and the sky just goes on and on, neverending beauty.

It was a beautiful summer day.  School was out and kids were playing outside everywhere.

There was an area in Cheyenne south of the downtown that was in truth, at this time anyway, a pretty rough area.  It was deprived both socially and economically, and it was also violent.  Most calls we received in this unfortunate section of town usually were of a highly complicated nature.  Any call of course has this potential, but sadly the areas affected by poverty and urban plight got more than their share of sadness and grief – it seems it is the way of the world.

Mid afternoon the sheriff called and asked that we respond to a back lot in this particular area of the city.  The sheriff also requested two or three vehicles because five people had been discovered dead.

Not much more information was forthcoming, or if it was my boss did not tell anybody else about it.  Off we went, and in short order we arrived at the scene.

The vacant lot was more like a dump ground.  Junk was everywhere.  The lot was a distance off the beaten track and it was evident that many people just decided to secretly dump their used anything in this area.  You name the piece of junk and it was probably somewhere in this vacant lot.

I was clueless as to what had happened, but I found out quickly.  The Sheriff was at the bottom of a small hill and was standing in the middle of a bunch or abandoned refrigerators and he was waving at us.

My boss told the rest of us to stay with the vehicles and he proceeded down the hill.  I could not exactly see what was going on, but when my boss returned he was crying.  I had never seen him cry.  He had made me cry often enough, but as far as the “rock” (that was our nickname for him) crying, well I was stunned.  I just looked at him and he composed himself enough to tell us to get the cots out and follow him down the small hill.

As we walked down the small hill this one particular refrigerator had its back side to us, and the sheriff was standing in front and the look on his face was one of despair and hopelessness.  The county sheriff was a real tough fellow, but today he looked as if somebody had just shot his favorite dog.

As I walked around to the front of the refrigerator I looked inside and just froze. I had never, nor have I since (this was 1974) ever seen anything like what I witnessed at that moment.

Huddled inside the refrigerator were five, yes folks, five small children.  The sheriff concluded that the five little ones were goofing and playing around and decided it would be fun to hide inside the refrigerator and they all stuffed themselves in the appliance and somehow, someway the door shut, and shut tight – shut permanently.

This refrigerator and many of the others in that vacant lot were made before magnetic door seals, and when the steel door lock bolted shut in these particular models there was no way to open the door from the inside.  Also, not one of these refrigerators which had been dumped and abandoned had had its front door removed for simple safety purposes.  The owners of the refrigerators just dumped the appliances, left the doors on and took off thinking nothing catastrophic would happen, but catastrophe is the word to describe what did end up happening.

Interestingly, another group of schoolchildren who were roaming around this dumping grounds were the ones who opened the shut refrigerator just by pure chance and discovered the gruesome and pathetic sight.

By this time the local media was on the scene, and that evening the deaths of these five children were the major story for all the new broadcasts – the story even made the television reports out of Denve, 100 miles away.  The community was stunned, and in short order politicians swept in and actually did some good, for in the next legislative session a state law was passed making it a punishable crime to abandon a refrigerator with the front door still attached.

We were asked to bury three of the five children, and my opinion of my boss changed almost overnight.

I observed him throughout the funeral experience from beginning to end, and frankly he was a marvel to behold.  I saw gentleness, compassion, caring, concern and above all professional understanding that I just didn’t think any person was capable of, and up to this time I never would have suspected my “grumpy” boss possessed such humanness.  Of course since that time I have seen this combination thousands upon thousands of times in and from funeral directors across the globe. 

My boss took care of this family, and I mean he took care of them.  He was attentive without being overbearing, he was helpful but not overly intrusive, he was competent but not solemn, he was spiritual but not overly religious, he was cordial but certainly not intimate, he was ready to help but not overbearing, and he was gentle while being himself.  Today I still warm to the memory of his abilities – and I thought he was a grump!  Boy was I wrong!

I believe that funeral directors, thousands of them, have this delicate skill. They balance this skill very well, and they use it constantly – and that my friends is a good thing.  Yes, we have individuals who knock us, criticize us; yes we make mistakes, errors in judgment.  Certainly these are complicated time to be gentle in – no reality TV program is going to be centered around people being nice and respectful to each other – but funeral directors are nice and respectful, even the ones whose bark is loud and intimidating and causes people to tremble. 

I concluded long ago that I was wrong about my loud, intimidating boss who did have the ability to make me tremble.  I learned that as I tried to imitate him he actually stopped barking at me so much. Maybe there is a growing up lesson in this story – who knows?  However my opinion of his wife ... well, that is for another time ....

Anyway that’s one old undertaker’s opinion. TVB

In the mid 1970s I worked for a couple of years in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  A few people in funeral service still remember my presence out West, but this was so long ago that the State Board of Embalmers in Wyoming had actually lost and forgotten that I had been licensed in that wonderful state.  My record of licensure was so old that the state had purged the files and when I needed verification a few years ago they did not have a clue who I was, which happens all the time.  I got it straightened out, and my license number for any funeral sleuth out there is #377.

My employer was also the County Coroner.  Back in the time I am writing about funeral directors across Wyoming ran for the County Coroner’s office.  I believe the system has changed in a few Wyoming counties, but in the 1970s it was almost a community expectation that the local funeral director or one of the local funeral directors would be the County Coroner.

This happened during the summer of 1973 and a funeral director from Laramie, Wyoming wanted to go on vacation with his wife for a week and he needed a rent-a-funeral-director and I was selected to temporarily move into his really nice home for a week and watch the business.  This funeral director was also the County Coroner, and hence I was temporarily deputized as the County Coroner in conjunction with a County Judge who would be really in charge if anything would happen.  I was not “Quincy” in any stretch of the imagination.

As this Laramie funeral director and his wife drove off for their fun week, I was standing in their driveway waving and he left me with these prophetic words, “Todd, don’t worry, we have been real slow; nothing will happen.”  I was so young and new to funeral service that I actually believed him.  Youth is wasted on the young.

For three days nothing happened.  It was organized boredom. I mowed the grass, vacuumed the carpet, washed the coach three times in the same day, took naps, watched TV (I enjoyed the Price Is Right), played with the organ in the chapel, dusted off embalming fluid bottles, counted the supply of calendars, washed the coach again, talked to myself in the office, answered possibly three phone calls, cleaned the whitewalls of the coach, swept the sidewalks, counted trocar tips, cleaned lip brushes with DryWash and basically kept busy without having any funerals. 

This funeral director’s wife was a lovely person and she had stocked the freezer with steaks, really nice steaks.  I grilled out by myself, watched TV by myself, and it was actually like a little vacation.

The vacation ends

At 7 a.m. the funeral home phone rang and it was the County Judge announcing to me that the Wyoming State Police had found two teenage auto fatalities at the bottom of a canyon about 20 miles northeast of Laramie.  He gave me instructions and said he would meet me at the scene.  He sounded might provoked.

In forty minutes I was at the scene of the crash.  It looked like two young chaps had been traveling at a fast speed, missed a hairpin curve and off the road they went airborne. Gravity quickly pulled the car and them to the bottom of a deep narrow canyon.  The crash was horrific.  One young lad was thrown from the vehicle and the other lad sat in the driver’s seat.  Both boys were dead, no question.

The Wyoming State Police did their investigations and concluded that it was a open and shut case; no foul play was involved and the officers (who were really professional and nice) gave permission to remove the boys from the canyon.  The County Judge, who clearly was not yet awake, looked at me and said, “Go ahead.”  I had never removed a dead body from a canyon before. I had no heavy equipment, but with the help of a couple of the law officers, we succeeded in getting both bodies up on the road, and eventually into my vehicle.

The bodies were identified and the officers looked at the County Judge and said “You need to go notify the next of kin about these deaths.”  The County Judge in turn looked at me and said “You need to go notify the next of kin about these deaths.”  It was really my first experience with the popular human concept of “professionally passing the buck.”

The Wyoming State Police were interested in wrapping things up, and the County Judge was interested in going back to bed – anyway that is how he impressed (or depressed) me.

The law officers gave me the addresses from the drivers licenses and the County Judge drove off in his car, as did the police in their cruisers.  I walked back to my vehicle with two dead boys in the back and two addresses and drove by myself back into Laramie.  Both families lived in Laramie.

The Coroner’s Office was in the funeral home I was temporarily watching over, so I took both bodies back to the funeral home and placed them in the preparation room and walked back to the office and sat down.  I did not know what to do.  They did not cover this situation in Mortuary College.  First I thought of phoning, but my heart told me that would not be right.

It was by now 10 a.m. and Laramie was full of morning activities.  I looked at the addresses, found a map and located where the two families lived, and still sat in my chair.  Truth is, I was terrified.  I was only in my early 20s, still a kid in many respects, and was faced with a situation that I never dreamed in my life would happen. I was also slow upstairs, because when I was made a temporary Deputy County Coroner what in the devil did I think might possibly happen?  I was never the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Just as I was ready to leave to go see the first family the phone rang.  It was a Roman Catholic priest; one of the fatalities was a member of his parish and somehow he had heard about the accident and volunteered to go and tell the bereaved family, who he knew very well, what had happened.  He asked me if that would be all right? ALL RIGHT?  Certainly that would be fine.  To this day I don’t know if this was legal, but at the time I didn’t care.  The priest was a godsend.  I have often looked back at this intervention. We did not have any beepers, voice mail, cell phones or anything else offering immediate contact, so if I had left one minute earlier I would have missed the priest’s phone call. 

However I received no such rescuing from notifying the other bereaved family; I was on my own.  I remember driving up in front of the house. I rechecked the address; I had the right place. Then I drove around the block about ten times.  I felt a pit in my stomach, I was lightheaded, and I wanted to run back to Cheyenne.  That however was not possible. This was hardball, so I parked the car, got out, walked up the front steps and rang the doorbell. 

A nice looking woman maybe about 35 years old opened the door.  I stood there, a total stranger, and the following events were probably not handled properly, most anybody could have done better. Trust me, I have had many people offer me suggestions on what I should or could or would have done when I tell them this story, but I was on my own and I was making it up as I went.

The woman, who was the deceased young boy’s mother, looked at me and she knew immediately that something had happened.  She asked, “Who is hurt?”  I just responded by saying, “I am Todd Van Beck, and I am with the Coroner’s office.”  The mother then responded with, “Who is hurt; is it my son or husband?”  Then out it came, “Mrs. _____, your son ______ was killed this morning.”  The mother looked at me and said, “How bad is it?” 

Let’s freeze this frame for a moment.  Now after many years of teaching psychology of grief I can recognize this mother’s reaction as pure denial, and totally understandable denial.  Denial is a powerful emotion that protects our psyches from taking in horrible information all at once, which would certainly be detrimental and overwhelming.  Denial is like a psychological filter, a natural neurological function which allows the person to take in terrible news in small bites.  The mother certainly heard the words “coroner” and the word “killed,” – and we all rationally know that the County Coroner rarely if ever makes official social calls, and what “killed” means. 

In about fifteen minutes after a cycle of physiological responses such as sighing, shaking, weakness, and silence except for some quiet weeping, she looked at me and said “Is my boy really dead?”  “Yes he is, I am so sorry.”  Then she looked at me and said “My husband is at work in the mine and we are in the middle of getting divorced.”  I just sat there in silence.  I felt so sorry for her.

Just by accident and not by any sophisticated design I asked her if I could get a neighbor to come in and stay with her.  She told me the name and I walked over and asked the neighbor if she could come over, and the neighbor was as shaken and stunned as the mother, but at least the mother now had someone she knew instead of me, a total stranger, with her.

The mother instructed that the funeral home I was watching over was to handle the funeral and with that information I took my leave.  The family came in later to make the arrangements, the funeral was taken care of in a professional manner, and the young lad was buried.

What I remember most about this was the utter relief, anxiety, confusion, nervousness, insecurity, and general tension I felt when I walked back to the car.  I was not in a hurry to get out, but at the same time I knew that my life would never, ever be the same.  I felt a myriad of emotions.  I welled up and when I had gotten far enough from the house, I just broke down (I have always been a blub) and sat in the car alone weeping.  The entire incident simply shook me to the core, which looking back, it should have.

I never found out the fate of the people involved.  Did they get divorced? I don’t know.  How did life go for them after I returned to Cheyenne? I don’t know.  Eventually I moved back to Iowa, then into mortuary education, but I have never forgotten this dramatic and  traumatic event and the people involved.

It made me a more sensitive funeral director, and it certainly gave an additional depth to my later lecturing and teaching.

Most everybody in our great profession can share similar experiences; it is just a part of the environment. I certainly did not handle it properly, because I was just making it up as I went, and for many years to come when I looked back I chastised myself by thinking that I ought to have said this, or I could have said that – but in the end I did not do any of that. I just stumbled through the situation as I have done with many other life events.

In the end, over the veil of time this tough experience taught me that misery lies across the face of the earth. There is enough misery to go around for everybody. It taught me that those in our profession cannot easily pick and choose what aspects of funeral service we are interested in and what aspects of funeral service we are not interested in. In the end, death is an equal opportunity employer. Anything can happen anywhere, and at anytime. 

I did learn one firm inviolable lesson however: When a funeral director tells you that they have not been busy, and that probably nothing is going to happen, my suggestion is that we not take those words too much to heart.

Anyway that’s one old undertaker’s opinion. TVB 

Ten days ago or so, my cousin died.  The story, which is somewhat fuzzy, went like this.  He was driving on I-10 in Palm Springs, in the fast lane, and was evidently talking on his cell phone to my Aunt about pains in his chest the intensity of which he had never experienced before in his life.  He had been dealing with “indigestion” for the last several days.

Eye witnesses said they saw the car move over several lanes of traffic, attempt to exit, hit the guard rail, careened off the exit ramp, hit several objects and came to a stop.  My cousin was pronounced dead at the scene.

When my mother called to inform me of his death I have to admit that I felt nothing remotely akin to the pain and anguish of human grief.  However, I did feel a sense of lost history, a haunting feeling that I probably had not done the right thing by my cousin for I have not seen or talked or had any type of interaction with my cousin, my Aunt, or his surviving sister for forty years.  Is that not sad – forty bloody years?  However this confession is true.

This was not always the case.  From the beginning of my life until around eighteen years of age, my cousin and I were buddies, although there were times I could have strangled him.  He was a bully, I was not.  He was a tease, I was not.  I was more reserved and quiet, he was the opposite.  Yet despite our differences we did spend a great amount of time together.  

For one thing my cousin’s father died when he was ten, and for quite a while my family became a type of surrogate family for him.  My cousin spent many summer weeks, many week-ends, many holidays with my family.  My cousin was a city boy, I was a hick farmer.  The farm however offered him more peace and substance in his crisis over his father’s death than the city could – it just seemed that everybody knew that fact of life.

Together he and I were creative.  What one didn’t think of the other one did.  For instance we had a great big barn on our property and I made one section of it a fire department, the other section, I know no one will believe this, I made into a pet funeral home (fifty years before pet funeral homes were even in vogue – I could be a consultant today).  My cousin predictably turned the hay loft into a gambling casino (an idea he got from watching the movie “Some Like It Hot” where the speakeasy was in the back of the funeral parlor).  I said we were creative.

That barn was the most popular kid spot in kiddom.  Kids from miles around walked just to see the place.  On any one given day we might have a dozen fires, two dozen funerals (I was always the funeral director), and between battling imaginary blazes and holding state funerals for real and true dead rabbits, we managed to get in games of 21, dice, craps, slots, in fact any game of chance you might think of, my cousin and I had one.  One problem existed with our gambling casino however – the house never won.  My cousin and I lost every time when somebody else would play one of our games of chance, but we were undeterred even when my own mother beat the pants off the house.

There were a thousand memories and experiences packed into eighteen short years, and looking back eighteen years is indeed nothing.  Eighteen year olds don’t believe this, but I can assure you 58 year olds do.

Shortly after our graduation from high school my cousin married.  I was one of the groomsmen.  After the wedding someone dropped me off at the front door of the Heafey & Heafey Mortuary, and I never talked or laid eyes on my cousin again.  That was it. Over, finished, done, and gone.  Eighteen years just vanished with the slam of a car door.

Over the last forty years I have thought about him off and on.  I have made some half-hearted inquiries concerning him, his mother and sister.  In all honesty however I really was not too serious about any attempts to find out what his life had become.  For some reason, which honestly is still a mystery, all connections with my cousin and his immediate family just broke apart, never to be again, and now it is way too late to bring things together or at least try to with my former chum and good buddy – way too late.  My cousin is a corpse.

I feel shame in writing this because in all honesty the block to connecting, at least on my part anyway, was simple willpower and stubbornness.  I come from a long line of stubborn and willful people (you ought to have attended one of my family's holiday dinners – shootout at the OK Corral), and I know in my own heart there were times I thought about simply offering him the olive branch and just making the call.  I never did.

I never knew his children, I know nothing of his mother or sister's status, I learned that he had been divorced, and had a significant other, and also that he had done well in the profession of golf instruction and country club management.  I found this information five days after his death.  If you had asked me anything about him over the last 40 years I would have just shrugged my shoulders.  Everything I gleaned about my good buddy cousin I learned five days after his death.

I realize that nothing lasts forever.  Everything dies, even our relationships.  Right now however that type of sterile intellectualization about the ultimate truths and realities about life offer me little comfort.  I don’t feel the deep pangs of grief or even of wrenching guilt, no not those emotions.  I just simply regret not calling him.  I ought to have called him.

I know full well what my life has been like without my cousin involved with it, and it has been overall really pretty good.  Today however I am wondering what my life would have been like, what experiences both good and bad I would have had, if I had kept up with him, tried to keep up with him, just called him here and there, now and then, even if I got rejected.  I know that had I taken the initiative, and abandoned my own willfulness and stubbornness, what I am writing right now would be much different, but I do not know and will never know what that difference would have been.

I feel the unsettling pangs of consciousness today in having to honestly face up to deal with the haunting phrase “Too late.”  I did not do the right thing.

I went to see the Disney version of Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” a week or two before my cousin died.  The story always touches me, but as I write these words in view of what has happened since, I am thinking that I am a modern version of Ebenezer Scrooge, and I really need a visitation from three spirits to give me the wake up call.  I should have called my cousin.

I think I will write to my Aunt and see how things are going for her.

ELUO VICIS IS EST EFFERCIO VITA EST NO OF.  Don’t squander time; it is the stuff life is made of.

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.

TVB

I do not like to bring up subjects that annoy people.  Well on second thought there are a few people I like to annoy, but not many.

With that said, and with profuse apologizes made right now before I really say anything, I have noticed that the press is amazed at the number of people who die at this particular time and have no funds per se for a funeral, cemetery plot, or even cremation.  Also the newspapers are reporting that this trend is not going to slow down anytime soon.  Once again I sit back and wonder the same old thought, why is it that the press just misses so much about the truths, the many truths, the glaring truths, about funeral service?  

For years I have known that the press does not “get it” about us and for a while I thought it was because they were just rash, rude and rough, but over the last several years I have developed a sneaky suspicion that they really do “get it” they just don’t want to report it, because “getting it” about funeral service almost always translates into the average Archie and Edith Bunker in America ending up being quite interested in our fascinating profession, and that translates into “good news” for us.  We know the press gives lip service to good news, but does not really like good news because good news does not create fear, and worse yet the readers and listeners of the news might just conclude that the world is not such a bad place, and that idea terrifies media people, who seem to thrive on doom and gloom. 

I can’t empirically prove this, but my old trusty Iowa farmer’s instinct tells me I am right on the mark about this issue.  Good news just does not sell – that is really a shame. 

So now the media is telling us another doom and gloom story that people are in a financial bind because the economy is in the bucket and of all things this is affecting funeral service.  Now there is an extremely insightful idea – something in life affecting funeral service – my, my they do know how to cut to the chase.  I would venture to think that the only people who are not in a financial bind concerning just about everything in life are those fat cats on some famous street in New York City whose mouths are watering right now in anticipation of some mighty obscene bonuses which I think you and I are paying for.  I also suspect that those fat cats are not in the least concerned about paying for a funeral when they need one.  In fact it might easily be predicted that these fat cats will never ever be concerned about death care costs, because I have noticed when a family pulls up in a Bentley their loved one usually goes out in a carboard box with no services whether the Bentley is paid for or not. 

In my career it is Archie and Edith Bunker, the salt of the earth, common folk who pull up to the funeral home in a Chevy whose loved one often times goes out in a wood or metal casket, with some services.  Thank God for the common folks, I believe they are the foundation, the rock, the anchor of our great profession – but exploration of that subject is being held for a future blog.  (I can’t still believe I am blogging!).

Anyway.

For many years I have been told, undercover of course, that people who select cremation are, well, cheap, they don’t care, they are strange.  Might I balance the scales here a tad?  For my entire career I have encountered clients, no matter what method of final disposition they select who are, well, cheap, they don’t care, they are strange (to me, anyway, and I have been mistaken many times in these judgments).

Sometime back I concluded that people choose cremation because it reflects in an almost unconscious way how they have lived their lives, long before they encountered any funeral director and/or cemeterian.  Long, long before.

I believe that in the instance of cremation the attraction –  again almost unconsciously these days – is because it mirrors how these good people, common ordinary people have eaten, driven, entertained themselves, cooked, washed, taken care of their autos, just lived daily life long before they were involved with our profession. In other words they walk in the front door with already set lifestyles, attitudes, values and convictions concerning the disposal of the dead, and unfortunately they might well have formed these pretty solid ideas without any input from any person from our profession. Now that is too bad.

Seems to me that most people make medical decisions in consultation with a physician, dental decisions in consultation with a dentist, financial decisions with a banker, educational decisions with a teacher, but too often, way too often, rock solid decisions are made concerning death services or the lack of them without any consultation with the funeral director.  To be sure consultations with funeral directors happen every day but possibly not on the scale to which is might or should.  Too bad so many people have such solid opinions and arrive at such convictions concerning anything to do with death and fail to converse or communicate with the funeral director.  We have some dandy valuable information – anyway I believe we do.

In fact I had a woman tell me once, very innocently that she spent more time picking out her hair dresser than she did the funeral director when her husband died, and her experience with this 11^th hour funeral director was not good.  When I suggested to her that it was her responsibility to select a reputable funeral director to insure she didn’t end up with what she encountered with the “last minute” guy she got grumpy with me. 

So right now, people, good common ordinary people, have become used to a way of daily life which is quick, painless, easy, instant, and perceived as inexpensive - this latter point is all the more critical these days.  Put all those ingredients together and when people walk into the funeral home it might well be way too much to expect on our parts to ask them to “slow down” and smell the roses, and experience something which we know is valuable but they have not developed those insights which are common knowledge to you and I.

For years we have known in funeral service that people want instantaneous gratification.  Now add a terribly shaky economy to this mix, and the implications for funeral service are something to monitor and examine carefully.

When I was a child in Iowa if I ordered a hamburger, French fries, and a soda it took on average about half an hour for my food to show up, and guess what?  We all waited, never complained, had no high expectations, we just sat there waiting for the food – of course that was in 1956.

My father would take our car to the service station to get the oil changed and we had to leave the bloody vehicle all day long and three service attendants worked on the project throughout the entire day – of course that was in 1962.

Let’s do an internal check.  How many of us would wait for a NUMBER FOUR at Burger King for say half hour?  How many of us would leave our auto at Jiffy Lube for an entire day just to get the oil changed?  I am predicting - - - - NOT MANY!

Now add to this social condition the ingrained social mores and folkways about life being fast and easy and add a horrible economy. Why would anybody these days wonder why the number of people who die and have no money would be increasing? 

The average layperson might be interested in such news, but for you and I this reality is yet another truth concerning people caring, or not caring, for their dead in a consistent manner with how they live their life day to day.  This is a powerful insight which calls out for analysis and action, for if anybody in our profession wants to get a true, accurate, real insight as to where funeral service has been and where it is going, all anybody in any funeral home or cemetery needs to do is to get out of the office and walk downtown and witness daily life, soak it in.  This is a real type of focus group as sure in its accuracy as if a funeral company paid a professional focus group leader $100,000 to come to town and tell them what’s going on.

Downtown, neighborhoods, the local café, the church suppers, and scouting activities, the Friday night ballgames all are living indicators, all are truth serums as to what is going on in your communities, which will ultimately translate into what is going on in funeral service, cemetery work, cremation, burials, and yes, even indigent/penniless deaths.  I find it disconcerting that the poor indigents or just people who can never pay for a funeral through no fault of their own never before made the newspapers until now when increasingly their deaths create (according to the reports) an economic hardship on the community.  Can the indigent and poor of this country when they die possibly be a problem?  The dead being a problem, what are we coming to?  I think a much better question would be to ask is why is it that these people dying without any money, did they once have money, and if they did what happened to the money, which appears today to be translating into a pauper’s grave or immediate cremation?  What happened to these people? 

Yes people are going to care for their dead in a consistent manner with how they live their lives, and if now they have no money – well my friends in funeral service, what are the alternatives? 

Do you think any of the bonus people, the very wealthy, would, because of this terrible economic situation kindly make a large contribution to the “Worthy Poor Funeral Fund?”  I doubt this very much, and as has been the case before in funeral service history, the responsibility of caring for the dead in good and bad times falls to the local funeral director/cemeterian.

I am of the opinion that these poor economic times will see funeral history repeat itself so in the end the compassionate, caring and concerned service to humanity regarding basic care of the dead, regardless of monetary wealth, regardless of station in life, regardless of unavoidable changes in life circumstances and fortunes, will end up on the front door step of the local, hometown funeral director, as it always has in the past.  Thank heavens many funeral homes still have good old-fashioned front porches on them – the front porch has always been a symbol of safety and comfort which are mighty important mental health assets in turbulent times like these.

A great American funeral director - I mean folks this gentleman was one of the best in our profession - once passed along two pieces of funeral service philosophy, not advice but philosophy, to me.  First he said that the word “No” should not be in any funeral director's vocabulary, and second he said, “If it is mentionable by the family it ought to me manageable by the funeral home.” 

This great American funeral director was named Alfred Bickford Marsh and I worked for him while I was a student in Mortuary College in Boston.  No matter who walked through the front door Mr. Marsh embraced them, exercised unconditional positive regard, and became a legend in funeral service.  What an honor it was to work with him.

My friends, Al lived his philosophy with a consistency that most men never attain in life.  He had the ability to gauge his community, he accepted always without question any call, he served "the least of these," and he drove a 1964 Plymouth Fury which seemed to always be in the shop.  The stellar human beings who have been attracted to funeral service make one proud.

Times are not good right now, and there are good people who are living in a consistent and required “new economic” manner by having to watch pennies, to tighten up the belt and yes to spend money on life essentials and in the end possibly die without funds. 

This is happening right now, but as mentioned before, consultation with a funeral professional is ALWAYS a good idea.  Since funerals and death activities are important aspects of living life, given the current situation might it not be wise that funeral homes/cemeteries rekindle, rejuvenate, rebirth the advance planning programs, and get out into the communities and tell our important story? Not to make a sale, but to help a friend make wise and careful and informed decisions and help them make the future not such a scary place.

Anyway that’s one old undertaker’s opinion.    TVB

Why do people choose cremation?
What is most important to families planning a service for a loved one?
What should the funeral director's role be during the service?
A celebrant who has worked with families for several years shares with fellow funeral service professionals what she has learned.

A few years ago, I became certified as a celebrant through the Doug Manning—In-Sight Books training. I dabbled in the field for the first couple of years by doing a service now and then.  Recently, however, I have made a true career change. Now I do celebrant work full time and find it to be the most rewarding endeavor I have ever embarked on.

My experiences with families are wonderful. It is an honor and privilege to help people create a meaningful tribute to their loved one and provide a service that meets their needs.

I have been to the ocean and performed scattering services. Many ceremonies are graveside services, some at the local national cemetery. A few have been in funeral home chapels and some have been in retirement homes.

I find it interesting that the majority of my referrals come from immediate disposition companies. Much of the time someone from the firm attends, passes out folders and arranges flowers, helps with the music and performs other tasks.

The majority (86 percent) of the families I have served chose cremation. There have been many different reasons why, but not one has told me it was because it was less expensive.

One reason I've heard is that a deceased parent wanted to be placed with a predeceased spouse but the surrounding space in the cemetery had been used and the only option the survivors could think of was cremation so that the cremated remains could be placed in the existing grave site.

In several cases, those making the arrangements told me they were following the wishes of the deceased. In those cases of "following orders," scattering always seemed to be the final disposition after cremation.

In some cases, placement in niches or walls where other family members were memorialized was chosen.

Only once have I been told that the person had wasted away with disease and the person handling arrangements thought the deceased would not look good for a viewing.

Cremation, Viewings and Value
About 50 percent of the cremation families I have served have seen the body and held a viewing for family and friends. Some said that the body didn't look like their loved one, but many commented that seeing the body helped them. If the body is available, I view the deceased, too. The majority of the time, the body is beautifully prepared and presented.

I try to meet with every family I serve to gather all the stories and memories I can to create a meaningful service. Only twice have I failed to bring the family together for this purpose. Once it was because the family was out of state. (I did manage to talk to them the evening before the service.) In the other case, because of a huge family rift some of the children simply refused to be in the same room with one another... but that's another story.

Sometimes we in the profession think that folks who choose cremation for their loved ones do it because they care less about the deceased than those who opt for traditional services. This simply is not true!

In talking to cremation families, I find that they care very deeply about their loved ones. Cremation is not the enemy. These families are willing to do things that matter—things they see value in doing.

Merchandise probably is not nearly as important to the consumer as it is to the funeral service provider. To providers, it is a revenue stream, right? Well, for many consumers, it is a necessary but unwanted evil. I have officiated over many cremation services with the plastic box containing the cremated remains right up front. If it doesn't bother the family, it doesn't bother me.

When I ask, as I always do, "Will the urn be present?" usually the family says yes, they would like to have the urn present. They see value in the cremated body being at the service.

I don't ask them questions about the urn itself unless the conversation happens to go in that direction and it turns out there is a special significance to the style or color chosen. A number of people have replied to my question about the urn by saying, "Yes, the urn they provided for us will be there."

For how many years have vendors been advising funeral service providers not to "provide" the family with an urn (or container, if you will)? How many times do suppliers have to say, "Ask the family to select the container they want to use" for the message to get through?

If you glean nothing else from this article, remember this: Stop providing a temporary container for cremated remains. Instead, always ask the family to select a container. They will be happier, and so will you.

The reason is simple. Out of all the families whose loved ones' remains were in a plastic box, only one told me they didn't like anything they were shown. All the rest told me no one offered them anything else and they would have liked to have something other than the plastic box.

If you're thinking, "that can't be true," remember that a person in grief does not always understand what is being said to them. It is possible that in some cases the funeral service provider did try to offer the family a selection of containers and the family members simply didn't hear.

When you are going over the General Price List and doing the paperwork and you tell the family that the cremated remains will be returned to them in a container, why would they want to see anything else? After all, you are providing them with a free container, right? They have hundreds of decisions to make and you're making it easy for them in this one instance by not giving them a choice. But who is the loser?

Take Charge of the Service
Many times the family has chosen to contact me directly. Sometimes they are determined to be in charge of everything. They also choose to pay me directly. (And 20 percent of the time, they give me more than I charge.)

Newsflash: Personalization is not about products, it is about the person who died. Many suppliers will think this is sacrilegious. Sorry—it's true. Personalization is not about the bells and whistles of the "stuff," it is about the service, the body and the celebration.

The consumer wants something other than what they have been getting. Families want a true celebration of the deceased's life, a reception with some food and a celebrant who will tell the story of their loved one. They do not want a minister who only provides a sermon and an altar call.

It is very gratifying to have people come up to me and say, "Wow! I have never been to a service like this. Why aren't all funerals like this?" Many participants have asked for my card or for a brochure. They are truly hungry for meaningful celebrations.

When you meet with a family, even one with a church home, when discussing plans for the service, ask them, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how religious would you like this service to be?" If their answer is five or less, call a celebrant. Suggest to them that they would be better served by someone who feels the same way they do.

Yes, there are some ministers who can provide a celebration versus a sermon, but perhaps the funeral home would be better served if the event was "awesome" and the family was thrilled by a service that knocked their socks off.

Don't be put off by the family who says, "We have a minister." Ask the question! I have handled services for families in which the deceased had been a member of the same church for as long as 35 years, but the children wanted a celebration, not a sermon, despite being regular churchgoers.

I agree with author and Baptist minister Doug Manning: Funeral directors gave the service away to the clergy, and that has hurt the profession. How many times have you, the funeral director, stood outside the door of the chapel and heard people say as they left, "Don't you do anything like that for me! I don't want a funeral!" How many times did you yourself feel the same way about what you had just heard?

It must be frustrating, especially when the problem wasn't something you did as the funeral director. You worked hard to do everything right for the family, made sure there would be no mistakes, no glitches. But then you handed over the service—and the limelight—to a minister who got up in front of everyone and, in less than two minutes, ruined the experience for the family.

The solution: Take back the service!

For me, it is wonderful to work with a funeral director who acts as master of ceremonies. Please, get up in front, introduce the celebrant or minister, tell folks who are singing and what the music will be and why those particular songs were chosen. Tell people how to get to the cemetery and invite them to the reception afterward.

YOU do it—don't turn that over to the officiant. That is your time to shine, to make sure everyone there knows who did the work. Don't stand in the back with your hands folded and your mouth shut. You have worked hard to provide a meaningful experience for the family—take credit for it. Be seen and be heard.

If you don't get up front and everything you do is behind the scenes, when the minister blows it, what do the attendees think? They think what they just saw is what a funeral is. If you get up front and are visible and then the minister blows his portion of the service, they know it was the minister, not the funeral director, who didn't do his or her job.

******

I love the families we serve. I love funeral directors for their hearts of gold and their tireless dedication to families, and I love feeling like my life matters. Helping a family create a meaningful tribute to someone they dearly loved is an honor and a privilege. I love being part of funeral service, and I hope I will be for many more years.

When a funeral director gets chosen for one of those “man on the street” interviews, look out.

I’m writing a series on dealing with the media that is running in ICCFA Magazine, but one topic I’m not addressing is that random interview. I can think of no worse or more vulnerable position to be in than when a roving reporter or interviewer randomly selects a funeral director as the “man on the street.”

Let me give you an example, a glaring example. Years ago, I had a student at the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science named Jamie Bowles. Jamie is still in funeral service in an Eastern state and has done mighty well for himself, and we have remained good friends.

One evening a few years back, I was watching “The David Letterman Show” and as he often does, Letterman sent somebody to roam the streets of New York and pick out people to “interview.”

To describe what Letterman does as an interview is truly a stretch; this particular evening the interviewer was a man who operated a deli in Manhattan. The camera starts rolling, Letterman is giving the deli man his instructions and in time several customers enter the store. One of them was none other than my friend Jamie Bowles—I damned near fell out of bed.

The deli man was quizzing everybody with the questions Letterman was telling him to ask. Letterman, back in the studio, would make comedy from the answers the customers were coming up with.

It was now Jamie’s turn and Letterman asked, “What do you do for a living?” My thrill turned immediately to concern and I watched as Jamie paused, got a little smile on his face and said, “I’m a funeral director.” Letterman went out of his mind on the air and firmly told his deli operator to “Get him (Jamie) off now!”

Mr. Bowles is always the gracious gentlemen, and he took the snub in stride, but it was a glaring example of how the subjects of funerals and funeral directors can ring bells and whistles.

When dealing with the scene of a death means more than a simple removal, what help can a funeral director offer the family? What should you look for in a trauma scene contractor before recommending one to families?

For families dealing with a death that occurred in the home, the loss may be compounded by the need to remove the visible signs of the tragedy.

In these cases, the role of the funeral director in providing grieving family members with complete and compassionate care should include helping them arrange for their home
to be returned to good order.

This means the funeral director should know what professional trauma scene services are available in the area and know enough about them to feel comfortable recommending them to the family.

What trauma scene contractors do
A good trauma scene contractor will properly complete the cleanup of all blood and bodily fluids to ensure a sanitary home environment and allow family members to move forward.

In one crucial aspect, a good trauma scene contractor should resemble a good funeral home:
The relatives of the deceased and/or the owner of the home or other property being cleaned must feel confident that the company will be discrete and respectful about its work.

The contractor's job is to remove any visible signs of the remains and disinfect the affected areas. All blood and bodily fluid material must be removed to ensure a sanitary condition, meaning no odor can be detected and nothing is left that would provide a food source for insects or rodents.

Trauma scene cleanup differs from environmental scene cleanup in that there are no enforceable standards for removal of blood or bodily fluids.

Complete disinfection is difficult to measure onsite at the time of the cleanup. The standard is therefore very much a self-imposed "best effort," consisting of sight and smell criteria.

In some cases, a contractor may decide that a stain cannot be cleaned up and the contaminated surface—carpet and pad, wallboard (sheetrock), subfloor, fixtures or personal effects—must be removed.

The following examples illustrate what can be involved in handling a trauma scene:
1. The deceased was an elderly man who had died in bed; it was at least a week before his son found him. The decomposition of the body had saturated the bed mattress, box spring and the carpet under the bed.

The trauma scene contractor (recommended to the son by the local funeral home) dispatched three technicians. The mattress, box spring and affected carpeting were removed and placed in containers for disposal. All waste materials were delivered to a contracted autoclave (sterilization) facility able to handle wastes containing biological hazards.

The technicians also vacuumed the entire bedroom, offered to remove the spoiled food from the refrigerator and boxed-up personal effects that were of immediate importance. Before leaving, the technicians deodorized the home.

2. After a man committed suicide at home, in the garage, his son-in-law asked for a trauma scene contractor to handle the cleanup.

The contractor met the next of kin at the property to gain access to the garage and learn what items were of monetary or sentimental value and would need to be cleaned and returned, if possible, rather than discarded.

During the course of the cleanup, the contractor discovered several sizable bone fragments and notified the medical examiner. The unpainted sheetrock walls and ceiling could not be effectively cleaned, so the technicians removed them after discussing the situation with the son-in-law and getting his approval.

Throughout the cleanup, the contractor took photos for use in preparing a report and invoice to send to the insurance company.

These cases show why trauma scene cleanup requires more than the typical janitorial service can offer. At a minimum, all field personnel must prove compliance with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration blood borne pathogen standard 1910.1030.

Evaluating contractors
To ensure the best possible service for your families, you should recommend only qualified trauma scene response contractors.

At this time there are no national certification requirements, and only a few states require companies offering these services to register with the state health department to demonstrate their qualifications.

What criteria should a funeral director use in screening a trauma scene contractor? A competent, compliant and professional contractor should be able to answer the following questions to your satisfaction:

• Does the company have a blood borne pathogen control program, and does it conform to all of the requirements of the OSHA 1910.1030 standard?
• If required, is the contractor registered or licensed by the state or county?

• Does the company have a contract with a licensed disposal facility to incinerate or autoclave waste?

• Does the company have equipment and personnel dedicated to trauma scene response? Does it offer services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year? (In other words, will it be timely in its response?)

• Does the company have a quality control program or can it show you its standard operating procedures (SOPs) and a generic health and safety plan (HASP), which offer an indication that it can do the job?

• Does the company have commercial Insurance, including general and professional liability and errors and omissions?

• Does the company, or its personnel, hold any accreditations? Does it belong to any professional associations?

• What experience do the company and its staff have? How many cleanups have they performed?

When a family's loss is compounded by having to deal with a trauma scene, the funeral director can offer complete care by being prepared to help the family find a company to handle the cleanup quickly, completely and with discretion.

Aside from DNA, there is only one other aspect of the human body unique to each and every individual who has ever walked the earth: the fingerprint.

As we move toward greater individualization and personalization as a business, working to create tributes that tell a story unique to the person being memorialized, I believe the source of helping families to think more about their loved one than about cost and details lies in the fingerprint.

First, though, the history.

Time well spent
Recently I stood at the rear of our chapel with a pastor from one of our local churches. This pastor's approach to "officiating" at a funeral is somewhat unusual. When he receives a request for services, he schedules a time where he can sit with the whole family and get a feel for who the person was and what the family envisions happening at the funeral service.

He usually spends about two hours with them while they tell the stories that were important to their family. He then writes a personalized eulogy and a message of hope tailored to each family and situation.

The time he spends at the service and in the follow-up is handled with the same care and concern for the bereaved.

In all, he spends about five to six hours with each family, compared with some ministers who spend about 20 minutes on the phone with the family and for every service deliver the same message, with only the name changed.

Anyway, this pastor made a passing comment to me about what was happening following the funeral at which he had officiated.

He said, "Isn't it interesting that these people can come here and share this raw emotion, get it out of their system, and go on with life?"

Until that point, I hadn't spent much time reflecting on the value of what we do. I had spent two years in the "alternative" funeral delivery system, where anything that reeked of service or ceremony meant more cost and, therefore, was not appropriate for the families who chose to do business in the "alternative" environment.

Now I had left that environment and returned to a funeral home, I was having to relearn the emotional, spiritual, sociological and psychological value of a group-centered, time-limited tribute wherein a deceased individual's story is told, often for the first time.

The times, they have changed
When did a funeral stop being a rite of passage and become a transaction? Why does a client family look for the least expensive route of disposition without taking into account the effect that choice will have on their families' emotional health?

How can those of us in the funeral profession and not planning to retire anytime soon show families the value of what we do?

The first step involves learning to interview and listening to families as they tell the life story of their loved ones. In essence, taking their "lifeprint."

Where do we go from there? Several years ago, at a Cremation Association of North America marketing conference, I was looking for a place to sit down and enjoy my buffet breakfast.

Just as I was about to sit down alone, someone said, "Why don't you come sit over here?" I didn't know the fellow who had issued the invitation, but I recognized him as a fellow conference attendee.

As soon as I sat down, he started talking. "I've been working on this idea for identifying the deceased person while still at the place where they died," he said.

He showed me drawings and some notes he had scribbled. The drawing was of a metal disc with two hearts, an inner one and an outer one, each marked with the identical number.

His idea was to attach the inner heart to the deceased when the pick-up took place and detach the outer heart and give it to the family at that time.

This disc would accompany the deceased throughout the entire disposition process, whether burial or cremation, and end up affixed to the casket or urn, thereby giving the family extra assurance that the body they were receiving back into their care was, in fact, the same one they had placed in his.

I was impressed both with the idea and at the man who had envisioned it. He extended his hand and said, "I don't believe we've met Dave Daly."

I'm sure most of you reading this knew him for many years, but I was a young man just starting out, and the name Dave Daly held an aura of celebrity for me. "Are you the Dave Daly?" I thought. This was one of the guys I'd listened to on tapes and watched on videos for so many years, along with others such as Gary O' Sullivan, Asher Neel, Bud Kendrick and Bill Rowe. And now I had had the opportunity to share a meal with one of those giants of our profession.

I love this job.
Back at Eternal Hills, we drew on Dave Daly's idea to take our "lifeprint" concept further. When someone is received into our care, we take a fingerprint of the deceased's right thumb and place it on a bracelet that will accompany the deceased through the entire disposition process.

In a burial case, the bracelet will remain in place and end up in the casket with them. In a cremation case, the bracelet is removed and kept with the paperwork while the cremation takes place, then placed in the urn.

At the same time we place the thumbprint on the bracelet, we also attach a copy of the print to the first call sheet. The thumbprint is then scanned onto our internal computer network and a copy is placed in the paper file for the deceased.

Aside from providing an additional means of identification if a question of identity ever arises, the thumbprint helps us transition to service planning. As I mentioned before, the service becomes the telling of the deceased's story—his or her "lifeprint."

To help families think about how their loved one was unique, we bring the scanned image of the thumbprint onto the television or computer screen in the arrangement room.

We then say, "We've spent the last few minutes talking about your dad and the impact he had on your life. The purpose of the funeral is to tell his story and show his unique “lifeprint” on you, your family, his friends, his colleagues and society.

"Whether you plan on having a public time of tribute or simply a private gathering, we believe you will find great sex cam comfort and live sex cam healing in the free sex web cams gathering together of live cam girl friends and family to share memories. I think some of the things we need to incorporate into that time are…….”

At this point, the funeral director begins to share some of the ways Eternal Hills can work with them to turn the memories they've shared about the deceased into a meaningful tribute that will be remembered by everyone who attends the service.

Learn to direct the service
As providers of goods and services surrounding the death of a family member, we must stop standing at the back of the church or chapel and move to the front. When I look up "director" in the dictionary, I find it defined as: "one who supervises the production of a show."

How many funeral directors would meet that definition of the position? How many understand what Ernie Heffner calls "the panache and profit correlation?"

Based on my own observations, I would say not many. Funeral "directors" who realize that bereaved families need help and advice will not worry about the rising rate of cremation or the rising costs of doing business. They will instead seek new and profound ways to take the business we know today as "death care" to a new level.

I'll end by dropping one more celebrity name. Todd Van Beck's concept of seeking, with or without the family's knowledge or permission, the one thing that is going to be their "WOW factor" should be a funeral arranger's ultimate goal.

This is what elevates the funeral from something endured for the sake of the grieving family to a tribute that accurately reflects the deceased's life so that everyone in attendance leaves with the feeling their time was well spent.

Can you say goodbye forever in 60 minutes?

I can wash a car, mow the lawn, wash the house windows, change the sheets on every bed in the house, make a meal, give a lecture, write a letter, visit a shut-in, read an entire magazine and take a nap. I think and plan ahead to maximize my efforts.
 
These are tasks I know I can do in one hour.

There are also things I know I can't do in one hour: paint the house, drive 400 miles, read "War and Peace," understand my computer and solve the Middle East crisis.

And, I know I can't accept condolences from 100 or more people prior to the funeral service for my loved one.

Saying goodbye shouldn't be rushed
I may be able to receive support, tell how my loved one died, hold another human being, reminisce and share my grief with perhaps a maximum of 10 individuals. The rest will have to stay lined up in the center aisle of the church, synagogue or funeral home.

They will not get to see the deceased, to whom they have come to bid their farewell or pray for. And they will not get to fully accept the reality of their friend's or co-worker's death.

They, and I, will be forever void of the meaningful interchange when people stand at the casket and share their stories, memories and grief. They will be without the opportunity to touch, kiss or pray near the body of a person they knew and loved.

The stories will be lost forever. The pain will be kept forever. The support will be missing forever.

A life is remembered by poignant moments, forever.

Visitations matter
The visitation is a major aspect of the funeral process. It brings humans together to fulfill human needs. These basic human needs cannot be met when the obituary reads, "Visitation one hour prior to the service."

Picture memory boards are helpful at a visitation. Video collages are helpful at a visitation. Prayer services are helpful at a visitation. A well prepared body is helpful at a visitation.

But most of all, time is the greatest asset at a visitation. Without time, all of the other important functions can't happen.
One hour holds a mere 60 sweeps of the clock. How insignificant when compared to a lifetime of 85 years, or 44,676,000 sweeps of the minute hand.

Those in funeral service before us remember visitations that lasted two days and nights. They remember that at the end of those visitations the family was much more ready to give up their loved one.

By making things "easier" for mourners and funeral directors, we have made it harder to obtain the value of the leave-taking process.

In this era of options, which funeral service proclaims as the new wave, let us offer the option
of more hours of visitation/viewing and explain the value of the visitation in the funeral process. Counsel those you serve on the value of time and keep meeting those basic needs in your funeral home.

It all started with these words
If you're seeing numerous people lined up in the aisle prior to the start of the service and are wondering what to do, remember, it all started with the words, "Visitation one hour prior to the service."

When a large number of family comforters will not leave the cemetery and continue to stand near the closed casket, and you can't get the immediate family members back to their cars, remember the words, "Visitation one hour prior to the service."

When family members come to pick up more thank-you cards and say, "Everything seemed to happen so quickly and we never got to talk to everyone who came," remember the words, "Visitation one hour prior to the service."

One of our major roles is helping families see the pros and cons of their decisions. When you counsel families, please remember what can and can't be done in one hour.

It's easy to talk about the importance of offering families personalized, meaningful services, but following through is harder.
It takes good interviewing and listening skills, combined with a flair for translating what is learned into a ceremony the family will value.

Families today are increasingly looking for ways to personalize funeral and memorial ceremonies so they better reflect the person's life, no matter how simple or complicated it may have been.

There are many ways that officiants can and should personalize ceremonies, including speaking with family and friends before writing the ceremony and encouraging family participation in the ceremony itself.

At the heart of the ceremony, we should look to incorporate the hobbies, pastimes and passions of the individual we are remembering. This can be done in a tasteful way that reflects the person's true nature, and in turn, the things that he or she loved.

Gathering the information
As a funeral celebrant, you should collect information essential to creating ceremonies by conducting an unhurried interview with the family to ensure accuracy, warmth and meaning. During this interview, the family will share many details about the life of their departed loved one, from the school days and neighborhood friendships to career information and adult life.

By asking pointed yet caring questions, the funeral officiant can and should be able to paint a vivid picture. Once informed, you must then go about the creative process of writing the eulogy, carefully choosing appropriate readings and arranging for the music selected by the family.

Even when you have spent a lot of time preparing the eulogy, you should carefully review it with family members ahead of time to check for accuracy.

You are then ready to officiate at the ceremony, a duty to be performed with compassion, sincerity and care, whether it takes place at the funeral home, crematorium, cemetery or other location.

The three examples that follow are from my work with families. They show how stories and objects or symbols can be woven together to create personalized and authentic end-of-life ceremonies.

Remembering the lost babies and celebrating family
The couple struggled to have a family through the in vitro fertilization process; over several years they suffered the death of three babies, all stillborn. Five years later, they had a family, daughters 3 and 5 years old, but they had not forgotten the babies who would have been their daughters' older siblings.

They chose to honor the memory of those three brief but precious lives in a springtime ceremony. Family and friends gathered at their home and garden. The parents expressed the importance of family, their love of life and the joy their two young daughters have given them.

Throughout the ceremony, they used symbolism and homegrown rituals to honor the children who had not survived. One beautiful example: The family planted three evergreen trees in their garden, one in memory of each of their stillborn babies.

In a meaningful and deeply touching way, this family discovered that through ceremony they could pay homage to their family, present and past. They were able to honor the life experience of having children and of losing children, and were able to share the ceremony with the people in their lives they love the most.

Giving a father and best friend a fishing pole salute
When their father died, the two brothers in their 30s also lost their best friend. Throughout their lives, the three had been inseparable. Together they shared the best of times, deep-sea fishing, clearing brush by their oceanfront property, simply hanging out, playing guitar and, most of all, watching the glorious sunrises on the beach.

Every summer, the whole family, including grandchildren, enjoyed time together at their golden oasis by the sea. Early one morning, the eldest son was helping his father untangle the shore brush when his father suddenly fell ill. No one else was in sight. He held his father in his arms and shared the last few moments of his life. As the sun rose, his father passed away.

For their father's funeral ceremony, the two men wrote a song to honor his memory. Neither of them was much for talking; they were more comfortable sharing their loss with family and friends through their guitar music.

Prior to the viewing, the celebrant asked guests to bring their fishing poles and line them up in the funeral home near the casket. It resembled a military procession, with a fishing pole rather than a gun salute.

The ceremony was true and heartfelt. The two sons were able to communicate their feelings and the close relationship they had shared with their father in a sincere and meaningful way, and everyone who attended was able to participate in showing their love and respect for this beloved father and friend.

Remembering all the colors of a long life
A Dutch landscape artist, father, grandfather, husband and musician took his life at the age of 81. A little known fact is that worldwide, it is not uncommon for elderly people to take it upon themselves to end their lives at a time and place of their own choosing. Family members then have to come to grips with their death and find a way to grieve and honor their lives as well as respect their personal decisions about dying.

Although suicide is a difficult subject to talk about, and some clergy would rather not deal with these deaths, it is so very important for people whose loved ones have taken their lives to find a dignified way to pay proper tribute and respect to that life.

Denying a ceremony for someone who took their own life is damaging to their family and friends, both emotionally and psychologically. Bringing the family and loved ones together to share the grief and to understand the history and spirit of the person is vital for mental health and well being.

Through a carefully crafted ceremony that tells the story of the deceased—heritage, history, loves, hates, talents, relationships, accomplishments, foibles, failures and joys—we paint the picture of a real person.

We tell the story, heart and soul, and we share it with family and friends. An in-depth personal eulogy, or life tribute, becomes in itself "life affirming," a meaningful record for families and a legacy passed down to future generations.

For this artist's funeral ceremony, all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren painted something to be placed in his grave—a gift from younger generations to a previous one. The ceremony elaborated on the great Dutch heritage that thrives in the family of artistic expression through fine art painting. Every one of those 13 could draw or paint.

The ceremony acknowledged that this man who was a very talented artist also suffered during his life from various illnesses, went blind and, upon losing his dear wife of 50 years, who had died the year before, lost his will to live.

One of the artist's grandsons, who had been very much influenced by his grandfather, had become a fine artist himself.  He also arranged, not long after the funeral, a meeting with a curator to view his grandfather’s work, now displayed in the National Museum of Art.

As these vignettes about lives remembered and honored illustrate, showing an appreciation for life helps us appreciate our own lives. There is no better way to honor our departed loved ones than to create a ceremony that truly reflects the person we loved.

Funeral celebrants are trained laypeople available to work with a deceased person's family to plan and conduct a funeral service that celebrates the person's life. They are used most often when the deceased was not religious or had no relationship with a local minister or house of faith.
Celebrants are more widely used in Australia and New Zealand, where church attendance rates are low and cremation rates high, but they are becoming more common in North America. This is the story of how one celebrant provides a caring service to a Calgary funeral home and its families.

Bonnie Roddis operated veterinary clinics for 30 years and regularly takes animals to visit schools and nursing homes, but it is her role as a funeral celebrant that this resident of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, considers her life's calling.

Since attending celebrant training two years ago, Roddis has led approximately 200 services through Foster's Garden Chapel of Calgary. She considers a personalized service that enables even family members to learn more about the deceased to be "The last gift we can give. I just help the family find the right wrapping paper."

Several of the earliest services Roddis conducted were for indigents who had no money for funerals.

"I feel very strongly that everyone should have appropriate words said over them," Roddis said. While she received no money for these services, she described "the greatest payment I've ever received" as eight photographs of scenery around Banff in the Canadian Rockies taken by a man who died a pauper.

Learning about the person
Roddis' work begins when a funeral home contacts her to let her know it is serving a family that may be interested in her services.

She calls a family member, expresses condolence for their loss and arranges a time to meet at their home or at the funeral home. She then outlines what her role would be and what would be involved in preparing for the service.

If the family decides to engage her as celebrant, Roddis begins with a list of questions designed to obtain the family history and biographical facts about the deceased.

She then moves to a more open-ended approach and may say something like, "Give me five words that describe your dad," or "What was your mom like on holidays?"
During the interview, Roddis draws out information about pets, athletic pursuits, hobbies and anything else a family member thinks is important.

A young child once asked Roddis if she was going to speak about her grandmother and Roddis immediately asked the child if she had something she wanted to share.

"She could take her teeth out," the child replied. Roddis carefully crafted a way to use the story and drew smiles from family members in the process.

In another instance, Roddis worked with the family of a 37-yearold woman who had died of cancer. During the family meeting, Roddis learned the woman was an alcoholic who had joined Alcoholics Anonymous and stopped drinking three years earlier.

At her service, "we focused on what a fabulous thing she did when she joined AA and helped others at the same time," Roddis said.

"I speak for the immediate family about what they want people to know about their loved one," she said. "They want someone to talk about their love for the person. They want it put right."

Writing a good eulogy takes time
To get it right, Roddis spends two to six hours in the family meeting and then three to six hours putting the service together. As she writes a eulogy, she imagines one person in the service who never met the deceased. By the end of the service she wants that person to feel as though he or she did know the deceased.

For the family, Roddis wants "to give them a mental picture that's not as sad as the one they saw in the casket or at the hospital. You have to give them something good."

Roddis also works with the family to decide where the service should be held. She has officiated at services in funeral homes, private homes, yards, parks and a historic building.

"Not everyone's cathedral is made of brick or wood. It may be on a river bank or on a mountainside," she said.

Roddis, who is 56 and has multiple health problems, believes being a celebrant may be her last vocation. She also doesn't believe she could have done it at a younger age. "There is a wisdom that comes to a woman in her 50s," she said.

She is sometimes asked why she has chosen to be involved in such a "sad" line of work.

"I don't hear about sadness," she said. "I hear about courage, selflessness, love and many other human traits. I'm not making a fortune, but I'm making a difference."

What advice would you give if a funeral service intern asked you how to find a good job?

A young funeral service intern asked me the other day, "How can I obtain a good position in the profession after my apprenticeship?"

I thought about how the funeral business has changed over the past 20 years. In the past, most interns would be sons and daughters from family funeral homes who would not have to ask that question.

They would return to the family business and eventually follow their parents—and often grandparents and great-grandparents, and would someday have children of their own who would continue in the profession.

In today's world, a growing majority of those entering the profession have chosen to do so without any previous family connection or even funeral experience itself. Of course, this is true in other areas of expertise as well. Most dentists, lawyers, engineers, retail sales managers, teachers and health care professionals choose their careers rather than "inherit" them.

There's a lot of advice that I could think of for this young man to consider. Off the top of my head, I could have listed:

•    Dutifully fulfill your obligations while going through your internship.
•    Ask lots of questions about how funeral services should be conducted.
•    Develop a personal professional style and interpersonal skills to better relate to grieving families.
•    Practice technical preparation procedures.
•    Invite feedback from coworkers.
•    Network through professional associations.

Searching for the key
But I wondered if there was one single thing that could answer his question and provide the guidance he so sincerely requested.

When I was in my 20s, I graduated from an agricultural college where the dean was a memorable character and a great mentor to the students. He had served his country in wartime and loved watching young people learn and see their dreams come true.

He instilled in all of us a special determination to be the best at whatever we did, and to have fun in the process. His philosophy has stuck with me throughout my career.

I remember one evening as I was studying in my dormitory for some midterm exams coming up; he walked by my open door and stuck his head in. He said, "Why are you studying when some of your classmates seem to be more interested in partying?” I half-jokingly answered, "Because I want to know the material well, then pass the exams and then party."

He replied, "Good for you! You've discovered the first secret to success in work and life."

I asked him to explain what he meant. He said, "Make no mistake about it. The world is 'dog eat dog,' and it's every person for himself. My philosophy is straightforward: I love my job. It's a hell of lot better than working, and I'm not going to let some sluggard take it away from me.

"You can endure your place in life or you can enjoy it. It's entirely up to you. If you are doing something that's not better than working, you are working."

As young people choose to enter the funeral profession for whatever reasons and fully apply themselves, they are making a series of commitments. Over time, some will do better than others as their various levels of abilities and talents manifest themselves. Some will be very strong at first and then fizzle out, others may start out weak but develop into prominent leaders within the profession.

Some will find funeral home environments that are more conducive to personal development than others. Some funeral directors will help them become all they can be and others will take unfair advantage of their time and talents and not compensate them fairly.

In any case, those who succeed will obviously be enjoying what they do. They won't be people who are enduring, just "getting by." They will have passion and a keen interest in everything they turn their hands to.

Those who persevere will find opportunities that will open more doors to advancement. The fact is, people with abilities tend to rise to the top, tend to find rewarding positions and develop strong reputations for expertise, passion and creativity.

So what was my response to the intern's question? I said: "Love your profession. It's a hell of a lot better than working, and don't let some sluggard take it away from you. You can endure your profession or enjoy it. It's entirely up to you."

The potential in the next five years for anyone who wants to provide funeral, burial and cremation services to grieving people is enormous.

It's not about finding that elusive "position," it's positioning your attitude and daily approach to the profession that eventually attracts opportunities and a resulting rewarding career.

Developed in 1998 by the Government and Legal Affairs Task Force of the
International Cemetery and Funeral Association
 

BACKGROUND

Occupational licensing by state regulatory authority is a common practice in many professional fields, which includes the licensing of funeral directors and embalmers. In order to qualify for a professional license, individuals generally have to satisfy certain requirements, such as achieving a specified educational level, undergoing specialized training, completing an apprenticeship or internship in their field, and passing certain professional examinations.

Since specific licensure requirements for funeral directors and embalmers vary from state to state, this guideline attempts to standardize the criteria for reciprocal licenses to help promote universal acceptance of this concept. In those states with separate licensing for funeral directors and embalmers, corresponding reciprocity requirements could also be bifurcated.

PRINCIPLES

1. A funeral director or embalmer making application for a reciprocal license should furnish the new state regulatory authority with proof that they:
   
   1. a valid license from another state;
   2. Have graduated from an accredited program in mortuary science; and
   3. Have passed a nationally recognized examination.
2. The new state regulatory authority should obtain a certified statement from the state regulatory authority where the applicant is licensed attesting to the applicant's qualifications and certifying the following:
   
   1. That the applicant's license is in good standing and that there are no pending disciplinary actions relating to the existing license;
   2. That the applicant has never been convicted of a felony or misdemeanor related to the practice of funeral directing, embalming, or consumer fraud; and
   3. That the applicant had experience as a licensed funeral director or embalmer in the former state for a specified number of years.
3. The applicant for a reciprocal license should pass a written examination covering applicable laws in the reciprocating state.
    
4. When the applicant has satisfied the above requirements, the regulatory authority should not unreasonably withhold issuance of a reciprocal license.
    
5. If there is a prerequisite for completion of an apprentice or intern program contained in the reciprocating state law, this requirement should be waived based upon the former state regulatory authority's certification that the applicant has prior experience as a licensed funeral director or embalmer for a specified number of years.

What Do Funeral Directors Do?

Primarily, funeral directors care for and safeguard the deceased person until final disposition, including embalming and restorative work. A growing number of funeral directors are trained as grief counselors to help families through the bereavement process. They also arrange and provide an orderly series of events that finalize the funeral, the final disposition, and legal paperwork so the family can proceed forward. They also provide the physical establishment in which all of this can be accomplished.

See also "what is a store-front funeral home?"