The January ICCFA Magazine was devoted in not a small way to the subject of education.  I finished reading most of the issue, and while I thought it best to keep my pen shut, I thought better of that cowardly approach and decided to dive into the education pool, so to speak.

I was also inspired to write my thoughts concerning this very interesting subject because of an email I received from another educator, of whom I hold in great respect, and deference, and he was NOT pleased with the tenor and content of some of the writing.  No surprise on that one, for any suggestion, let alone a criticism or worse, a call for mortuary education reformation, is most generally headed for hurt feelings, defensiveness, and outright rejection.  This seems a touchy subject.

In my years working in mortuary education I knew full well that the vast majority of educators work with diligence and devotion, and truthfully the inner educational system has in many ways improved itself from what it was when I was a mortuary science student.  Yes, progress has been made, and as with ALL academic change it is usually done at a snail’s pace and is much like pushing a wet noodle up a hill.  The reality of education's “slows” is customarily something that business-oriented personalities, people who want rapid change, don’t understand. They usually add insult to injury and do something worse: They don’t respect this reality concerning the world of education and hence most often totally underestimate the brick walls that they encounter when they suggest change.

What does one say which hasn’t been said over, and over, and over, and hashed, rehashed, and then rerehashed again and again over the years?  

In reading the different articles in the ICCFA magazine, I was not in the least inspired or excited, nor did my creative imagination spark.  No, not at all; in fact, I read nothing new.  It was mostly all predictable stuff.  Let’s see.  There of course was the politically correct approach article, then the call for dumping this and that and replacing this or that article with changes which seemed ominously attractive to the author of the article.  Then of course was the war cry article crying out for more practical hands on stuff--you know, how to turn on a crematory, how to raise a vessel, how to cater a funeral reception, how to, how to, how to.

For a hundred years or more, most everybody has agreed that the mortuary science curriculum is lopsided.  You know the drill – too much science, not enough business courses, too much bleeding heart grief psychology, too much embalming, in fact with this “too much” logic the end result is that every mortuary science curriculum in every mortuary college is lopsided, which is NOT true.  The glaring truth, which I did not read in any articles, is this:  mortuary education, in order to expand, needs more time.  Time is the essential 21^st century ingredient which mortuary education needs desperately and which the appointed critics of the system seem to ignore on a consistent basis.

Over the years, I have gotten into trouble on many fronts.  First I have never been the brightest or most insightful person, so I have made some personal and professional bonehead decisions.  There have been times I ought to have spoken, and remained silent, and to be sure there have been many, many times where I ought to have been silent, and then just opened my BIG mouth.  However, with all my foibles and inadequacies as a human being, two ideas concerning my beloved profession have held my interest for years  First is the idea of a universal requirement for a minimum of a bachelor's degree to enter any aspect of funeral service, and second is the idea of a universal license which is accepted in every state to function at any level in funeral service.  I can hear the laughter as I write this, and you who are laughing are absolutely right to do so. My idea, my dream, my hope, concerning these two ideas will go with me to my grave, unaccomplished.  I accept that sad reality, but for my own integrity (what I have left), I need to always get my commercial in somewhere.

I have mentioned that educational reform is slow, and that is not a criticism, it is just true.  Even Harvard University spends years in planning any change to any part of their curriculum, and for good reason.  The curriculum is the basic contract between the student and the academic institution, and once that is set in stone, for say a year, four-year, or a ten-year program, if the administration fiddles with the curriculum, presto, it is a breach of contract.  Because of this fact, I don’t see any quick reformation of mortuary education.  Also, I don’t see state boards reforming requirements for licensing any time soon.  I don’t see the curriculum changing quickly in order to fit any special interest demand from this group or that group.  I just don’t see this happening, but what I do see happening is the ability for our profession to embrace the idea of continuous improvement of the human being through education, not just for licensure or a set of job skills, but for living life.

I believe many people, including myself, have been and are just too hard in the criticisms of mortuary education.  I did not learn funeral service in mortuary college, and I did not learn ministry in seminary.  What I received upon both graduations was not a level of expertise (although you could not have told me that at the time) but instead I was awarded my learner’s permit.  I was given the right to enter a professional activity with the minimal knowledge of knowing “WHAT NOT TO DO.”  That was it, nothing more, nothing less.

If any profession looks to just education or quick education reform as a catch-all to solve problems, then surely that profession and those who hold such expectations are in for a fall.  Education has limits.  Education cannot do everything, and education is limited in preparing most people for the stark and inevitable realities of working and living life.

I might suggest (not seriously of course) that people who really and truly want to change the educational system, step right up to the plate get their graduate degrees and become instructors and professors themselves.  That they prepare their own lesson plans, compose examinations, monitor student honesty, look at the students and have the fleeting thought “my oh my, are we in trouble.”  Even education in adult training, seminars, in-house workshops and the like, most times is fragile, simply because adults can easily nod affirmation after affirmation to the boss, and then when they leave revert back to old habits.  It is just the way of adult education.

The University of Funeral Service is NOT in any mortuary college or found in a sales seminar; it is found on the floor of the mortuary, it is found on the grounds of the cemetery or the homes of a prospective client.  To be sure, education seminars, videos, tapes, can help, support and affirm, but there is something larger in scope that needs our attention.

What then can we say about education, not simple robotic practical education (which seems so much in vogue today), but instead a deeper, more lasting and permanent philosophy of education?  This idea of education for living life, of education for the simple sake of education.  This then is the idea of continuous education for the individual as compared to the standard continuing education for a profession.

There is a sentence from Samuel Johnson that points to a persistently important subject in all professional education and one I have found of particular interest in my personal work in education. The good Dr. Johnson said:  “Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.”

Over my years in this lovely profession, I have heard many sweeping comments, and read many sweeping words concerning education.  Many students' war cry is, “Why do we have to know this stuff?”  I always suspected they learned this from jaded and cynical funeral directors they might have encountered.  Many funeral directors' and cemeterians' war cry is, “What are you teaching those kids these days?” or “When I was a student we didn’t put up with that stuff.”  I suspect every generation of every student and mentor bemoans the state of their experience in any educational endeavor.  It seems that the discontent of students and mentors, whether it is mortuary college, cemetery university, medical school, law school or welding technical college, is much the same.  Students can’t wait to get out, and professors can’t wait to see them leave.

I believe in the worth of education simply for the sake of education.  I truly believe that most mortuary educators work diligently in a system which just paralyzes them because of lack of time.  I believe that the curriculum reflects a history of change, but a slow history of change, which annoys the speed demons addicted to rapid fire change to no end.

However, with all this said, does the ideal of “education simply for the sake of education” have worth?  Is this not truly a worthy ideal?  I believe it is.

For decades, much time, energy and money has been spent on debating the question as to whether funeral service (and today, cemetery work) ranks as a profession or a trade.  Opinions abound. Many agree this work is indeed a profession, but many take the converse attitude that this work is in reality a trade, a business.  I believe both sides of the debate are missing the core issue concerning education.

I used to think that education was an end in and of itself.  I used to think that if the colleges did not teach me everything I was confronted with in life, then it was the college’s fault.  I used to think that while I felt I was entering a profession, I also felt keenly that there were practical skills that I needed to possess, and when I was confronted after graduation with the glaring reality that I did not possess ALL the technical, business, professional and practical skills which clearly were essential, I once again blamed the college.  Blaming colleges for any deficiency is a terribly easy thing to do, particularly for people who do not teach.

Over time, for me at least, I learned that I could not expect any seminar, any curriculum, any outline, any manual, any script, any textbook, any lecture, any discussion group to fill in ALL the career blanks I encountered.  I had to fill in the blanks myself.  I had to adopt a lifelong attitude of continuous education, continuous curiosity, and continuous improvement.  I could not expect mandatory continuing education to do it, nor could I expect a magic bullet fired at me in a seminar to do it all the time.  I had to do it, and let me give you an example.

When I was in mortuary college, we had a professor named Maurice Lurensky who taught chemistry, and he was tough.  He scared me to death just by his presence.  He was intimidating, he was a bully, he used threats, he berated us daily, and he basically in my mind was a non-human.  However, and here is the point, I LEARNED CHEMISTRY.  I LEARNED ORGANIC, INORGANIC, BIO, AND EMBALMING CHEMISTRY, AND I GOT A 96% IN CHEMISTRY ON THE NATIONAL BOARD WHEN EXAMINED.

However, even with this success, I still did not get it, and I still fought the basic concept of education for the sake of education.   I thought “nobody uses chemistry when they embalm.”  I had watched hundreds of embalmers appear to me to just pour chemicals in the machine, and off they went.  I had truly missed the point about life education.

I learned chemistry, and the truth is I don’t think a day has gone by that I don’t link up some experience in living life to chemistry (even in embalming), and I am able to do this because I learned chemistry, regardless of the immediate application to the practical embalming issue.

The idea of the simple power of lifelong education for the sake of education can be as simple as this.  Several months ago I was visiting my parents in Iowa, and one evening we were watching the The Learning Channel, and the program was on the biology of life.  DNA stuff, the building blocks of what makes each of us tick.  The narrator was pumping out basic chemistry information in almost every sentence he spoke, and I could follow everything he was talking about, but my 90-year-old father could not.  My father was lost throughout the entire program, and readily admitted that he didn’t have “an idea in hell” (a direct quote) what the narrator was talking about.  However I knew precisely what was being discussed.

Now my father is not slow, not stupid. In fact, he is very sharp and very intelligent, but he never learned chemistry in his life and would not know a symbol from the atomic chart from a pipe organ.  This is an example of the power of learning and education just for the sake of learning and education.  

In the end, the power of this idea has little to do with curriculum reformation, practical robotic skill development, or getting a license, it has everything to do with the expansion of our brains, and that in the end is a terribly individual motivation. Some people get it, some people don’t.

Should we stop the debates, and protectionism of territories, and get together and expand and improve our formal professional and practical education?  Sure.  Will that happen?  Sure, someday, sometime.  But not tomorrow, not in a month – but possibly just possibly, if we stick to it and cooperate and find our unity in our diversity, maybe it will happen in a significant permanent way within a decade, maybe.  That is the way of educational reform – it is never as fast as the self-appointed reformers wish for, never – but overtime it does happen.

Based then on this simple ideal of the value of education for the sake of education, the answers to some of our pressing, seemingly insurmountable challenges can possibly be found.  Here are a few issues that come to mind:

• Too many mortuary schools?  Yes – however select the best, not the closest.
• Too much science in mortuary schools?  Possibly – but then any science is good; learn it for your enhancement of living life.
• License and certify cemeterians?  Why not?  The rest of the professional world seems to get licensed and certified.
• A minimum of a bachelor’s degree for entry?  It is a good idea, has merit. (It will never happen, but then, I can dream.)
• Apprenticeships?  Choose the mentor very carefully.

Finally, let me close with this thought.  The simple fact of life today is that if we ignore the ideal of education for the sake of education, and simply focus on the illusion of immediate gratification from a script, training seminar, or workshop (as valuable as these can be), if we ignore the philosophy of education for the sake of education, then this and any other profession or job will stagnate in the stale pool of the paralysis of creativity, and when that happens, then the world, our clients, the consumers and our communities who right now are deeply involved in lifelong learning quickly and unfortunately will permanently pass us by.  I would suggest that as a group of people interested in working in the arena of death, we abandon territories, egos, personal biases, and personal agendas and educate simply for the sake of improving minds.

I learned this idea concerning education from a chap named Socrates.--TVB

Georgia and I just returned from participating in the Wreath Across American ceremony and activities at Arlington National Cemetery.

As I pondered this moving event I could not help but be reminded of the tremendous sacrifice that so many people have made so that I could possess the freedom to even pen these words.

I have always loved history, and particularly presidential history.  It is true all one has to do is study the lives and times of the United States presidents and at the same time one is studying the history of this great country.

As we walked the miles upon miles of roads in Arlington, I was not surprised in the least that the gravesites of the Kennedy brothers attracted a tremendous amount of attention.  Who can resist the “Eternal Flame” and the symbolism and story behind that American icon of freedom and the high price freedom exacts.

Thousands upon thousands of wreaths were laid on one gravestone after another.  In fact I was told that this year the Wreaths Across America program laid out more wreaths than they have ever done in their history.  This is good stuff to be sure.

However I was struck by the observation that here and there some gravestones did not have a wreath.  The monument that did not have a wreath which struck me the most was the impressive monument of another president of the United States, William Howard Taft.  There is no question that Taft was a tad out of place as president (he was by nature a jurist), but he was nonetheless a great American who holds the distinction as being the only American in history to hold the two highest offices in the U.S. government – namely president of the United States, and chief justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Close to Taft’s gravesite was yet another significant American whose grave had no wreath.  That person was Robert Todd Lincoln, who was the eldest son of Abraham Lincoln.

While it is true that in Arlington National Cemetery there is great evidence of what I call the democracy of death – in other words no one grave ranks higher than any other – it also seemed appropriate to take a moment to lay wreaths on the graves of these two Americans who both had contributed so much to the building of this country, but whose memories have faded with the veil of time in the history books. 

What does the ritualistic exercise of memorializing our dead accomplish?  I believe that ritualizing our dead accomplished two personal assets and attainments which are priceless to the betterment of the human spirit.  First, it gives a person peace of mind, and second, it give a person the feeling that they have done the right thing.

I know when I saw the graves of both President Taft and the son of the Great Emancipator without a wreath it gave me peace of mind, and a feeling of doing the right thing, when I laid those two beautiful, simple wreaths on these two men’s final resting places.

As I got on the plane to fly home, I had a warm feeling inside, and once again the magic of ritualization, the unexplainable significance of simple wreath laying, had worked. 

Such it is with ceremony: It is priceless and so effective to help us embrace things in our hearts and souls when mere words fail, and I did not say one word when I positioned those two evergreen wreaths.

Anyway, that is it for this old undertaker.  TVB

All my adult life, in fact even as a little kid, I knew funerals, ceremonies, rites, rituals, were terribly important.  As a child I did not understand one thing concerning the meaning behind rituals and ceremonies, but it did not make any difference at all, because I could feel the impact of the “happening,” and children do indeed love happenings.

Today, however, I have tried to lay down childish things, and have spent many years trying to pin down the meaning, the impact, the nuances, the panache, and psychology of what happens to people when they gather in a common cause such as a funeral.

Just over a week ago my wife and I held a Holiday Memorial Service for the entire community.  We had a large crowd.  A few of the staff were cynical, a few supportive, but then that’s life – is it not?

However, when the ritual of the Holiday Memorial Service took off, even the most cynical staff members (who had previously felt mighty put upon for being asked to work the service) were themselves moved by the magic, the metaphor, and the raw data of the ceremony.

As the ritual began, it was not the planning or the execution of the event which held the meaning – it was the behavior and response of the human beings who attended which held the meaning of the ritual, which is true of all rituals.

The impact of this type of ceremony is that even the slowest, dullest, and intellectually challenged person understood what was going on.  I believe this is one of the cardinal beauties of all rituals.  The simplest is the best.

I remember three gentlemen arriving, and they were, in my opinion, a rough bunch.  They were unshaven, all three had dental problems, their cloths were worn, they were socially awkward, and they seem ill at ease, until the ritual began.  Then they were all at high attention, they had tears streaming down their faces, and the looks on the faces told the universal truth that grief is grief, and pain is pain across the globe.

In fact the events of this one evening once again reaffirmed in my mind and soul the terribly important meaning of rituals and ceremonies; in fact I am of the thinking that communities can not actually survive with good mental health without rituals and ceremonies.

It seems to me the bedrock foundation of our grand, great and noble profession.

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.  TVB

It is time to resurrect the funeral home ambulance service again.  This time, however, I am not alone in such a project.

I have made a new buddy, albeit hundreds of miles away, and a gentleman I have never laid eyes on named Scott Reinbolt.  He lives around the Cincinnati metro area, which is my old stomping grounds, so I was immediately intrigued by who he was, and what he was doing just because of his connection to the Queen City, and my intrigue was not for nothing.

Mr. Reinbolt has written a very interesting little treatise called “Humble Heroes: Setting the Record Straight About Funeral Home Operated Ambulance Service." The title is long, and the booklet is 40 pages long – but for anybody, and I suspect there are still a bunch of us out in the world – for anybody who tackled, battled, fought, and nay loved and hated the funeral home ambulance service I would suggest this as a good read.

I wrote a work in 1992 for the American Funeral Director Magazine called “The 1,100 Year History of the Ambulance Service.”  I can’t recall anybody mentioning that they even read the article but AFD published it, and I was happy with the results, but I do believe Mr. Reinbolt has gone a step, in fact many steps ahead of what I had offered in my article.

Mr. Reinbolt, I think anyway, hit pay dirt in his treatment of the myriad of complications, disappointments, and frustrations that many funeral directors experienced in trying to get out of the ambulance service in the 1970s and early 1980s.  I know what a hassle that effort was because I was one of those funeral director who basically could not give my ambulance service away.

Mr. Reinbolt in succinct manner traces first why funeral directors ended up with the ambulance in the first place.  Then he really makes a compelling historical case concerning the road blocks that we faced in trying to get out of the ambulance service.  It was a nightmare experience for so many.  Town meetings after town meetings (where absolutely nothing got accomplished), politics, ego’s run amuck, private agendas, profit and loss, government regulations, insurance requirements, and then just the mistrust that many funeral directors in the ambulance service had for each other.

I remember in my own case the other funeral directors in town all agreed that this or that date would be when we all got out.  The date came, but then at the 11th hour we found out that one lone funeral director had a change of heart – so then we all stayed in it again and in short order this cycle repeated itself over and over.

It is not necessary for me to elaborate on these historic experiences for Mr. Reinbolt has done a thorough job in mapping out just what happened to so many of us.

The booklet is also peppered with funny stories, and Lord knows any of us who operated the ambulance service probably are still telling funny stories to our friends at cocktail parties, because humorous experiences seemed to follow the ambulance like a shadow.

 
I remember one incident where I hauled this old lady probably a thousand times to and from the nursing home to the hospital, and on every trip I was assured by the medical profession that she was at “death’s door.”  How many times did we hear that one?  I never sent the family a bill, not one.  The logic being that because they seemed to like me I was counting on doing the funeral – mistake with a capital “M”.  Sure enough the lady died and to my utter horror the other funeral home got the call.  I damned near lost my mind over it.  Within three months I ran face to face with the deceased woman’s son downtown.  I couldn’t take the pressure, and blurted out, “Did we do anything to upset you in transporting your dear mother?”  The son replied, “Oh, heaven’s no – mother just loved you.  But my wife and I talked this over and this being a small town to be fair we decided that since we had given you all the ambulance business we had better let the other place have the funeral – you know Todd, just to be fair."

I believe the year was 1978 when my funeral business filed bankruptcy.

So there you have it, the wacky world of the funeral home ambulance service, and the story is retold in a really nice fashion in Mr. Reinbolt’s book.  The book is easy to get and you can contact Mr. Reinbolt at humbleheroes@inbox.com.

As I write this post my mind is spinning with memories of running the ambulance service.  I did it for over 20 years, and at times I loved it, and at times I could have burned the vehicle up!  However we did take the ambulance service seriously, we gave (for the time) stellar care with what we had to work with, and looking back for me ambulance service was simply a matter of heart – and my friends in the end is that not what funeral service is all about – a matter of heart?

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.  TVB

I just returned from doing three clergy seminars on behalf of the Maine Funeral Directors Association, and I was inspired to put some thoughts down on paper.

Over the last 40 years that I have been running around the globe doing seminars and lectures, there are some state funeral association I have bonded tightly with, that I have connected with and that I feel a true sense of kinship with, and the Maine Funeral Directors Association qualifies as one of those groups.

For over 30 years, I have been honored and privileged to make trips to the great state of Maine, and Lord knows how beautiful that grand place is—breathtaking is the word.  I have traveled from Portland to Presque Isle presenting a variety of topics ranging from my old standby seminar (now ancient) “The Assassination and Funeral of Abraham Lincoln” to business management topics, to bereavement/grief seminars—well, the list of seminars and talks goes on and on.

This time, however, my specific assignment was working with clergy guests, and I must confess I was gratified and pleased with the turnout.  Many Maine funeral professionals stepped up to the plate and brought clergy guests.  As far as I could tell over three days and many hours of work, all went well, though, of course, there was one grumpy chap who took me to task saying the average lifespan for a male was 73, not 78 as I had mistakenly put on the flip chart.  I was duly corrected and put in my place, made my apologies for my ignorance but privately thought the gentleman must be a spy for the Maine Department of Vital Statistics.

Truth is, there is always one of those types of characters in every seminar, and I have gotten comfortable in being told about my glaring inadequacies over these many years; it just goes with the seminar territory.

This post is not really about the content of the clergy seminar, although I want to share that once again I tried my best to make the following points which I have concluded are significant in bereavement care:

1) It is a crying shame that seminaries generally place so little importance on teaching grief psychology (the Maine clergy readily agreed that they had been ill prepared in their seminary education to minister to the grieving);

2) that religious institutions are the perfect place to teach and hence increase people’s own personal death awareness;

3) that there is great wisdom in people embracing their own mortality and hence experiencing what I call “eschatological urgency” (a five-dollar theological word meaning in essence the ability to feel the urgency to live life by coming to terms with our own mortality).

Anyway, that was about it concerning content, and the clergy responded very well to the information, not because of any skill on my part, but because they have never been exposed to anything academically about grief that contained substance and essential depth, and hence they were sponges when some solid information came their way, even if it came from a fellow like me.

However it is on the theme of “depth and essence” I would like to talk about here concerning many of the members of the Maine Funeral Directors Association.

Here and there, every now and then, just once in a while, a group emerges with a depth and essence of mission and service to others attitude that impresses me to the core, and the Maine Funeral Directors Association is one of those organizations.

Throughout the many times that my path has fortunately crossed the paths of the Maine Funeral Directors Association, I have never once experienced a disappointment.  The members almost uniformly have an attitude of committed service to others.  They basically live in the example of “you cannot enrich yourself until you first enrich the lives of others.”

When I was a student at NEI in Boston I went to Mortuary College with several chaps who were from Maine or who by career situations located to Maine, and every time I see these old chums again we walk over memory lane concerning the famous Kenmore Square (where NEI was located), the old J.S. Waterman building, the Rathskeller Bar, the Kenmore Club and a interesting haunt called, of all things, “Lucifer’s.”  Kenmore Square was in the heart of the Back Bay and it was a great place to be a student.  It was great fun!

It is gratifying for me in these tumultuous days and times to watch professional funeral service people tend to the important business of caring for the dead and simultaneously caring for the living, and so many of the members of the Maine group truly fit this description.

It has been my honor over these many years to hobnob with these good people, and I wanted to share these thoughts.  As time has marched forward I have witnessed a slowing of the formal times in which funeral directors and clergy come together to commiserate on the important issues which face both professional callings.  Twenty years ago clergy/funeral director seminars were very frequent, but I believe this type of activity has slowed down or is slowing down – and this is attributable to a variety of reasons, not the least being the secularization of our society.

But with that said, and with the movements to involve non-clergy in funeral rituals, I feel a need to share because of my most recent experiences with the work that the Maine group organized that the connection, communication, relationship building, and mutual interests shared by both clergy and funeral directors has not in the least lessened in its importance from years gone by. In fact, with the very secularization of our society, and from the outcome of our Maine clergy seminars, I would humbly suggest this type of effort on the part of funeral professionals is more important today than ever before.

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.  TVB

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

ICCFA 2011 Convention speaker Juliet Funt, who talked about the importance of "white space" (unscheduled time) and how to get more of it in your life, ended her fun and informative presentation with a short "anthem," with the help of ICCFA members Mark Krause and Doug Gober (on loan from the Cryptones), Mike Hays and Nicole Weideman.

The audience loved it, and so will you. It's a 2-minute picker-upper (click on the pic to listen):

The lyrics:

Every day of my life there’s more to achieve,
A sense of urgency that just won’t leave,
I try to do my best,
But they put me to the test,
...It’s the Culture of Insatiability on me,
But I’m singin’ a different tune now listen to me- I’m freed!

Singin’
I can let it go,
The pressure and the stress and the crazy rat race,
I can let it go,
So come and grab a little white space with me.

It’s noble work to counsel the bereaved,
The satisfaction’s not be believed.
But then the florist’s late,
And the grandson get irate,
It’s the little things that make me anxious and distressed,
Even Todd Van Beck would be a mess- unless, he sang,

I can let it go,
The pressure and the stress and the crazy rat race,
I can let it go,
So come and grab a little white space with me.

I can let it go,
The pressure and the stress and the crazy rat race,
I can let it go,
So come and grab a little white space with me.

I recently marked my 23rd year of presenting at the Dodge Sunshine Seminars.  It has been a long and eventual relationship, and one that I am honored to write about today.

My first seminar for Dodge was held at the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel in Honolulu.  I was scared to death.  In fact I was so nervous that I blurted out the name of an embalming chemical in the middle of my talk that was manufactured by a chemical company other than Dodge.  The minute I blurted out the name of the “competing” embalming chemical I thought to myself “Well Todd, you dunce, you have done it again, so kiss off another invitation from Dodge.”  My fears, at the time, were only strengthened when Jake Dodge said absolutely nothing to me concerning my seminar presentation after it was over.  Jake said nothing, not one word.  I remember getting on the plane and thinking “Todd your family has been right all along, you are the ‘black sheep’ no question about it.”

One year later Jake Dodge called me and invited me back, and the rest, as they say, has been history, and what a marvelous history is has turned out to be. (I had to learn that not saying much was one of Jake Dodge’s character hallmarks.)

Over the past three decades it has been my experience, my fortunate experience, to have worked closely and at times at a far distance, with most every funeral/cemetery connected organization out in this big wide world.  The truth is that I have enjoyed almost all of my associations.   Of course not all of them have been a “love fest,” for some of the experiences have been a labor, in fact it would be better described as a “ill fated labor” which ended in hurt feelings, damaged egos, and the taking of the firm TVB oath that “I will never cross their paths again.”  Yes, this stuff has happened, but after giving seminars for over 35 years, to over tens of thousands of funeral professionals, clergy, hospice workers, cemeterians, mortuary science students, well this list goes on and on I have concluded that I just can’t be all things to all people, and people in turn can’t be all things to me.  You win some, you lose some, it is just the way of it – don’t you agree?

However, the truth is these unfortunate experiences that I have just described are far and away in the minority of my experiences.  Without question, the last 35 years have been filled with rich and meaningful work and associations, with countless people in our grand profession who really are great, decent and just kindhearted human beings, and nowhere in my myriad of speaking experiences have I found this to be more true and self-evident than when I work with a Dodge Seminar.

I would like to share some observations concerning the substance and literal panache of a Dodge meeting.  First and foremost, in my humble opinion, is that the history of the Dodge Company, both past and present, is a continuum of a genuine, literal, in-depth love of the funeral service profession.  I always felt that the generations of the Dodges since 1893, when the company was founded, well, they just seem to grasp the DNA of embalming and hence funeral service.

I found also that the Dodges were quiet people who have and had keen insights and were able in turn to discern the quality and content of the presentations that were given at the Sunshine and other seminars.  No formal evaluations were made, but most often it was clear enough which speakers hit the home run and which speakers flopped, simply based on whether you ever saw this or that speaker ever again.  Nothing was ever said, but the message was clear as a ringing bell and it depended upon the return invitation.

I remember very well one particular speaker – giving the location of the seminar is too risky, but here is what happened.  This person had presented themselves as a “grief expert.”  I have only known a couple of people who truly ranked in the realm of deserving the title “grief expert” and this speaker quickly taught the group that they were NOT a member of this exclusive club.  As my memory serves, this particular seminar started out in good order, but then the speaker shifted gears and started talking about taking care of a family who had experienced the tragic death of a loved one and the deceased had been severely mutilated in an industrial accident.  In a word, the dead body was literally in pieces.  This “grief expert” strongly suggested that in order for the bereaved family to “establish the reality of death” that the funeral director lay out a water proof canvas on the floor of a room in the funeral home, then set out the various pieces of the deceased person, and then have the family come in and look at the scene.  The “grief expert” in conclusion suggested that funeral professionals have the bereaved family “sit down Indian style so when they faint they won’t have so far to fall.”  I damned near fainted as well!

I was sitting in the back of the room when this happened.  The crowd was stunned into silence.  It is the only time I saw Jake Dodge’s expression change.  We never ever saw the “grief expert” ever again, anywhere.  The message was as clear as a ringing bell.

The Dodges have been risk-takers to be sure, but they have also been very savvy and insightful to be careful, prudent and cautious about what is put in print, what is said in their Sunshine and other seminars.  It appears clear to me after all these years that they just have the funeral knack, they always have had it, and it is clear to me that they still possess that greatly appreciated skill.

A couple of weeks ago I made another presentation in Maui at the 2011 Dodge Sunshine Seminar.  Of course over the passing of two decades the audience has changed.  Some of the old-time regulars are simply not with us anymore, and thankfully an entirely new group is attending which adds a fresh dimension to all of the proceedings.

The group in Maui once again reaffirmed my belief in and love for our great profession.  For the first time I moved from my historic ancient caveman approach and I actually used a PowerPoint presentation which I have to finally admit is much easier to maneuver than my old ancient Kodak slide trays which I lugged around on planes, trains and automobiles for a hundred years.

In this 2011 seminar I spoke of several themes.  They included a definition of success, an examination into a fascinating arena of thought which is called “Acres of Diamonds,” and of all things I included Newton’s physical laws of nature into the session.  It seemed things went well, and I finished up with sharing my new service concept which is called “Create Don’t Compete.”

While I was presenting I really was thinking and then publicly I shared in this 2011 seminar that the Dodge Company was a stellar example of just what I was talking about.  Their rich history is, in reality, in my humble opinion, a history of not competing, but is instead a history of creativity, which in the end is always much more influential and long-lasting.

As my sainted grandmother always used to say, “The proof is in the pudding.”  I actually never had any idea, and never understood, and still don’t really know what possible proof of anything can be discovered by looking into pudding, but it is of no matter, because everybody, I think, understands what that strange phrase really means: Just look at the results, and no question the results of the Dodge Company have been mighty impressive.

The Dodge Sunshine Seminars have been one of the fortunate experiences in my career.  In fact I knew that the Sunshine Seminars were of high quality many years before I was honored to be invited to be a part of them.  I knew this reality while reading about them in the old De-Ce-Co magazine while I was washing cars, delivering folding chairs and sweeping up the parking lot at the old Heafey & Heafey Mortuary on Farnam Street in Omaha.  Even a young funeral director wannabe could see the “proof in the pudding.”

Anyway that 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

Several months ago I made a speaking trip to Northampton Community College in Pennsylvania to give the annual Pearson Lectures.  I always have enjoyed my trips to the “Keystone” or “Quaker” State, and as always I was treated with much courtesy and hospitality.

I am guessing that the lectures went alright.  My host John Lunsford, who is a true gentleman, and the head of the mortuary science department at the college, said the evaluations looked good.  Of course there were a few good people who took task with some of my thoughts, but then that is the risk and the reality of giving public presentations – you can’t be all things to all people.

However as enjoyable as my work with Northampton Community College was, and as gracious as my hosts were, one of the true impacts on my life and career happened just out of the blue when I was introduced to a couple by the name of Trish and Tom Quinn.  The Quinns are funeral professionals in the Philadelphia area, and what I encountered both in listening and learning from them has had a great influence on my view of funeral service and the noble worthy ideal of our continued quest to improve our abilities and skills in helping bereaved human beings.  Helping people always seemed so worthy to me.

The substance of my interaction and subsequent friendship with the Quinns has revolved around one primary subject, the extremely sensitive and vulnerable topic of the death of a child, and the subsequent funeral activities or lack of them.

I cannot remember a time in my career when children have not died.  Certainly, and this is a great blessing, the death of a child is nothing today like it was at the turn of the century, or throughout history for that matter, but even though the numbers of children deaths are less than ever before, the impact of such a death is more pronounced than ever before simply because CHILDREN ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO DIE ANYMORE.

There was a time, actually not that long ago, when the death of a child was not unusual.  Throughout history children have been particularly susceptible to the neverending work of the Grim Reaper.  I remember looking at an old funeral record book one time and being struck by the fact that for the month of August 1893 this undertaker had conducted 38 funerals, and 13 of them had been for children under the age of twelve.  It was sobering reading, I can tell you that!

Thank God things have improved concerning child mortality statistics in this country, but yet, as every funeral professional can attest, children still do die, and this cruel reality is the particular ministry and mission on which the Quinns have focused their attention.

Customarily such connection between a funeral professional and the subject of the death of a child is a psychological one.  You know, the seminars which have been presented for years on the subjects of “How to Tell a Child” or “What Do Children Do” or “What Happens When A Parent Dies” or the neverending topic “Should A Child Go To A Funeral.”  All these subjects have great worth, but the Quinns have focused on something else.  Their focus is on the basic economic structure, or lack thereof, of a child’s funeral expenses, and to that end they have created what I consider one of the most innovative, worthy and creative organizations I have ever heard of in our great profession, FINAL FAREWELL. http://finalfarewell.org/

Let’s freeze this frame a moment and as usual I would like to dive into some funeral history.  When I started out in funeral service, the rock solid policy of the funeral home I was connected with was that if the deceased was a child (the criteria was if the body was too small to go into an adult-sized casket), there was no charge made to the family – even if they could pay. 

I knew several other funeral homes in the area in which I worked that had the same policy.  My employer’s attitude was one of benevolence, kindness, generosity and mercy.  The truth was that most often when a child died, the parents or others most closely affected were people without means.  Most of the people we served when a child had died could not afford prenatal care, they might not have been married, some were shunned by their own families. When the child’s death was not due to illness, we seemed to always be dealing with accidental death or, sadly, homicides.

It was clear that a child’s death placed the funeral home and our staff in a psychological position that many times tackled the very fiber of our service ability.  To that end my employer made the decision that since the atmosphere of a child’s death was so charged with complications and sensitivities and trauma and drama, he was not going to add to these poor people’s problems with a funeral bill.  He would just absorb the expenses and move on.  Certainly today this approach might well annoy or cause some readers to react negatively, but I am just sharing history and not in the least suggesting how a funeral home owner today ought to approach a similar situation.  This is just history, nothing else, and as we all know we can’t change history.

It seems evident to me that the death of a child still causes much anguish. It also seems evident that some people who have experienced the death of a child still experience poor prenatal care, might not be married, might well be shunned by their families, and children are still killed accidentally or intentionally.  The Grim Reaper is still very busy.

The approach my old employer took of not charging for a child’s funeral did have positive results for his career, and his business. His generous spirit translated into family loyalty, and while he did not charge for the child’s funeral, he did not give away funerals to the child’s grandparents, aunts and uncles or their parents.  In fact, this great funeral director's generous spirit truly came back to him a thousand times, and what is more, he slept well at night.

Of course that was more than 40 years ago, and I am not naïve; things have changed.  The basic profit structure of a funeral has changed in a big way,  the economy has changed in a big way. Today the notion of giving anything away needs careful consideration, careful procedures and most of all careful attention to fiscal responsibility.  Things have changed.

This is where the Quinns and their creative work in starting up the philanthropic foundation called FINAL FAREWELL comes in.

It has been a long time since I have seen a philanthropic effort in our profession that I personally believe has as much worth to it as does the Quinns' FINAL FAREWELL ministry.

The basic idea behind Final Farewell is simple:  the foundation is a financial resource, a pool of funds used to assist families with funeral expenses when a child dies.  In other words, based on each individual situation, case by case, the vision and now the work of Final Farewell is to help pay for funeral expenses on behalf of a bereaved family. The funds go directly to the serving funeral home, so that a type of win/win situation is created – if one can possibly even use the word “win” in reference to a child’s death.  Worded another way, when contacted, the Quinns and their Final Farewell Foundation will work in tandem with both the bereaved family and the serving funeral home to arrive at a figure which the foundation will contribute to defray the funeral expenses that occur when a child dies.

There are no complicated formulas, no complicated forms, no lengthy application processes, no bureaucracy and no one is turned down.  The amount of money given is always predicated upon how much money is in the foundation's account, and the particular situation involved.

The Quinns also have been diligent in creating a non-profit recognized enterprise overseen by a Board of Directors, all of who are highly respected leaders from funeral service and other professions.

The amounts of money that are extended to a funeral home is based presently on the amounts of money that are sitting in the Foundation coffers, and the truth is the Foundations bank accounts is not piled high with cash, in fact the cash presently goes up and down depending on how many generous souls the Quinn’s can contact and attract and what the daily needs are concerning helping bereaved people when a child dies.   Bluntly speaking the Foundation needs money, they need contributions, and they need it from us, and they need it now.

The Quinns have just begun their noble work, and I believe they are doing pioneering work, but also I believe they have their hearts precisely in the right place.  They do not look at this work as a business; I believe the Quinns look at this work as their mission in life, a ministry to the least of these, and in the end a true corporal act of mercy.

They need help.  They need contributions.  The need relationships out in the funeral service profession.  They need a solid base so that the funds extended to the worthy people who experience a death of a child can be in time made entirely from the interest which will be in financial investment accounts intended to last long after the Quinns are gone and other people take over the program. 

The other side of the wisdom of Final Farewell is that it will help contribute to the financial security of funeral homes.  Final Farewell might not be able to take care of all the financial obligations of a child’s funeral, but they are helping. I know they want to help more.

I would ask any reader that before you make a decision to invest your time and/or monetary contributions, you first explore Final Farewell on your own by looking at their Website.  Also you can easily contact the Quinns by calling this phone number:  1-800-238-8440.  I believe you will be happy you made the contact to get involved.

This is NOT a sales pitch, but it is a worthy call to action.  I believe Final Farewell is a worthy ideal, and it is managed by two worthy and dedicated human beings:  Trish and Tom Quinn.  I believe their work deserved our attention and support.

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

The Blust Bros. were our sainted local undertakers when I was growing up in Southwestern Iowa.  The two brothers had operated the funeral home since their father, who had started in funeral home in 1871 had died in 1916.  In the 1960s the Blust Bros. were still doing our funerals, and on top of this they operated our local furniture store, and on top of that they operated the only ambulance service for a 30 mile radius.

Today when I say in conversation that I operated a ambulance service, and that many funeral homes across this country also operated ambulance services, people look at me like I have carrots growing out of my eye balls.  Then of course the utterly predictable, but utterly stupid remark is made concerning the “glaring” conflict of interest of the undertaker running the ambulance service – everybody except me has a great laugh at this idea.  These days I am so damned tired of explaining the history of the funeral home ambulance service that when this junk happens I usually just order another drink or maybe several.

However funeral homes did indeed operate ambulance services, and the truth is most funeral directors took the ambulance service very seriously even though it was a constant operational headache for which most funeral directors never got paid.

Today people innocently project the sophisticated notions of “emergency medical technicians” and the even more impressive “Para-medic” training and expertise to their vision of the funeral home ambulance services and this is totally understandable.  However during the period when funeral homes were operating ambulance services, the idea of specially trained professionals, let alone the idea of moving hospitals on wheels as we see today, were thoughts and visions that were relegated to the science fiction books and thinking.

In my own ambulance career, looking back the basic approach to funeral home ambulance services came, in my opinion, down to two facts:  first was let’s load and go, and second was the idea that fast speed to the hospital equaled patient care.  Yes to be sure we had oxygen tanks, we had Ace bandages, and we had Timmon splints, and I remember the most impressive piece of equipment was the “Ricco” aspirator.  We did the best we could with what we had, and the truth is the funeral home ambulance service worked well and certainly provided a much needed service to the community for a very long time, but if anybody held a card in “Advanced First Aid” they were at the top of the ambulance training system.

The Packard Ambulance
The Blust Bros. had a great 1949 Packard Ambulance sitting in their garage, and folks, it was not a combination (hearse and ambulance).  This was an honest to God, fully equipped ambulance (equipped for that time).  The vehicle  had a huge cherry red light on top, and a great big Federal “Q” siren prominently attached to the front of the vehicle.  The Blust Bros. had a cot, they had several towels, they had a pan you could vomit in, they had splints, they had oxygen, they had bandages and with no hesitation they very boldly advertised in our local newspaper that they offered “TWENTY FOUR HOUR EMERGENCY AMBULANCE SERVICE – FULLY EQUIPPED.”

Everybody in town was mighty impressed and proud of this Packard vehicle.  Even the ambulances we would see in Omaha could not compare in sheer size and sound to the Blust Bros. ambulance.

The Blust Bros. ambulance was not just a vehicle; it was, looking back, a moving signal to the good people in our little town that something had happened to somebody in our town that needed our community's attention, and more importantly, it required our attentive gossip.  And if our little town was anything, it was mighty skilled at the noble art of gossiping.

Here is a typical Blust Bros. ambulance call.  Usually when no funerals were going on, the Blust Bros. could be found laying down carpet, delivering a refrigerator, or setting up a bedroom set in a home.  In fact, the brothers had signs for the furniture store or the funeral home, some of which would read “Closed, got a funeral today”, or “Laying carpet at _______ if you need us come get us.”

There were no pagers, no beepers, certainly no cell phones, and in our little town the idea of an answering service was as remote a concept as, say, the idea that we could put a man on the moon.  The Blust Bros. communication system was simply this:  If you needed the Blust Bros. and if they were not at the funeral home or at the furniture or at their own homes, you had to go find them.  That was the way it was, and no one in town thought any different.

No question about it, when we heard the Blust Bros. siren most everything in town stopped.  Everybody went to their windows or front porches and would wait to see the Blust Bros. fly past our midst with the red light flashing, the siren blasting, and Henry Blust at the wheel going like a bat out of hell.  Then the gossip would begin in earnest.  “Who was it?” “Could it be. . . .” you know that “so-and-so is doing poorly.”  A wonderful system of community chatter would start and it was all stimulated to community life by two old undertakers flying past us in a 1949 Packard ambulance.
 
Today I am impressed and of the opinion that the Blust Bros. really loved their siren, because they used it every chance they got, and with tremendous bravado would crank that sound up to fever pitch and then just let it rip, moving through our streets and byways with terribly impressive speed.  All I could think of when I saw that old Packard ambulance was that was what I wanted to do went I grew up – and folks, my dream did indeed come true.

Today of course the Blust Bros. ambulance simply pales in comparison with the high tech skills and vehicles that we expect as basic, standard care.  The Blust Bros., however, possessed something with their 1949 Packard ambulance that I suspect might well be absent in today’s high tech world of emergency medical care – our people in our town knew these two men and we trusted them.

The care the Blust Bros. were able to offer the sick and injured certainly would not measure up to the impressive standards of care today, but the Blust Bros. possessed an aura and a panache about them running that old ambulance such that when our people saw these two ancient, hard-of-hearing brothers show up, we all looked at each other with the look of affirmation that “all will be well, the Blust Bros. are here.”  Looking back, I believe that was a priceless connection that we had with our local undertakers – “all will be well.”

If an injured person was screaming in pain at the top of their lungs, it didn’t make any difference to the Blust Bros. not because they were insensitive but because they couldn’t hear the screams, they couldn’t hear anything at all, ever.  But all Henry Blust had to do was to look at someone or a gathered group in our town and say the magic words “Don’t worry about this; we will take care of it” and we all went home feeling better, even if the poor injured soul expired.

If someone died in the Blust Bros. care no one ever thought to level blame at the two brothers, and suing our beloved Blust Bros. was unconscionable, and we all knew that when someone died on the way to the hospital in a couple of days the Blust Bros. furniture store would be closed because Henry and Nob Blust would be entrusted with doing the person’s funeral.

All of this was possible because, as I said in another blog, we just liked the Blust Bros.  Liking is a powerful motivator for all kinds of human behavior.  Liking, I believe, is still a real goal in life, and it seems evident that it is still one of the key parts of being effective in the art and skill of being a good funeral professional.  Being well liked is a good thing. 

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.  God bless the good ole’ Blust Bros. 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

Last week I made a trip to Northampton Community College to give a couple of presentations to the area funeral directors.  The day was sponsored by the Mortuary Science Department at Northampton which is led and administered by the very able and capable headmaster John Lunsford.  I was very impressed by the events of the day, but for this particular writing I want to share extremely redeeming experience that I had during my sojourn to the great Keystone State.

Having spent a considerable amount of my career teaching I have formed changing opinions of students.  My opinions, over the years, have almost always been predicated on the maturity level, or lack thereof, of classes.  When I started out teaching in the early 1980s I found most of the classes were composed of students who had a level of maturity, and also who had a mission as to precisely what they were getting involved with in a career in funeral service.

As I have written in past articles devoted to mortuary education over the years it was my hard lot to discover that students were changing, and I concluded that they were not changing for the better, in fact I concluded that the future of our great profession based on my conclusions concerning students looked dim indeed.  This opinion was formed before I made my trip to Northampton.

The old saying goes that you “can’t teach an old dog new tricks”, and I have often said that you “can’t teach an old undertaker new tricks,” but Lord knows I was wrong.  I was taught some new lessons.

Here is what I learned.  I had the good fortune of interacting with a score of mortuary science students from both Northampton, and Mercer County students from New Jersey who generously made the trip across the state line to hear my seminars.  I thank Rob Smith (headmaster of Mercer County) for his interest and organizational skills – Smith has always been one of my personal favorites.

My interaction with the Northampton student’s actually was predicated on the students own idea for a fund raiser for their fraternity.  Of all things these good students decided to sell, now get this friends, TVB’s CD which has all my management and outreach programs on it.  I said yes to the idea and freely sent John Lunsford a copy and he and the student’s made impressive cases for the CD, they set up a booth, they promoted the CD, and were very effective salespeople, because at the end of the day they sold $1,000 worth of the CDs and are planning to use the money raised for a charitable purpose. (What charity it was I have forgotten – but I am sure it is worthy.)

What I discovered in dealing with these fine students in the seminar and the CD project was several characteristics which made this old grumpy undertaker’s heart soar.  First of all they were all dressed impeccably.  Their dress was clearly consistent with the extremely conservative nature of funeral service, and not one of them, that I could see, was using the opportunity to make “a fashion statement.”  There also were no snooty “attitudes.”  The students were polite, all behaving as professional gentlemen and ladies, and they smiled, yes they actually were smiling, none of them looked like they had been sucking on lemons all day, and they conversed, they talked, they carried on conversations, they extended their hands in cordiality and hospitality, and they actually seemed to behave as if they truly enjoyed being mortuary science students.  I did not meet one cranky, grumpy, complaining, or ridiculous student – not one.

The students also seemed interested in my seminars.  They asked insightful questions, and actually some of them came up later and requested additional information.

Here is the lesson I learned.  I have been way too hard and critical of mortuary science students, and for that I publically apologize.  What I personally encountered at Northampton Community College renewed my faith in the future of our great and beloved profession, because no matter what we veteran funeral directors have to say about the future, the future of this great profession to a large extent rests on every breath of air that is taken by mortuary science students right this very moment across this county.

I am the past in funeral service; they are the future.  As I flew back to my world I felt the need to write this, to get my error in thinking off my chest, and to publically admit that I was wrong. Mortuary science students are mighty fine people – anyway the ones I encountered at Northampton fit the bill.

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion. TVB

I spent a couple of days traveling the wide width of the great state of Pennsylvania a couple of weeks ago.  My host was a chap by the name of Bob Buhrig who I made friends with many years ago, but who I have not seen for over a decade.  It was a great trip, and made all the better by Mr. Buhrig’s insight and clear devotion to funeral service.  Bob is known as BeepBob in Pennsylvania, and clearly he has made some valuable inroads in the Keystone State.

We started out in Harrisburg, and then traveled west to Pittsburgh. Over the years of my career I have had the fortune to work with many funeral professional in Pennsylvania, but honestly these two seminars, which were hundreds of miles apart, reinvigorated my impression of just what quality people our great profession attracts.

I was impressed, as I am on every trip, as to the wide breadth of cultural diversity in Pennsylvania. The two groups I talked to could not have been more different, except for one common denominator – they all seemed to be mighty interested in funeral service, and they all were mighty cordial and hospitable.
It does me good to reconnect with people who like being in funeral service. Honestly, I hear so many negatives, so many pundits with this grudge or that grudge to voice that I actually get worried and depressed that our profession is going to hell in a handbasket. Of course that is only my own temporary psychology, for when I encounter people such as I did in PA, all my worries and fears concerning the future tend to evaporate.

I am not naïve to the problems we have, and the list is long and of concern, but in talking with and listening to and learning from the PA funeral professionals, I concluded that things are not that bad, and that families are still being served on an excellent level, and that the idea that the “sky is falling” is just that – just an idea.

I am not Pollyanna, and truthfully as I was being taken around Pittsburgh and Harrisburg it was clearly evident that things had changed. In Harrisburg a few former funeral homes are now gone and just empty buildings, and in Pittsburgh there are a few parking lots that I remember once were the sites of some really big funeral operations. So yes, things have changed, but when I first traveled in Pennsylvania many years ago, I left feeling that there were some mighty nice people up there in our profession, and when I got on the plane after this trip, well, friends, I felt the same way. Thank you PA; your kindness and courtesy is appreciated.

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

Of course what I am about to share is old-fashioned and today I suspect viewed as antiquated and possibly downright offensive, but here goes anyway.

I have worked with funeral home promotions for many years, and have seen some mighty impressive ideas and creativity show up with all sorts of concepts and efforts to make the funeral home more visible (in a tactful manner) in the community.

Here is the story.  When I started college back in another world I worked for a small town funeral home in Western Nebraska.  We did around 60 calls a year, but what we really did was operate a free ambulance service which responded to probably 300 calls a year.  My boss was a wonderful man, generous to a fault, a horrible business person, and just loved running his free ambulance service.  While many funeral directors complained about the ambulance my boss literally basked in delight when he got to turn on the red lights and blast the siren.  He did not make a dime on the ambulance but he had a marvelous time driving that vehicle at light year speed throughout the town and country side.  Looking back I have to admit that some of the most dangerous and life threatening experiences I have encountered was not with the sick or injured people we picked up, but it was riding along when my boss was driving.  He took chances on the road that today would be unacceptable and would probably get him arrested.

However he did two things with his funeral coach and his ambulance that I just thought would be worth sharing and I am not suggesting that anyone adopt these ideas, it is just my recollections of times long gone by.

First was his use of the hearse.  If we went for a couple of weeks without a funeral my boss would instruct us to drive the hearse downtown and travel up and down the streets of our community – and that was it.  The name of the funeral home was prominently displayed in every window so you could not miss or get confused as to who owned the hearse.  My buddy and I drove around for an hour or two.  Just driving that was it.  No waving, no stopping, no conversation – just driving around, and as we all know funeral coaches draw attention.

The first time he asked me to do this I thought he was crazy.  Adding to the nuttiness was the fact that he never took the time to explain to us why we were driving the hearse around in circles, but he was the boss so off we went.

However, and this happened constantly, on our very next call during the visitation period people would come into the funeral home and while they were signing the register book would nonchalantly mention that “good heaven’s you guy’s must have been really busy the other day, I saw your hearse I bet twelve times.”  The truth was we had not had a call for a month, but to the public’s mind we were mighty busy.  Today I call this a mobile advertising effort.

The other innovation that my boss did was with the ambulance.  Years before I went to work for him he had gone to every hospital in the area and offered to transport mothers who had had a baby and were being released from the hospital a free ambulance trip back home.

We even had a special cot with a canopy over the head end so the mother and newborn would not get too much sun.

We routinely took a mother and her new baby back home in grand style.  The ambulance had the name of the funeral home on every conceivable place on the vehicle, including the roof.

My boss gave us explicit instructions.  When we were about two blocks from the home of the mother and new baby we were to turn on all the red lights, and crank the siren up as loud as it would go to draw attention to the our arrival, and sure enough when we turned the siren on most every neighbor came out of their homes, and the family of the new baby was already present, and most everybody had cameras and were (they thought) snapping pictures of the mother and new baby, but what they were also doing was snapping pictures of our ambulance with our name prominently present in every photo.  We took our time in getting mom and baby out of the ambulance, we poised for photographs, we shook hands, we visited, and we basically did great public relations building for the funeral home through our ambulance.  There were some touching and memorable moments when we would take mother and baby back home.

In fact it was not unusual for someone to come to the funeral home to attend a funeral and proudly announce that they were an “XYZ funeral home baby.”  They seemed proud of the fact that the funeral home had delivered them home when they were born.

Today these ideas sound terribly old-fashioned and I suspect there are many reading this who will take justified exception with such past practices, but that is what we did, and here was the interesting fact: the public responded favorably to our innovative visibility ideas.

Anyway friends this is just another ambulance memory and thoughts of an old undertaker. TVB

Last week I spent a day teaching out at the “Farm” in Batesville.  I have lost track of the number of trips I have made to the “Farm” over the years, but suffice to say I have been making that journey many times over the past thirty years.

It all started out when I was teaching merchandising at the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science and way back then we took two classes a year to Batesville (I think they still do this) to have the grand tour, and to let sink into the minds of the “baby undertakers” just what it took to make one casket – let alone seven hundred caskets a day.  To say the least, it was and still is mighty impressive stuff to take that tour.  Then for a decade I was involved with a large corporation who had a close relationship with Batesville, and since that experience went belly up, I have made a trip most every year for other funeral service companies who were having their annual training programs out at the “Farm.”  I have seen the “Farm” move from a small assembly of cottages to a terribly impressive training and conference center with a splendid lodge, and gorgeous surroundings.  Batesville, as with most everything, like it or not, has done this right, no doubt.

This last trip as I was driving from the Cincinnati airport and meandering across the country roads outside of Batesville I was just struck at what insight, vision, tenacity of purpose, and just good management the Batesville Casket Company has exhibited consistently over these many years.
Say what you want about the Batesville Casket Company, and there certainly have been detractors, but to be honest this company I believe has changed the methods of burial and now cremation across the globe.  I take my hat off to them and their leadership but particularly for their creativity.  Batesville I believe did not compete; instead, they created.

There was a time in funeral service when countless casket companies abounded in the field.  Looking back, there were probably just too many of them.  When I started one powerhouse company was the now defunct Crane & Breed Casket Company located in Cincinnati.  There was Belmont, Merit, Chicago, National, Springfield Metallic, Boyertown, Marsellus, Clarksburg, Connersville-Franklin, and Comet - well, the list went on and on.  In their own way each of these companies did an outstanding job, for the time they worked in.  However, it often took a month to get a casket from some of these fine casket companies, and Batesville, along with other things, changed all that.

I remember the first time we were able to get a replacement casket from Batesville in a couple of hours. We were stunned, and to tell the truth that experience alone changed the way we looked at casket companies.  Of course quick replacement of caskets is nothing new today, and if a casket company can’t replace them quickly, well then the individual funeral homes will no doubt determine, among other things, who sells caskets and who does not.

However beyond the reformation of the casket industry, Batesville had something else, I concluded on my last trip to the “Farm.”  The company clearly succeeded in implementing and leading a new vision of what a casket was, and more importantly what a casket could be, and that one aspect, I personally believe, changed the way the funeral profession viewed the casket.

Certainly our profession has learned much from Batesville’s Options program, and I remember when that program was rolled out the reaction many times was not supportive or visionary.  I remember hearing “Batesville is endorsing cremation!”  I don’t hear that comment much anymore. 

There have been a few, not many, just a few movements in our great profession that literally changed things.  Cremation is of course one of them. The movement from home funerals to the mortuary concept is another. Going from using ice to embalm with to accepting arterial embalming is another. Government involvement is yet another. And I would suggest that the work and success of the Batesville Casket Company ranks right up there with the other permanent changes in funeral service.

To be sure there are other great casket companies – no question about that. But thinking about my most recent trip and looking back at these many years, I cannot help but conclude that Batesville just changed the way the funeral profession viewed caskets, merchandising, and now cremation possibilities.

Anyway, I was just thinking about Batesville; my small brain was jogged by my trip out to the “Farm.” As always, this is just one old grumpy undertaker’s opinion. TVB

This year was the 20th year that the funeral management college has been operational within the structure of the ICCFA University, and what a 20 year run it has been.

It has been my good fortune, (and trust me, friends, my life and career has not been a planned event nor was it ever by design), to have been associated with this small funeral service management college contribution to the all voluntary University experience from the funeral college’s inception.  Much credit needs to be given to Patrick Downey, who was the first person on earth to see this vision, and took the calculated risk of approaching me to head up the pioneering efforts, and the rest, they say, is history.

This blog however is not about the funeral management college, although I have had many a wonderful experience year after year with each group.  Not one group was ever the same, not one!  They were all in the end wonderful people who showed up because they simply wanted to, there was and is not any government bureaucracy looming over anyone’s heads at the ICCFA University saying with dire consequences “get those CEUs or you are going to be in big trouble with the state or province.”  That type of stuff does not happen.  People come to Memphis because they want to, and what a refreshing concept that is.

I have been connected with ICCFA for many years and of course my association with this organization has not been without detractors.  However I have had detractors my entire life, which is already long and has not been totally uneventful.  I concluded many years ago that detractors were just a part of the grand adventure and in the end I would never be asked to give an account of them, only myself – so off I went, and part of this grand adventure involved quite by accident ICCFA. 

My connection with ICCFA was not by design or plan I just stumbled into the ICCFA world be a series of unforeseen events.  Looking back at my life I have to confess that most of the richest blessings I have experienced have actually been under the lurking category of the unforeseen events, and the truth is most everything I have planned for, designed intentionally to be successful has in actuality failed.  But not the unforeseen events, they have been successful and just seem to have come from God knows where.  ICCFA was a totally unforeseen event, but what a blessing it has been. 

The University is but a microcosm of the entire overview of the organization.  And I have found, for me anyway, that one phrase, a three word phrase, can very aptly encompass the attraction for me of the ICCFA world and that phrase is “unity in diversity.”

All my life I have been attracted to that phrase and the deep idea that it communicates and in fact as I have aged this idea of unity in diversity has become even more attractive and powerful in how I personally view and cope with the real world, which sometimes is not pleasant, and sometime can be mighty cold. 

This last week I spent once again four and one half days teaching at the funeral management college and I can happily report that the idea of unity in diversity was once again alive and well in the halls and classrooms of the Fogelman Executive Center on the campus of the impressive University of Memphis.  The experience warmed my heart, the University was not cold, it was not unpleasant and the difference between my feeling warm or cold revolved around the innocent idea of unity in diversity.

Mention any job connected within the ranks our great and grand profession and I will bet you that they were somewhere within the ICCFA University world.  Just name anybody.  Gravediggers you ask, were any in Memphis?  Yes they were there, and I learned quite a bit from one particular gentleman whose mission in life was to dig graves, it was not a job, and it was his mission.  He was a man of dignity and felt strongly that the profession of digging graves was indeed a worthy ideal, and I agreed with him totally, but privately felt ashamed that 35 years ago I looked my nose down on gravediggers in Omaha and felt that time in life anyway that I was superior to them.  Of course those are the years that I have dubbed the chapter title in my autobiography as “The Years before Todd Became a Human Being.”

Landscape artists who talked about the worthy ideal of flowers and bushes were there; preneed counselors were there who talked about the worthy ideal of planning ahead; operational managers were there who talked about the worthy ideal of making sure everything ran smoothly; funeral professionals were there who talked about the worthy ideal of funerals; attorneys were there who talked about the worthy ideal of staying out of trouble; grief people were there who talked about the worthy ideal of helping the bereaved; visionaries were there who talked about the worthy ideal of preparing for the future.  It was, and always is quite a group.

I personally don’t know of an event where such an eclectic group of people are gathered for such a period of time.  Certainly it is not exclusively a love fest; there are the grumpy, cranky, fussy people who show up, but not many.  Most are open, sharing, caring and most of all are focused on their own personal worthy ideal and seem clearly to me to be progressively realizing that worthy ideal whatever it might be – even if it is to dig the best damned grave on earth.  ICCFA and the University offer an experience of good times, good experience, good learning, and for me, personally, living the noble ideal of unity in diversity.

Anyway that’s once again is one old undertaker’s opinion.   TVB

Todd Van Beck and some students in the College of Funeral Home Management.

To see more classroom photos, go to:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=235824&id=87540039256&l=5e47b1ea5c

For networking photos, go to:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=235179&id=87540039256&l=747cca1424
 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The vacation ends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 

A couple of weeks ago I wrote my first article on my memories of the funeral home ambulance service.  My friends, trust me, what a ride it was working on the funeral home ambulance service.

Last time I shared a funny story about one particular ambulance call, and I have more where that one came from, but yesterday I had an experience which made me think back more than 30 years ago to one particular call we had which was not funny in the least.

First let me share with you what I witnessed yesterday. As I was driving back from lunch, I pulled over for a fire engine, and the right behind the fire engine, an ambulance.  Of course the ambulance was much different than the ones I worked on.  Today I believe the modern ambulance is literally a moving emergency room on wheels – and thank God the service evolved into what it is today.  I believe many lives are saved because of the advancements in ambulance service that we almost take for granted today.

However, in the past, while our vehicles and training could not compare with the present day sophistication, nonetheless we ran smack into terribly difficult and life and death calls on a regular basis.

Yesterday as I turned the corner going back to the funeral home, the fire engine and ambulance had all lanes in the direction I was going blocked, and a police officer was on the scene stopping traffic.  In a short time, one of the paramedics came out of the house and I could see that he was carrying a baby in his arms.  In quick order the infant was whisked into the back of the ambulance the doors were shut, the fire engine moved out of the way, and traffic resumed.

Maybe other drivers felt a pang and chill witnessing that scene, I don’t know, but I do know that I felt hollow inside .I felt the tremors of anxiety that only someone who has been involved with an injured and ill infant can feel.  My memory went back to 1969 in North Omaha.

From routine to emergency

As dramatic and traumatic ambulance work was, after a while calls do become somewhat routine.  Not callous routine, but after 1,000 calls the siren gets tiresome, battling traffic gets tiresome, and the calls in reality are usually not life and death.  In fact my boss, in moments of ambulance exasperation, used to yell that “We are running a glorified and FREE taxi cab service.”  His exasperation was well founded, for once we got an “emergency” call from a grocery store and when we arrived the old lady simply wanted us to help her take her groceries home in our $45,000 new ambulance.  

However everybody who knew anything about ambulance work also knew full well that just about the time you relaxed, just about the time calls got boring, just about the time you got complacent, BAM, WOW, SMACK, some call would come in that would derail your comfort level and alter your psyche forever.

This happened to me on several memorable occasions.  Here is one of them.

It was hot in Omaha, blistering hot.  The heat certainly helped the corn grow tall, but it made ambulance work a nightmare.  We dreaded daytime calls because the air conditioner in the back end of the rig simply could not keep up with the doors being opened and closed constantly.  Night calls were better, or so I thought.

One summer evening the sun had disappeared and it had started to cool off wen we received a residential call.  This was not a police call.  Police calls were almost always a safer type of call to respond to, simply because if the police were on the scene somebody (usually the police, but not always) had a gun.

So off we went to North Omaha.  The neighborhood was rough, many burned out buildings, because there had been a couple of assassinations the summer before that motivated people to react with anger and furor, and the neighborhoods bore the scars. The area was full of blight and poverty; it was a tough place.

It was about 8:30 p.m. and as we pulled up in front of the address I could not see anything amiss.  Oftentimes in really tough calls, people are screaming, running round and basically going nuts – but not this time.  Everything was quiet.  It was still so hot that even the neighbors didn’t come out to see what was going on.

I was in the passenger seat and got out of the ambulance.  Out of the blue, like a shot in the dark, this young woman came flying out of her front door, ran down the front steps, and tossed a small bundle in my arms.  It happened so damned fast that my buddy who was driving had not even gotten out of the vehicle.

I looked down at the small bundle and pulled the blanket back. It was a little baby, not more than three months old.  The young woman started shrieking and yelling at the top of her lungs, and then she started punching me in the arm.  I froze.

Finally my buddy pulled the hysterical woman away from me and as I took the infant into the back of the ambulance I could tell without question that the baby was not breathing.  I was mortified.  Advanced first aid had covered CPR, but hell, I never thought I would run into this situation in a million years. But then I was a kid, and what does a kid know, particularly working on the ambulance? But as God is my witness, this night I learned fast.

My buddy looked at me and did not say one word.  He jumped into the driver’s seat, I shut the back door and off we went to the nearest Omaha hospital, which fortunately in those days was only maybe 20 blocks away.

We had purchased an “Emerson Resuscitator” which in 1969 was the state of the art in emergency breathing equipment – or so we thought.  Looking back, however, the bloody thing didn’t work.  There was an adult mask, and a child’s mask, but no infant mask, and even with the masks, if you did not create a perfect seal on the mouth the machine would just click repeatedly with oxygen escaping through the cracks in the supposed seal.  Also the machine weighed 100 lbs.

The baby was not moving, and I was trembling.  I thought, “Lord, help me!”  Finally I bit the bullet and started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and heart compressions.  It was difficult to do this in the back of the old ambulances, because room was tight, and on night my buddy the driver was so freaked out that he was driving 70 mph going up North 24^th Street, which is a major avenue in Omaha.  The result  was that I was getting tossed about hither and yon in the back end and could not get a strong foothold.

I don’t know why I did this – ignorance, desperation, stupidity, I don’t know – but I decided to pick that infant up and smack its bottom.  I imagine any EMT reading this is just having a conniption fit, but that it what I did.  I smack the baby’s bottom and then turned him around and started CPR.  In a few second the baby vomited – I hope this doesn’t gross you out – but the baby vomited right in my mouth.  I can’t say I handled that every well, because I also threw up. (I was a true professional.) 

Suddenly we were under the canopy at the hospital ER and my buddy had hysterically raced like a wild man into the ER yelling and screaming about our desperate situation, and before I knew it three nurses had taken the infant out of my arms and into the ER they carried him.

It is interesting that a crisis seems to end about as quickly as it starts.  One moment I was getting vomit in my mouth and the next minute I was sitting safely in the front seat of the ambulance, having now no control at all over the situation and feeling damned happy and relieved that I did not.

For about 20 minutes my buddy and I just sat in the ambulance looking at each other.  I almost started to cry, and all my buddy could say was "god– , god–" over and over again.  Then we looked at each other and burst out with a goofy stupid laugh.  Certainly the situation was not funny, but that is what we did.

When I returned to the funeral home, I told my boss about the call, and he very sympathetically looked up and said “Oh hell, buck up son; it can get worse.”  My friends, he was telling me the truth. I did go on worse ambulance calls over the years.

About a month later, we had another call and ended up at the same hospital again.  One of the three nurses who had rescued the infant from my incompetent care came over to me and told me that the baby had lived, he was alright.  Then she looked at me and said, “You know, you did a good job.”  I don’t know to this day whether that comment was accurate, whether it was sympathy, or whether she was teasing me.  I don’t know.  I know at the time I thought that I was in way over my head on this ambulance call, but it taught me a valuable lesson – be prepared for anything in the funeral profession.  Complacency is high-risk behavior; the concept of “routine” in reality does not exist in funeral service.

When I saw that little bundle being taken from the house yesterday, my memories immediately went back to North Omaha.  I know in the end that the crack medical team at the hospital did the real work, but I have always taken comfort in the terribly kind words the nurse said to me.  She didn’t have to do that.

There are more ambulance stories, and I hope the readers will not bore too easily going down memory lane with me.

Truthfully the ambulance experience made me a better human being, and hence I improved my skills as a funeral professional.  I didn't become perfect by any means, but these types of ambulance calls did improve my sensitivities to the tenderness and fragility of human life.  

And in the end if funeral directors are not sensitive and tender and aware of the fragilities of human life, what do we have left?

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

 I had a marvelous trip last week.  After an absence of about a decade I was cordially invited to give a seminar to the Indiana Funeral Directors Association annual convention in Indianapolis.

Over the past three decades I have enjoyed cordial and fruitful relationships with basically all the state associations. Oh, yes, here and there I encountered people who didn’t like me and I didn’t like them – but hell, that is just part of life.  Overall, in general the state associations are wonderful, and what make them wonderful are the people who make up the organizations.  I have always enjoyed the Indiana group – just a group of mighty fine people, and highly dedicated to their beloved profession.

Of course their somewhat “new” executive director, Curt Rostad, has been a longtime buddy of mine.  We traversed the Loewen days together, and actually I believe we both emerged with our mental health still in place – although I think Curt has done better in that department than I.

The seminar was devoted to basically the good news about funeral service, and no matter what the bothersome and annoying and irritating anti-funeral people say, there is good news about our profession – say like the Gallup poll once again ranked funeral directors in the top ten most ethical professions in the United States.  Anyway the anti-funeral people really just repeat the same old stuff year after year, but the funeral as an experience and the funeral director as a professional person are really beyond their grasp.  They just don’t get it, and can’t have it.

Indianapolis is a great city.  Great funeral homes and great people.  I had lunch at the old trusty Columbia Club with another old buddy, David Ring – who has to be one of the most intelligent people I have ever crossed paths with.  I always learn something in conversation with David, and we also have something else in common we attended the same college in Boston in another life.

Indianapolis however always ranks high in my funeral estimation simply because it is home ground for the world famous Crown Hill Cemetery.  Basically, and there are exceptions, but basically anybody who is or was anybody is or was buried in Crown Hill.

A president of the United States, four or five vice presidents, a bunch of congressmen, senators, and not just a few mayors of Indianapolis are resting within the gates of this marvelous testimony to the idea of reverence for the dead.  Even notorious John Dillinger calls Crown Hill his final resting place, but from all accounts I get the picture that Mr. Dillinger has not rested that much in peace.

What impressed me most, and inspired me the greatest on this trip, was the spirit and panache that I saw in the eyes of the funeral professionals who attended this seminar.  I basically told the same old stories, and in the end really probably did not do that well, but the people made me feel great, the good people of Indiana, the great funeral directors of Indiana, made this old burned out undertaker feel good.

Thank you to the Hoosier State.  I was proud to participate.  Thank you.

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

When I was a resident of Cincinnati, Ohio, my Saturdays were most often a day just for me.  I would sleep in, get up and go to Blue Ash Chili for a high cholesterol breakfast, then I would mosey downtown, park my car and sit on a bench at Fountain Square and people watch.  Cincinnati was, and is, a gem of a city. 

There were three major department stores close by, three major hotels, and an old F. W. Woolworth’s on 5^th Street next to the Elder-Beerman Department Store.  I would mosey down to Woolworth’s and have a BLT.  Sometimes I could see a cockroach scrambling across the counter to safety, but that really never bothered me. It surely freaked some people out, but not TVB.

This BLT lunch combined with my totally unhealthy breakfast meant I had probably devoured a side of bacon, but no matter; I enjoyed it and worried about the health consequences for a later day.  

After my lunch I would mosey down to the new Hyatt Hotel, which was a marvel when it was newly built. This I believe was the highlight of my Saturday, and the reason was simple.  In the Hyatt lobby there was a gentleman who was the only shoe shiner for the entire hotel.  I never, ever, found out his real name but that did not make much difference for he had given himself a name and an impressive title – DR. SHINE.

Behind his shoe shining stand he had a framed diploma (which he obviously had designed himself) which boldly gave testament to Dr. Shine having received the degree of MASTER OF DELIVERY (M.D.) FROM “SHOE U.”

Next to his M.D. degree he had another prominent sign which read “DR. SHINE IS IN RESIDENCY AND IS PREPARED TO TREAT PATIENTS – CHARITY CASES NEED TO WALK ACROSS THE STREET TO THE HILTON HOTEL.”  It was absolutely grand!!

Dr. Shine was resplendent with a perfectly white doctor’s smock, and he even wore a stethoscope around his neck, and when he rolled into his routine – watch out!

Dr. Shine had more energy that any person I can think of.  He was constantly dancing, laughing, talking, and hawking his expert M.D. services.

People would simply and innocently walk by and Dr. Shine would start yelling “Emergency, emergency, we have a shoe emergency, youreshoes are in a life and death situation, and I can save them, I studied shoeectomy at Shoe U.  I know how to perform them quickly and painlessly and I passed the course with an “A+!” and you need a shoeectomy stat!”  People in the lobby at first were startled by this man and the site and stir he created, but when they caught on, he had a totally captivated audience.

Performing a "shoeectomy"

Shoeectomy?  Who ever heard of that?  But folks, it worked, and worked in a big way.

When you got into his seat the real fireworks began.  First Dr. Shine would place his stethoscope on the top of your shoe.  He would listen intently, ask you to tap your foot three times and do it slowly, he would look at you with the stethoscope in his ears and look lost and forlorn and take a big dramatic sigh and just shake his head – just like real doctors do.

Then he would look up and give you the preliminary diagnosis which was always connected with the type of shoe you were wearing, and always the prognosis was not good.  Things looked bad.  Doom and gloom.  We have a deathly serious situation here.  Dr. Shine would look at you mournfully and announce in solemn, reverent terms things such as, “Sir, I have to inform you that you have a severe case of ‘deck shoeitis.’”  Or it could have been running shoeitis, track shoeitis, tap shoeitis, skateshoeitis, Oxfordshoeitis, wing tipitis, moccasinitis, loaferitis, golf shoeitis, flip-flopsitis, deck shoeitis, clogitis, bowling shoeitis, beach shoeitis, and climbing shoeitis.

Every shoe was infected and inflamed, and Dr. Shine knew precisely how to treat the condition.

Sometimes he advised that the person’s shoes really needed to die and be donated to the – now get this, folks – Shoe Zoo Museum for Lost Causes. 

Often times he would call out loud and clear for the hospital chaplain to come quick because in his words “this shoe needs sole” (soul, get it?).  When Dr. Shine would toss that one out the person getting their shoes shined would just howl with laughter.  Then off and on Dr. Shine would look around and lament and say “Oh, I wish I had my trusty nurse Sue to help with your shoe.”  Then he might come up with “I seriously doubt if I can undo the trauma to your shoe.”  Everything rhymed – everything.  “You and your shoe are in a serious health crisis.”  “You have no clue how to take care of your shoe.” “You need to shampoo your shoe regularly.”

Every shoe shine included a high level, dramatic “Code Blue” emergency.  You never knew when it was going to happen, but out of nowhere Dr. Shine would start yelling “Code Blue, Code Blue, bring the shoe crash cart - stat!!!!!!!”  His crash cart consisted of his drawer in the bottom of his stand where he stored all his stuff, and he would open the drawer, grab a polishing rag and yell “Stand back, stand back, I can’t find a heartbeat” and he would start doing his own version of Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation on your shoes.  Dr. Shine would be slapping your shoes with his rag and saying, like they do in real CPR, “One, two, three, four, five – breathe, damn you!”  Each time he slapped your shoe was akin to another heart compression in CPR.  Then he would stop, take his stethoscope, check for a “heartbeat” and start all over again.  “One, two, three, four, five – breathe, damn you!”  Then suddenly Dr. Shine would, with stethoscope in his ears, look up and dramatically announce, “I think I have a heartbeat.”  Then under his breath you could hear him say (he wanted you to hear), “Damn, I am good.”  

To top off this comedy routine, Dr. Shine actually had fake prescription pads and everybody walked away with a “shoe review” as he called it prescription.  Dr. Shine’s prescriptions usually had something like this to say:  “I hope you enjoyed this shoe shine.”  “I certainly thank you for coming in.”  “Without people like you I would be out a job.”  “I hope I gave you a laugh or two.”  Dr. Shine always complimented, he always thanked, AND he was always the consummate gentleman.

He had one more sign he required that you read.  It said, “THE ETHICS OF MY PROFESSION (M.D.) DO NOT ALLOW ME TO ACCEPT TIPS – PLEASE RESPECT THIS ETHICAL STANDARD IN MY PROFESSION.”  Then Dr. Shine would wink at you with a Cheshire cat smile.

Dr. Shine charged $3.00 for a shoe shine.  I always gave him a $20 bill.  My shoes have never looked so good!

Oh, by the way – there was a line of people at Dr. Shine’s Shoe Clinic patiently waiting for his M.D. services.  Dr. Shine had a lucrative M.D. practice saving the lives of shoes.

Lessons for us from the "doctor"

I have thought about Dr. Shine many times over the years, and a couple of weeks ago I was in the Queen City to do a couple of seminars at the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science and the world famous Spring Grove funeral home, cemetery and arboretum.  I stopped by the Hyatt and was informed that Dr. Shine had been tragically killed a few years before in an automobile accident on I-75 on the West Side.

I felt mighty sad when I walked back out on 5^th Street. I thought of my Saturdays and what utter joy and happiness my Shoe Doctor gave me.  

After those shoe shines I would mosey over to Arnold’s Bar and Grill and start on my Canadian Club drinks, I would eat their Dover sole, and by 8 p.m. I was sitting in the marvelous and grand “Music Hall” listening to the near perfect Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.  I was in a good mood, and Dr. Shine set that psychological stage.

Naturally no one in our profession would behave the way Dr. Shine behaved, but can we find ways to be more memorable? Can we leave a greater impression on the people we serve? Can we WOW our clients with those little things of service that Dr. Shine had so expertly discovered in his profession of shining shoes?  I believe this is a real possibility, and something that in these stressful funeral service/cemetery times deserves discussion and further exploration.

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

This is going to be a short and sweet writing.  The 2008 Gallup Poll results which polled the average American concerning the subject of professional ethics in careers is out, and once again funeral directors have made the top list.  I think, if memory serves, funeral directors have made this prestigious list for now over a decade.

The overall results of the Gallup Poll, which really focus in getting the opinions of the common ordinary folk, you know the Archie and Edith Bunkers of the world, who are the substance of the funeral profession, have concluded that Nurses literally shine in the public’s ethics opinion and Bankers have fallen from ethical grace in a big way – surprise of surprises.

Anyway here are the top ethical careers for 2008, in rank order:

1.      Nurses

2.      Pharmacists

3.      High School teachers

4.      Medical doctors

5.      Police officers

6.      Clergy

7.      Funeral Directors

8.      Accountants

Here are the bottom ethical careers for 2008, in rank order:

1.    Labor union leaders

2.    Lawyers

3.    Business Executives/Bankers

4.    Advertising executives

5.    Stockbrokers

6.    Congressmen

7.    Car salespeople

8.    Telemarketers

9.     Lobbyists

Not surprisingly the career of “Anti-Funeral Muckraker” made neither list.  Could it be that Archie and Edith Bunker are really not interested in the least concerning the anti-funeral career people?  Might be possible, and just might be probable, anyway the Gallup Poll indicates this.

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.  TVB

In 1992 I published an article in one of the professional journals entitled “The History of the Funeral home Ambulance Service.”  Actually it was one of the few attempts I have done at writing that caught some attention, well attention from veteran funeral directors anyway.

Over my years of writing and doing seminars I have often asked funeral director groups how many of the attendees worked on the funeral home ambulance service.  Thirty years ago many hands went up, and those who raised their hands were also shaking their heads, and rolling their eyes.  The baby funeral directors in the group had no clue as to the veteran’s reaction when the subject of the ambulance service came up.  The baby funeral directors would just look bewildered, and some even confessed to me later that they were totally unaware that funeral homes even operated ambulance services.  Such is the case of generational disconnect.

However today when I ask the question of funeral director groups about operating the ambulance service the number of hands that get raised has clearly dwindled, but still the ones that do raise their hands (they all look a lot like me - you know, white hair, etc.) still shake their heads, and roll their eyes, and still the baby funeral directors just sit seemingly baffled by what this old grumpy undertaker (meaning me) is talking about.

For some this blog item will be going down memory lane.  For others it will probably sound like total science fiction – a story or stories that Todd just pulled out of thin air – but trust me, my friends, what I am about to recollect is NOT science fiction, in fact the ambulance service was for many years as an entrenched a part of the typical American funeral home as were embalming, caskets, funeral vehicles, and funerals!

From the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s I was involved with ambulance service, and our ambulance service WAS NOT simply invalid transportation (as it used to be called).  Our ambulance service was heavy duty, emergency, day and night ambulance service, and as strange as this sounds in 2010 with paramedics and basically moving emergency rooms, in the period of time I am talking about our ambulances were state of the art.

In fact when I decided to become a funeral director I just took it as a matter of course, without even thinking about it, that the ambulance service was a part of the scene, it was part of the career, and I found out quickly that it was a big part of the career.

I need to explain something quickly concerning my use of the term “state of the art” in reference to the funeral home ambulance service.  The funeral home ambulance service was indeed “state of the art” in say 1966, but not by today’s standards.  The basic qualifications to operate the ambulance were nothing.  Some, like me, had advanced first aid – but folks that was it.  The emergency medical technician program was still a decade away when I started on the ambulance.

State of the art in funeral home ambulance service was basically simple.  The impact of the idea of state of the art was actually connected with the appearance of the ambulance itself, and the appearance and the type of vehicles used as funeral home ambulances were literally all over the map.  There were no minimum standards, those were entirely up to the owner of the funeral home and ambulance.

The first ambulance I drove and worked on was a great 1959 Miller-Meteor, and it was a tank.  The second was simply a converted station wagon.  Then I worked on a 1960 Oldsmobile combination (which served as both a funeral coach and ambulance) and then in Boston I drove some really nifty Cadillacs.  

I drove ambulances out in western Nebraska, in the city of Omaha, in rural Iowa, and in the city of Boston.  I worked for the last funeral home in the metro area of Boston to operate an ambulance service when I was a student at the New England Institute, and what an experience that was – driving a ambulance through the streets of Beantown.  WOW!!!!!

In reality our ambulance care for the patients was a kind of “load and go” approach.  We would often times advertize quite boldly “FULLY EQUIPMENT EMERGENCY AMBULANCE SERVICE – 24 HOURS DAY OR NIGHT – OXYGEN EQUIPPED – TWO-WAY RADIO.”  The advertisements read well and sounded great.  We indeed looked grand and great going down the street, because no matter the type of ambulance we had, we had most every emergency light and siren that had ever been invented on those vehicles.  Funeral home ambulances were often times flashy, fast, impressive and above all loud, really loud.

For a young man it was a dream job come true.

However the truth is that our “Fully Equipped Emergency Ambulance” was really not that fully equipped.  Here is what I remember about being fully equipped; we usually had a couple of towels, some ace bandages and 4 x 4 gauze pads, a stretcher, some old Timmons splints (which needed to be seen to be believed – I always felt sorry for people with broken bones), and a tank of oxygen – sometimes full, sometimes half full, sometimes . . . . . . . . . .  Oh, yes, and we had a little plastic bowl called an “emesis basin,” which we were supposed to use when people were vomiting.  The emesis basins, anyway the ones we had, were very small and my patients when I was sitting in the back of the ambulance usually missed the basin totally and threw up on me.

As I mentioned, in the mid 1960s we knew no different, and while by today’s standards people laugh at the idea of a funeral home running the ambulance service let alone at our equipment and how we responded and took care of call, I believe that laughter is really out of ignorance on their part. They really don’t know what they are talking about, and trust me, WE TOOK THE AMBULANCE SERVICE VERY SERIOUSLY.

There were no pagers, no beepers, no answering services, no voice mail, no nothing except for the land line funeral home phone which had to be attended to in person twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year.

I believe the Federal Wage and Hour Act had been passed and was law of the land in the mid 1960s, but you would never have had inkling that there was even a concept like Wage and Hour in the funeral home world.  We were on call constantly.  Days off?  What are days off??? Who ever heard of such a ridiculous idea – days off?

Add to this that in every funeral home I worked in or even the ones I owned, the ambulance calls always were higher in number than the funeral calls.  Always.  Too often people that were just as ill at 2:00 in the afternoon waited to call the ambulance until 2:00 in the morning.  There is something about the sun going down and the increase in ambulance calls.  Night work was where the action was – most always.

When you operate an ambulance you see the heights of the human spirit, but you also see the utter bottom of human depravity.  Time and space do not allow me to even touch on some of the rawest of the raw calls, and in today’s cultural sensitivities some of my case memories would be offensive – I can’t even tell my family about the real rough ones, but on this tender subject any veteran funeral director who operated the ambulance service will know precisely what I am talking about.  We were in the thick of some of the most distasteful and stressful of human events in our community.

However the flip side of this was some of the most hilarious things happened to me on the ambulance.  A funny story here is appropriate.  When I was a student in Boston we transported an old lady from Don Orione Nursing Home in East Boston to Massachusetts General Hospital.  We hauled her back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.  This lady was so small and meek and she sounded like a faint little mouse when she would talk – she was just a sweetheart, we liked her very much.  Every time we picked her up she would say over and over again “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me.”  I always assured her that we would not hurt her and off we would go to the Mass General.  Her name was May.

One afternoon we were called to haul her back to Don Orione, so into Boston we went and put her on the cot.  As we were leaving the ambulance entrance area, before we made it out into the parking lot it started to rain and rain hard, just a down pour, raining cats and dogs, a monsoon in Boston.  Our standard operating procedure in rain like that was to take the blanket and cover the patients head and make a run for the ambulance.

I learned over to her and said “May, I am going to cover your head with this blanket, so you won’t get wet – it’s raining really badly.”  May replied “What did you say?”  So I go through the plan one more time.  I take the blanket and cover May’s head, but honestly it was raining so hard that my associate and I did not want to get soaked so we decided to wait “just a little bit” till it lightened up.  Not a good idea, and there good old May lay her head covered with the blanket and not saying one word.

In a short time a little crowd of people had gathered who also were leaving the hospital, but they too decided to wait a little bit for the rain to let up.  As I looked around at this little crowd it was evident that everybody thought we had a corpse under the blanket, because no one was saying a word, everyone was somber and reverent and all this time the rain just got worse and worse.

It might have been ten minutes that our little group of people afraid to go out into the rain were all standing there, and I remember one woman who was holding a vase of flowers looked over at me and gave me that real sympathetic smile which is always a nonverbal communication that she wanted us to know that she knew we were removing a dead person.  

Out of nowhere, I mean out of nowhere, we all hear this little meek voice said from under the blanket “I think I am going to suffocate.”  It was May talking under the blanket.

It scared the b’jesus out of the entire group waiting for the rain to lighten up, and the nice lady who had sympathetically smiled the moment before at me actually was startled so much that she dropped the vase of flowers and broken glass scattered all over the ambulance entrance.  I looked at my associate and gave the nod saying “let’s get the hell out of here” and rain storm or not off we went to the ambulance.  It must have been a bumpy ride for May.

I was laughing so hard that tears were running down my cheeks.

So friends, there you have a brief memory of the highs and lows of the funeral home ambulance service – I could and probably will write more on the subject.  It was the experience of a lifetime, and while we eventually had to get out of the service, which was the right thing to do, I look back today and would not change a thing about my experience.  The ambulance was a headache, a tension producer, and at times a literal nightmare, but it also was an opportunity for a young man to see the raw data of life, and realities of the human condition, and the ambulance stories make marvelous cocktail party chatter – people love the ambulance stories.  The ambulance service forced me to continue to grow up.

Maybe some of the readers can share their own memories of this significant chapter in funeral service history.  TVB

I have had a few funeral experiences in my 44 year career, but none has basically surpassed my experience at the United States Mortuary at Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu in 1992. 

I was asked to make a presentation for the Dodge Company at their annual Sunshine Seminar.  After the seminar was completed Jake Dodge came over to me and asked if I would like to join him and take a tour of the U.S. Military Mortuary.  I jumped at the chance and off we went.

Our first tour was the actual mortuary where we were treated like funeral royalty.  The staff, all licensed funeral directors and embalmers, were outstanding.

As impressive as this part of the tour was, the surprise came, and the life changing event happened, when it was announced that we were going to be allowed to tour the MIA Identification laboratory.  

We were allowed into the lab and almost immediately a young lady approached me and asked “Are you a funeral director?”  I responded that I indeed was, and I asked her what she did in the lab.  Her answer was that she was a member of the identification team which were actually like modern day detectives, much like Sherlock Holmes, whose job it was to piece together the intricate puzzle of who exactly these dead people were.

I was in for a learning experience no doubt.  I was taught that the remains of MIA’s literally arrive from all parts of the world, and from most of the past modern wars – even World War II, and beyond.  At this time there were the remains of two pilots whose plane had crashed over Tibet in the middle of the World War II and their remains were frozen in a mountain glacier where they were discovered by mountain explorers some 50 years after their crash and deaths.  They were now to be identified, and my interest was on high alert.

This young lady, I will call her Amy, was also a trained anthropologist and during the tour she told me quite frankly that she did not believe in funerals until she had a life changing experience connected with her job at the lab.  She further explained that she had really taken the job to work in Hawaii.

However now her attitude had changed, and it had changed in a big way.  She shared this story with me.  One day she received the assignment to identify a box of bones that had arrived at the lab.  Sure enough in time she had a positive identification, and she also was informed that the deceased serviceman’s mother was still alive, living in an Eastern state and now in her 90s.  The mother of the serviceman was duly notified and instructions were received that the mother wanted her son’s remains returned “home.”  This lady’s son was killed in 1942.

My new friend Amy, through a series of unorthodox circumstances, went along with the escort on the flight back to the mainland to take the deceased home. Amy confided to me that the trip was also an opportunity to visit friends on the mainland that she had not seen since her move to Hawaii.

The evening after the remains arrived and the flag-covered military casket was lying in state at the funeral home, Amy and the escort stopped by after supper.  The elderly mother was standing in the foyer and ignored both Amy and the escort, but did ask the funeral director to move the bouquet of flowers that had been placed at the head of the casket and in its place put a folding chair for her to sit on.

The funeral director did as the mother wished and the elderly mother sat by the head of the casket with the American flag in her hands, rubbing the end of the flag on her cheek and crying inconsolably.  Amy thought this was the strangest type of behavior she had ever witnessed and confessed that she wanted to leave the funeral home then and there.

Two days later a military funeral was held.  After the funeral and flag-folding ceremony, all seemed completed and Amy started walking to her rental car when she heard the elderly mother calling out:  “Young lady, oh, young lady!”  The elderly lady was waving from under the committal tent.  Amy walked back to see what the old lady wanted, being somewhat confused because the mother had totally ignored her throughout the entire funeral process.  But now things were different, something had happened, and something needed to happen and to be said in finality.

Here is the conversation Amy relayed.  The old woman said, “The undertaker tells me you are the person who identified my son, is that right?”  The mother was holding the folded American flag tight to her breast.  “It that right?” she asked again.  Amy replied, “Yes the body in this casket is indeed your son; I am sorry.”  The mother next asked very firmly, “Are you absolutely sure, are you totally certain, that this is my son?”  Amy said, “I can assure you with all the sophistication of the lab in Hawaii, with all our equipment, and with my knowledge and experience that this is indeed your son.”

Then tears welled up in the old lady’s eyes, and she took Amy’s hand and asked, “Honey do you know what it is like not to sleep for 50 years?”  “Every night for 50 years I would lie in my bed wondering, if he is alive, is he OK, and if he is dead why can’t they find him and bring him home?”  But then the mother added, “But tonight I will sleep the sleep of the saved and innocent because I know exactly where my baby is.”

This mother’s son had been dead for one half of a century.

Amy returned to Hawaii believing in and now knowing the value of the funeral, the value of saying farewell, the value of ritual and ceremony, and value of one dead human being.

I believe this incident is a telling lesson which everybody who is involved with this honorable and noble calling needs to ponder and reflect on – even for just a split second.  I personally believe that type of connection, that type of attachment, that type of funeral experience is in essence the authentic foundation, the raw core of this great profession.  It is the very reason why we are here in the first place.

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.  TVB

 I received a call today telling me that Dan Hillenbrand passed away at his home.  It is appropriate and fitting that we all in funeral service pause for a moment in respectful remembrance of this leader and gentleman.  Funeral service changed forever because of the impact of this one man.

Years ago when I was teaching at the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science one of my responsibilities was to take the merchandising class students twice a year to take a tour of the Batesville Casket Company.  It was always a looked forward to event, not the least because the tour was interesting, the food was great at the Sherman House, it was free, and Tim Hogenkamp was par excellent at motivating the students in his presentations.

The tour always included a trip to the “Farm.”  The farm is well known to probably every funeral director in North America.  It is a pristine place, well kept, ideal for seminars and meetings.  One day I was standing in the bar area of the hospitality center and this well dressed gentleman walked in.  He went into a side room and closed the door.  I did not think much of the event as I was occupied with the behavior of the students.  In short order the gentleman came back out and walked over to me.  “Hello, I am Dan Hillenbrand.”  I almost fainted, for I knew precisely who he was as well as who all the other Hillenbrands were.  They were mighty important in the world of funeral service.

I seemed that over time Mr. Hillenbrand enjoyed hobnobbing with the students.  I tried to explain to them who is was and what he and his family had accomplished but they were students, some of them got it, some of them did not.

Mr. Hillenbrand lived a long, fruitful life, and I found it always an honor and pleasure to run into him, visit with him, and listen to his years of experience and vision.  He was a smart guy.

I have not seen Mr. Hillenbrand for many years, and was sad when I received the news of his passing.  No question the Hillenbrand family changed the way Americans buried their dead.

OK I admit it.  I am biased to people from the Midwest.  This I believe is a natural psychology simply because I was born and raised between Iowa and Nebraska.  Interestingly while today I am drawn to people in the Midwest, when I was a young stupid lad I truthfully could not wait to get out of Southwestern Iowa.  Today I can’t wait to get back home.  As the veil of years has passed I find I am chronically homesick for home, for Iowa, for Nebraska, for Omaha, and for my little villages that are my hometowns, Avoca and Hancock, Iowa.  I probably will only return to Iowa to be buried, but in the meantime I think about the Midwest all the time.

Last week I returned to the Midwest to make a presentation to the Tri-State Funeral Directors Association convention which involved the Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri Funeral Directors Associations.  My longtime friend Pam Scott, executive director of the Kansas group, made the arrangements and as usual she did her work with quiet professionalism and great attention to detail.  It is always a joy to work with Pam; she is one of the best.

My purpose in recording these thoughts is simple.  The members of these three organizations are wonderful people.  They are kind, considerate, and thoughtful, and above all strike me as believing very much in the value and benefits of funeral service.

I got up and babbled on for a couple of hours, as usual my perspiration problem left me soaked, and I don’t believe I told the group anything they already did not now, but their response, in spite of my glaring deficiencies, left me with a warm spot in my heart. Add this to my warm spot for the Midwest in general. It was a mighty enjoyable experience.

One of the experiences that touched me the most was the utter reverence and compassion that I witnessed as I spoke at the Kansas group’s Service of Remembrance.  It was evident by the serious, sober, and reverential expressions on people’s faces that these funeral directors believe deeply in the value of rites, rituals and ceremonies.  I was honored to be asked to preside at this service.

One of my real heroes in life, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, once wrote, “A man searches the world over to discover what he wants and returns home to find it.”

The Tri-State convention was not just another professional assignment for speaking. I am certain 90% of the group had heard every one of my stories a hundred times, but for me the convention was an experience of traveling back home.  It did this old undertaker's heart and soul good.  TVB

No matter what anyone says Cincinnati is a wonderful city.  The name that the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow gave to the city “Queen of the West” was an inspirational insight.  Cincinnati is truly the Queen City of the West.

I lived many fruitful and fascinating years in Cincinnati, and I miss Cincinnati on a daily basis.  I miss other places, but Cincinnati and TVB just clicked.  First of all is the first class world famous Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and their marvelous home located in Music Hall.  Then I always enjoy my five-ways at Skyline Chili, Graeter’s Ice Cream, Christian Moerlein Beer, metts, brats, Montgomery Ribs, Scotti’s Italian, Pompalio’s in Newport, Hathaway’s Coffee Shop in the Carew Tower, Mt. Adams,  Arnold’s Bar, Grammers, Findlay Market, the historic Schaefer & Busby Funeral Home (est. 1832) and of course Spring Grove Cemetery.

Other cities can rightfully be proud of their own rural cemeteries.  Boston/Cambridge has Mt. Auburn, Philadelphia has Laurel Hills, Baltimore has Greenmount, Brooklyn has Green-wood, Buffalo has Forest Lawn, the Bronx has Woodlawn, well friends the list goes on and on, and every rural cemetery has a history, a character and a ambience and panache that is unique and speaks a silent yet powerful message about the meaning of life and death.  Rural cemeteries are a good use of God’s great creation – earth.

I spent the weekend with my wife Georgia in Cincinnati, and naturally we ate Graeter’s, went to the symphony, had breakfast at Hathaway’s, and spent time on the grounds of Spring Grove.

I have always held to the notion that people are going to care for their dead in a consistent manner with how they live their lives, and nowhere, absolutely nowhere in the world is this sentiment experienced more completely than when strolling the grounds of Spring Grove Cemetery.

The utter scheme, size and layout of the cemetery grounds actually speaks volumes about the values and attitudes of the people who have made Cincinnati their home since the cemetery was first opened up.  It is impossible to walk the burial grounds without being keenly aware of the importance that Cincinnatians placed on the importance of ethically caring for their dead, and also to the importance they attached to the creativity of funerary architecture. Spring Grove is in actuality a city within a city.  It is a necropolis in the center of a metropolis. 

Memorialization, personalization of death, attachments to the dead, the esoteric meaning of death symbols, messages from the dead to the living, well they are all present, and highly visible within the boundaries of Spring Grove.

I have had a connection, albeit at a distance, with Spring Grove Cemetery for now going on thirty years.  I used to haul classes of mortuary science students twice a year to tour the cemetery (that was a labor in the vineyard I can tell you!), and then on my own made good friends with two of the cemetery superintendents as well as the talented horticulturalists, and I spent hours of private time walking the grounds of the cemetery and tracking down the graves of the rich and famous as well as the obscure citizens of the Queen City.  One rainy Saturday afternoon, after having spent several hours at Arnold’s Bar I traveled to Spring Grove and found the grave of undertaker Samuel Cobb, who was the predecessor of Schaefer and Busby Funeral Home and who in 1841 conducted the Cincinnati funeral of President William Henry Harrison.  For TVB those experiences are exhilarating.  

Spring Grove is not just a cemetery, far from it.  Spring Grove is, in an interesting way, a living presence attesting that the thousands upon thousands of lives have lived, and that they are now dead.  That idea sounds terribly simple but just apply that simple idea to the attitudes that people have today concerning death, and particularly their own death.  Death denial abounds with tremendous energy.  Death illiteracy has taken on a life of its own.  However, it is impossible, no matter how death denials try, to deny the reality of death when walking the grounds of Spring Grove. 

The vast and the word is vast, use of the 700 plus acres which comprise the developed and undeveloped sections of Spring Grove abound with highly visible monuments, and there are some magnificent monuments adorning the horticultural magnificence of this city for the dead, which is equally renowned as a world class arboretum.  

Today I suspect many might deplore the “expense” and “opulence” of such monumental masonry and architecture but I do not; most of these good people who bought these monuments have been dead a long long time, and I suspect that either the monument bill was paid or if it was not it has been written off as a bad debt by the monument company decades before you and I were even a glimmer in our father’s eye.  No, friends, I see something that goes way beyond mere money, yes now there is an idea, something beyond mere money, something of greater importance than mere money, something that money in the end cannot buy. I see, in the symbols, the sentiment, and the scenes and sensations that the world of Spring Grove represents the human experience of standing before the awesome presence of our neverending attempts to capture the mystery of death and what death means.  Our attempts in the quest end up being carved and written in granite and marble, in bronze and in sandstone. 

When I visit Spring Grove I believe that our attempts to grasp the meaning of the mysteries of death have some success – the purpose and mission of Spring Grove hit upon this.  Not with total success to be sure, but certainly we see and are given glimpses of connecting with the cemetery of what is waiting for us on the other side.  These are shadows of meaning in stone, but make no mistake, there is meaning to this grand effort on the part of human beings – the efforts are not wasted.

It is evident today that contemporary culture is showing clear signals that we might be still interested in glimpsing into what is on the other side, but we might not be using symbols and memorial architecture to help us get to that awareness, the way our ancestors did not too many years ago.  

Nothing lasts forever, except just possibly our cemeteries come as close as anything to our quest to have something we have created last forever.  Of course our cemeteries also die (and when they do the science of archeology is born), but it takes a long, long, long time for that death to happen.

In the meantime our precious and cherished rural cemeteries need visiting, need constant attention, need work, need support need the human touch, because when they get what they need the beneficiaries are the living human beings.  

Given a chance to live the old cemeteries and the new can teach valuable life lessons.  Anyway that has been this old undertaker’s experience in my fortunate connection with Spring Grove in the Queen City.

TVB

When I was a student in seminary – yes folks I went to seminary and actually graduated, the buzz word in the academic world of theology was this big impressive word – demythologization.  The meaning of demythologization is:  to rid of mythological elements in order to discover the underlying meaning.

Here is an example.  In seminary we had courses where the professor’s assignment in the class was to demythologize biblical legends – in other words take the stories in the Bible and rationally discover the underlying meaning – sounded good to me, at first.  For instance in a Old Testament course I took the professor was firm and unmoving that the story about the Egyptians chasing the children of Israel and in the end getting swallowed up by the Red Sea, was in reality nothing rationally nothing more than the topographical fact that the Red Sea is maybe a foot deep at anyone place and while the children of Israel could easily navigate the shallow waters on foot the Egyptian’s heavy and cumbersome chariots got stuck in the mud, and that my friend’s is a clear example of demythologization. It left me cold, but inquisitive. 

As you might well imagine a few students were angry as hell and some stomped out of the classroom.  This behavior however did not deter the professor and his assignment to knock down our religious “myths.”  I personally did not take him too seriously in fact I did not take much of the seminary experience too seriously – just to protect my own mental health.  You might well ask, “Why the hell did you even go?” Good question, and a quarter of a century after the experience I am still asking myself the same question – but that is fodder for another time.

Here is another example of demythologization.  When I was a child in every classroom in my school, from kindergarten to high school, in every classroom there were impressive portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  Nobody had to say a word.  Not one word, because the message was clear – these two men were terribly important, they were heroes.  I knew they were heroes even before I knew what a hero was such was the power and influence of the myth.

In the process of demythologization however heroes are made into antiheroes, for today we know that George Washington was human, made mistakes, owned human beings, and just was probably not as great as we thought he was.  Lord knows Lincoln has been demythologized, for people are still arguing and debating his life and legacy 140+ years after his untimely and unexpected death.  This stuff still leaves me cold, and not so inquisitive.

Make no mistake, demythologizing is in itself powerful, and make no mistake about it, demythologization has consequences and consequences for our profession.

What I found interesting in listening to theological professors taking apart biblical legends is that they did not replace our time honored thinking with any type of new replacements.  It left me cold.  It was like tearing a fence down before you understood why the fence was put up in the first place.  I much preferred the stories where the myths were alive with metaphor and meaning, that left me feeling warm inside, whether the myth was based in rational, logical fact or not.  Just made me feel good.

Certainly it appears to me that our culture yearns and continues to search for heroes.  However in these contemporary times heroes seem to be illusive prey, they seem to be well hidden, and I guess for good reason, because today if a person is deemed a hero I have observed that thousands of cynics, media pundits, editors, columnists, commentators, literally scramble to outdo each other in tearing down the hero myth to such an extent that the “hero” is reduced to being just like the rest of us.  However being just like the rest of us is in mythology, in the world of hidden silent truths is simply not true.  Also what is not true is that just because some talking head on CNN bashes and tears to pieces a “hero” does not mean that heroes and/or beliefs in stories/ legends and myths do not exist, in fact I believe they have a urgent need to flourish in this cynical, sterile, skeptical culture we live in.

I am not referring to politicians, or business executives, or bankers, or health insurance officials, who clearly have been demythologized. Here is what I am referring to.

The other night I was watching the political commentator Bill Maher on television.  As with any television person I am not enamored.  I liked and miss Walter Cronkite, but I also liked and miss Lawrence Welk, so there you have it, I am a nerd.

This night Bill Maher was on a diatribe against, and bashing into the earth of all people, now get this, SULLY SULLENBERGER.  No kidding, Mr. Maher was off like a shot tearing Mr. Sullenberger to shreds.  No stone was left unturned.  I was so stunned that I left the television running.

Mr. Maher took the myth of Mr. Sullenberger being a true American hero and said publically that he had had enough of listening and watching the honors which this pilot was receiving.  Now I am well aware that Mr. Maher has the right to voice his opinions, and I suspect he makes a decent living doing so, but I thought of something that another professor mine told me years ago.

THERE IS TRUTH IN MYTH.  THERE IS TRUTH IN MYTH – ALL MYTHS CONTAIN TRUTH.  

Let’s take Mr. Sullenberger for a moment.  Is it a little bit impressive that somebody could land a great big airplane safely in the middle of the Hudson River?  I mean folks he missed the George Washington Bridge, and the Lincoln Tunnel, and the Holland Tunnel and a whole lot of boats, and a side note HE MISSED MANHATTAN, NEW YORK.  Not one person was killed, not one.  So yes in the world of demythologization, my former theological professor would have claimed that probably any pilot (except for the crack pilots on Northwest who missed the airport by 150 miles) could have easily landed that plane. Yeh, sure.  Personally I think not, and while the hoopla around Mr. Sullenberger might have annoyed Mr. Maher, there is truth in the myth that Sully was and is a hero.  Not the entire truth, for he is a human being, but there is truth floating around in this legend, in this story about one pilot.

So what does all this have to do with funerals?  I believe from my travels and experiences that many people are demythologizing the dead and the funeral ritual.  They are demythologizing the rituals of the funeral ceremony.  They are demythologizing saying goodbye, and they are getting big time encouragement from the prototype “Bill Mahers” who today have a presence in our profession and who are talking about why people ought to demythologize death activities.

For centuries upon centuries, for over several millennia, human beings found the best way to have personalized death rituals were to incorporate the dead human body as best they could into these once in a lifetime activities.  I have often pondered how much more personal can any death ritual be than when a parent is in close in proximity to their dead child – where they can look, see, touch, caress the corpse?  Certainly this type of personalization is much more dramatic and much more tasking than possibly the dove release, but in heavy duty psychology the mantra and myth has been and still is that the toughest life experiences usually result in the greatest longtime growth in the neverending process of maturation.

However today demythologization has clearly taken place and gotten a strong foothold on the “myth” of the value of the corpse being essentially necessary.  In the process of demythologization the corpse has now been dubbed by the demythologizers as a “toxic pickle.”  People, many people, innocently respond to this demythologization of the dead because it seems easier, more environmentally friendly, more cool, more green.  However if my old professor is correct, THERE IS TRUTH IN MYTH.  So does a corpse possess truth?

I would like to suggest that the demythologizing of the dead, when some inherent truths about life exist in a dead person, is a slippery slope to travel.  Certainly the idea that a corpse contains truthful lessons about life is something that has to be looked for and discovered, but without time spent with a dead person in close proximity I would like to suggest that these truths about living life are missed or worse yet the significance of these truths about life for my own life are missed.  The significance of the event of someone dying is an integral part of the truth in the myth about the value of viewing the dead.

Somewhere in the myth that dealing with the dead is important, truths abound.  The first truth is that when I look at the shell of a dead person I am looking straight at previews of coming attractions for me, no getting around that truth – and today most certainly that truth in the myth can and appears to be a tough pill for many to swallow.  Second, looking at the shell of a dead person is the truth if allowed to sink in is the extremely valuable life lesson which is this:  I had better get off my brains and start living life – the myth possesses the truth concerning the urgency to live life.  Third, looking at a dead person possess the truth about the reverential and gentler side of life.  It is most always a time of reflection and discernment, both good and not so good thoughts, and this is a great truth for all of us, particularly in these dog eat dog times.  Fourth, looking at and participating in the myth of looking at dead people replaces the void created by demythologizing the dead into a rational, sterile, logical “toxic pickle” with something of deeper meaning and substance and which has been valid to the betterment of the human experience since time immemorial.

To demythologize simply for the sake of changing things, simply for the sake of change, has been proven time and again in history of humanity of going from nothing to nothing.  I am all for change, and try my best to embrace it, understand it, and change with the times.  However as a person who has been exposed to the down side of the process of demythologizing life into sterility, rationalizations, logic, and anti-heroism, and anti-legends I need to stop myself and say that myths surrounding life experience such as physical death hold deep seeded truths and it is up to me to discover them, and hold on to them, and to realize that life needs ongoing passion, beliefs, sentiments and this is most often discovered in the hidden truths which are found in all myth across the globe.

The ancient myth that having a dead body visible and present at death rituals is from this vantage point not only an essential but also possesses truths about life’s deep meanings.  I believe the myth about the value of viewing a dead human body has underlying value but it must be given a breath of life to be effective and reclaim its ancient position in the betterment of the human experience.

I know this position is not and will not be popular, but I thought it worth putting pen to paper.  Also I want to go on record that I believe firmly in the myth that Capt. Chesley Sullenberger is a true American hero.  It makes me feel good to hold that private truth close to my heart, and I hope that when my plane is starting to descend into the murky waters of the Hudson River that the hero myth of Mr. Sullenberger is sitting in the cockpit.  The other reason I like to hold onto the hero myth concerning flying of course is much more practical – I don’t know how to drive a great big airplane, and I suspect neither does Bill Maher. 

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.  TVB

Here and there, now and then over the years I have been privy, and been exposed to the contemporary idea that funeral processions need to be eliminated, and the anti-funeral procession people seem to have a variety of arguments to support such a movement.

In fact I just finished reading that in Gulf Port funeral processions are limited to five vehicles.  No question about it, in today’s society funeral processions are difficult – well, they seem to be in the great metropolitan cities anyway.  

I find it fascinating that people can easily drive 90 mph and maintain a distance of five feet or less between vehicles, but in the instance of a funeral procession the same drivers going 35 mph can easily have ½ a mile distance between cars.  I always took the position with drivers in funeral processions, as I did with pall bearers, that I must assume they had no clue as to how to proceed and behave.

Yes it seems that funeral processions are a nuisance, and add to this that many really nice people, really friendly people when they get behind the wheel of a vehicle experience the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde phenomena.  The attitude of friendliness and kindness seems to just “fly out the window” (pardon the stupid pun).

Now add to this that really nice human beings like to honk their horns, give non-verbal communications with their middle finger, yell, wave, shout, and literally try to push into the funeral procession and I guess I can see why government officials are saying ENOUGH!  

I was told the other day that I ought not to admit to being old, out of touch and ancient anymore, and I guess my counselor was right; hell, there’s nothing I can do about how old I am.  However I can remember, not too many years ago, when people even in the great metropolitan cities pulled their cars over, got out, put their hands over their hearts, and here’s one – TOOK OFF THEIR HATS when they encountered a funeral procession.  Don’t see that much anymore unless you are fortunate enough to live and work in the less complicated areas, such as the country, the small hamlets, the salt of the earth type places, the places where mutual respect for life and death is alive and well.  Those places are out there and interestingly the town officials in those pastoral, peaceful places have not felt the need to abolish funeral processions, and yes there are still people to will take the time and effort to get out of their vehicles, put their hands over their hearts, and TAKE THEIR HATS OFF – I personally approve of that type of behavior.

I fear that those type places are also vanishing from our midst.

Without question the police escorts, anyway the ones I have worked with over the years, are excellent.  They really tend to business.  Yet even with these efforts the anti-funeral procession people argue the powerful positions of traffic safety, traffic jams, motorist inconvenience, unnecessary slow downs, accidents and the like.

I suspect that when this issue raises its head in most communities the individual funeral directors stand up and try to explain the absolute value in funeral processions – I mean the procession is as ancient a human activity as anything in recorded history.  I suspect that funeral directors are stepping up to the plate and offering to take their funeral processions on a different route, than to lead the entire group up the acceleration ramp and try to stay together on a major congested messed up interstate.  I hope this is happening, because if the funeral director does not show up at the city council meeting, does not stand up and be heard, I fear that the future of the cherished funeral procession could well be in jeopardy.  

Funerals have already gone from being a 2-3 day affair, to now a 2-3 hour affair.  Please omit flowers seems to have taken a new life again.  Fewer people seem to be attending actual funeral services.  Fewer people seem to be showing up at wakes, fewer people are embalming, fewer graves are being sold, and now funeral processions are being fiddled with.

I will admit that it is much easier on everybody to not have to fiddle lining up a funeral procession, not battling traffic, and just meeting everybody where the disposition will take place – much easier. 

It must be another sign of the times.  However I would like to suggest that there remains deep value in the symbol of the funeral procession and there are indeed ways to hold on to that value without legislating them out of existence.

A former student of mine, Ted Reese from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, ran into this precise issue in 1995.  The following letters to the editor were published in the PATRIOT-NEWS.

Letter One:  The complaint

FUNERAL CUSTOM HAZARDOUS

Watching a long line of cars in a funeral procession moving uninterrupted through two traffic signal changes while endless bumper to bumper traffic is forced to a standstill, the observer wonders when society will get around to abolishing the custom that is inappropriate in these times of much road activity.

Besides, a motorized hearse rushing 40-50 M.P.H. to dispose a dead person’s body, does not seem to possess an aura of respect and dignity.

CHARLES ZYK

HARRISBURG

Letter Two:  The funeral director's response

PAUSE FOR REFLECTION

Mr. Charles Zyk of Harrisburg was delayed by a funeral procession recently, and it made him angry enough to write (Letters, March 24).  Yes, yielding to a funeral procession can be a frustrating, aggravating thing, especially in today’s high speed, fast forward world.

Although it may seem practical to abolish the custom of reverently accompanying a loved one (someone’s mother, father, sibling or child) to the cemetery, I ‘m concerned by the moral and ethical implications.  Indeed, the reality of death would be so much easier to accept if we could find more ways to ignore it and simply “dispose,” as he says, of a human body.

It has been said that the way a society cares for its dead is indicative of its respect for the living, and I am privileged to hold a license that allows me to serve the public by caring for the dead.  Sometimes, I have to hold up traffic to do so, forcing the public to take notice that a life has been lived and is now ended.

So, I offer my apologies, on behalf of my colleagues, to anyone who is delayed by a funeral procession today, and I suggest that others take a moment (while sitting in traffic?) to wonder who may be riding in the back of that hearse.  It may be someone you knew.

TED K. REESE

HARRISBURG - THE WRITER IS PRESIDENT OF REESE FUNERAL HOME, INC.

I admired Ted greatly for his stance and courage, and made me feel proud he was a former student of this grumpy old undertaker.

If we do not stand up for the value and purpose of the funeral, who will?

One last question:  Are we finding new ways to ignore death?  And is the abolishment of the funeral procession in reality another example?

TVB

As usual the powers to be within the leadership of ICCFA have done it again as far as being on the cutting edge of what is going on out in the real world of funeral and cemetery vocations.  A new survey (available only to those who attended the recent convention in San Antonio) popped up on my computer and I have to say that I was, for what this is worth, mighty impressed, and indeed fascinated with the results and information. It was like reading a moral treatise which has the outcome of making the comfortable uncomfortable and making the uncomfortable comfortable.

I have always been suspicious of surveys of most any kind.  I had a sociology professor in college who convinced me that when I looked at all surveys I should first and foremost see who paid to have the survey done in the first place.  I have actually found this pretty good advice over the years.  For instance, from what I can detect, every survey that law enforcement departments commission almost always concludes that crime is on the increase.  

Most every survey taken concerning the status of education concludes that we are not doing enough, not enough money is being spent, and that the system is in deplorable condition.  I mean my professor was of the thinking that if the education surveys reported that we were doing more than enough for students, that we had all the money we needed, and that representatives from other developed countries were scrambling to see how we did it – the obvious questions would be asked by somebody “Why does the school system need all this money?”  

Because of the influence of my professor I have become cautious and cynical about surveys, and in the past I have rolled my eyes and shook my head in disbelief with some of the surveys I have read and digested concerning this profession.  No need to elaborate on those historic events, but I need to say that of all the surveys I have read concerning funeral service, in the end and up to now, only the Wirthlin studies, of which there have been several editions, have captivated my attention and altered the materials that I have included in my seminars. Some of the Wirthlin conclusions were not pleasant – for instance the survey’s conclusion that the average American person does not see a distinct difference between a cemeterian and a funeral director – Lord knows that one stung when I read it.

To this day I know friends who will not believe or accept that conclusion from the Wirthlin study.  Who knows the final truth, but I concluded that this one particular piece of information was indeed accurate about cemeterians and funeral directors, even though I had to endure and process some mighty significant ego bruising along the way, but that is another story.

Now ICCFA has stepped up in a big way and commissioned a study, the results of which were shared this week to people who had attended the recent convention in San Antonio.

Before I get into some observations I need to again say that this survey is not final word concerning funeral service and cemetery work, I don’t believe such a source of final information even exits.  However what struck me as attractive was that while this survey was indeed sponsored by a funeral, cremation, and cemetery association it did not candy coat some glaring realities about how Edith and Archie Bunker are looking at our world.  I believe it would have been might easy for the powers to be at the ICCFA headquarters to censor some of the results, it would have probably been much easier politically for them to be sure, for I have seen that done before and because of the censorship was deluded into thinking here and there that some privately selected funeral “fact” which was published in a survey ended up not being a fact at all which messed up my thinking and truth awareness about how things were truly in the real world.  No examples of this are necessary; we, or most of us, have been there and experienced the consequences of being out of step with what the community knows, expects, and wants from a funeral home and/or cemetery.  Being out of step is no fun.

I applaud the courage of ICCFA to publish this survey as the results came in to them.  Some of the results were good news, and other results indicated that some trends that you and I have accepted as gospel truth, as to being where the future lies, and has taken on a life of their own is not necessarily true, and in some instances far, far, far off the mark.

For thirty years I have known that funeral service and cemetery work has been and is changing.  However I also knew and experienced that the banking world went from human tellers to robots tellers in parking lots, to men and women of integrity to men and women in the penitentiary.  I also know that Hospice work went from all volunteer people, fulfilling a calling, to today professional marketers wining and dining people in the medical profession in order to get their business of dying people.  Yes indeedy I don’t need a survey to tell me things have changed.

Any survey that concludes and states that things are changing is to me humdrum, but this survey added some tidbits which I found changed my attitudes and also affirmed some long held beliefs about my beloved profession.  Here is an example.

This blog is not intended to let the cat out of the bag concerning the contents of the entire survey results, but a few carrots I believe is in order and will be approved of.  The first carrot concerning the survey is the verifiable truth that the environmental stuff has power, it has substance and it is what much of the public is looking for.  Never mind that when I was a college student in 196_ the famed ecologist Dr. Paul Ehrlich came to town and said that for our environment to return to what we had just 50 years earlier (which at that time would have been 1919) it would take us 500 years to accomplish, never mind that.  The good ecologist might be wrong, he was wrong about other things, but what matters today is that Archie and Edith Bunker are interested in the environment and if they have lived with this interest and conviction for their lifetime they are going to march right into the funeral home or cemetery office with such an attitude.  I don’t know if “green burials” will be the answer, but certainly it seems to me that wicker coffins are something to look at seriously.  The survey is packed with golden nuggets like this one.

The survey covers many important issues such as the power of word of mouth (does that really still matter?), the attitudes of people towards the death of a pet, the presence of religious activities at the time of funerals/cremations/dispositions, is preneed really as important a movement as we think it is or is it not? And a bunch of other eye openers.  It was a good read.

I can say this, the content of my writings and seminars will be altered because of my acceptance and belief in the integrity of this survey.  It seems to this old undertaker that the author of this work and ICCFA are telling it like it is.  Good stuff.  

TVB

On the surface of it, it would seem that humor and death are literally opposites of human emotions and experience.  I have found nothing really funny about death, although some of the most hilarious events in my life and career have indeed happened on funerals.

There seems to be nothing funny about the painful emotions that death creates, namely deep, profound, acute grief – nothing funny about pain and grief.  Grief hurts; death can be terribly untimely, unexpected, and inappropriate even though the death rate is always 100%.

The human emotions caused by death and grief can kill.  People can and do self-destruct when confronted with such inevitable life situations.  Not everybody, to be sure, but enough to capture our attention. 

As a funeral director I have, as have colleagues, been subjected to death humor regularly.  I need not elaborate; needless to say we all in funeral service have experienced it, and what is impressive is that most of us understand the genesis of such behaviors.

I have long felt that people have a natural built in fear of death.  This seems a good thing in a way.  A respectful fear of death certainly teaches people to avoid needless dangers in life.   However this learning about death's fearful possibilities is not something we are born with, it is developed learning, and in the absence of this type of learning people grow up with the meaningless idea that death has nothing to do with them, and if and when the subject pops up, humor is often used to distance a person from a subject that they are fearful of and hence causes them anxieties, and few if any people want to feel anxious.  We have learned to laugh at death, laugh in the face of death, laugh at deaths power, laugh at people whose calling in life is to minister in this death world, laugh, make sport, ridicule, make jokes, laugh, laugh, laugh.

Being afraid of something is a mighty powerful motivator to create a language that distances people from reality - here is a sample of euphemisms that humans have made up to address the subjects of death/the dead/dying:  Dirt nap, pushing up the daisies, passed, ex-, demised, expired, gone to meet their maker, stiff, resting in peace, kicked the bucket, in a better place, six feet under, crossed the bar, bought the farm, belly up, checked out, departed, done for, liquidated, perished, in repose, rubbed out, snuffed out, wasted, cashed their chips, cashed out, checked out, croaked, finished, kicked off, snuffed, gave up the ghost, wacked, terminated, put down, eternal rest, laid to rest, was a goner, rode into the sunset, that was all she wrote.

We have done an excellent job in making up an entire language that makes fun of grief and death, and add to this that certain comedians make big money and get big laughs on this subject and the conclusion can easily be make that laughing at death makes people feel safe, secure, comfortable, and also totally deluded.  There is another story to be told to be sure.

I have found that in my seminars I can use humor, but only if it is directed at myself, and certainly if the humor concerning death and grief is not too honest, not too direct, not to disturbing.  Interestingly during breaks at my seminars all kinds of people, hospice workers, clergy, funeral directors, cemeterians, come up to me and tell me humorous jokes and stories about grief and death, but oh my if they are told in public, or shared with the group, most everybody seems to freeze.

So humor abounds, jokes are told, people laugh, but concerning death and grief only under certain circumstances which almost always mirror the basic concept of being afraid of death.  This environment needs an atmosphere of being safe, secure, and comfortable – and don’t share the death jokes you heard during a break in a seminar.  There is a dynamic which makes something funny between two people during a break time, but totally off limits being shared with a group.  Interesting? 

I once saw a Catholic priest give a seminar to the Association for Death Education and Counseling in Portland, Oregon on humor and death.   He had collected an array of cartoons from a variety of sources and all of them were irreverent, candid, blunt, raw but terribly honest.  The audience at first was stunned into absolute silence, and I thought to myself “How are you going to get out of this one?”  However by the end of the seminar most people were rolling in the aisles while at the same time trying not to laugh too much in front of their colleagues.  Such is the utter power of laughing at death, and this was a group of death professionals, the cream of the crop so to speak.  I remember when the priest finished and took a break the laughter had vanished and people were judging the rashness, the boldness, the offensiveness of the priest.  Interesting?  He was not invited back again, even though or in spite of the fact that people were laughing till their sides hurt.

It fascinated me to watch those dynamics – laughing one minute, utterly judgemental the next.  Interesting dynamics. 

Remember Johnny Carson?  Anytime he ran into trouble in his opening monologue he would tell a joke about the world famous Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California.  Johnny Carson, I thought anyway, gave the impressive Forest Lawn company free publicity on national television.

The queen of the muckrakers, none other than good old Jessica Mitford, went to the bank laughing at death and funerals.  Hell she made almost an entire career on using humor and death and she perfected her anti-funeral craft with great skill and delivery. 

My old professor the Rev. Dr. Edgar N. Jackson, who seriously took Jessica to task wrote in a book review in October of 1963 of Mitford’s book “The American Way of Death,” that “If this fear of death motivates attacks upon funeral directors, Jessica Mitford must be frightened to death of death.”  No one ever said it better.

The great Union Theological professor and world acclaimed philosopher Paul Tillich said that death-anxiety is the basic human emotion.  It underlies all our other fears and apprehensions about the process of living. 

I have concluded that when dealing with such an all pervading and unfocused emotion such as grief and fear, it is not surprising that one’s anxiety leads one to forms of acting out that may seem incongruous, immature, and utterly fearful simply because we are operating in the area of non-rational.  The death rate, rationally and bluntly speaking, is 100% but just try to get a group of people or one individual to rationally respond to this fact of life.  Some get it, many do not, and the number of those who do not get this rational truth I want to suggest is growing day by day.

People who are fearful and anxious usually have a strong need to reduce the bothersome subject in size to something that can easily handled, or they think can be easily handled.  This works sometimes, but usually not with larger than life subjects.

One hundred years ago sex was taboo.  People were excellent at reducing the formation of babies to small size bites which they thought made the touchy subject of how every human being on the planet got here more manageable.  Hence the small easy story of the “stork,” or the small easy story of the “cabbage patch.”  Storks and cabbage patches were much preferred by many people over the honest and rational penis, ejaculation, vagina, sperm, egg – much preferred – and look what happened.  Unwanted, untimely, unexpected pregnancies abounded in this country.  Sex was too large a life subject to be relegated to the stork or the cabbage patch.  Same is true about death and grief the defy reduction, can’t be done successfully.

I believe that each person on this earth is in reality in a fight for life.  Though conditions concerning this fight differ greatly, none the less the fight continues and part of this battle is the balance between the tensions created by confronting the larger than life experience such as birth and death, and the necessary humor that we use to embrace these serious sobering issues and not become so overwhelmed by them that we are paralyzed.  So at times and at certain places humor has its place.

My son fights in his life his own serious, sobering life issues which have taken time, love, more love and more time.  However as serious as his challenges are, the other night he told a story about one of his roommates in the place that is trying to help him and the story involved this chap using crack cocaine.  Trust me folks, I have never ever thought cocaine was a humorous subject, but by the time my son was finished telling this ridiculous story I was laughing my ass off.

It is not unusual then, based on the following analysis, that the more serious the human problem, the more likely it is to become a subject for humor.  This I believe is the embryo of undertaker jokes.  They hurt, they sting, and yes they are horribly boorish but I believe they stem from something much deeper, much more profound than a knock knock joke.

The other side of humor, while it can be caustic and rude, is that it also can be pure mental health.  I had a professor in Boston once say that a good belly laugh was worth ten valium.  I believe the good professor was correct.

Humor reduces stress, and this is clearly evident on funerals.   I remember once a woman came running into the narthex of the church.  The place was packed, and she saw me and came running over and in a loud voice said, “Do you have a car for the ball bearings?”  I had no earthly idea what she was talking about.  I asked her to repeat her question.  She yelled in a loud excited voice “My son is one of the ball bearings, do you have a car to take him to the cemetery?”  OK now I got it.  Pall Bearers were today on this particular funeral transformed into Ball Bearings.  Everyone in hearing distance started to laugh, and finally the woman blurted out, “Oh my God, I mean the pall bearers car – good God what did I say?”

Here were people in grief, and out of the blue humor popped its head up, and people released their tension.  So yes, while death and grief are serious sobering larger than life experiences, grief and humor are too, and are related, and this relation can be and often is both useful and valid in expressing the natural human emotions which run high at such unique special times in life. 

Looking closely at community rituals and practices one realizes quickly that there are many ways that people try to manage their anxiety about death – and usually some form of humorous acting out is a silent yet powerful companion on such activities.  Let’s take Halloween for instance.

I used to love Halloween when I was a child.  I still love Halloween and relish staying home and handing out all the goodies to the goblins, witches, ninja warriors, and Star War people who ring my doorbell.  Great fun and I get a great laugh out of the vampires, ghosts, and monsters.

The theme and history of Halloween, no matter how well it is disguised, is unquestionably death.  Interestingly on Halloween parents can without even knowing it act out their death anxieties in a socially accepted manner.  They dress their children up in the symbols of death – skeleton suits, death masks, and ghostly dress.  They send their children out into the dark of night, fully aware of the hazards, but willing to take that calculated risk (on a temporary basis) so as to have it all over with and then the little ones return back to normal, safe, secure ground in only a few hours.  Once again the environment of risking death culminates hopefully in safe and secure ground, but still with the accompanying delusion present.  The delusion of course is the reality of death is ever present because on the sobering serious side of life we all know that some little ones every year and at every Halloween never make it home from their night of trick or treats, some are poisoned, some are kidnapped, and some are murdered.  Yet the risk is still taken, and to be sure it is a calculated risk on the parent’s part, for unquestionably they are skirting death.  It is a powerful silent symbolic death lesson whether people are aware of it consciously or not.

If a person were to stand back and take an rational, clear objective look at the strange and bizarre behaviors that takes place on Halloween night, one would have difficulty making sense of it – unless that person sensed its deeper meaning, which many people do sense to be sure.  All Soul’s Day after all is one of the major events in the Christian Church calendar.  I believe that when parents accept the events of Halloween and take the calculated risks involved they are probably in the end expressing their need for a symbolic, socially approved way of getting close, in possibly dealing with, albeit it temporarily their own particular form of death-anxiety. 

Possibly the intensity and frenzy with which Halloween is prepared for, commercialized, and socially approved may be a clue to the degree of death-anxiety that parents and the community feel in this culture.  Halloween has all the ingredients necessary for personal death awareness.  Death symbols, risk taking, and possibly hopefully a safe return to the nest.  It is like putting one’s big toe in the deep end of the pool and safely pulling it out again.  Yet once again even in this metaphor many people drown when they put their big toe in the deep end of the pool.

Certainly our behaviors at Halloween is lighthearted and humorous, but yet in the church calendar the holy drama of the death and resurrection of Jesus lacks humor, its function may well also be related in a big way to the emotional needs expressed in the sportive counterpart that occurs between Easter at one time, and the next Halloween.  The theme of both is precisely the same:  death.

While I personally do not like undertaker jokes (I have always been thin skinned and ultra sensitive, I can dish it out but can’t take it) I believe that when anybody confronts death honestly, whether it is in jest as in Halloween, or in all seriousness as in Easter, one may very well reduce the intense anxiety that surrounds the emotional hazard of personal death, personal grief, and personal dying.

I believe that in laughing we tend to reduce the magnitude of the perceived threat.  I suspect the worst approach is to not laugh at death or take death seriously – but instead to be indifferent to the subject.  That possibility, today a reality, frightens me.  Death illiterate, death indifferent people I believe can and do dangerous things, for if one is numb, desensitized, neutral, immune, and utterly indifferent to death, I believe one will be the same to life, and can possess the ability to mow down one's school chums without giving much concern or awareness to the literal, rational and honest permanency of their actions for onesself and others.  I have been told that cold blooded killers have a soulless look in their eyes.  I have a suspicion that it is better for young people to use humor with each other.

Grief and death are sobering subjects.  Sex is a sobering subject.  Financial security is a sobering subject.  Health care is a sobering subject.  These subjects are so sobering that if humor is not injected, if some light hearted comment is not made, the reverse of healing and help will certainly occur.  Fear will take over, and while this might be a great motivator, too much fear stops the human experience questing for personal peace and contentment in its tracks.

Jack Benny made fun about his being a miser and he was hilarious.  He made the obsession with financial security look ridiculous, while all the time watching him I knew that being serious about financial security was important.

George Burns made sport of being old and having sex.  He quipped once “Making love after you are 80 is like playing pool with a rope.”  Certainly intimacy is important, and it can be terribly sobering, but George Burns helped balance out the realities of aging with a quick joke, which I found really funny.   However I told this joke at a seminar and was never asked back.

When the humor eventually comes my way about my job, my work, the endless undertaker jokes, I try to understand, have a laugh, and not take it too seriously.  Not too long ago a man came up to me and said “Todd do you know the definition of self-control?”  I did not know the answer, so the man replied, “It is the undertaker trying to look sad at an $80,000.00 funeral!”  He laughed and laughed.  I patted him on the back and said “That is a good one.”

Emotionally, physically, spiritually and socially it is just possible that the humor people employ to face death and grief may be many times a useful and necessary device for reducing one’s own anxieties to small size bites which are palpable and manageable.  What I used to view as offensive and inappropriate is I believe, in context, quite valid and helpful.

My goodness I could live in San Antonio.  I was not crazy about Houston, real nice people, great food, but hot, hot, hot, hot.  

My personal opinion is that San Antonio has to be one of the best cities in the world to have a convention, fun, history, culture, and of course the River Walk, what a wonderful city.  

My buddy Rob Heppell from Canada had never seen the Alamo, and I was staying at the Historic Menger Hotel which was right next door to the center of independence, and so he and I walked over after dinner.  Rob looked at me and said “The Alamo, wow, this is where Custer had his last stand.”  Rob is so talented, so bright, but I had to gently correct his US history.

The convention once again opened my eyes, confused my mind, inspired me and worried me concerning the state of the state of funeral service.  I had an enlightening conversation with a buddy of mine concerning green burials, and he assured me that the worry I have concerning critters stealing – well just imagine, folks – was unfounded.  He said the gravediggers everywhere would always under all conditions dig a grave deep enough that critters could not smell the remains.  He was the expert, not me.

I was once again struck by all the technology, baffling stuff, and I still have not, probably never will get a handle on it all.  Possibly I am not alone?

However what struck me, and as usual I was mighty happy about this, was the smiling faces, the collegiality, the courtesy, the friendships which were evidenced by the attendees.

I have wished for many things in my career, and seeing cemeterians, monument dealers, florists, attorneys, funeral directors, embalmers, insurance companies, techy people, grave diggers, landscape artists, worker bees, corporate executives, and just about anybody connected with death care that you could think of actually talking together, seemingly having a good time, no gigantic egos, just people with a common cause smiling, laughing and learning together is for me a wish come true.

www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=195375&id=87540039256&l=29dd1bee13

I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know this:  isolation, exclusivity, egos run amuck, myopic visions, and protectionism, territories and boundaries, does not work, and will continue to fall apart as time marches on.

ICCFA’s model does not continue to kick dinosaurs. 

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.  TVB

I was a terrible student in school, well anyway in elementary, junior high and high school.  Terms like middle school, pre-school had not yet been invented when I was attempting to get out, and I mean precisely that, “get out” of the school system in Iowa.

I was a horrible student; my teachers save for two despised me.  In fact I was so terrible that they, the teachers and my parents (me not included of course) used to have meetings about me, and I can assure the reader that the content and conclusions of those meetings (while I was not an eyewitness) were NOT GOOD.  In fact the guidance counselor in my school in Iowa assured my poor parents that I would never ever get into let alone get through Mortuary College.  The prophecy of the “academic experts” was not without substance and evidence, for when I graduated from high school (a questionable exercise at best) I ranked 71^st out of a class of 72 students.  The student who graduated beneath me at rank 72 was institutionalized the next year at the Iowa State Asylum in southwestern Iowa.  He and I were academic buddies, we studied together.

I always wanted to be a funeral director, and let me assure the reader not many people supported that life goal, in fact I was made sport of many times in and out of school.  I could not wait to get out.  So in time off to Omaha I went, and by fortuitous chance landed a job at the old Heafey & Heafey Mortuaries.

Then I got the nutty idea that I was going to attend Mortuary College in Boston.  Iowa to Boston—what?  Once again I was dubbed “nuts and inferior in the noodle,” and so off to Beantown I went resplendent with my Midwestern accent, nerdy dress, naïve to the world, and excited and worried and scared as hell.  

Talk about Moxey.  I had never been to Boston in my life, I made all the arrangements for my job and school over the phone, I never saw the mortuary college, and I never saw or personally interviewed for my funeral home job.  I basically slid into Boston, emotionally scared, financially vulnerable, insecure about failure, lonely and lacking any confidence that I would successfully navigate the mortuary college curriculum.  My taxi ride from the airport to Winthrop was basically a tour of East Boston at night, for the taxi cab driver knew he had a greenhorn and just ran up the fare. I was clueless about such city stunts.

Looking back I am amazed that I was so much in denial of how risky my psyche and self-esteem were to bite off such a chunk of life.  But bite off I did.

I remember the first attempt to make it from my funeral home apartment (more like a single room) to the Mortuary College, which was then located at Kenmore Square in the Back Bay of Boston.  It was about a seven mile trip, which in the end took about 45 minutes on foot, bus and subway.  No car, no money.

I successfully arrived at the subway station via a bus in East Boston, I successfully made it to Government Center on the train, but instead of walking upstairs to the next platform I walked across the same Blue line platform and took the outbound train right back to where I started at Orient Heights.  I felt sick.

Finally the first day of Mortuary College started and I was late for orientation because I got confused again on the train.  I was 35 minutes late.  I was frazzled, I was embarrassed, and I thought to myself “I will never ever get out of Boston successfully – I am doomed.  I will fail at this.  It is true I am a failure, I know I am because my father told me all the time.”  Yes, I self talked "Boston will be a disaster," like most of the other educational experiences I had tried.  But now I was 800 miles away from home.  I was stuck in Boston with no money, and I had flown to Boston from Omaha on a one way ticket.

As I was standing in the wings waiting for the orientation to take a break, I felt horrible and in utter despair.  I thought I needed to get out of the New England Institute right then and there and quickly find a part time job washing automobiles or something and make enough cash to get back to Iowa.  But then I thought what would be my father’s reaction if I slid back into Iowa once again a miserable failure.  After all, he predicted that I would not make it.

While I was lost in my chronic low self-esteem self private conversations, a man walked up to me, smiled, held out his hand and said “Hi, my name is Edgar Jackson.”  I damned near fainted, because he, the Rev. Dr. Edgar N. Jackson, was the primary reason why I selected the New England Institute as the place to go to Mortuary College.  I had read everything the man had ever written concerning funeral service and grief psychology.  I knew in my young totally insecure and wacky 20-year-old mind that Dr. Jackson knew his stuff.  He had already captivated me just by what he wrote, and now he was standing right next to me, with a kind gentle smile, a terribly warm handshake, and such deep insightful eyes.  I knew right then that no matter what happened, I was at the right place, even though I was still haunted by the thought that many people thought I was out of my mind to travel one-way to Boston.

The orientation started up again, and I mumbled something to Dr. Jackson, I don’t remember what I said, but I remember thinking it was stupid, and started off to take my seat, but as I left Dr. Jackson looked at me and smiled saying “Todd, watch out for the subways in Boston, they can be tricky.”  How did he know?

This first meeting began a long-term and extremely fruitful relationship between the good doctor and me, the loser from Iowa.

Looking back at the years I spent in Boston as a student, I can recount every conversation I had with Dr. Jackson.  It was Dr. Jackson who convinced me that I could be a good student, it was Dr. Jackson who convinced me (I knew it in my heart, but not my brain) that funeral service is a noble and honorable profession and I should not let others get me down because of they own anxieties and misunderstandings.  It was Dr. Jackson who first planted the seed that I just might be effective as an educator, and that I should try writing.  It was Dr. Jackson, who when I lost my funeral home, walked me through the valley of shame and healing and told me a thousand times that I was a decent person, and that losing a business in the big picture of life was survivable—he was right.  It was Dr. Jackson who listened to me when I felt misunderstood and unappreciated.  Dr. Jackson changed my life.

I remember the first academic quarter that I was at the New England Institute, the school sent my parents a letter.  When the letter arrived, even before he opened it, my father announced to my mother shaking the envelope in the air, “You see, I told you they’ve kicked him out already.”  When the NEI letter was opened it announced that I had made the Dean’s list.  This incident broke my heart, and I went to see my mentor and now friend, Dr. Jackson.

He sat in the NEI office listening to my heartache saying nothing.  When I had exhausted myself I looked at me and said, “Todd, life is not easy or fair.  Seems that your father has his own troubles, but those troubles need not be yours.  Yes this hurts, and yes children long and want to be appreciated and accepted by their fathers, and mothers.  But in your instance this might take time, and it might never happen.  The question is what will you do with this possibility?  Remember not to expect too much from people, or you will always be disappointed.”

The clouds temporarily lifted, but Dr. Jackson was right, stuff like that happened again and again throughout my life, and not just with my father.  

As I look back those words rang through my head as I drove to visit my son who is in drug rehabilitation.  To this day that conversation has become one of the most important communications I have ever had.

Dr. Jackson has now been dead many years, and except when I present at the Dodge Seminars, I rarely ever have a conversation about him, but the Dodge family knew him extremely well also, so we rehash Dr. Jackson stories, which always warms my heart.

His wisdom, his insights, his kindness, his spirituality, his legacy certainly changed my life, and while this old undertaker still messes up royally, still makes monumental blunders, still misses many important life points, still feels many times like the slow boy in the class, I have to say that my life experiences with Dr. Jackson have been pure tonic for my troubled and terribly imperfect soul throughout the years.

I wish that all the young funeral directors in the world might have had him (or somebody like him) as a professor in Mortuary College, and today I wish that every young funeral director in the world would be required to read his writings.  Without question the Rev. Dr. Edgar N. Jackson was one of the best friends funeral service has ever had, and without question the Rev. Dr. Edgar N. Jackson helped salvage a once young funeral director’s very soul.

Attending Mortuary College at the old New England Institute of Anatomy, Sanitary Science, Embalming and Funeral Directing ended up being one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life.

Thank you, Dr. Jackson, your memory lives on, and I am still trying to labor in the vineyard as I know you would expect me to do.

Oh, by the way, on August 31, 19 __, no brag just fact, I graduated “With High Honor” which put me in the top 10% of the class at the New England Institute. So much for academic experts' prophecy of failure and doom.  My father was proud I guess, but certainly stunned, I know.  

TVB

This week I received a message from a former student of mine who today is a success in our profession (no thanks to me having been his professor). His message caught my attention and once again I sat in my office asking myself questions about the state of the state of this great profession.

Here is the situation my former student encountered.  In one week two former casket company sales representatives and executives from two separate casket companies died and my former student received the call to serve both families.  I gleaned from his message that these two men had worked in the casket world for decades, and between the two many decades of work had taken place, and I was of the thinking that thousands of casket had been sold to funeral directors who in turn sold them to bereaved families.

Both casket representatives were immediately cremated.  No casket, no embalming, no flowers, and no nothing save for the incineration of the dead human remains, and an instruction from the descendents of both families concerning the disposition of the cremated remains.  There you have it in a nutshell, and this made me start thinking.

I have the firm conviction that it is anyone’s absolute right to choose what they want.  No question, I mean this is American – freedom reigns supreme.  The funeral profession and cemetery activities will not fold up because two former casket sales reps, or someone else for that matter, decided to do what anybody finally decides to do.  Options and alternatives are quite popular in our society today and the insightful funeral profession offers scads of options and alternative.  This decision concerning the two casket representatives is not the end of the world.  There are many more important issues confronting the human experience than what happened to two casket reps who sold caskets thousands of times.

However this situation just started my brain thinking again about the state of the state of this world of death that we all live in.  Here are some unanswered questions that I have, and as I always like to learn stuff about my profession, so I openly ask for anybody reading this to jump in the deep end of the pool and educate this old fat grumpy undertaker as to why these things continue to go on.   Remember these questions come from Todd, so don’t expect too much sophistication.

Here are some questions:

1.  Why would someone who has sold caskets for decades to hundreds of funeral directors upon their own death would not utilize a casket? 

2.  Why would a funeral director, who has conducted hundreds and in some cases thousands of funerals in their career, upon their own death not have a funeral?  I remember several times in my own limited career that some mighty prominent funeral directors died and nothing was done.  No ritual, no ceremony, nothing.  Why?  Does this not strike anyone else out there funeral land as something to question?  When a funeral director does not have a funeral for themselves what kind of a message is sent to the community that they have served faithfully for years?  Is it not an oxymoron, the funeral director might just not like funerals?

3.   Why it is less expensive to cremate a dead human body than to dig a grave usually? Crematories require thousands and thousands of dollars of equipment and facility investments, and cremation requires certifications, training and expensive on-going maintenance,  and has significant liability and is a time consuming procedure, and then the post cremation activities are involved and requires meticulous attention to detail, but yet to dig a hole in the ground with a mechanical digger, which takes much less time than to cremate, and if the grave, God forbid, is dug in the wrong place the error can be quickly corrected (an error in cremation cannot be corrected), and there seems to be no certification and formal training to dig a grave, so why does this cost more money than to cremate?, And if you die and want a burial on a week-end the cost can be ten times what a cremation costs to accomplish.   So here is my question: why is digging a grave so much more expensive than cremating a dead body?

4.   Why is it that embalming a dead human body is cheaper than digging a grave?  A dead human body was alive, lived life, and influenced others.  In some religions the human body is sacred.   Learning the art and science of embalming is not a snap.  It takes time, several years of college education, mentorship, internships, study, examinations (tons of them) skill, knowledge and expertise.  Embalming a dead human body appears to me to be ten times more intricate and requires ten times more skill and knowledge than it does to dig a hole in the ground, no matter how important that grave might be.  Why is this?

These are four questions that just baffle me, and I ask for and am extending the right arm of fellowship to any reader that can help me fill in the blanks concerning this stuff.  I am obviously missing something here, but then missing stuff happens to me all the time.

I am asking for insight, for education, for your thoughts out there in the funeral/cemetery world, and please don’t give a thought if your answers establish that the person (me) who generated these questions is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, many people have concluded that fact years ago.  Your thoughts, honest candid thoughts, are welcomed, and at my stage of life and career, well, folks, when you have been shot with seventeen arrows the eighteenth one does not hurt very much.  I hope to hear from many of you good folks.

TVB

I knew it would start happening and last week the reality of my prediction about life started to take shape.  I knew that in time, if I lived long enough, that my friends, my contemporaries would start to die away, and last week this started in my life in a glaring manner.

Two of my long time buddies died within days of each other.  One was Jack Hogan and the other was Bruce Overton.  It is not necessary to eulogize these two marvelous human beings in this writing, for everything that could be said about their stellar human qualities have already been put to ink and page and also spoken in public.  I have nothing to add save for the fact that the three of us, over time made our own history.

History is for me a way of life.  It is part of what makes me tick and I constantly process, filter and evaluate most every aspect of my life and the meaning of my life and my experiences through the eyes of history.  It has saved me many heartaches and headaches, but it is not 100% foolproof.

History is a tough and impersonal teacher most times.  History is what it is (of course depending on who is writing the history), for good or for bad.  Most interesting is that one’s own personal history is absolutely free.  Every human being on the face of the earth has a history and also possesses the freedom to close or open their own personal door to their own personal history anytime they wish.  That is a rare thing in life.  Most life issues are not this black and white when it comes to absolute total freedom.

Closing the door on one’s history has with it a great risk great danger, for as the great Harvard philosopher George Santayana said “A person who forgets their history is condemned to repeat it.”  

Because of Jack and Bruce’s deaths I have been opening the door of my history, reflecting, reviewing, exploring and coming to renewed conclusions of why I did this or that or why I did not do this or that. 

The passing of these two men caused me to stop and look hard and long at my history, and honestly there are a couple of things, well actually a ton of things I would have done differently.  

I have never been an optimist, far from it.  However this week when I examined my life, stimulated by the deaths of Jack and Bruce, I concluded that here and there, now and then, just once in a while I have done good things and contributed something to life and to my profession.  That gives me comfort, and yes, there are people that I would like to track down and simply say “I am sorry” so my history as all histories also possesses regrets and utter failures.

Over the veil of history our lives evolve and continue till the last breath is taken, eyes are closed and thinking ends as it did last week for my two buddies, and as it will in time for me.  History and death are companions on the inner way.  They go hand in hand. 

Socrates said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”  How true those words ring in my ears given the recent loss events in my life.  So I examined my life again this week in depth and was required for psychological health and balance to assimilate the dual realities that I have done good, and that I have done harm, they also seem to do hand in hand.

I suspect that if I live long enough more of my buddies will die and that once again I will honestly be compelled to explore, reflect, discern and make renewed conclusions about the experience of the meaning in my one solitary life, and I am prepared to do that, and to take once again that inward journey.

One interesting conclusion that I have arrived at in thinking about my history with Jack and Bruce and all the other people in my life is that my awareness that my history will also end one day is a great motivator for me to press ahead, to try to do good, and if I make mistakes make them on the side of kindness and generosity, and in the end to feel a God given-energy to live life, not perfectly, but to live life, for to be sure my Calvary will arrive soon enough.   TVB

In the last several weeks the subject of mortuary education has again popped up.  One of the professional journals did a survey of the state of the state of mortuary education and the results were not favorable.

A few good folks weighed in with thoughts, (including myself) and there were some salient points made.

One of the points made was the issue of requiring a Bachelor’s level degree for entry into funeral service – no matter what the position.  I took that position, and believe in my heart of hearts that this is an important issue, even though in most places this dream appears to have become the impossible dream – but people do need to dream, and funeral professionals these days need to dream about the future and take those dreams very seriously.

First a quick word concerning what has become the impossible job of being an instructor/professor within the world of mortuary education.  I have spent a few years of my career fulfilling this type of job, and I can tell anyone reading this, teaching mortuary science whether it be in the arts or sciences or both is not an easy task.  In fact it has gotten progressively more challenging and just plain difficult over the years for one major reason – lack of time.

The curriculums of each of the testable subjects on the National Board exam that have to be taught in mortuary colleges has consistently increased year by year, decade by decade, American Board meeting by American Board meeting, and THAT I BELIEVE IS A GOOD THING.  Reformation and expansion of any professional curriculum is a good thing no matter the profession.

However within the mortuary science arena a major glitch exists.  While the information concerning each subject area has grown, the amount of time that is given to teach this additional academic information has not grown in tandem.  The result is that in 2010 professors of mortuary science are literally scrambling to get all the information stuffed into say a quarter, or a semester, but certainly stuffed into on average one calendar year.  This curriculum crunch translates into students taking packed quarters after quarters or semesters after semesters.  

For the good student, who would succeed under any academic conditions, this is not a problem.  However for the  low average or poor student way too often the results of the necessary curriculum packing results in less than successful performance and many times failure.  Let me state this: I believe that when mortuary science students do fail it is not always the fault of the mortuary science instructors or even the student; the “dump-truck” approach concerning the literal ton of information that must be taught in such a short time must be taken into account to be fair to everyone concerned.

I know firsthand when I was teaching I most times took a sigh of relief when the quarter was over and I was successful in getting taught all the required information which was necessary to insure that the students had gotten what they needed and gotten what they had paid for.  

Add to this was the glaring situation that the curriculum itself was not only crunched for time, but the curriculum as a result was lop-sided.  In other words there were subjects that had few if any questions on the National Board being given the same about of credit hour value as subjects that might have dozens of questions on the National Board.

Looking back it is amazing that the system works as well as it does, and my hat goes off to the mortuary science instructors, who are relegated to basically the same amount of actual mortuary arts and science teaching time that was used in 1930 but today add to this 1930 time hundreds more pages of require curriculum.

So what to do?  I want to suggest that the mortuary science curriculum in order today to be able to just breath, in order for the professors to take their time in teaching, in order for the average or poor student to improve, in order for long term learning (vs. stale memorization) to take place, in order to raise the professional standards of this great profession a serious, progressive, timely, long overdue movement of establishing as a minimum a Bachelor’s degree in funeral service needs to take root and be allowed to grow and flourish.

Minnesota did it, Ohio did it.  If those great states can do it the possibility and nay reality exists that every state can do it.  

The other benefit of requiring a Bachelor’s degree is that the curriculum can be given fresh life of academic freedom and philosophy that instead of the education being taught to pass an extremely important examination, the teaching could also take place in the classroom or internet that reflects the nobility of the concept of education just for the time honored sake of education – for human learning.  

Education for the sake of education, my oh my, how many times in my career had I wished that in say funeral service ethics for instance I might have spent another week on the philosophy of what the great thinkers of the western world had to say about the ethical care of the dead – and trust me my friends they most all had something to say, and what they said WAS NOT THE PHILOSOPHY OF IMMEDIATE DISPOSITION OF THE DEAD – FAR FROM IT.

However I was not able to accomplish that teaching ideal and hope, and is it not sad when a mortuary educator wants to teach more but does not have the literal time to do it because of ancient constraints?

Education for the sake of education, what a strong, liberating, forward thinking position for funeral service to adopt, for a profession is always gauged and ultimately evaluated by the educational requirements that must be attained in order for entry into such work.

When I was in Mortuary College I took a ton of chemistry, and I hated it, and I judged it as to its daily relevancy in daily funeral service/embalming work, and from that myopic position, chemistry just lost out.

However today I don’t look at my chemistry studies in mortuary college just based on its relevance to embalming – because if I did chemistry would again lose.  I am damned happy I took chemistry even though it drove me nuts.

Today I realize that I was educated in chemistry, not just for embalming, but for the quality of my life – for human learning.  I don’t use chemistry when I embalm, per se, but I use it every day of my life.  Little things, like this.  My father is an extremely bright person, but when he and I watch the Discovery Channel I most often can follow along when they are talking about chemistry.  This is NOT the case for my father however; in fact this bright man would not know the atomic chart from a pipe organ.  That, my friend, is a living example of education for the noble sake of education, no matter what, I have a understanding of chemistry, my father does not, and I learned that material in mortuary college, as well as a whole lot more stuff, but even then we were slowed by the issue of NO TIME.

Today’s mortuary science instructors need time, more time, and I believe that can only be accomplished when funeral service universally across this great country adopts, implements, and protects the minimum level academic requirement of a Bachelor’s degree.

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.  

TVB

I have been on many interesting and growth filled trips in my long and not totally uneventful career, but this last week end in Denver, Colorado has to be in the top five of these experiences.

My assignment on this trip was to do a couple of clergy seminars for various churches and one seminary.  I was looking forward to this Rocky Mountain trip because 38 years ago I lived 100 miles north of Denver in Cheyenne, Wyoming where I worked as a funeral director and unbelievably a Deputy County Coroner for the Wiederspahn Chapel of the Chimes. (Today owned by my good buddy Roger Radomsky and family).

Because Cheyenne was only 100 miles away, I-25 and Denver became a second home for anybody who worked at Wiederspahn’s.  All the remains we received or shipped out came in and out of Stapleton Airport in Denver, and all the trade embalming we needed done was taken care of by a wonderful old man named Floyd Stevens, who owned a leviathan mortuary building on East 17^th Street in Denver.  Floyd Stevens opened in 1932, and Floyd was still embalming in 1975 when he sold the firm to Crist’s.  I liked Mr. Stevens a great deal, all he wanted to do was to embalm – and he was damned good at what he did.

Colorado has had an interesting funeral service history.  First of all, the first mortuary college was opened in Denver by Dr. Auguste Renouard in 1874.  George Olinger founded the National Selected Morticians in Denver in 1917, and the Archdiocese of Denver opened up a mortuary on the grounds of Mount Olivet cemetery in the 1980’s (which created quite a fuss) and then of all things the Colorado State Legislature sunset the State Board which interestingly gave beautiful Colorado the distinction of being the only state in the Union that had neither a funeral director or embalmer’s license.  That also created quite a fuss.  

When I return to Denver it is like walking down my past history in funeral service.  I enjoy the trip and of course I always have to have the prime rib at the Brown Palace Hotel does not detract from my fun in the least.

Friday evening late the plane landed and my gracious clergy hosts picked me up, and off we went.  I was put up at the Marriott downtown, which is not too shabby.  The seminars, there were four of them, went fine as far as the evaluations went. Of course the standard response from the clergy was, as always, “Why didn’t we get this stuff in seminary?”  This is always the lamentable state of affairs with the clergy, but the seminary curriculum committees have been totally disinterested in any curriculum proposals I have sent in – but then of course my stuff is most often not that good or well thought out.

However something marvelous happened to me while I was in Denver.  This marvelous occurrence was very close to home and involved a longtime friend of mine by the name of George Malesich – he was a former student of mine at the ICCFA University in Memphis. 

Here is the inspiring story:

In April of last year, for a variety of reasons George Malesich and his buddy Donald Shirey, Jr. opened up a new funeral home, they are partners.  Both men had been employed by a high profile mortuary/cemetery company when they decided that it was time to venture forth into the risky world of independent entrepreneurship and open their own funeral home – from scratch.

New funeral home buildings had certainly been built in Denver, but existing funeral home companies had built them, and according to my memory a spanking new independent funeral home had not been opened in the metro area in decades.

I wanted to see George’s and Don’s place first hand.  So when there was a break in my work I caught a cab and out to a place called Arvada I ventured.

The cab dropped me off and George and Donald were there with big smiles.  I asked them what the building had been at one time and they announced proudly that it had been a former “Seven-11.”  The building is approximately 1,800 square feet, not big, but what they have done with 1,800 square feet is truly remarkable.  

When I looked around my thoughts went to the fact that most every funeral home in the country when they first started out began in humble surrounding, not cheap or distasteful, but just humble surroundings.  This little mortuary is tastefully humble.  It is truly a home like environment, and remember folks these chaps are just getting started and ALL beginning are difficult no matter what they are.

The second thought I had was the story of Boyd R. Braman in Omaha who managed a prestigious funeral home for many years and then out of the blue resigned his position and marched up 72^nd St. about 8 blocks from where he had worked and bought an abandoned fast food restaurant and at age 65 remodeled the facility and started a funeral home.  Today the Braman Mortuary Company is building their second facility.  What I remember most about Boyd Braman’s courageous decision at age 65 was that most all the other Omaha funeral directors thought he was out of his mind.  I remember that only a single funeral director across the river in Council Bluffs actually wished Boyd success – and they had been classmates in Mortuary College in the 1940’s.

The thought crossed my mind as to how the funeral community in Denver was responding to Donald and George.  I was to learn in a short period of time from George and Donald that not everybody in funeral service was smiling and hoping for good tidings, no it was even worse; many were not taking them seriously and some are having a good laugh – that is too bad. I don’t know if today I could in good conscience laugh at somebody who is actually doing what I wish I could or would have done in my own life.  I can’t laugh at people who are trying, I used to be able to do that, but not anymore

The Malesich & Shirey Funeral Home is a nice place, pure and simple.  They have watched their pennies and have set to work a quality service system whereby they can really and truly handle any type of situation or circumstance that is requested.  The preparation room is top quality, and the furnishings are appropriate and tasteful.

George and Donald have predictably discovered that not everybody in Denver is supportive and encouraging and in fact reports that George and Donald have received are much like Boyd Braman received when he opened up in Omaha, the sentiments and opinions of this new venture are not nice.  It appears some think George and Donald are nuts (history repeating itself again), and while I am no psychologist I can assure anybody reading this that George Malesich and Donald Shirey are not nuts ,they are funeral business pioneers in a place called Arvada, Colorado.  

There will always be naysayers.  There will always be people on the sidelines laughing at the risk takers, it just seems to be part of the human condition, and even Jesus was misunderstood amongst his own.

I believe that it takes guts to pursue this type of voyage.  Because certainly somewhere down the line their funeral ship will encounter rough waters, but nothing ventured, nothing gained as the old saying goes.  The test for these two chaps will be how well they navigate the rough waters.  

As I spoke with these two delightful men I got envious myself.  All I have done mostly in my career is speak and write, and that is an odd way to make a living is it not, with one’s pen and tongue?  I wish them luck, they have already done an impressive number of calls, and walking around downtown Arvada with them it just seemed that everybody in town knew them or of them and they all seemed damned happy to have their own funeral home in town.  All funeral service is ultimately local, is it not?   What a joy is was to see what these guys are trying to do.  Bravo, boys!

Throughout the history of the human experience catastrophes of Biblical proportions have occurred.  Millions of people, innocent, hard-working men, women and children, have been swallowed up by the seas, fallen into the earth, burned by fires, shattered by earthquakes, and of course (the most dangerous threat) killed in war.  From my study of world history this state of affairs has never stopped and given the recent natural disaster in Haiti it is clear that there are forces in nature that no matter how humankind deludes themselves in the thought that we can control everything, this idea of contol is just not true.  Never has been true, never will be true.

In my travels in the world, and I have been several places, I have noticed that most places people do not live in the manner or fashion of our great country, the United States of America. Everywhere I go I see that people are at one and the same time different and the same.  Other places just have a much different way of life, different and special customs, different and special holidays, different and unique attitudes, different ways of viewing the world, different ways of dealing with stress and problems, and different ways of dealing with the dead.

The United States of America is a truly blessed country, and we are without question, regardless of what the French say about us, the most generous nation on earth, and we will and do contribute, act, and help out when disasters happen across the globe.  Helping out it just seems in our national DNA.  We should always remember that when 100,000 Belgian children were starving to death after the First World War, it was an American, Herbert C. Hoover, who organized the food relief efforts and fed and saved hundreds upon thousands of helpless little children, and Mr. Hoover (another good Iowa farm boy) did the same thing after the Second World War.  The message is clear, if you are hungry America will send you food – no questions asked.  I am proud of that, makes me feel good as an American.  Helping out is the American way.

I know that when the earthquake struck that probably every funeral director on earth thought “What will they do with all the dead?”  

The media has posed this question but interestingly even the tough media people treat the care of the dead subject as taboo and issue warnings after warnings to the viewers that “this information might be uncomfortable for some viewers.”

However all in funeral service know the raw data realities of this situation.  There are thousands upon thousands of dead people, thousands of them everywhere.  We also know that given the lack of infrastructure of the county on even a good day, given the tropical location of the country, given the predictable decomposition rate in such a climate, and given the best laid efforts to help the living get help in a snarled airport space, the lack of organization, the lack of leadership, given all this and on top of all this is now the terrible post mortem reality of highly virulent diseases from the rapidly decomposing dead, the decision of rapid disposition seems to me not just wise, but in the face of the blunt reality of such overwhelming numbers it is the only course the country of Haiti could have taken, as sad and as sobering as that decision is.

However, we as Americans want to help out.  It is in our blood, and there are several outstanding mobile mortuary units from the USA and various countries who want to help, but as I understand the reports, have been told by the Haitian’s “thanks, but no thanks.”  For generous humans whose mission in life is to help, and to use their considerable expertise to identify, prepare, and carefully handle the dead, this response naturally would be disappointing.  That is understandable.  However it seems clear by now that time has gotten away.

Things seemed to be much more difficult and different this time in Haiti. In light of the mind boggling challenges, just to maintain daily life, just to save the dying people, just to get through another day, I can understand that somewhere the decision was made to have mass graves, to take care of the dead quickly before the dead themselves innocently contributed to the deaths of even more Haitians, which given the time span between the earthquake and today is a scary, true, horrifying reality.  If post mortem diseases get started, well, every embalmer on the face of the earth knows the health consequences of such prospects – and horrible prospects they are.

In a real way, I believe this small country is doing the best it can, and we and the world are helping as best as we can.  When it comes to caring for the dead or saving the living in Haiti by burying and or cremating the dead as quickly and as rapidly as possible, if the latter assists in a big way the saving of human life, I don’t know if a compelling argument can now be made to the contrary.  

I was e-mailed by a good buddy of mine that he was going over to Haiti with a well-known disaster management company, and I suspect they are, as usual, doing a yeoman’s job.  I was always impressed with that type of disaster management dedication.  The ticking of the clock means that life, all life, moves on, and in time Haiti will move on, and it appears she is trying to take baby steps to that end as I write.  

I suspect that over time the Haitian government and society will clearly mark the massive graves with impressive memorials and monument much like our country had to do with many military cemeteries that emerged from the Civil War, that the day of the earthquake will become a national day of remembrance, that the saga will be taught to children for generations, and that in the end no one will ever know how many and exactly who died in this mega catastrophe.  

For years to come, for generations after generations, this event will be memorialized in music, prose, poetry and in the collective consciousness of the world, until at some point in time somebody somewhere will find some obscure evidence that in the year 2010 a massive earthquake struck a place called Haiti, and that many people were killed and this person will think “Wonder where Haiti was?” This happens to me when I first I read of a volcano named Mount Vesuvius that on August 24, AD 79, covered the city of Pompeii completely.  I had never heard of the event in my life and I had to find an ancient map to locate where this natural catastrophe happened.

It is the way with history; many times impersonal, distant, aloof.   

My heart goes out to the people of Haiti and my hat goes off to the gravediggers in Haiti, the laborers in the vineyard who are performing their solemn but absolutely essential job.  Life leaves me baffled many times.

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.  TV

The writers of this manual, "Undertaken With Love: A Home Funeral Guide for Congregations and Communities,” have convictions, to be sure; they appear to have all the answers for the do-it-yourself funeral people—I mean ALL the answers—but we need to seriously and soberly examine the suggestions and convictions that these writers make which are in truth unfair, dangerous, and yes, even stupid. This is found in the chapter “With Our Own Hands,” the chapter which gets into the nitty gritty of actually caring for and treating a corpse.

This is not intended to be an article on embalming theory, but even people in our profession who are not embalmers will quickly see the truly unfortunate fallacy of just the following points these authors offer as wise and careful ways to care for a dead human body. There are many more, but I have selected the following quotes:

·         Page 21: “Unlike a living person the dead do not cough, spit, breathe or sweat.”

·         Page 21: “In the case of transmittable disease simply take the same precautions that were used in life such as the use of medical gloves.”

·         Page 21: “It is usually easier to care for the body soon after death before rigor mortis has set in.”

·         Page 21: “Remove medical items, supplies and as much clutter as you can to make the space feel serene.”

·         Page 21: “Transporting the body of an adult usually requires six people.”

·         Page 22: “Go through a trial run with the empty coffin.”

·         Page 22: “Before bathing, place a folded towel or disposable plastic pad under the hips and bottom, and slowly apply firm pressure just above the pubic bone to remove any urine from the bladder or bowel content.”

·         Page 23: “Mouthwash can been used as an antiseptic rinse to reduce odor.”

·         Page 23: “….you can wash the genital area.  If you are not comfortable doing this, an alternative method is to draw a washrag or towel back and forth between the legs a few times.”

·         Page 23: “If there are open or unsightly sores or wounds cover them with gauze pads and seal in place with waterproof medical tape.”

·         Page 23: “…….Although bodily discharge is not usually a problem … If you are seriously concerned you may place cotton in the rectum to make sure any leakage is contained.”

·         Page 24: “Apply makeup and nail polish if desired.”

OK I can see 99 percent of the funeral profession reading this with stunned and horrified looks on their faces, but this is what the writers seriously are suggesting—they are serious. Let’s explore their naiveté a little further, because I have left the best for last.

What is wrong here? Simply stated, the writers seem to actually have no knowledge about the mode of death, or in other words how people die. They have successfully created the illusion that most everybody dies at home, in a clean bed, no fecal material, no odors, no mess, no blood, no nothing except all kinds of family and friends around, who are members of a do-it-yourself funeral committee and on top of all that who are willing and able, competent and knowledgeable to do the following:

1. Remember to wear a mask when and if the corpse exhales on them upon movement. Corpses do exhale and inhale.

2. Have quick access to Personal Protective Envelope uniform.

3. Have a working knowledge of the chemistry of rigor mortis knowing full well you cannot assign time limits to the condition, and also know the impact of livor mortis and algor mortis, which the writers never mention once.

4. Know how to handle and dispose of medical wastes, blood-borne pathogens and hazardous waste products—in accordance with federal law, do-in-yourself corpse care or not.

5. Locate six people to move the remains at a variety of times and places in the middle of the work week.

6. Deal with urine and fecal material—and a lot of it at times.

7. Understand that mouthwash is not a post mortem disinfectant—gargling when you are alive is much different that disinfecting when you are dead.

8. That it is high risk method and possibly just nasty to run a towel under the genitals as the method of cleaning this high risk area.

9. Understand that a roll of gauze from CVS will not do anything to correct the odor and cause and sight of most bed scores. It will take much more that a roll of gauze and a jar of Vapor Rub.

10. Understand and fully appreciate that the term “discharge” is a candy-coated term which really means purge, which is most often … well, do-it-yourself corpse care writers, you just wait and see.

11. Ladies' cosmetics rarely are useful in the instances of post mortem stain, which is a real possibility without arterial embalming.

Now for the kicker. After all this information, after all “do this” and “do that,” after one suggestion after another as to how absolutely easy and carefree taking care of and treating a corpse is, finally at the end of this “With Our Own Hands” chapter the writers enter into the world of corpse-care hardball.

They cover the following subjects in only four paragraph: massive trauma or burns, autopsied bodies, sever obesity, infections (they focus in on septicemia and ignore AIDS, active tuberculosis and hepatitis), and tissue gas. It is with tissue gas they finally give up the ghost. The writers say: “Once started (tissue gas) there is no way to prevent the spread of the bacteria other than the use of embalming chemicals. If it is important for the family to continue with their home funeral plans, then a funeral director should be called upon immediately to embalm.” Finally concerning the removal of pace-makers so the do-it-yourselfers won’t accidentally out of ignorance blow up the crematory the funeral reform writers end with this: “Consult a licensed funeral director.”

These good folks, the do-it-yourself funeral people, have the right to do what they want, call who they want, and have any kind of meaningful experience that they want. I believe that with every fiber in my being. I believe that home funerals are good, valuable and we ought to seriously explore returning to those activities (see my post of 12/16/09).

Unfortunately the information these writers present concerning the actual care and treatment of an unembalmed dead body is just foolish. Frankly an unembalmed body is in reality a ticking time bomb, and when body fluids start escaping from the body in front of friends and family I doubt very much whether all the poetry readings, song singing and modern art will do much to lessen the absolute horror that lay people encounter this. It freaks them out when such distasteful things happen to a corpse, and happen they do.

So the writers go through one procedure after another to teach people to take care of a dead human body and in so doing how to avoid us, the funeral directors, and then in the end when there is big trouble, big issues, big problems—which most corpses can create in a second of time, their suggestion is to call the funeral director immediately. Personally, this seems unfair, condescending and insulting.

Let’s turn the tables for a minute. I was at a do-it-yourself funeral seminar once many years ago, and the usual witch hunt on the undertakers took off in full swing. The group naively went through the same old stuff about how easy it is to take care of a corpse. No problem. Purge? What’s purge? They went through once again all the mistaken funeral history, they went through Jessica Mitford line by line, and in the end the group was contented that they knew everything about what to do when somebody died. However even in this seminar, the old pesky issues of obesity, tissue case, murder, suicide, children deaths, accidents, war casualties, all the truth concerning caring for the dead came up and their universal conclusion was that, “Yes, I guess we have to admit (with a long lamentable condescending sigh) that in these rare instances we will just have to suck it up and call the undertaker—but be careful of them.”

As I sat and heard this, it hurt my soul to its depths, and for once my feelings were so damaged that I did not say one word and privately I thought of the utter cruelty and insensitivity of such a remark, and the group seem totally oblivious that they had damaged my feelings. I have the capacity and God given calling to be an experienced and trained caregiver to the dead, which for them made me look extremely odd and weird. For once I shut up. I hate being muzzled, but I just gave up and I walked out of the meeting room.

However later that very evening I did have one wicked fantasy. I thought about one particular person at this seminar who so smugly brushed me off, who treated me like a beggar, and who told me straight out her opinion of undertakers. Of course looking back, it was easy for her to do because nobody was dead, let alone dead of some cause and manner of death other than dying peacefully in bed. I imagined in my mind the funeral home phone ringing and this one snooty woman saying to me, “Todd our son just shot himself in our basement, come quick.” For a fleeting second in my pain and hurt I imagined I would respond with this angry, hurtful comment: “You want to do-it-yourself—that’s what you said this afternoon when you made me feel like a leper. Tell you what, snooty lady, just open up the basement windows to get some air then shut the basement door, and you know what, you keep your damned cadaver.” It is truly what I thought. It that not horrible? But I was so upset that is what I fantasized.

However it was only a fantasy, only my hurt and pain speaking, for out of my love for funeral service and desire to be helpful to others, if anybody called, even the self proclaimed anti-funeral people, and said, “Todd, our son just shot himself in our basement, come quick!” My instance response, like every other funeral director in the world, would be, “I am on my way.” That is the strength of funeral service.

I believe so much in home funerals, but a layperson taking care of a corpse after death … well, that stretches my understanding to its limits, because a 40-page manual (that is how long the manual is from cover to cover) that devotes only 4 pages to the careful care of the actual dead body, misses the target by such a distance that such well intended efforts by the funeral reformists end up being ridiculous. They haven’t a clue what they are talking about.

Heavens to Betsy, Robert Mayer’s “Textbook on Embalming” which really and truly in great depth and expertise covers the care of the dead, is 683 pages long! And even that monumental academic and professional effort cannot cover and does not address all the myriad possibilities that can happen concerning a dead human body. If somebody who has read the 683 page textbook and actually understands the information can explain the information and has passed numerous examinations on the subject and prepared hundreds of dead human being gets stumped at times with certain cases, what possible sense does it make to turn any of this important work over to self-proclaimed “layers-out of the dead,” do-it-yourselfers who write a measly 6 pages and specifically only four paragraphs  concerning the safe and insightful and care of a dead human body?

Giving a layperson, a do-it-youselfer, a piece of gauze and some waterproof tape to take care of a bed sore makes as much sense as giving 5 year old child cooking utensils and telling them to make a five course meal. The meal is probably is not going to work out, even in light of good efforts and intentions.

It is the risk taken in turning important activities over to neophytes.

I ordered and just finished reading the publications “Undertaken With Love: A Home Funeral Guide for Congregations and Communities,” written by a seemingly nice group of people – Donna Belk, Margalo Eden, Gere B. Fulton, Wendy Lynons, Joyce Mitchell, Holly Stevens. This manual was accidentally brought to my attention several weeks ago when I stumbled upon an article by self-appointed “funeral expert” Holly Stevens. (I had never heard of her in my life.)

Once again I am stumped at what these self-appointed funeral reformers are trying to accomplish. This do-it-yourself funeral manual, like all the rest, starts out with the funeral horror story, and usually it is one distressing incident that the funeral reformers band together around and create a mutual exaggerated mission that funeral directors need to be muzzled and funeral homes need to be—well, they ought not to make too much money, that’s for sure!

For over one half century the anti funeral reformers battle cries have always been the same, money, funeral directors are crooks and in reality you really don’t need a funeral director/embalmer.

The high expectations that their beloved Federal Trade Commission Rule would finally accomplish the moral self-appointed task of muzzling undertakers, and making sure the undertaker and his/her family did not make a living did not work, in fact the Funeral Rule accomplished just the opposite by driving the costs of a funeral higher and hence neutralizing the funeral reformers main goal.

Now what should we do, the anti-funeral people, licking their wounds and feeling sorry for themselves asked? If a federal rule backfired on us in a major way what should we do? So once again they regrouped (remember Nietzsche – a mutual object of hate is a powerful motivator for people to band together) and came up with a highly original idea: “Let’s teach people how to do their own funerals—the do-it-yourself funeral program.

Yes, the do-it yourself funeral program—it is fun and easy, and costs hardly anything and you don’t need that pesky undertaker running around.

To this end, the ever present Lisa Carlson (who is a terribly bright person) wrote the blockbuster book “Caring for Your Own Dead” in I believe 1987, published by Upper Access Publishers, in Hinesburg, Vermont.  Even the goddess of death Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross proclaimed in her quote on the cover of the book, “I love the idea.” What an endorsement!

Of course even with her endorsement we all knew even in the late 1980s that Dr. Kubler-Ross was not herself, and even my mentor, professor and friend Rev. Dr. Edgar N. Jackson, who knew and worked with Kubler-Ross told me straight out in a conversation during this period, “I worry about Elisabeth.” However an endorsement is an endorsement and it is still high risk behavior to say anything remotely uncomplimentary to Dr. Kubler-Ross, so I will leave that one alone.

I have all the editions of Carlson’s book in my library and I have to confess that the work she did of ferreting out all the myriad state laws concerning disposition of the dead is extremely impressive and I use her book as a quick reference tool constantly. Thank you, Lisa, job well done—better you waded through the swamp of state laws than I.

So there we are. For a little over twenty years the doing-it-yourself funeral idea has been roaming around looking for a home.

Now another attempt by the self-appointed funeral reformers has been made.

The manual I just finished reading is simply paper with the same old information that Ms. Carlson put together years ago with some nice additional art work, which I thought were excellent examples of modern art.

The table of contents is predictable. Titles like “At Life’s End,” “Then and Now,” “Finding the Law,” “With Our Own Hands,” “Setting Out Together,” and finally “Down This Path.” The manual ends with online resources. The titles basically reflect the contents of the chapters. For instance the one called “At Life’s End” covers the dos and don’ts when someone dies at home. The chapter “Finding the Law” is self-explanatory—in  other words the writers warn that the do-it-yourselfers should find out the law so no one gets in trouble with the sheriff and/or the state.

Peppered throughout the chapters are readings, verses, group and individual assignments which really reminded me of the lovely Quaker Meetings that I have attended in my life. Beautiful sentiments, kindness, love and gentleness abounding with open arms and open hands. I love that kind of sentimental prose and poetry and want to thank the writers for including such beautiful thoughts—Good Stuff.

Naturally a few of the contributors appear innocently to be self-proclaimed funeral historians and attempt to cover the segment of funeral service history, embalming, undertaking during the time period of the American Civil War. Trust me folks, these obviously really nice people have not got a clue concerning that particular period in funeral service history, not a clue.

The writers also strongly suggest that the do-it-yourself funeral disciples read the Funeral Rule of the Federal Trade Commission and understand it. Yeh, sure, my 85 year old mother in Iowa is going to study and understand the General Price List? Yeh, sure! Also these writers say the FTC rule does not apply to home funerals. Possibly they are right, possibly not—this issue has not really been tested, but I suspect if the do-it-yourself funeral movements gets a real foothold, the FTC will have something to say as they have something to say about everything, and they probably will not be saying “no regulations for you, do-it-yourself funeral people.”

Now to be fair, we all know that in only a few states is the involvement of the funeral home required. Of course the liberating fact of all this is that funeral homes and undertakers were involved with community deaths long before any laws were enacted, let alone enforced. Funeral service IS NOT dependent on laws, funeral service is dependent on relationship-building in communities.

Clearly the writers are people of convictions, and for the layperson reading this manual, the unfortunate danger lurks in the distinct possibility that these funeral reformist might just be mistakenly perceived by, say my 85 year old mother, as knowing what they are talking about. However, I have seen convictions, firmly held life-long convictions, simply evaporate in the face of a life crisis, such as the death of a significant person. If funeral directors deal with anything, it is crisis after crisis.

Here is an example of firmly held convictions vanishing in the midst of trauma which involved the services and presence of funeral directors. There was a time when funeral homes operated the emergency ambulance service, and here is the case study.

A man in Omaha was cutting a limb off a tree and he was sitting on the end of the limb that he was trying to cut off. In short order the branch broke and down he went and when he hit the ground he suffered a compound fracture to his left femur. A neighbor saw him fall and called the Omaha Police Department and called our funeral home for the ambulance. When we arrived this man was howling with pain.

A crowd had gathered and in the midst of this drama a woman came running out of the next house screaming that we should not touch him, nor help him, they did not need us, in fact she told us to go home. She explained that the man was a member of a religion that denied medical treatments under all conditions, and that all we needed to do was to assist this gentleman into his house—they would take it from there. She was clear that the funeral home ambulance was not needed.

Folks, this man’s femur was sticking out of his leg and the police and we were trying to move this man up his front steps, through his front door and lay him on his sofa.  He screamed bloody murder throughout the entire ordeal, and I was psychologically frazzled and started thinking that I ought to have become a fireman instead of a funeral home ambulance man.

My boss and I got back in the ambulance, and as we drove down the street my boss looked over at me and smiled and said, “You know Todd, don’t feel too bad, I will bet you by the time we get back to the funeral home this poor chap will have had a significant religious conversion.” I had no idea what he was talking about.

However when we pulled into the funeral home parking lot the secretary came running out saying that we were needed to return to this man’s house immediately and take him ASAP to the university hospital. The man with his femur sticking out of his body had converted from his firmly held conviction and decided he did need the services of the ambulance. So much for firm convictions in the light of drama and trauma. I never knew if the man lost his leg, but if the poor chap had held rock solid on his convictions, losing his leg would have been a real possibility.

Next: Good intentions aren’t enough when faced with a dead body

The Van Becks have lived in Iowa since arriving from the Netherlands in 1870.  I knew even as a small child that our family had been original pioneers in Southwestern Iowa, and it made me feel good to know that our roots were so deeply planted in the rich soil of the Hawkeye State.  Nothing lasts forever and if anyone visits the Oak Hill Cemetery in Hancock, Iowa you will see that over the last 139 years many Van Becks have died and been buried in that little cemetery located right in the rich black soil of rural Iowa.

By Christmas of 1975 our family was facing yet another death; my grandmother who had been a physical wreck for sometime was dying.  Nothing was working concerning the medical profession, and she just seemed to slip further and further from us and from reality.  In the months prior the family had held one meeting after another concerning my grandmother’s condition, and it was unanimously decided that she would NOT end up in a nursing home, under no conditions would she end up with someone else taking care of her.  She had taken care of us, now it was our turn to take care of her.

Of course I guess our family is normal because by Christmas of 1975 my grandmother was in a nursing home where she would subsequently die six months later.  So much for family conferences and/or convictions and promises.

During the same year of 1975 I bought my first two funeral homes in Eastern Iowa and was busy trying, without much success, to become the premier funeral director in our little town.  Looking back I am ashamed that I thought I could be the premier at anything let alone being a great funeral director, but hell folks I was only 23 years old, and did not know didly squat about life or what surprises my life held in store for me.

The phone rang about five days before Christmas and the announcement was made that my grandmother was slipping fast and that the medical people had sounded the alarm which summoned everybody to make the trip home.  Now freeze this frame for a moment.

Let’s take a moment and travel back to 1960.  In 1960 my grandmother was a literal dynamo.  Energy plus and she was 69 years old.  She never sat down even when she was eating because she was too busy making sure everybody else had enough food to eat.  She was an outstanding cook, outstanding seamstress, and outstanding gardener, and to top all this off she was a Registered Nurse (graduated in 1909) but first and  foremost she was my grandmother, and I always knew I was her favorite – she told me so on countless occasions – in fact she told me this fact way too many times to count.

In 1960 a television station out of Omaha had a program on Saturday nights called “MONSTER, CHILLER, HORROR THEATER.”  It was without a doubt, besides the old “Superman” and “The Three Stooges” my favorite TV program to watch – it just scared the hell out of me and I loved it.  Nothing was better in my kid world than to watch Lon Chaney, Jr. turn into the “Wolfman”, or Boris Karloff chasing some half naked women through a forest and swamp, or Bela Lugosi flying around drinking the blood from again some half naked woman who was in a dungeon in a spooky castle in Transylvania.  It was great stuff!  My father forbade me to watch the show.  I was always sent to bed – when I was at home, anyway.

One Saturday afternoon however, the clouds in my life concerning watching this scary program broke and the sun radiated through my father’s stubbornness and his evident total disinterest in getting scared to death.  What happened was simple; my grandmother asked me to spend the weekend at her house.  She lived seven miles away; it was a safe distance.  Halleluiah!  Reprieved at last! I am free, free! So off my grandmother’s house I went and a mighty happy camper I was indeed.  It was Saturday afternoon, six more hours before “Monster, Chiller, Horror Theater”.

That evening we ate dinner, I had two pieces of apple pie, she fussed on me, doted on me, and basically made me feel like the king of the castle. 

After I had helped her wash the dishes while we both sang old time songs we went into the living room to watch Saturday evening television.  “Lawrence Welk” started off the evening. Then I asked if we could watch “Gunsmoke.”  Sure was Grandma’s response.  I saw my opening.  If she would say yes to “Gunsmoke” there might just be a chance she would say yes to………….

The ten o’clock news came on.   Usually at home this was my father’s cue to start pushing me off to bed, but my grandmother just looked at me and asked if I would be interested in some popcorn?  Popcorn in the middle of the night?  Why sure I’d love some.   So off we went to the kitchen and started popping.  While I was keeping watch over the popcorn project my grandmother went over to the refrigerator (she called it the ice-box) and pulled out a beer.

She went over to the cupboard and got out two, yes two glasses.  By now the popcorn was finished and it was just about 10:30 p.m. time for my scary movie to begin.

Very nonchalantly and with great diplomacy I asked my grandmother if we could watch “Monster Chiller Horror Theater” and she said yes without batting an eye.  I determined right then and there that my life plan was to change considerably and that from now on my purpose and mission in life would be to finagle as many weekend invitations to bunk out at my Grandmother’s as possible.  My life had new meaning.

She poured herself a glass of beer and poured the rest of the bottle, very little was left,  into a small shot glass for me and with popcorn in hand she and I went into the living room to get the bejesus scared out of us – or me anyway, I hoped. 

There we sat, an old lady and a kid, watching a scary movie, eating popcorn and drinking beer and having the time of our lives in the middle the night – middle of the night for a kid, that is.

My beer tasted horrible, just horrible, but I felt so grown up that I knew I couldn’t let on.  Obviously my grandmother did not think her beer tasted horrible, for in no time her glass was empty.  I don’t think I ever finished my beer – if may well have been the only beer I never finished; my, my how things have changed over the years concerning by behavior with that particular recreational activity.

In the middle of our naughty clandestine activity my grandmother leaned over to me and whispered (there were only her and I in the room) “Now don’t tell your Dad about this, will you?”  TELL DAD!!!!!!!!!! ARE YOU KIDDING?????????  TELL MY DAD!!!!!!!!!!!!  I promised on all that a kid could hold holy that never a word would be said to my father about the movie, the beer or even the popcorn – it was our secret.  To this day he does not know, I never told on her.

Let’s pick the frame up.  Now it is Christmastime 1975, fifteen years later, and I had arrived home.  At the nursing home my grandmother was flat on her back, eyes closed, saying nothing, not moving at all, just lying flat on her back.  She had lost a great amount of weight but she was small to begin with, could not speak, her hair was a mess, however the nurses had made absolutely sure that she was clean and that there were no bed sores.  Looking back they might well have had a vested interest in my grandmother because as one RN told me in the hallway “If it had not been for your Grandma’s influence in my life I would never have mustered the courage to go to nursing school – she taught me how to be a practical nurse, way beyond the textbooks.”  I was so proud.

In mid-evening I found myself sitting all alone with Grandma.  Some Christmas cards were taped up, there was a little Christmas tree which was nice, but my beloved friend, confidante, and Grandmother was dying right before my eyes and there seemed to be nothing I could do to help her.  I just sat there thinking.

Eventually this same nurse who had been an apprentice of Grandma’s in the nursing profession came in and started talking to her like nothing was wrong, like in the good old days.  This nurse was telling my Grandmother about other patients and the trouble she was having with some of them, and she one time even asked Grandma what she ought to do with one particularly grumpy patient down the hall.  Grandma said nothing.

Finally the nurse looked at me and said she had to leave for a few minutes and why don’t I continue talking to Grandma she asked.  I was totally uncomfortable.  You want me to talk to my Grandma, are you kidding?  I had known this woman for years, and as she left the room she shot me a stern look and said, “You heard me Todd, talk to her, she loves you so much.”

So I started talking to her stumbling around not knowing what to say exactly.  I started to talk about “Monster, Chiller, Horror Theater,” and what a blast it was to make the popcorn and drink the beer with her and go to bed really late and that Dad never ever found out about it.  She did not move once while I was talking to her.

Finally I ran out of steam and was sitting there quietly buried in my own thoughts, when out of nowhere, out of the blue, without any hesitation or stumbling my grandmother, eyes still closed, said as clear as a bell – “I DON’T REMEMBER THE BEER.”

I just sat in my chair stunned.  My nurse buddy came in and I told her, and she took my hand and said again “She heard everything you said, she loves you very much, she just can’t talk, that’s normal.”  Those were the last words my grandmother ever said to me, “I don’t remember the beer.”

It was cold as hell outside, snow was everywhere.  I gathered my coat and walked out to the car.  Another Christmas in Iowa, but not another one for my Grandmother – this one would be her last.  However, today every time the Yuletide season comes around, this one profound memory is what I recall with the greatest frequency.  The memory has nothing to do with toys, presents, parties, singing, laughing and being merry, it has everything to do with the real meaning of Christmas – love.

My sainted grandmother has been dead for 33 years. I have survived 33 Christmases in her physical absence, but I know that she is not spiritually absent, and each time I feel that warm holiday glow I remember two human beings from years ago, one old, one terribly young, sitting together in a very little house in a very little place called Hancock, Iowa (population 250), making popcorn, laughing, telling stories, drinking a little beer while watching some crazed lunatic monster chasing people all over the place, and on top of all that, Dad never was the wiser – great fun – God I would give a year's salary to have that moment just one more time.

Interesting, is it not, what happens to people in the past. When it is happening, it seems routine, somewhat mundane, but what a difference history and time make on those seemingly routine and mundane life events of years gone by.  Youth is truly wasted on the young, and what ticks me off with young people is that they are the very people who don’t get it.

Two last thoughts, the first one is special, almost unbelievable in fact, and the second one is just dripping with sincerity and love.  Here is the odd, special, eerie, strange, unbelievable one: On June 27, 2009, I married a Registered Nurse. Can you believe this, a real live honest to goodness licensed certified graduated formalized canonized Registered Nurse, and trust me, my friends, she is in every way just as much of a dynamo as my sainted grandmother was. I can’t keep up with her and she has indeed changed my life, all for the better.  Lastly, to all my good buddies in this great profession, this old undertaker sincerely and truly wishes everyone a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Years.

TVB

The final requiem for the old traditional home funeral appears historically to have come to a temporary conclusion right around the time I started working in funeral service – the 1960s.

I worked on many home funerals, and I need to say this right away that I never worked so hard in my life as when I was working on a home, a residential funeral.

It is one thing to do a funeral in a funeral home, mortuary, undertaking parlor, church, lodge hall, but honestly it is a totally different animal to do a funeral out of a private residence.  Work, work, work, work, work, work ... And surprise after surprise.

It seemed to me that everything including the kitchen sink had to be taken to the home.  You name the funeral equipment and we set it up, and then we tore it down.  We often times had to engage the services of a carpenter to take out a window so we could push the casket through the opening when the door was not wide enough.  Then we would have the carpenter put the window back in, and then have the carpenter come back to once again take the window out so we could remove the remains, and then put the window back in.  It was a ton of work.

I can totally understand why the “old timers” who had spent years lugging funeral equipment all over the place were so supportive, and nay overjoyed when the public embraced the notion of funerals being done out of the funeral home.  However it appears that history might be repeating itself once again.

I just finished reading a horribly boring article published in “The Christian Century Magazine” by Ms.  Holly Stevens (a self-proclaimed funeral consumer advocate, where does one study that subject?) entitled “A Family Undertaking, Caring for Our Dead.”

The article just rehashed the old negative hash concerning our profession like Lisa Carlson has done for years and Ms. Carlson seemingly made a living doing so.  However one new twist with Ms. Steven’s work was that she refers to us undertakers as “commercial morticians.”  I had not heard that one before.  “What do you do for a living, Todd?”  “Why I am a commercial mortician I make commerce from death, and do mortician commercials on TV, or something.”  Snappy title – “Commercial Mortician.”  The only one I have run into that was snappier was the funeral director in Omaha who used to refer to embalmers as “Preservative Surgeons.”  That one was a little much, I thought but his families seemed to like the title.

Looking back today and after reading Ms. Steven’s boring article I have to say that I think home funerals are a good thing.  They were certainly a back breaker, but I always thought they had tremendous value, and I think that we should seriously consider a return to the good old days, and offer them again.  I think this is a true possibility and with all the other services, accessories, bells and whistles we are offering, why not a home funeral package?

Ms. Steven’s article is really not worth reading for those of us insiders who are active as “commercial morticians.”  Same old stuff, but the idea of the home funeral I really do believe is worth a revisit and further consideration.

Here are some of the advantages that I gleaned from working on home funerals.

• Everybody from the funeral home was highly visible in sight of the families we were serving.  Have you ever considered just how much of our work is actually invisible to the family?  Poof here is the dead body, poof here is a register book, poof here are folding chairs, and say where did that funeral coach come from?  Home funerals we worked and people saw us in action.
• It was comfortable.  Even if it was crowded, it was comfortable.  Not that the funeral home is not comfortable, but this environment was like the “Walton’s.”
• People knew where things were.
• People could cook, eat, take a nap, just be themselves.
• It gave us an invaluable opportunity to bond with our clients, much different than the more formal funeral home environment.
• The family was surrounded by their memories.
• People visiting the family actually visited, it was so much more informal.
• The funeral home was able to provide extra little things which the families seemed to appreciate so much.  I remember one home funeral during the winter and my boss made me scoop the snow from the sidewalks around the family home. The family was so thankful.
• There were no hours at a home funeral.  People could easily sit up all night with the deceased, which offered many more opportunities for private thought and meditation than when the more formal mortuary closes at 9:00 p.m.
• In a very real sense everybody from the funeral home was much more intertwined with the neighborhood and community than at the formal mortuary.  I remember being sent out to an outstanding Italian restaurant to get carry out while working on a home funeral.  My, oh my, was that good food, and had we not been working at the family home I would never ever have found out about that culinary secret.  
• Every home funeral we conducted was a full service funeral.  However I can well imagine that many families who choose alternative options might well be interested in having the urn or whatever memorialization accoutrements on display at their residence.

I have even thought that funeral homes could well in the future offer a “Do It Yourself Funeral Kit” for families that do not want the funeral home represented at the memorial service.  The kit would include everything needed for a memorial service, a register book, folders, flower card envelope, pens, etc. and even a instruction sheet and check off sheet to make sure they have gotten all the bases covered, and this kit could easily sell for $500, which could easily make up the profits on a lost never ever going to happen casket sale.  It is just an idea.

Certainly the movement back to the home funeral will probably not become a national fad, however there are rumblings about it, and these days any rumblings concerning funerals ought to capture everyone’s attention. How about offering an additional type of unique service – the old fashioned home funeral package - that could be put on the GPL and offered to the community?  Crazy, right?  Too far out of the box right? You gotta be kidding right?  No I am serious; I think we ought to explore the possibilities.

I think I would rather see and I believe it would benefit the future of this great profession if the funeral home came up with the “Home Funeral” package and offered it to the public instead of before say the Ms. Stevens of the world, who clearly dislike “Commercial Morticians” but advocate home funerals.  We ought to beat people like that to the punch.

Oh, by the way Ms. Stevens has published a book entitled “Undertaken with Love: A Home Funeral Guide for Congregations and Communities,” published by the Home Funeral Committee Manual Publishing Group.  You can look at her stuff at homefuneralmanual.org.

For some unknown reason am thinking at this moment that I never ever thought Wal Mart would be selling caskets. 

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

When I was in seminary we were required to do this assignment.  It was simple.  We walked to the Public Gardens in downtown Boston, and were asked by the professor to mark out some undisturbed piece of ground four feet square and then we were asked to examine very closely the variety of life which existed in such a small area of earth.  It was astonishing.  

There were many species of plants; evidence that mice had been roaming around; spiders, ants, and other small creatures abounded in just four feet square of earth.  Then the professor brought out a microscope and WOW what an incredible array of microorganisms all functioning in perfect association with the larger life forms which we had seen with our own eyes.

Then the professor gave each student a small garden spade and asked us to dig a small hole, small enough that the Boston Police Department would not notice, for digging in the Public Garden was illegal – and here we were seminary student’s breaking the law.  Oh well………

Just a few short inches into the earth it was literally amazing.  There were more insects, earthworms of various kinds, and a fresh array of bacteria right in the middle of downtown Boston.

I know that if we had not stopped we would have eventually reached bedrock and in the rock formations there would be hundreds of feet of dense fossil deposits laid down through millions of years representing the remains, the evidence of a myriad of dead species and an astronomical number of individuals who died.

The lesson that day was clear.  In that little square of ground in downtown Boston we witnessed an interdependent community of life in which birth and death were continuously taking place and in which extreme diverse life forms were sheltering and nourishing one another, constantly until death stopped the cycle.  The evidence of this stunning feat is well written in the rocks beneath the earth which tell the story of this process going back through millions upon millions of years.

Humankind is part of this ongoing community of nature, on a world scale subject to the same cycle of birth and death which governs all other creatures, and like them we are totally dependent on other life.  

It has been my observation that sometimes in our high rise apartments, living in the fast lane, our manicured suburbs, our obsession with youth and being carefree and endlessly happy, and our chromium plated institutions we tend to forget this.  I forget this.

Our need is not to conquer nature, the results of which attempts are frighteningly glaring at us as I write, but instead to live in harmony with it.  This does not mean rejecting technology, but it does mean adding deep thinking, developed philosophies concerning the meaning of life and also death.  Thinking just about life at the total exclusion of thinking about death simply does not work, because without thinking about death, death becomes something that is to be feared, and when we are fearful about something that is 100% guaranteed to happen – well, the results are not good.

Birth and death are as natural for us as for the myriad forms of life in that little square of ground in downtown Boston.  When we have learned to accept ourselves as part of that community of nature, then we can accept, explore and hopefully find meaning in death as part of the simple natural order of things.

Without thinking, pondering, meditating, praying about the particular subject of death, ours and others, we commonly behave as if we, and those we love, were going to live forever.  What a shameful attitude to possess. It is shameful because it is wrong, for all must die – and we cannot ever know when this will happen.

Throughout my entire career the subject of death has been taboo, and those of us who are called to minister in this world are viewed – well that is fodder for another blog when I am in a bad mood – and it seems utterly impossibly to get death education classes implemented in our educational systems – seminaries are not even interested.  This makes me sad, and this is really unfortunate for death is a normal and necessary part of life.  I am of the thinking that until our culture learns to face death honestly and accept it as part of growing up; we are not living at our best.

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

The first month at my first job in funeral service (I was very young), the firm I was associated with was summoned to a mansion to make the removal of an extremely wealthy person who was a member of one of the pioneer merchant families. In other words, he was "loaded!"

Everybody in the area knew he was a total recluse and basically was never seen anywhere, let alone at the great big department store his family owned downtown.  I had driven past this man’s mansion a thousand times and it was a gloomy “Withering Heights” looking thing which had a scary looking brick wall surrounding the property.  Every time we would pass the mansion, the same story would be told.  Whether the story was true I never found out, but it was one hell of a story.

The story goes that this old multimillionaire recluse had been a passenger on the “Titanic.”  As everybody knew, the “Titanic” sank with a terrible loss of life.  However the stunner about this old recluse and the “Titanic” was that this man was supposedly the man who had dressed up like a woman to escape the fate of the ship’s sinking – remember, women and children first.  The story that somebody had dressed up like a woman to get off the “Titanic” was common knowledge; I had seen it in the 1952 movie “Titanic” with Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck.  However, the local twist was that this recluse millionaire was the actual person who had acted in such a cowardly manner.

The story continued that this man returned home in total disgrace because he had easily been found out and quickly identified, and that his utter and complete shame was the reason for his total withdrawal from society.  It was one hell of a story, and gave us all the heeby jeeby’s when we would tell it.  Today I doubt that it is true, but it is still a good story.

This night the alleged “Titanic” recluse had died and the firm I was associated with was called in.  My boss told me to say nothing, absolutely nothing, just stand there looking stupid, which I was able to do perfectly without any error.

When we arrived at the mansion, we were instructed to go to the back door for privacy.  As we entered the mansion, the widow was sitting at the breakfast nook with a half empty bottle of vodka – it was 5 a.m. and she was popped.  I felt sorry for her until she opened her mouth.

The bereaved widow left nothing to the imagination.  She declared to all that her husband was worthless, the years with him had been wasted, that he was reprobate, rogue, a rascal, who ignored her and worse was a complete and worthless coward, and she wanted him out of the mansion – NOW!

Her instructions were clear.  Burn him up immediately.  Do nothing, say nothing, just burn him up.   Not even an obituary, although she did ask if cremation was absolutely the cheapest way to go.  What did she want to do with the cremated remains, you ask? Who cares? was her response. She told us to do what we wanted to with them.  I suspect they are still sitting in the mortuary, in the eternally, absolutely free cremation storage closet in the basement of the mortuary since 1966!

I did not feel so sorry for her when we left.  In fact I felt mighty happy to get out of that house with a deranged widow present who was polishing off a gallon of vodka and sitting extremely close to carving knives and other such sharp kitchen weapons.

Not one word was said on our trip back to the mortuary.

The millionaire was cremated.  End of story?  Well, not quite yet.

About two years later we received another call from the mansion.  There had been another death.  This time, however, we did not take the funeral coach, but instead the sedan. 

Once again my boss instructed me to play stupid and say nothing, and I am happy to report  that my skills at acting stupid had definitely improved over a two year span of time – by this time I was an expert at the art of stupidology.

Once again we went to the back door, and once again here was the wife of the deceased millionaire at the breakfast nook, again with a bottle of vodka, again chain smoking, again dressed in a skimpy nightgown – she was again popped.  The only difference, which was a big difference, was that this time she was out of her mind with grief.  She was weeping, sobbing, crying, bawling so much so she could not talk.  Finally she blurted out, “She is in there,” pointing to the mansion’s library.

“Ishy Pishy Poo Poo” had unfortunately passed away.  The death was not totally unexpected as the poodle was 300 years old, but still the death had come as a horrible shock to the nervous system of this poor woman.

Courageously my boss looked my way and instructed ME to pick the dead dog up and wrap her in a baby blanket and carry her gently out to the sedan.  I damned near burst out laughing – you want me to wrap up a dead dog with a what? but my boss was deadly serious – he was not laughing at all.  The removal was professionally made and off to the mortuary we went.  Not one word was said, but having grown up on a farm where animals were usually seen as just animals, my brain was spinning with thoughts that still to this day must be kept private.

“Ishy Pishy Poo Poo” was placed in a solid bronze child’s casket filled in the bottom with dried ice, and taken to the mansion to lie in state in the library surrounding by Ishy’s favorite toys, bones, rags, food and water bowls, winter apparel and of course surrounded on the book shelves by the likes of “Moby Dick”, “The Scarlett Letter,” “Plato’s Apology” and other classics in literature.

A grave was dug on the property and the local vault company lined the grave with concrete and brick.  In time an extremely nice monument was erected with Ishy’s vital statistics engraved, and the inscription “Love Is Eternal.”  I was not allowed to attend the funeral – it was a private affair.

The pet owner’s grief was real.  It was true.  It was authentic.

Having grown up around farms, I was struck for many years after this experience by the seemingly odd fact that this pet owner would expend more time, money and emotion on a dead dog than on her own dead husband.  However my confusion over such life matters simply reflected my innocence and naïveté concerning such matters.  I was unenlightened. I had not lived long enough.

I today watch the pet funeral area growing by leaps and bounds, and I say bravo.  Yes, it is probably sad that a woman will think more of memorializing her dog than her husband or vice versa, but who is to really judge this?  Is it really that sad?  I say no, it is not.

Given the state of affairs concerning just marriage – let’s see a 50%+ divorce rate for going on a half a century, then add to this everyday cheating, lying, and a myriad other reasons why human relationships fall apart . Contrast to this vulnerability the possibility of loyalty, unconditional positive regard, total commitment, fun, entertainment, cuddling, walking, playing with a pet. Why shouldn't the living give their dead pet who was more trustworthy, kind, and considerate than the dead human the experience of leave-taking and saying a formal goodbye?  I again say bravo.

In fact, children are instinctually programmed to have funerals for their dead pets, long before they have figured out the meaning and purpose of adult funerals.  Leave a child alone and don’t let adults fiddle with things and corrupt them, and sure enough, when their pet dies there will be some type of funeral.  Too bad children grow up and become adults concerning funerals.

I have watched, albeit from a distance, one of the large professional associations embrace pet funeralization and memorialization and I say go for it.

Given the fragility of human adult relationships these days, the innocence and security that many pet relationships offer creates bonds, lasting bonds, which are filled with wonderful memories.  Honestly I have encountered many adults that when I look back at my relationship with them the memories are – well let’s just say they are less than stellar – and some of these people have been dead for years – I have not forgotten.

However when I remember my little dog “Tinker Bell,” yes folks that was her name, “Tinker Bell” (anybody want to make something of this?), my memories of that little dog are of sitting with her on the banks of the Nishnabotana River in Iowa and pouring my soul out to her about people who had upset me or did not understand me – my goodness Tinker Bell was a marvelous listener.  In fact I have never encountered any human being who could match her in listening skills.  She seemed to understand that you cannot talk and listen at the same time.  She never said one word, just listened and licked my face – what great memories.

When my dog was put down (that’s an Iowa phrase) I was devastated, however my buddies and I gave her I believe four different impressive stately funerals in one day, and while I could not afford a solid bronze child’s casket, my buddies and I all worked on an orange crate and painted it a beautiful bronze color, lined it with a white sheet, put a transverse cut in the lid and held a public viewing in my barn. That was indeed “Tinker Bell’s” precious metal casket.

Grief is an emotion pure and simple.  Love is an emotion pure and simple.  They go hand in hand in life.  I have had people in my life profess love and take it back and I have done the same thing.  I have had people all my life say this and that – but it was only words, no action, and I have done the same thing.  Yes, here and there in my life noble human beings have emerged who are trustworthy, loyal, and kind and good listeners, and when that happens my life is indeed sweet.

It was my pet, however, who batted 1,000 in these “sweet” characteristics.  It was my dog who was my buddy and friend, companion and confidant.  It was my dog who when she died indeed deserved a funeral – she got one, and even to this day I feel peace of mind and a long standing feeling that I and my kid community did the right thing – she died in 1962.  I bet even Ishy’s mother would agree with me on this point, with or without the vodka.

It is a danger for human beings to distance themselves too far from our animal friends and compatriots – we inhabit the same globe – none of us can escape, we are on this planet together.  Bonds that create security, stability, comfort, loyalty, support, unconditional positive regard, I vote are good no matter where they come from.

My vote is for us to jump on the pet funeral and commemoration movement in a big way, it seems to possess all the ingredients necessary to really help people out. And in the end what more do we have to offer our communities, our friends, our family, and today, our pets?

I believe that funeralization and memorialization are wise and valuable for all life, no matter their technical genus or species.  Saying goodbye under any conditions just makes sense.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.

TVB

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

I have been annoyed for years concerning the people who rant and rave about the cost of funerals.  I call the ranting and ravings “myths” and on this blog I would like to offer some practical realities concerning an analysis of funeral costs. It is not necessary to cover the exaggerations of the anti-funeral people – their war cry is always the same and I suspect their verbosity will have no end.

This blog is going to be short.  The readers are thinking privately and possibly out loud “Thank God Above, Glory Halleluiah, this time Todd will be short – it is a miracle.”  I totally understand; you ought to try living with me day to day.

Here are the myths:

MYTH NUMBER 1 “Funerals are too expensive!”

Here are the facts:

• It takes 136 individuals separate steps and services to complete one average adult funeral.
• The average funeral in 2008 was $6,500.
• Basic cost analysis:  For each and every service the funeral comes provides based on the $6500 overall cost each service to the client comes out to be:  $48 per service.

MYTH NUMBER 2 “A funeral is the third greatest expense in life after buying a house or car.”

     Here are the facts:

• Ask anybody this question:  “Have you ever remodeled your bathroom?”
• Ask anybody this question:  “Do you have children in college?”
• Ask anybody this question:  “Have you ever improved your kitchen?”
• Ask anybody this question:  “Did you have to pay for your daughter’s wedding?”  (This question I find particularly sobering when viewed in the reality that the divorce rate in the United States is 52%.  One would have better chances of success in Vegas).

MYTH NUMBER 3 “Funerals are just too expensive – period.”

     Here are the facts:

• The average funeral in America costs roughly $6,500.
• The average American (this does not include untimely or young deaths) lives an average of 75 years.
• Living 75 years equates into living 27,375 days.
• This means that the average 75 year old whose funeral costs $6,400 has spent 4.2 cents for every day of their lives for a funeral 

MYTH NUMBER 4 “If we keep burying people at this rate the entire United States will become a cemetery.”

Here are the facts:

• The world’s population is approximately 5 billion people.
• One thousand people can be buried on one acre of land in a single grave space.
• If everyone across the globe died at the exact same moment the entire world’s population could be buried on: 7,812.50 square miles of land, an area which is just a little smaller than the State of Massachusetts (8,257 square miles) and about six times larger than the State of Rhode Island (1,214 square miles) or about the size of Prince Edward Island in Canada.

MYTH number 5 "Wow, caskets are really expensive."

Here are the facts:

• When President Abraham Lincoln died in 1865 his casket cost an even $1,500.  It was made of solid walnut, lead lined, cloth covered and was one of the finest burial receptacles made.
• What would this casket cost today, calculating a mere 5% inflation, which equates to 1.05 increases annually on $1,500 over the last 144 years?
• The Lincoln casket today would sell for, it the casket price kept up with the ups and downs of the economy over the last 144 years for the astounding fee of: $2,480,625 

There you have it – funeral demythologization in a nut shell.  

So next time you are at a cocktail party and some obnoxious funeral service self-appointed reformer starts that ancient babbling and ramblings of the Jessica Mitfords of the world (and remember my friends they are still out there) just pull up some of this stuff and you will stop the funeral director reformer, the funeral director wannabes in their tracks.  Also it feels good to share this stuff.

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

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

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