I suspect I might well regret writing this blog simply because I had an attorney several weeks ago in New Orleans firmly and repeatedly remind me what I had writing in past blogs – in other words tossing my own words right back at me, and he was good at his job.

However I know that the lawyer’s job and stock in life is not easy or pleasant, and having been through the deposition process a few times I was not surprised or ruffled (much).  The young man was just doing his job.

This writing however is not really about the situation that popped up in the great state of Louisiana.  However to be fair to the reader, in a nutshell, here is what is happening way down South.  The religious monks are making caskets – I suspect really nice caskets simply because I have seen the monks' caskets in the past and most of them are skilled craftsmen. (I suspect that last comment will also come back to haunt me, but I will take the risk.)  Now here is the rub: There is a rule, regulation, some prohibition in the great state of Louisiana stating that only licensed funeral directors can sell caskets to the public.  The monks want to sell casket directly to the public, and the funeral directors stood up and said no.

The situation ended up in Federal Court – and as of this writing I have not heard what the learned judge has decided, and not being a betting man, I am just going to wait and see what decision comes down from the bench.

Throughout these proceedings however I was struck by this notion.  I can well remember days when people’s interest in funerals, caskets, vaults, monuments, anything basically to do with death, was extremely distasteful to the typical American who only crossed the death threshold when it was necessary.  It was clear that the general public did not want to talk about, face up to or interact much with the funeral service world, and to be sure caskets were an intrinsic part of the funeral world, and hence funeral directors, by public default almost, were the basic lone provider of the casket. This system worked for years, and some states (like Louisiana) even passed rules which were designed to keep the casket in the exclusive preview of licensed funeral directors, because funeral directors, with a law or without a law, historically have been the only people in any community who ever showed the least inkling of interest in the casket.

However in the past decade people seem to be coming out of the woodwork to get their piece of the overall funeral pie so to speak, and the casket is a very easy target to focus on.  The monks in Louisiana want to sell caskets and have been selling them to the public and I cannot speculate as to what is their motivation to do so, but then there are people right off the street who decide to sell caskets directly to the public, sell memorial books, sell vaults, sell most any death/funeral related “commodity” directly to the public.

Not surprisingly however I have not seen many of these “outsiders” wanting to take on the responsibility of caring for the actual dead body, and/or serving the bereaved family during and after the commemorative funeral rituals, and I totally understand why – because it is easier, pure and simple.
The logic of the ease goes this way.  If I can sell a casket between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. and make a nice profit, why should I even be concerned about getting out of bed at say 3:30 a.m. and respond to a death crisis?  No, my friends, the outside people who have put funeral service products on their financial radar screen want to be “funeral directors” without having to put in the time, education, mission and devotion to just do it right.

I suspect when my new lawyer friend reads this he will smile and his smile is probably justified and understandable given the sign of the times these days.  It is clear now to me that I am out of touch with exactly what it means in essence and substance to be a funeral professional these days.  There was a time that providing caskets was a part of the essence and substance of being a funeral professional.   Who are we now?  What now is our mission?  How do we respond kindly to the loss of something that clearly once was viewed as a “sacred burial receptacle” but today is very successfully being bantered around as a commodity rating about on level of importance with a refrigerator?  What do we do?

If as funeral directors we put up a protest, then naturally the response is that we are being greedy (as were some of the responses in Louisiana), and of course nothing is more archetypal in its offensiveness to the human experience than the stereotype of the greedy undertaker.  Even Charles Dickens portrayed the “greedy” undertaker in his novel when he invented the shylock London undertaker “Mordecai Mold.”  Of course, to be fair, I don’t think that the lawyer profession these days is doing much better when it comes to a positive public image, nor is the United States Congress – it is just a sign of the times.

I find that the only comfort I can get concerning this state of affairs in professional life is to talk to other mission-oriented professionals who have stayed the course, who have been educated, who have passed their required state and national examinations who have served their required internships, clerkships and apprenticeships, and who have GOTTTEN THEIR STATE LICENSE TO PRACTICE THEIR CHOOSEN PROFESSION and not circumvented the requirements that the rest of us had to successfully attain.  It gives me comfort to talk with these people who have stayed the course, because it places my sadness about the signs of the times in a better perspective.  Here is an example.  Following my trip to New Orleans for the deposition upon my return I spoke with a physician buddy of mine.  We both had gone to college in Boston at the same school and at the same time.  He is a mighty fine human being.

We sat in a bar, and I poured my soul out to him about my experience in New Orleans.  He patiently listened and then said a couple of comments that stuck with me.  One statement was “Well Todd, take heart, think what I feel like, after sixteen years in medical school and I get dressed down by some clerk at an insurance company.”  The next statement he made also struck me. He said:  “Our litigious society is eroding us by pieces, and we are so used to the lawyers just battling it out that we are numb to it, and personally I end up requiring needless medical test after needless medical test, just to cover my ass from being sued.”

There we are.  Insurance clerks are bossing around licensed physicians; purchase of pharmaceuticals can now be easily accomplished online without the assistance and expertise of a licensed pharmacist; and monks want to sell caskets.

I want to close by proving as best I can my opinion that there are now folks out in the world who are mighty interested in making money through funeral service, but are not in the least interested in actually doing the work.  In New Orleans I spontaneously in my deposition tossed out this question. “If the monks are interested in caskets, why don’t they just open up a licensed funeral home, I mean the Archdiocese of Denver did it a quarter of a century ago, and it is still in business.”  The looks I received made me feel foolish and that I must have had carrots growing out of my ears.  The message was clear – caskets yes, funeral service no.

In the end I feel that our rock solid foundation of funeral service is just that – service to other people.  The casket used to be part of that – but who knows what the future will hold concerning that issue? The profession is called “funeral service” not “funeral casket” and that is something that these days grounds me and gives me solid direction – service, service, service, service to others.

I drove home that evening, still sad that the monks and undertakers ended up in Federal Court, but thinking clearly after talking to my medical buddy “It could get worse.”  Only time will tell.  Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.  TVB

Throughout my career I have gotten into trouble because I simply did not behave properly according to a few people, sometimes people who held power and prestige, and they used it.  There have been times I just said the wrong thing, and there have been times I have paid the price for saying and writing certain things.  This might well be another one of those times.

Some topics that have gotten me into hot water:  I said several times publically that the minimum educational standard for licensed funeral directors and yes, embalmers, across the United States should be the bachelors degree.  I said publically that I felt that funeral service was fractured because of the many different associations that we have and publically asked the question “Who speaks in the end for funeral service?”  I wrote an article once where I said that caskets might be sold at wholesale cost to the public to respond to the Wal-Mart phenomenon.  I wrote that funeral directors and cemeterians ought to just get together and look at the future together, finding unity in diversity – a thought that did not go over very well in some quarters. 

I am not a terribly courageous person, and certainly these issues have been bantered around for years, but when I have publically spoken or written about these and other issues I have paid a price.  However when you love something, and I certainly love funeral service, there is always a price to be paid.

Now all this introductory material is being presented because I read a fascinating piece of funeral service journalism the other day and part of the article concerned an interesting group called the Funeral Divas.  I hope I have the name of this organization correct, because if I don’t I will risk misbehaving once again, and will certainly be corrected by someone.

As I understood the article, the Funeral Divas is a group of women funeral professionals.  Let’s freeze this frame a minute.  Over the past years several many women in our profession have organized themselves into groups which reflect their need, I believe, for a venue for the expression of their mutual concerns, and also as an opportunity for them to explore their mission and careers in funeral service, to kick around hopes and dreams, and vent frustrations – this happens in most every organization, and is, I believe, a good thing.

I can well appreciate and have totally understood why women felt the need to create their own environment.  In fact when I taught at the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science in the early 1980s we had a organization within the college called The Women’s Club, and amazingly I was their advisor, as if I, as a man, could possibly have contributed anything of substance concerning the issues that these good people were facing. And make no mistake, they were facing issues.

When I worked in tandem with the Women’s Club at CCMS, it was clear to me that indeed there were issues and challenges that the female students were experiencing which created problems and disappointment for many of them.  They needed a safe harbor to express these concerns, and explore them together to find solutions, and truthfully solutions were sometimes very evasive and frustratingly sad.

I remember going to their meetings and listening to their stories about the roadblocks they encountered.  I listened and all the time I was haunted by the fact that I had to work at understanding these evident road blocks that they were experiencing.  I concluded that my initial difficulty in understanding their disappointments arose simply because I personally had felt from birth that having women in funeral service was a natural.

In many of these writings I have made reference to our sainted Blust Bros., who were our undertakers in my hometown of Avoca, Iowa.  I have told stories about them, and have shared many memories about these two human beings.  However what I have innocently omitted, until now, is the glaring truth that the substance and foundation of the Blust Bros. Funeral Home was not the two brothers but was in absolute truth Henry Blust's wife, Hattie.

In my years growing up, the center of the Blust Bros. Funeral Home was Mrs. Hattie Blust.  She was a licensed funeral director and embalmer.  She had embalmed my grandmother’s first husband after he died during the influenza epidemic that struck this country after the First World War.  Mrs. Blust was the business brains behind the success of the funeral home and furniture store.  Mrs. Blust was the rock solid manager of all aspects of the Blust Bros. little empire, and in truth her husband and her brother-in-law did what she told them to do.

Because of this history, I never once thought that having women in funeral service was odd or strange. Mrs. Blust went on as many ambulance calls as anybody did, and she was very strong physically.  I have tossed this tidbit in for the ancient reader who is still addicted to the ridiculous idea that “a woman can’t lift.”  In my career I have worked with a few men who couldn’t or wouldn’t lift, and I have to confess that I can’t lift the way I once did – so there.

Writing on such a topic is always risky.  The risk stems from the fact that topics such as this can easily be edging close to sexism or of being politically incorrect.  However since the Funeral Divas organization has caught this old undertaker's attention, I will take that risk.

Several weeks ago I was honored by being asked to be the commencement speaker at the graduation ceremony for the old standby Worsham College of Mortuary Science in Chicago.  I have always liked Karl and Stephanie Kann (they head up Worsham’s), and it was mighty cordial of them to ask me to speak.  The evening was successful, I believe, but what caught my attention, but did not surprise me, was the impressive number of female graduates.  I was impressed, and my heart was warmed, but I was not surprised, for some years back I saw an increase jumping in the number of mortuary science students who were women, and I thought to myself at that time, “In a short order women will be the major employment force in our line of work.”  In other words, women will become and are now clearly starting to become the managers, the owners and part of a central core of the entire funeral service workforce.

As I watched woman after woman march up to get their degree at Worsham’s, I remembered when I graduated from the New England Institute that we had about 170 graduates in our class, and there was only one, yes you read right, just one woman in the class. Her husband, who owned the funeral home, had dropped dead and she needed a license for business purposes.

While I advocate attempts to find unity within our diversity and criticize the fracturing of our profession into so many splitting groups by having so many associations, I can absolutely, and with great sympathy understand why women feel the need to get their own arena, their own territory, their own venue.  I understand it because during my career in education, I observed the abuse of many female students who were put through the wringer trying to just find an apprenticeship, let alone full time, permanent employment.  There is no need to rehash those difficult experiences, because they are fading away, and hopefully someday will be eliminated because of what I saw happen in Chicago at the Worsham’s graduation: woman after woman getting her diploma.

I believe this issue goes much further that mere employment statistics, standards and opportunities.  Every profession has its sexists, every profession has its egomaniacs, every profession has its fair share of biased and prejudiced people, and every profession has its share of incompetents, bigots and mean spirited people.  I would like to explore something much deeper than the mere fragile human condition concerning funeral service.

In my travels I have seen what I am about to say abundantly clear, and I do not need any survey or study to confirm these observations.  In its very foundational nature, funeral service is more feminine in substance and identity than it is masculine, and I am NOT referring to the traditional ancient idea as feminine being exclusively pertaining to women, and masculine being exclusively male.  I am referring to the very core nature of funeral service in the thinking of Dr. Carl Jung, the great founder of the school of analytical psychology.

Jung spoke of the anima and the animus.  He proposed, with great success, that these are two primary anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind.  The anima and animus are described by Jung as elements of his theory of the collective unconscious, which is a domain of the unconscious that transcends one’s personal psyche.  Rituals (funerals) and death are part of the collective unconscious simply because they happen to everybody on the face of the earth.  Dr. Jung maintained that in the unconscious of the male this finds expression as a feminine inner personality – the anima, which all men possess to a greater or lesser degree. Equivalently, in the unconscious of the female it is expressed as a masculine inner personality – the animus, which all females possess to a greater or lesser degree.

In other words, the basic substance of funeral service, the basic work required in funeral service, is clearly an expression of the anima – the feminine.  Not male or female in the traditional understanding, but instead just a human being, male or female, who can connect with the feminine in their being.  The archetypal feminine does not have to be female, it is anybody who can connect to their feminine characteristics such as listening and being nurturing, caring, sympathetic, gentle, understanding and accepting of others.  I have observed that the most successful men in funeral service are the men who possess these Jungian feminine anima inner being capacities.

Socialization plays a tremendous part in how we end up.  Women are many times socialized to develop this type of Jungian anima, b many time men are not socialized in this manner.  Many times, not always, but many time in our culture male sensitivity is often repressed or ridiculed or worse actually punished for being soft.  Remember the school yard lesson – socially few boys wanted to be called the “sissy.”

I have seen in funeral homes regardless of what labels were given to any of us in the schoolyard that grieving people respond most quickly and effectively with the human being, male or female, who possesses the Jungian concept of the anima – the archetypal feminine which I described above.

Grieving people, in their raw, vulnerable need, respond to any (licensed or not) human being who can naturally be nurturing, caring, sympathetic, gentle, understanding and accepting – can express the Jungian feminine.

I have tried to connect with the anima in my person.  This has not been easy, simply because I was raised socially in a rural agricultural environment which rewarded strong masculine (being in control of everything, never making a mistake, and never ever being wrong) behavior and punished what was considered weak masculine behavior, being the schoolyard “sissy” (caring, gentleness, listening, etc).

However, when I remember Mrs. Blust I can easily connect to the power and authentic connection of the anima, of the feminine in funeral service.  Clearly Mrs. Blust possessed this. Her husband and her brother-in-law had it, but they did not develop this in themselves. Looking back, the truth is that our grieving people in the village of Avoca, Iowa, turned to Mrs. Blust as their guide through their personal valley of the shadow of death.  Mrs. Blust’s husband and brother-in-law did the physical hard work – that is how they were socialized, while Mrs. Blust did the nurturing, and it worked very well.

I personally believe this is why women are doing so well in our great profession.

I also suspect that if Mrs. Hattie Blust was alive today, she just might become a member of the Funeral Divas.

Anyway this is one old undertaker’s opinion. TVB

I just finished reading a recent overview of a high level educational session conducted on the important topic of the future of funeral service. This has been a popular subject throughout my career.  It has dominated many issues of our professional journals, it has been the fodder for the prophets and pundits of our profession, it has certainly been the topic of many continuing education seminars, and many a written word (like this) has been devoted to the neverending topic of what is in store for the future of funeral service.  What do we see in the crystal ball?

I have even been asked now and then to put in my two cents worth concerning this subject, and for the life of me I could never and still can’t figure out why my opinion was ever solicited, because most everything I have predicted about funeral service has been wrong, which just seems to be the way of prophecy.  In fact in my college undergraduate liberal arts education I was taught very clearly in philosophy class that most prophecies have one thing in common (except of course for certain religious prophecies): they have always been wrong, they have missed the mark, they have terribly exaggerated or terribly understated the realities of what the future in the end did hold.  In other words, “crystal balls” only work well in the carnivals with fortune tellers. 

I have certainly encountered “crystal balls,” but I have never really encountered an honest-to-goodness mind reader who could predict the future.  My mother attempted to convince me years ago that she could read my mind, and there were many times I came close to thinking that she could, but in the end even my mother could not read my mind.  Nor can anyone else for that matter.  Telepathy, mind-reading and gifts of prophecy I believe are real but rare, and when it comes to the world of funeral service I have not encountered many clairvoyant undertakers, or embalmers, or morticians, or funeral corporate people, or funeral vendors.  I am sure they are out there, but I have not encountered them.

I have, however, concluded that the prophecies made concerning funeral service are different from the prophecies made about other professions.  It strikes me that most of the prophecies concerning funeral service end up being negative and in the end frighten people, and I would like to suggest this is not a good thing.

What I mean to say is that I have read in other professional journals positive reports about the future of this or that other profession.  This is uplifting, the future looks shiny, and these prophets and pundits bring good tidings.  Most of the reports have nothing to do with money or financial wealth, because I fear if the futurists in any profession focused only on money or financial gain the news would be pretty shaky for most of us.  These positive reports focus on a form of wealth other than money (if in America such a notion is today even possible).  They focus almost exclusively on what, for a better term, I am going to call the predictions of the “worthy ideal,” and I have concluded that by focusing on this, they always end up taking a positive spin. In fact, I have concluded that there are really no other options when the future is viewed as possessing a “worthy ideal.”

The “worthy ideal” always has at its core one premier concept, that of being of service to others.

Here is an example.  A few years ago, a buddy of mine who graduated from law school told me one evening that he knew that the members of the local garbage collectors union made  more per year than he did working for a well-respected law firm.  In the course of our conversation, my friend looked at me and said, “But I love the law.  I know people knock and ridicule being a lawyer all the time, but I don’t care – I’m different – I just love the law and I want to serve people.”

That is a stellar example of a human being having a “worthy ideal” and no matter what, my friend predicted he would succeed at being a good lawyer. Maybe not a wealthy lawyer, but a good, honest, mission driven lawyer helping serve people.  He had the “worthy ideal,” so in his own mind his future looked good and that was all that mattered.  His attitude toward serving others through his profession simply made him immune to the prophets and pundits who looked into the future of the legal profession and declared doom and gloom.

A history of “doom and gloom” predictions for funeral service

Let’s turn back to funeral service.  Throughout my career, I have watched our beloved profession go through fire after fire, and the future many times looked uncertain, but of course trying to look “through” a fire is always scary and uncertain—just ask any firefighter. 

Here are some examples of historic funeral fires: First there was Jessica Mitford, and the prophets and pundits predicted doom and gloom. Then there was the Federal Trade Commission and the Funeral Rule, and once again the prophets and pundits predicted doom and gloom.  Then there was the interference of OSHA, ADA and a slew of other regulations, and once again the prophets and pundits predicted doom and gloom. Then the cremation rate took off and the prophets and pundits predicted doom and gloom.

I don’t remember a single prophet or pundit, while with great certainty and self righteousness predicting (again) impending “doom and gloom” ever raising the professional bar and talking about the worthy ideal of actually being a funeral professional, and how a funeral professional with the worthy ideal would, like my lawyer buddy, find the “doom and gloom” predictions not so scary.

The result of the nonstop doom and gloom approach to anything in life is almost always scaring the hell out of people. Just watch the television news, or tune into a weather report.  Constant reports of doom and gloom create fear, and while fear is indeed a motivator it is a very poor one, and never truly helpful or permanent.  There are better options for getting people and professions motivated, and holding onto a “worthy ideal” of service to others is one of them – no matter what happens.

I remember years ago I went across a certain state doing OSHA compliance seminars.  I tried to take a careful approach and make some simple points, such as OSHA being a good thing – I mean who can argue against a safe work place for our people and clients? –  then I tried to assure them that OSHA was not a demon, and the chance of ever getting inspected was slim, unless a disgruntled former employee turned them in.  The points were not all inclusive, I knew other presenters would have done a better job, but I was careful not to put fear into the funeral directors' hearts and minds. In fact, I tried to make them laugh and relax.  I did not want to scare them simply because the truth was there was absolutely no reason to scare anybody about OSHA.

At the break, one funeral director approached me and said that after he attended a past OSHA seminar he went home so bloody worried and scared that he had seriously thought about just up and selling his funeral home to get a jump on the inevitable doom and gloom which was, according to that OSHA presenter, surely going to befall him and consume him and his wonderful funeral home alive.  I asked him a simple question: “Do you love funeral service?” He responded without hesitation that he did, and I followed up with this question: “Why would you want to sell something you love before it is really your time to sell?”

Scaring people, putting fear into a person’s heart, basically shoots the “worthy ideal” concept straight to hell, and in reality there is no reason to scare people – none.

Here are two beliefs that help me to avoid irrational fear about the future of funeral service:
    •    I firmly believe funeral service, no matter what, is a “worthy ideal,” and hence I believe that the future is good for our profession.
    •    I work consistently in the field with funeral professionals, and I know that thousands of them truly love funeral service. That attitude of service to others alone is success enough for the worthy ideal to prosper and continue to expand. 

This is not to say that any type of “Pollyanna” attitude will rule the day in our great profession.  The movie “Pollyanna” made me ill the first time I saw it in the 1960s when I was only a kid, and it still makes me ill.  If you've seen the movie, you remember the nauseating, ever cheerful, ever optimistic little girl. But that was just a movie, with memorized lines, costumes and make-up. There was nothing real about it.

But funeral service, the death of a human being, and the grief of a human being, is terribly real. I see scores of “in the trenches” funeral professionals with the notion of the “worthy ideal” of selfless service to humanity in their hearts. No matter what financial gains or reverses one experiences, having a “worthy ideal” of being of service to others in one’s mind and heart is, I believe, in the end the very definition and substance of success, and from this sole perspective there are many successful funeral professionals across the globe.

Fear is not a good motivator; a worthy ideal is

Funeral service has its challenges, but the truth is we always have and always will, but I never once saw fear improve things. Being motivated by fear has never made funeral service better – just the opposite, in fact. Fear has created jaded attitudes, sweeping criticisms of our own people from people within our own ranks, and a type of cynicism that tears down instead of building up.  Fear just does not build up anything.

On the other hand, the concept of a human being over time working to progressively realize a worthy ideal is a tremendous motivator and most every funeral director I work with and encounter has this worthy ideal, even if they do not call it by this name exactly.

It is clear that the buying habits of the public have already changed. It is clear that the historic financial structures of funeral service have changed. It is clear that the attitude of people toward rituals and ceremonies have changed.  All this and more is true, true, true – we are reminded of this constantly!  But what is also true is that the men and woman who actually get the work done are also changing and, yes, I believe improving.

No doubt from the point of view of the prophets and pundits the good people who actually make up the true working force of funeral service are not changing and improving fast enough, but I can assure you change and improvements are happening. I can also attest that in my own career I have had to change in both attitude and practice on a monumental scale from where I started out, and if somebody like me can change and improve attitudes, skills, knowledge and a vision of the future of funeral service, it means that scores of others in our great profession have already accomplished this task and are still doing it, because TVB has always been the slow boy in the class.

I would suggest that funeral professionals who have in their hearts the concept of funeral service being a premier example of living out by action and not mere words a worthy ideal do change and alter course when they themselves feel the impulse. They improve on their own timeline and not someone else’s, and this is how it should be.

In fact if a person carefully examines the history of our great profession, this is how the future has always been handled.  The power and influence in funeral service rests with the worthy ideal of human service held by the local funeral homes across this country.  It does not rest with a writer like me.  The future of our great profession rests on every breath taken by the funeral professionals (licensed or not) who make up the real substance of our ministry to the bereaved in the hundreds of thousands of hamlets and towns and cities and villages that make up this great country.

Some readers no doubt will conclude that what I have just written is in fact the problem. They would accuse funeral professionals of having a good old-fashioned  case of “the slows,” but I would suggest just the opposite.  I would suggest that most funeral directors have a good old-fashioned case of “the worthy ideal.” That is the great strength which has guided funeral service to always march through its challenges with care and not too fast, for our profession learned long ago that change just for the sake of change sometimes results in going from nothing to nothing.

As my young lawyer buddy struggled with pronouncements from all corners that the legal profession was going to hell in a hand basket, that all lawyers were crooks, all lawyers lied, all lawyers were scam artists, he held onto his own personal worthy ideal of service to others.  He held onto the idea that he could and would continue to make a difference, to be of service.  It seems that naysayers are in the ascendency in these complicated times, and some of the naysayers make big money tearing down and criticizing others and what they are honestly and sincerely attempting to accomplish.

Holding onto any type of worthy ideal is not easy.  Many times the rewards, particularly financial, are elusive.  Sometimes the worthy ideal concept and big money are simply incompatible.  Sometimes few people seem to understand or appreciate another person’s worthy ideal.  And some people's “worthy ideal” is making someone who holds a true worthy ideal in their hearts and minds behave in ways that will bring disapproval from people who don't “get” the worthy ideal.  But people addicted to behaving the way other people expect (or actually demand) rarely contribute much to making the concept of any worthy ideal a reality.  Worthy ideals and independence in thought seem to go hand in hand.  Here is a living example of a worthy ideal:

Take the physician who has been to college a million years, passed a thousand examinations, served years in a residency and is daily raked over the hot coals by people claiming the medical profession is going to hell in a hand basket, that physicians are just puppets of the great big immoral insurance companies, and that physicians make way too much money.  A physician who holds onto the worthy ideal of healing is able to look beyond all those naysayers and walk into a room where an ill person waits. Then and there the worthy ideal of healing takes over and healing work is performed.

So it is at times with our great profession.  The worthy ideal of ethical and reverential care of a dead body has great and ancient depth and substance, and even if some of the public has lost this connection, it does not mean funeral professionals must do so.  The worthy ideal of a funeral professional helping a bereaved person has great depth and substance, even if the legal next of kin is not all that bothered about the death. 

I suggest that this worthy ideal is needed more than ever in these cynical times.  I believe in my heart we need more funeral service builders, we need people with high ideals, we need people who see ultimate worth in the tenets, the true worthy ideals of the funeral service profession.

Funeral service has a positive future because funeral service is worthwhile. Caring for the dead and the living is a high ideal in life.  Funeral service will never be like it was, but it will never cease to exist.

The strength of funeral service is what is in a funeral professional’s heart. Nothing is more worthy than the kindness, mission, graciousness, benevolence and compassion in a human being's heart.  This is true:  funeral directors almost always are gracious and almost always have good hearts.  We need more funeral directors in the world.

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion. TVB

The great, late, speaker of the House of Representatives, “Tip” O’Neil from Massachusetts, once made this insightful remark, he said, “All politics is ultimately local.”  I agreed with him when he said it, and I still agree with him today.

With that said allow me to humbly paraphrase the great “Tip.”  According to TVB “All funeral service is ultimately local.”

In times such as these, when everything seems to be changing, and change has been the constant companion of funeral service for a mighty long time, in times such as these I find it helpful to sit back and remind myself of a couple of glaring and in the end comforting truths about our great and beloved profession.  Here are a couple of truths, as I see them anyway:
•    The average funeral home in this country is not large, it is not owned by large companies, and it is located in relatively small communities.  I believe that small communities still are more numerous than large metropolitan areas.
•    The success in funeral service is still relationship-based.  In other words, the relationships which are created through pre-need, at-need and after care translate into future security and success for funeral homes – regardless of who owns them.
•    Nothing happens until a relationship is created.

This is not Pollyanna stuff, nor is my list of funeral home strengths a feel good expression of pleasantries and platitudes, because even in view of these three mighty important strengths, things have changed.  The buying habits of people have clearly changed, and if we as a profession continue to be addicted to using outdated financial models that worked very well in 1968, and persist in using these outdated and obsolete models in 2010 – well it doesn’t take a scientist to conclude what will happen.

There are many more sages and wise people in the funeral profession than I who can address the changing habits of the public, and what these continuing changes mean to our success.  I will leave that analysis to people who are much more insightful and skilled than I am.

My list of funeral home strengths might be indeed short, but the length of the list ought not be confused with the truth that these strengths (and there are many more that I have certainly missed) are in reality a powerhouse of influence, a powerhouse of mission, a powerhouse of stability, a powerhouse of compassion, care, and comfort.

Local funeral homes are, I believe, potential and real powerhouses.  In fact given that the death rate is 100% and the resulting misery that this glaring mortality fact creates in every community, the local funeral home truly emerges as a powerhouse of influence, or anyway a potential powerhouse of influence.  The difference as to whether a funeral home is a powerhouse or not is always predicated on the attitude and what is in a funeral directors heart.

Henry Blust

I grew up in Southwestern Iowa.  It was somewhat of an isolated existence.  Omaha was 35 miles away and that gave us some contact with another way of life, but the truth was that in the 1950s my little town was a wonderful place, but it was also in a type of time warp, which looking back was NOT a bad thing.

Key to our little town’s mental health as a community was the presence and involvement our two beloved and eccentric undertakers – the Blust Brothers (Henry the older, and Norbert, nicknamed Nob, the younger).  The Blust Brothers were absolutely a living truth concerning the reality that in the end all funeral service is local.  In fact the Blust Brothers were what I call today funeral directors powerhouses, and here is the beauty of the Blust Brothers: they didn’t even know it, which was part of their charm and success.  These two men just loved being undertakers.

Today I marvel at the beautiful opulent magnificent funeral homes that are built.  They seem to be getting nicer and more opulent each year.  I knew as a young undertaker that in most towns the funeral home was indeed the most beautiful building in town.  In the big cities this was not always the case.  However in small town Iowa this aesthetic reality was a social more.  Funeral homes in small towns were almost universally located in the most impressive homes in the community, and the Blust Brothers facility was no different.  Outside the building was simply stunning, but this was not the case inside.

Not one piece of furniture matched in the Blust Bros. Funeral Home.  Nothing matched.  Pictures were hung either too high or too low.  The furniture had cigarette burns in the fabric, because one of the Blust brothers was a chain smoker, and carpet was really tired (which was interesting given the fact that the Blust Brothers also operated the town’s only furniture store, which sold carpet), the rooms were dingy and dark, the wallpaper ancient, the curtains were drab and heavy, and there was a water stained colored portrait of Jesus hung over the area where they placed the casket.

Then on top of all this were the eccentric Blust Brothers themselves.  Their father, a chap named Ferdinand Blust, had opened the funeral home in 1871, two years after the town was founded, and his two sons Henry and Norbert took over the business at the turn of the century.  Henry Blust was licensed in 1900 and his brother Norbert was licensed in 1908.  They were still doing funerals in 1955.  The Blust brothers were not perfect, they were not polished, they were not sophisticated, they were not cool, they were not socially adept, but they were local and very visible, and what is most important is the fact, and a fact it is, we liked them.  For all their warts and faults the community liked these two eccentric brothers.  They were both popular.  They built relationships.  They participated in the life of our community, and we liked them

Their eccentricities were legend.  For instance no dead person entrusted to the Blust Brothers care would or could be laid out wearing eyeglasses.  The dead person’s eyeglasses were placed carefully in the dead person’s hands.  Nob Blust was firm on his no eyeglass funeral conviction when he would declare, “Dead people can’t see!” Thus ended the lesson, Nob hath spoken, and no one in town ever argued with Nob’s eyeglass theory and logic.  Everybody in town agreed, dead people can’t see, Nob is right.

The other difficulty, looking back, with the Blust brothers was the fact that both of them were almost stone deaf and they stubbornly refused to get hearing aids.  So, friends, just let your imaginations go concerning how smoothly one of the Blust brothers' funerals went.  The brothers' made mistakes constantly simply because they could not hear and hence communications usually fell apart and became shambles.  But that little human frailty didn’t make much difference to us folks in town. We liked them, and hence we found it easy to forgive and forget the Blust brothers' snafus on funerals.  No matter what, the Blust brothers both had good hearts.  They liked us, and we liked them.

I remember very well one funeral where Henry was in front of the living room where the funeral was set up, and he had run out of memorial folders.  Nob was in the back of the living room and Henry shouted from the front in the presence of everybody, “Nob I’ve run out of cards.”  Nob replied, “I’ll take care of it.”  In about a minute Nob marched forward carrying a folding chair for his brother.  Henry got annoyed—he did not need a folding chair, he needed memorial folders—and dressed his brother down in front of everybody.  Of course Nob could not hear one word that his brother was saying to him and off he went, attending to other funeral duties.   That kind of stuff happened all the time on a Blust Brothers funeral.  But I also well remember when this minor funeral infraction happened that my grandmother leaned over to me and said, “Todd, Nob means well.”   Remember friends, we liked the Blust brothers.

In the age of high technology, high tech communication, high tech impersonal people, high tech greed, high tech fast lane living, high tech, high tech and then more high tech, is the thought that all funeral service is in the end local an old-fashioned, antiquated, terribly boorish concept?  I believe that some good people will say that the good ole days of relationship building, the good ole days that all funeral service is ultimately local, and the good ole days that being well liked is essentially important are truly and indeed over with – they are days gone by, they are ancient history and never to be seen again.  They might have a point, and of course the Blust brothers have been dead for many years, but interestingly the funeral professionals who are the legacy of the Blust brothers are also highly visible in the community, and people like them.  I wonder who they learned that idea about life and service from?

As I write these words, I feel a tug in my mind that I am so out of step with what is going on.  However, I am equally tugged by the memory of what I learned made the Blust brothers so well liked in our little town. We liked them NOT because the Blust brothers sat around in the coffee lounge waiting for the phone to ring.  Those two old deaf eccentric men were out in the community, they participated in the life of the community, they were there with a mission in life to help people, they earned every dime they made, and they possessed good hearts.  They paid the price for their success because they gave of themselves relationally to our little town.   Something to think about, is it not?

Oh, the last thought on the beloved Blust brothers – they operated not only the furniture store, but the ambulance service as well.  Now there is a scary thought about which I will have more to say about in a future post.

All funeral service is local – what do you think?  Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion. TVB

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

I have always liked people who liked funeral service, and after a 42-year career, I really like friends and associates who have been an inspiration and role model for me in my personal journey. Mr. John Doyle of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, is certainly one of those individuals.

John and I have been buddys for many years and this weekend there was a retirement party held for John at a beautiful lake pavilion in a gorgeous park right outside of Saint John.  I was honored to be asked to be the “surprise” guest to offer the testimonial after the formal dinner in recognition of John’s stellar career.

John and I basically started in funeral service about the same time.  Here and there, now and then, every so often I have encountered individuals in funeral service who are shining lights in my spirit and soul, and without question John Doyle has been one of those people.

As I watched the events of that grand party take form I was struck by the genuine love and admiration that the group assembled had for John.  It was a well deserved honor and I was humbled to be asked to participate.  I have had a few moments in my life and career where I was humbled to the core, but few if any matched my feelings when I got the call to give the formal testimonial for John’s career and his basic view of life.

The night was resplendent with sentiment, with glad tidings, with old-fashioned panache.  Several people spoke and one young lady who John had mentored welled up and had to work hard to complete expressing her deep gratitude to John and his guidance and mentorship in her young career – and young she was, she started out in funeral service in 2001.  However young, she possesses a spirit and attitude which is very attractive and she gave John Doyle due credit for instilling this depth of professionalism in her person.

John Doyle is not an agitator, he does not criticize, nor does he tear down.  On the contrary he is a supporter (even in the face of bad tidings), he always builds, and he builds through service which reflects his genuine love of funeral service, and he does not make criticisms – basically he just tends to his families and the funeral home.

Funeral service for John was not a business, it was a ministry in his life, and he was very good at what he did.

I well remember one evening very late I was in Montreal doing a seminar and around midnight I ended up walking over to the Basilica to marvel at the beautiful sanctuary.  There sitting on the steps of the church was John Doyle, and he and I talked the night away and felt at the end of our conversation that we had solved every problem and challenge facing our beloved profession – of course that was not true, but for a fleeting moment we believed we had accomplished that impossible task.

I will never be as nice a person as John Doyle is.  Never.  I try, but always fall short of the mark.  John is a consummate gentleman and a true friend, which is a rare thing these days.

I wish my good buddy the best and I know that his family is mighty happy to have him available to move on into the next venture in his life journey.  

There are fortunately thousands of people in our profession with the spirit of John Doyle, and that is a true blessing.  I have a dream that John Doyle will in his retirement become a adjunct professor in some mortuary science program and the students would not be allowed to talk – they would just be required to listen to the master instruct, inspire, and inform them of what great possibilities a career in funeral service truly has.

It was a wonderful trip and event.  Good luck, my good friend. TVB 

Last week I spent a very nice day doing some training.  What a wonderful, professional group of individuals in the group – no grumpy, fussing complaining people – no, not one.  It was fun, energizing, focused, and above all dedicated to discussions and knowledge about one major subject – serving families better.  It was refreshing, and did this old undertaker’s soul a world of good.

During the time that I had to teach I posed a question that I always ask any group I am working with:  “What do you think is the greatest threat and challenge facing funeral service today?”  I believe it is a good question to ask because the question basically cuts to the chase of what I believe seminars should be all about and eliminates any potential “Pollyanna” stuff which one often encounters in what is called group thinking.  I mean, really, anybody can deal with the good times, when things are going really well, that takes little talent. But are these times in funeral service/cemetery work good times and going really well???????

Here are some of the responses I received to my question:  casket stores, WalMart (of course nobody liked WalMart), cremation increase, lost casket sales, government regulations, poor recruitment efforts, changed people, changed demographics, changed value systems, funeral director wannabes butting in, aggressive sales techniques, and general malaise and apathy concerning detailed funeral service.  One courageous funeral professional even remarked that they thought one of the major problems funeral service was experiencing was preachers who did not know how to preach and hence ruined all the good work of the funeral home!

It was a great discussion and all the responses were valid I, thought anyway, to one degree or another. 

Privately, and I eventually shared this thought with the group, I have been haunted by an issue which just does not get discussed or explored much in professional circles, the almost silent issue of dwindling time.  In other words the erosion of the time that people spend these days in funeral and cemetery activities, in rites rituals and ceremonies, in leave-taking, in saying goodbye, in saying their final farewells.  This dwindling of time haunts me, and I believe we are already experiencing the consequences and they are not favorable.

When I was 14, my grandfather died in Southwestern Iowa.  He was 90 something, we really never knew how old he actually was, because he was born in Holland and never had a birth certificate.  He did not even have a Social Security number, and could not read or write English.  He smoked 20 cigars a day and had seven children.  I adored him.

Upon his death we called the trusty old Blust Bros. to come out to the farm to get his body.  What a nice way to describe an undertaker – trusty and old.  Later that day my grandmother and a few select family members, me included, picked out the casket in the showroom in the back of the furniture store.  Everything came to $800.  My grandfather had kind of prearranged his funeral without the help of the Blust Bros. by putting ten $100 bills in an envelope which was labeled “Funeral.”

My grandmother just handed Henry Blust the entire envelope and said “Take out of that what you will need.”  Mr. Blust counted out eight $100 bills and handed the rest back to my grandmother.  What a transaction – win/win in 1964!  Until the day she died my grandmother thought that Henry Blust was a saint from heaven because she received a “refund” on her husband’s funeral – two hundred dollars!   Trusty old undertaker Mr. Henry Blust did not take all her money – now there is a refreshing idea.

The first day at the viewing our horribly dysfunctional family gathered in the large room at the Blust Bros.  Some of these people basically hated each other and had not talked to each other for years even though they only lived maybe seven miles apart.  The Van Becks weren’t and are not today the Waltons. No one ever said “Good night, Todd Boy” to me.

That first day, seeing my grandfather, we all cried for six hours.

The next day new people started showing up.  There were some tears for some, but basically we were all standing around getting all the most recent updates on the gossip concerning our family.  You know the drill – who is back drinking too much, who is cheating on their spouse, who got kicked out of high school, who just lost their driver’s license, who is still borrowing money. You know, gossip – our family seems to thrive on it.

The third day at the funeral home the place looked like we were having a party.  Food was everywhere, people were laughing, some still crying, but most were just talking about what a long and useful life my grandfather had lived, and it was concluded by everybody that this fact was a comfort and blessing.

On the fourth day we had a funeral for him at 2 p.m. (that is when Protestants went to heaven in our little community) and buried him in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Hancock, Iowa.  After the funeral we all returned to the basement of the church, where the church ladies as usual had prepared a funeral feast.  Trust me, folks, Iowa church ladies know how to put on a funeral feast – nothing better not even at the Tavern on the Green in New York City.

Here are a few more particulars. The casket was a cloth covered wood, and looked real nice.  The outer box at the cemetery was made of wood which was an old railroad shipping case.  There were some nice flowers.  The preacher did a nice job.  It was a nice funeral, a nice experience, and in three days our entire family had moved from crying and weeping to celebrating. BUT IT TOOK THREE DAYS – IT TOOK TIME.

From a funeral service perspective, here are some particulars. First off the Blust Bros. building was used for three full days. The lights were on, the air conditioners were running full blast, the taped music was playing, the register book was out, the public was showing up by the tens of hundreds, the Blust Bros. were on the floor of the funeral home and not sitting in a coffee lounge watching a soap opera or Bob Barker giving away a new car.  They had embalmed my grandfather and he looked great.  They had dressed him and he looked really spiffy.  They had NOT put on too much cosmetics.  The funeral coach was not new, but it was shiny and clean, and the Blust Bros. were dressed impeccably. 

Here is a private thought.  I pangs me to drive by a funeral home at night and see that the entire place is dark – nothing is happening – nobody is going in or out, and I know that inside the building there are five deceased persons.  That bothers me. 

Looking back at my grandfather’s funeral, it was full of meaning, it was full of memories, it was full of emotion, and it was full of life.  It was definitely worth $800.

BUT IT TOOK TIME.

I have told this experience to thousands of funeral and cemetery professionals across North America and when I tell this story everyone gets a peaceful smile and pensive look on their faces.  I ask them “Do you think this was a valuable experience?”  They all nod in the affirmative – yes, indeed.

Last week when I was doing my seminar I flew into my old hometown Cincinnati, “The Queen City.”  I miss Cincinnati terribly.  I was getting my rental car and looked at the morning issue of the local newspaper and started reading the obituaries.  Here is one that caught my attention and sent chills down my spine.  “Calling hours at the mortuary starting at 11:00 a.m.; funeral will begin at Noon.”

One hour!  One hour!  One hour!  Now in these times, add to this immediate cremation, immediate burials, private graveside services, private services, services at the convenience of family. Well, here is a question:  If we have gone from memorializing our dead for three days of time say 35 years ago, down to 3 – 5 hours of time today, what will be the time that people use for funerals in the year 2020?  Three days down to three hours!  Dwindling ...

Dwindling, dwindling, and dwindling!  Fewer people attending funerals, less time being spent memorializing our dead – dwindling.  

I personally believe that dwindling time is the greatest threat to the future of the funeral.  Without time or without our making the precious little time we have to serve a family absolutely the most meaningful that it can be I believe we will continue to see the natural erosion of the funeral experience.  Funerals need time they always have and always will.

To this end I believe that just simple awareness on our parts of this silent issue is tantamount to our improving this situation.  Our awareness of this silent issue of dwindling time will stimulate professionals in funeral service and cemetery work to adapt, and adopt the new and improved methods which are being promoted everyplace and everyday to serve families to the best of our abilities within the time constraints that modern life and times are imposing upon us.  

We can and do have an influence on the decisions that our families make.  

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion. TVB

People are concerned about the economy, and with true justification.  Things have been tough, and even though the “experts” are saying that there is light at the end of the tunnel, still many people, way too many people, are experiencing layoffs, terminations, lost benefits, and financial hardships.

News items are showing up that announce the seemingly unbelievable and utterly astounding observation that enrollment in mortuary science colleges across the country is increasing.  Of course that is not real news, because throughout history in the United States, when the economy tanks enrollment in most training programs which are somewhat short in duration but offer employment opportunities and security increase in numbers.  In every economic slump I have lived through, enrollment in the mortuary science programs across this county has jumped, and these times are no exception.

This trend is so predictable that it makes you wonder, why would any newspaper give one moment’s attention to the increase in mortuary science enrollments?  Even now, with the increased numbers of mortuary science students, the total number across the entire nation cannot be more than a couple of thousand out of a population of over 370 million people. There have to be more students signing up for welding college, cosmetology programs, barber school, insurance school, medical vocational technical programs etc., but I have not seen any article which singles out increases in other types of career programs as they are doing with mortuary science.  Maybe news reports about other vocations increasing in numbers are out there, but so far I have not seen any.

In reading the articles devoted to the increase in funeral service students, and reading between the lines, I was struck by the thought that the reporter’s hidden message in singling out funeral service education as being a job to seek in bad times possibly translates into this: “WOW, these really and truly must be bad times if anyone would consider becoming a funeral director.” The exaggerated idea that someone would take up mortuary science because things are so bad economically truly misses the reason why anybody would be interested in funeral service in the first place, regardless of economic conditions. The newspapers are once again wrong concerning funeral service.

In the articles about someone who is, say, 30, 40, 50 or whatever age and enrolling in mortuary science college, the primarily focus is on the bad economy as being the person’s major motivation for a career change. I just shake my head. Here is why I shake my head.  These articles fail almost universally in exploring the reasons someone of any age, regardless of good times or bad, would be drawn to becoming a funeral director.  I find it interesting and annoying that the news media insists on reducing every aspect of funeral service to an economic/money issue.

In my years I have taught a rough estimate of over 5,000 students, in good times and in bad times.  I have seen the enrollments jump and slump, in good times and in bad times.  I have seen some of the most damaged human beings that God put on this earth walk into the mortuary college and proclaim that they want to become a funeral director.  I have seen the smart ones and the not so smart ones march across the platform and receive a degree and pass the National Board examination.  I have seen many students who I predicted would not have a snowball's chance in hell out in the real world end up owning 10 funeral homes, while after a 41-year career I still own none.

In good economic times and in bad ones, I have never once had a student tell me that they wanted to become a funeral director to get steady work and make money – not once.  In all my years of operating mortuary schools, I cannot remember one person, when things were tight financially, come into my office and announce “The Dow Jones fell apart last night, so I think I will become an undertaker,” or “Things are really tough out there, so I just think I will become an embalmer – how do you do that?” 

Not once have I heard the type of reasoning now being reported as the main impetus for the increase in enrollment in funeral service programs.  My friends, the reasons are much deeper, as everyone reading this already knows. Here is what I HAVE heard during my career, in good economic times, and in bad, from future funeral directors:

“You know Mr. Van Beck, I always wanted to be a funeral director – strange isn’t it, my family thinks I am nuts, but I am 55 and if I don’t do it now I will never do it.”

Or, “Hi, Mr. Van Beck, I can get a loan from the government and I was thinking over the last year or two about when my grandfather died and how impressed I was with the funeral director who did his funeral.  I always wanted to be like that undertaker.  I mean things are ok at work but I am bored to tears. I want more out of life and I really feel the urge to do this – do you think I am nuts?”

Or, “My best friend was killed in a car accident when I was ten and ever since that experience I have been drawn to the funeral stuff, like, like ya know what I mean, like, like –  like do you think I would make like a good funeral director?” (Yes, you might make a great funeral director like, like if you like expanded your like vocabulary, like, like a little.)

Or, “I am ok with where I am at, but I want to help people, and I have been thinking about this for a long, long time, for years. I think I could really help a lot of people being a funeral director – am I nuts?”

These conversations have taken place when the economy was fat and sassy and when the economy was horrible and depressed. I know of nobody, anywhere, ever who has opened their eyes early one morning, sat on the side of their bed and out of the clear blue said, “I think I will become an undertaker.” No matter what the newspapers are reporting, IT DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY, and I suspect that if the newspaper reporters would give the people they choose to interview more time, listen to them better, and give them more print space to tell their entire story, the truth of why they are REALLY in mortuary college would come out instead of the untrue and simpleton message that, "Gee whiz, the economy must really be in the bucket for someone to be so desperate as to study to become a funeral director."

I wish I could sit down with all the new funeral directing students who the papers claim are grasping for “steady” employment and ask them this heartfelt question: “What drew you to this profession?” Then I would shut up and let them talk, and I know what the conversation would be. It would revolve around a mission, an unfulfilled life hope and dream, a calling, something they just can’t put their finger on, but they know it is there, a hounding from heaven, a ministry in life, a worthy contribution to humanity – that is what the conversation would include, not just a steady paycheck or the phony idea of tremendous job security because the death rate is 100 percent.

For many years, I have been of the conviction that the reason the funeral service profession has been able to withstand attack after attack after attack from the media is for the precise reason that people who enter this profession in the first place, are most times not, I repeat not, motivated by money, which immediately destroys the “let’s get them” mentality and strategy that most media has tried and tried again and again for years.  This is a concept which is obviously too deep and philosophical for the news media, and they seem utterly incapable or unwilling, or both, of grasping the concept, let alone understanding it, let alone printing it. They just don’t get it.

The strength of funeral service, in good and bad times, is the belief, the anchor, the conviction of purpose and mission which drew most of us to this profession in the first place.  There is strength present in the identity of the typical funeral professional in this country, and thanks to God above, this unique identity of being a funeral professional is not surrounded exclusively by the almighty dollar. In my last blog posting (I still can’t believe I am doing this) I spoke about the present day recession and funeral service and about the historical fact of funeral directors giving many funerals away during the Great Depression in order to survive economically.  My friends, I have seen this kindness, this loving spirit, this broad view of caring, compassion, and comfort throughout my entire career, and this is one of the reasons I am still proud to be called a funeral director.

Years ago, I remember a young funeral director in Nebraska who had a death call in Omaha.  This young funeral director was just starting out and did not have enough ready cash nor could the family pay the expenses to arrange for a private aircraft to fly into Omaha and transport the remains back home.  He called the funeral home I worked at and we made the removal and did the embalming. I and was told by my boss that this young funeral director would be arriving the next day to get the remains. Mid-afternoon, the young man arrived and I helped him put the deceased in his funeral vehicle.  We stood out in the parking lot for a time talking, thinking that my boss was upstairs in the funeral home when in reality he was standing in the garage listening to our every word. 

The conversation went something like this:  I said, “How are things going?”  The reply, “Not too well, things are mighty slow.” Then the young funeral director proceeded to tell me that he had handled only two services since he opened up and the bank was leaning on him, and he didn’t really know what he was going to do, but he knew he had a mission to be a funeral director.  He had a calling, he said.  Then he asked me how much he owed us, and I said I would go inside and ask my boss, at which point my boss walked around the corner of the garage.

The young funeral director seemed mighty impressed to meet my boss, who was already a funeral director icon in Nebraska.  He said, “Sir, how much do I owe you?”  My boss smiled and said these impressive words, “Son you don’t owe me anything. The embalming was a good learning experience for my young man here (meaning me) who doesn’t know a lick about embalming (that made me feel real good, I can tell you)." And my boss ended the conversation this way, “Son I would rather have your friendship than your money.  Just keep me in your prayers and let us know what more we can do to help you.”

I cannot even begin to tell you the look of appreciation on that young funeral director’s face.  After he left, I said to my boss that I thought that it was a mighty nice thing to do, and this Great American Funeral Director simply responded, “Todd, just look around at all we have here.  That young lad needed a break.”

In time, this young funeral director did become successful, and even after my boss died, every time I would see this now successful man at conventions he would relay this story of generosity of spirit to anybody who would listen.  Such is the true heart and soul of funeral service – regardless of economic trends and events.  POWERFUL STUFF, TO BE SURE!

I wish I could interview some of these “economically driven” beginning funeral directors. I would predict the results of my interview with these up and coming funeral directors would be much different than what the newspapers came up with – but that is just speculation on my part, and remember my friends, TVB and his observations are usually wrong concerning funeral service.

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.

I went to a meeting the other evening concerning our profession.  It does not matter whether the group was composed of cemeterians or funeral directors, not in the least – or it should not matter, anyway, not these days with what is going on out in the death care world.

The basic meeting agenda which was printed on nice paper was a supposedly devoted to a discussion about the rapid changes in the demographics, the market, the buying habits of consumers, and the like.  I thought the agenda looked really good, and was anticipating learning some additional information concerning what the hell is going on out there.  I guess everyone attending had the same idea – at the beginning of the meeting anyway.

Present at the meeting were a few personalities whose histories preceded them as being touchy, moody, and at times argumentative and confrontational.  Out of thirty people this small group represented maybe three. 

I thought that time was of the essence because there was one invited speaker who really knows her stuff, and I was looking forward to listening to her presentation.  In her talk she made natural and predictable references to different groups which make up our profession.  I thought her remarks both well thought out and timely.  However in referring to different “groups” in the death care profession a fuse was ignited with some of the “touchy” group and off they went.

I have been to meetings, too many meetings over my career, where the results of the meeting ends up being a witch hunt aimed at portions of our profession who are not even at these meetings.  You know what I am talking about.

The “touchy” group began ranting and raving about ancient, and I mean ancient history, concerning the long time biases and simmering anger that certain groups have towards one another in the death care profession.  I heard absolutely nothing new; I had and have been listening to these types of divided diatribes for years, and in time several of the other attendees just started to roll their eye balls in disgust and frustration, because it was the same old stuff.  You know the routine – this group is errorless and clean and saintly, and this other group who is not in the room is foul, corrupt, egomaniacs, and control freaks. 

I drove home that night feeling a pit in the center of my stomach.  I thought “have we made such little progress at finding our unity within our diversity?”  Yes, there is the idea – finding unifying ground within the diversity of all the groups which today make up the death care profession.  Boundaries and territories seem clearly evident to be evaporating before our eyes – why?  Because the public is demanding that the boundaries and territories which have caused such acrimony and dislike in the past go away – now!

I remember when I read the first Wirthlin Study and saw the information which, in a nut shell, said that the American public really does not see any difference between a cemeterian and a funeral director.  I was dumbfounded I could not believe it, but then when the second Wirthin Study came out it said the same thing.

The fracturing of any professional group into splinter groups rarely, except for social reasons and purposes, works very well.  It doesn’t work well because of scant resources, repetition of services, and the like.  However it seems clear that within the death care profession there are splintering groups all over the place, and make no mistake, there are consequences for this division of the house.

I gave a major talk one time which got me into a whole lot of trouble.  I stood up in front of a group of death care professionals and said publically the radical thought that we need to unify, we need a type of a Moses figure who can bring the groups together into one strong organization which has great resources pertaining to people, money, talents, vision and action.

In this talk I asked this question “Who speaks for death care?”  Not who speaks for cemeteries, or funeral homes, or preneed programs, or grief counseling, or monuments, or ground maintenance, or insurance programs, or any of the traditional splinter groups, but who speaks for death care overall?

We all know that lawyers basically do not like each other – that is common knowledge, but you would never ever know it by the work and activities of the American Bar Association.  The lawyers might fight and scratch each other’s eyes out in the real world, but when they need to stand up together as a unified group there is one organization which represents them, and the American Bar Association does have power and resources. Can you even imagine how far the Federal Trade Commission would get if they tried to implement the “the Lawyers Rule” to regulate the lawyers in this country?  Enough said on that point.

What a mess the medical profession is in.  The problems of health care make our problems look like kindergarten stuff.  However the physicians of this country, while certainly in turmoil, are represented by the American Medical Association, and when the AMA says something even the President of the United States listens.  One organization, representing the myriad of levels of medical practice in this country, and it works exceptionally well.

Everybody knows that drinking too much milk or eating too much red meat is not good for you – everybody knows that – but according to the American Dairy Association, drinking milk is not only good for you it is sexy – “Got Milk?”  Do I even need to identify which association developed the national branding of “What’s for dinner?”  Red meat might not be good for you, but you would never know it from the work of the American Beef Association.

Here is a fantastic vision.  What could be the possibilities available to the entire death care profession if all the major organizations, while maintaining their own autonomy, just pooled enough money without regard for being in total absolute control of everything and took that impressive amount of cash and hired a posh Fifth Avenue advertising company in Manhattan and developed a national, country-wide advertising campaign around the themes that what the cemeteries, funeral homes, preneed programs, etc. do for the community is good and right and brings tremendous benefits to all communities, and run that commercial as many times as the American Dairy Association runs “Got Milk” and do not stop.  Make the ad part of the American popular culture.  Here is an idea – make death care work popular and interesting to the public.

Here is even a more crazy and nutty vision.  What would be the potentials, the possibilities, and opportunities, and the results for the future of this great line of work if the major organizations and associations amalgamated together?  Standing together as one voice representing the entire world of death care as does the AMA or the American Bar Association?  What might just be the results?   The closest thing I have seen in this direction is the open membership policy of the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association, but can more pioneering work at finding this unity in our diversity be done?  I say let the thing be pressed.

Driving home that evening I was sad.  We are still battling the same old ghosts of ancient days long gone by.  As I climbed into bed I thought that if I wrote this I would again get in trouble, I would certainly be offending somebody’s territory or boundary.  I thought is it even worth the effort of taking this position?  I know I would probably have a better chance at changing the financial structure of China than calling for unity within the diversity of the death care profession, but I think it is worth the risk, so here is the call.

I know we have come a long way at working for cooperation and common ground and the work continues, and I am going to ask the indulgence of the reader to balance what I am saying with what I experienced at that terribly disappointing meeting, but I have had this unification, amalgamation feeling and idea for a long time now, and thought it just might be worth making it public again.

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.

TVB

Lydia Ramsey, an expert in business etiquette, became an expert in grief when her husband died. She distilled her new, painfully gained knowledge into a guide to "the etiquette of sympathy," hoping it will give people the confidence to reach out to the bereaved.

On a beautiful spring day last April, I was driving home to Savannah from Charlotte after welcoming my first grandchild into the world. Little Samuel Carroll Niles was whole and healthy, and life was good—almost. My husband, Hank, had suffered a serious fall in October and was unable to accompany me. He seemed to be recovering, but I was still concerned about him.

I was nearly home when my cell phone rang. The call was from a friend who had stopped by to visit Hank and who had become alarmed when there was no response at the door. I drove into my driveway with the lights of the emergency medical services truck flashing in my rearview mirror. On May 11, I lost my warm, wonderful, gentle husband. Within a three-week period, I had become both a grandmother and a widow.

As I attempted to get back to life "as normal,” I found that my grief had its own timetable. When I was able to write again, I decided that I needed to address this issue, one that confronts everyone at some point, personally and professionally.

Doing something is important
It is often difficult to know what to say or do when someone dies. I want to share what I have learned in the hopes that it that may help when someone you know—a client, a colleague, a coworker or a friend—loses a loved one.
 
It is important to do something. Many of us are so uncomfortable with death that we don't do anything at all. We are afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing.

• Attend the funeral or the memorial service if you can. Your presence offers inestimable support. Even if you can't speak directly to the family members, you can sign the guest book. The family will read through it over and over again, and they will know you cared enough to be there.

• Write a note as soon as you can. Personal notes of condolence are a source of great comfort—more than you can imagine. I was moved by the different ways people expressed their sympathy. There were those who simply spoke of their sincere sorrow for my loss. There were those who described what Hank had meant to them personally. Others wrote about the character and personality of this special person I had lost. I was grateful for each and every note.

Commercial sympathy cards are equally cherished. It was clear to me that the commercial cards I received had been carefully chosen. Each one came with an additional sentence or two written by the sender, which is important. Be sure to take the time to add a short personal note when you send a sympathy card.

• Send flowers unless the family specifies otherwise. Send them to the family, the funeral home, the church or the gravesite. Flowers add warmth and are visual reminders of the support of friends. The flowers and personal gifts that continued to arrive in my home weeks after the funeral confirmed that neither I nor my pain had been forgotten.

• Take food and other items needed for daily living to the house.  The last thing the grieving family can think about is grocery shopping and meal preparation.

One thoughtful neighbor called me and said, "I'm going to the grocery store. What do you need?" My response was a baffled, ''I have no idea." This kind, generous person brought me everything from fresh fruit and vegetables to paper towels and toilet paper. She even included pet food for the four-legged members of the family.

• Make a contribution to the charities indicated by the family. Honor the wishes of the deceased. Give to the causes they chose unless the obituary states that contributions should be made to the donor's favorite charity. If yon missed the funeral notice and don't have that information, call the funeral home—it will have a record .

• Be specific when you offer to help. Most people say, "If there is anything you need, call."  While their intentions are genuine, it can be difficult for the family to know what is a reasonable request to make of particular people.

When our assistant rector said those words to me, my face must have registered what I was thinking—"Like what?"—because he immediately followed up with a verbal list of all the things I could call on him or other church members to do.

One neighbor offered to walk the dog. Another offered to handle household repairs if anything broke down or stopped working. Someone else volunteered to pick up family members from the airport. Once people were clear on what they could do for me, when I needed something, I knew exactly where to turn.

• Make a note of the date of the death. Honor the anniversary with a note or a phone call that says you haven't forgotten.

It is not necessary to do or say something grand. Any gesture you make is comforting. A simple word, a hug, a phone call, a card or an offer to run an errand are a few ways of the many ways you can express your sympathy.

Keep in mind that great authors, poets and thinkers have written for centuries about grief and loss, searching for just the right words to console themselves or someone else. Yet when all is said and done, there are no words that can accomplish this. Sometimes the best thing you can say is simply, "I'm sorry."

Comparing the past, present and future

Historically, women have been the caretakers of the sick, but they also played a large part in the care of the dead. For example, women were responsible for preparing the remains of the ancient Greeks, included washing, dressing and anointing the body Christian families saw it as their duty to take care of their own dead, and it was usually the women who handled this.

In Hebrew tradition, women did the washing and dressing because it was considered unclean and distasteful work for the priestly class. Likewise, colonial American women prepared their dead, unless the family was well-to-do, in which case a nurse could be hired to wash and lay out the body. Either way, it was still most likely a woman doing the job. All of these customs heavily influenced modern American funeral practices.

During the 19th century, when carpenters and cabinet-makers began practicing undertaking, nurses and midwives were acting as layers-out of the dead. This carried on through the late 1800s and into the early 20th century, when most deaths still occurred at home.

It was during this period that undertaking was first emerging as a distinct occupational specialty. Newspapers advertisements refer to both male and female tradesmen. Although they were ''tradesmen" and belonged to ''brotherhoods'' such as Steward of the Guild, the funeral service industry was one of the few trades that welcomed women in the days when the business world was dominated by educated, land-owning, white men.

Of course the 19th-century Victorian notions of decency were strict, and by this time women were only allowed to handle the remains of other women or children. (It was considered inappropriate for a man to embalm an unclothed woman he did not know.) Still, women were not prohibited from entering the trade, even though they were not commonly seen in the ranks of undertakers in the early years.

This brings us to the 20th century and one of the pioneer women of embalming, Lina D. Odou. Odou was born in Spain, but ended up in London at the age of 15. She acquired her passion for nursing when she met Florence Nightingale, who took Odou as her protégé and sponsored her training as a nurse.

Odou worked as a Red Cross nurse in the French Army and then became a private nurse to several royal families. Around this time she began advocating the use of female embalmers to handle the remains of women and children. She was once quoted as saying, "Over and over again have I heard mothers ask undertakers if they could not furnish women embalmers for their dead daughters, and many others to whom the dead are sacred have asked the same question, and I have invariably heard such men say there are no women to be had for such a purpose."

This is what motivated her to become an expert in the practice herself. She studied in Switzerland and then in 1899 moved to the United States, where she opened a school for women at the undertaking establishment of the Rev. Stephen Merritt. Her first class graduated 10 students. After two years, she went on to establish the Lina D. Odou Embalming Institute in early 1901 at Frank E. Campbell's establishment.

Due to Odou's work, writings and example, training of women embalmers gained increased support. She submitted editorials to trade journals advocating the use of female embalmers in undertaking firms and even the giants in the field supported the concept. Still, many establishments would not allow women to handle the remains of men.

As the "Superintendent of the Women's Department" at her own mortuary, Odou also organized the Women's Licensed Embalmer Association to furnish female embalmers to families and undertakers. She blazed a trail for other women to follow and they did, opening other institutions
that trained a pioneer corps of female embalmers that would practice at firms throughout the country.

Not everyone was receptive to the idea of women joining the trade. I'm sure the trend in the '50s of women typically holding "womanly" jobs such as nurse, teacher and stay-at-home mom put a wrench in the works. Women were second-class citizens and were thought to have no place in the business field.

The further the funeral industry headed toward becoming a profession, the further women were left behind. If you weren't family in a family-owned business, it was most likely unheard of for a woman to be in the prep room unless she was on the table. This mentality is still held by some of the older generation of embalmers today.

Whatever setbacks women might have seen, women's liberation sure changed all that, in this industry as well as many others. Now women are allowed to work on men as well as women and children. As the inclusion of women has increased, so has women's interest. In my class alone, the women outnumber the men at least two-to-one.

I think it is part of that innate desire in women to help others, carrying on the tradition of women being the primary caretakers in our society. Stereotypes don't come about without a reason, and whether it is true or not, people believe women are better at consolation.

I believe women have a very solid future in the funeral industry because of these notions. Some families will open up more and generally feel better with their loved one in the caring hands of a woman. I believe people today, as in Odou's time, want women to handle their sacred dead.

Women are also generally considered to be honest and innocent, even though we know that is not always the case. Families feel like they can trust a woman and won't be taken advantage of, as could easily happen during the arrangement process.

Bottom line, women have the talent and the care to be at the top in this field. Though only an estimated 10 percent of our class will stay in the field, I for one can attest that we women will make our mark on the future, following the legacy of pioneering female embalmers.

The public wants a funeral director who is competent in meeting their physical, psychological and sociological needs, and we will not let them down. There will be a whole new face to the funeral industry, and it is going to have a lot less facial hair.
By: Ellen Broaddus

Historically, women have been the caretakers of the sick, but they also played a large part in the care of the dead. For example, women were responsible for preparing the remains of the ancient Greeks, included washing, dressing and anointing the body Christian families saw it as their duty to take care of their own dead, and it was usually the women who handled this.

In Hebrew tradition, women did the washing and dressing because it was considered unclean and distasteful work for the priestly class. Likewise, colonial American women prepared their dead, unless the family was well-to-do, in which case a nurse could be hired to wash and lay out the body. Either way, it was still most likely a woman doing the job. All of these customs heavily influenced modern American funeral practices.

During the 19th century, when carpenters and cabinet-makers began practicing undertaking, nurses and midwives were acting as layers-out of the dead. This carried on through the late 1800s and into the early 20th century, when most deaths still occurred at home.

It was during this period that undertaking was first emerging as a distinct occupational specialty. Newspapers advertisements refer to both male and female tradesmen. Although they were ''tradesmen" and belonged to ''brotherhoods'' such as Steward of the Guild, the funeral service industry was one of the few trades that welcomed women in the days when the business world was dominated by educated, land-owning, white men.

Of course the 19th-century Victorian notions of decency were strict, and by this time women were only allowed to handle the remains of other women or children. (It was considered inappropriate for a man to embalm an unclothed woman he did not know.) Still, women were not prohibited from entering the trade, even though they were not commonly seen in the ranks of undertakers in the early years.

This brings us to the 20th century and one of the pioneer women of embalming, Lina D. Odou. Odou was born in Spain, but ended up in London at the age of 15. She acquired her passion for nursing when she met Florence Nightingale, who took Odou as her protégé and sponsored her training as a nurse.

Odou worked as a Red Cross nurse in the French Army and then became a private nurse to several royal families. Around this time she began advocating the use of female embalmers to handle the remains of women and children. She was once quoted as saying, "Over and over again have I heard mothers ask undertakers if they could not furnish women embalmers for their dead daughters, and many others to whom the dead are sacred have asked the same question, and I have invariably heard such men say there are no women to be had for such a purpose."

This is what motivated her to become an expert in the practice herself. She studied in Switzerland and then in 1899 moved to the United States, where she opened a school for women at the undertaking establishment of the Rev. Stephen Merritt. Her first class graduated 10 students. After two years, she went on to establish the Lina D. Odou Embalming Institute in early 1901 at Frank E. Campbell's establishment.

Due to Odou's work, writings and example, training of women embalmers gained increased support. She submitted editorials to trade journals advocating the use of female embalmers in undertaking firms and even the giants in the field supported the concept. Still, many establishments would not allow women to handle the remains of men.

As the "Superintendent of the Women's Department" at her own mortuary, Odou also organized the Women's Licensed Embalmer Association to furnish female embalmers to families and undertakers. She blazed a trail for other women to follow and they did, opening other institutions
that trained a pioneer corps of female embalmers that would practice at firms throughout the country.

Not everyone was receptive to the idea of women joining the trade. I'm sure the trend in the '50s of women typically holding "womanly" jobs such as nurse, teacher and stay-at-home mom put a wrench in the works. Women were second-class citizens and were thought to have no place in the business field.

The further the funeral industry headed toward becoming a profession, the further women were left behind. If you weren't family in a family-owned business, it was most likely unheard of for a woman to be in the prep room unless she was on the table. This mentality is still held by some of the older generation of embalmers today.

Whatever setbacks women might have seen, women's liberation sure changed all that, in this industry as well as many others. Now women are allowed to work on men as well as women and children. As the inclusion of women has increased, so has women's interest. In my class alone, the women outnumber the men at least two-to-one.

I think it is part of that innate desire in women to help others, carrying on the tradition of women being the primary caretakers in our society. Stereotypes don't come about without a reason, and whether it is true or not, people believe women are better at consolation.

I believe women have a very solid future in the funeral industry because of these notions. Some families will open up more and generally feel better with their loved one in the caring hands of a woman. I believe people today, as in Odou's time, want women to handle their sacred dead.

Women are also generally considered to be honest and innocent, even though we know that is not always the case. Families feel like they can trust a woman and won't be taken advantage of, as could easily happen during the arrangement process.

Bottom line, women have the talent and the care to be at the top in this field. Though only an estimated 10 percent of our class will stay in the field, I for one can attest that we women will make our mark on the future, following the legacy of pioneering female embalmers.

The public wants a funeral director who is competent in meeting their physical, psychological and sociological needs, and we will not let them down. There will be a whole new face to the funeral industry, and it is going to have a lot less facial hair.

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.

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."

Personalization can go beyond the funeral service.
Kelly and Dan Dwyer are expanding the options for getting from the funeral home to the cemetery, and having fun doing it.

My husband, Dan, and I started Michigan Specialty Funeral Carriages in December 2003 with one vehicle. During our Thanksgiving vacation, we found a circa 1890 horse-drawn hearse and bought it on the spot from Arthur Brewer, a retired funeral director in Hadley, New York. Dan rented a large truck, loaded the hearse into it and drove the 650 miles back to Michigan, with me and our daughters following in our van.

On December 8, we used the carriage for the first time, for my grandfather's funeral.  Since then, we've used the carriage an average of three times a month. There is a mile-long private road connecting Dan's funeral home, Michigan Memorial Funeral Home, and Michigan Memorial Park, which my family runs. (I'm a fourth-generation cemeterian; Dan is a fourth-generation funeral director.) The private road makes it safe for family members and guests to walk behind the carriage for the trip from the funeral home to the cemetery, and in most cases that is what they choose to do.

From horse power to horsepower
In January 2004 we added our second specialty vehicle, the Tombstone hearse. One of the most unusual pieces of funeral equipment we have ever seen, it's a customized Harley Davidson Road King motorcycle with a hand-built casket coach attached. When we first saw it at the NFDA convention in 2003, Dan and I looked at each other and said "we've gotta buy that!"—and we did.

Jack Feather, the builder and owner of Tombstone Hearse Co., had one franchise agreement with him, so we copied it and worked out our deal right there on the convention floor. (Our attorney, Frank Rosenacker, was on the floor at the same time, which made it very convenient).

We didn't have any goals for getting a return on the money we spent on the motorcycle. We figured that if all it did was pay for itself that was OK—owning it was going to be a lot of fun. (It is!)

Our first motorcycle funeral was on February 4, 2004 (10 degrees brrrrrr.... ), for a man who hadn't even owned a motorcycle. His family thought the Tombstone hearse was "cool."

We are now using the Tombstone bike about once a week, between funerals, parades and exhibitions. As of this writing, only 25 percent of the funerals where we use the motorcycle are at Michigan Memorial Funeral Home.

In 75 percent of the cases, Michigan Specialty Funeral Carriage has gotten a call to serve a family using another funeral home. We have served families at funeral homes all over Michigan and as far away as Indianapolis, Indiana, and Cincinnati, Ohio.

In the first six months we had the bike, three families chose Michigan Memorial Funeral Home specifically because of the motorcycle. Having the motorcycle also has been responsible for more than two dozen preneed arrangements and has given all of our businesses added name recognition.

Recently an 85-year-old woman came in to arrange her funeral and included use of the Tombstone hearse in her arrangements. She said, "My friends will get a kick out of this!"

Despite our success with the motorcycle hearse so far, we feel we could be doing even more business with it. Our biggest problem has been getting the word out about our service. Our competitors tend not to mention it to their families who are motorcycle enthusiasts. Most of our calls for service come from the families directly.

We market through direct mailings to funeral homes and motorcycle clubs, as well as at Dan's funeral home, my cemetery and Dan's casket store.

We've found, though, that the best advertisement (not to mention the most fun) is just going for a ride. We can drive it to a gas station, supermarket parking lot or anywhere, really, and it attracts its own crowd.

The Tombstone hearse is also the most photographed (and possibly the most remembered) part of every funeral for which it's used. We've never seen anything quite like the reaction it gets.

Michigan Specialty Carriage Co. was profitable in its first month, and business continues to improve. Our service volume is going up every month.

Setting up this company has been one of the most enjoyable things Dan and I have done, and we're not finished. We're still looking for "new and different" vehicles to add to our fleet.

How funeral rituals offer comfort, support and healing to the bereaved