Caleb Wilde
(218 comments, 980 posts)
Posts by Caleb Wilde
Going Out Like a Boss: Eight Things You Need for an Very Expensive Funeral
As a preface, let me say that I don’t believe a funeral should ever strap a family economically. I believe that honoring the deceased has very little to do with a costly funeral. And I also believe that frugality is a wonderful practice when it comes to death and death care.
But, IF you wanted to go out like a boss, here’s eight things you might need.
1. You’ll need to buy a grave plot at Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, N.Y.
Basic burial plots cost $4,800. Mausoleum crypts cost up to $1.5 million.
2. The Golden Casket
This beautiful piece of artwork costs around 40K.
3. You’ll need to be famous.
Most of the cost of the world’s REALLY expensive funerals goes towards logistics.
For instance, Whitney Houston’s funeral reportedly cost the singer’s hometown $187,000 in police overtime. Pope John Paul II’s funeral had four kings, five queens, 70 presidents and prime ministers and 14 leaders of other religions attending; it’s estimated that the security, organization, etc. cost roughly 10 million.
4. Russian Embalmers
Kim Jong-Il was the Supreme Leader of North Korea from 1994 to 2011. When he died, North Korea paid Russian embalmers nearly one million dollars to embalm the Supreme Leader’s body. I can’t imagine what a one million embalming job would look like.
5. This must be your hearse (The Rolls Royce Phantom Hearse)
6. You will need the Juliet Rose flower.
Via The Richest
Making its debut in 2006 at the Chelsea Flower Show, the Juliet Rose took the world by storm by its elegance and beauty. It took David Austin 15 long years to create this beautiful flower. The Juliet Rose is also known as the £3 million rose, which is equivalent to approximately $15.8 million.
7. Build an Egyptian Pyramid Tomb.
© 2013 David Stanley, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio
It’s considered nearly impossible for us — even with our modern construction equipment — to build one of the famous Egyptian pyramids / tombs. But, if it were possible, it would be at an estimated cost of nearly five billion dollars. Comparatively, the new One World Trade Center in New York cost an estimated four billion dollars.
8. Be Ronald Reagan.
Although it’s not a funeral cost per se, it is a cost caused by Ronald’s death. Here’s the figure from The Richest:
During the United States’ official Day of Mourning, stock markets closed, federal workers were given the day off and media outlets focused on nothing but the funeral services. And while a Day of Mourning is standard practice for the death of a president, when Functional Ambivalent crunched the numbers, the $400,000,000 tax payer bill for a federal vacation day sent heads spinning. If you add to that amount the estimated costs for state services, security and cost to networks, some speculate that the total expenses related to Reagan’s funeral may have reached as high as $800 million or even $1 billion.
Black Friday at the Funeral Home
At 6:30 AM Friday morning the funeral home doors opened. This was the situation at 6:15.
This book sold out within the first hour:
Our “Two Funerals for the Price of One” was awarded to the first 15 customers in the arrangement room. Edna, Mary, Shirley, Evelyn and Ruth wait patiently to cash in on this special sale.
A melee broke out over our limited number of 80% off Funeral Director Lego set. Unfortunately, one of the participants involved in the melee passed away; fortunately, they passed away at a funeral home.
The highlight of the morning came at 10 AM when Tim Cook explained the advantages of the New RiPod over the RiPod 2.
As their wives wait in anticipation, Joe Schilling and Tom Johnson fought over a half-price casket:
The Barbie play set was sold out in 10 minutes.
In our “Used” section, customers took full advantage of our products, such as the one pictured below:
Finally, Adam Sweaty camped out in front of the funeral home for five days to be the first in line for this beautiful discounted Ford Mustang Hearse.
21 Self-Portraits of Living after Loss
This series, entitled “Still, Life” is the work of Sarah Treanor. All the photos have been used with Sarah’s expressed permission.
Sarah writes, “Shortly after the death of my fiancé in 2012, I began taking self portraits.”
Week 1 – What is Left
“I didn’t know why at first, all I knew is that some part of me needed to see myself.”
Week 2 – The Fallen
“I felt like I had died too… the images gave me proof that I was still living. A way to externally explore and express everything that was going on inside of me.”
Week 3 – Relics of our Time
“Still, Life is a project that was birthed out of those initial snapshots – one photo each week for the year of 2014 – exploring the complex emotions around the death of my partner and how to keep living on.”
Week 4 – The Gateway
“I have been using art to cope with life’s challenges nearly all my life.”
Week 5 – The Guardians
“At age nine, I lost my mother to breast cancer. Making art became my sanctuary, my escape from the pain.”
Week 6 – Desperation
In my adult life I’ve come to use creativity to cope with things I never imagined I would have to at such a young age. In my mid-twenties, I lost my father to heart and lung disease. Parentless at 26, I took up photography as an escape.
Week 7 – Hope
“I found that when I was behind the camera I went to a whole other place…”
Week 8 – The Climb
“… able to focus on the present moment and on finding the beauty right in front of me.
Week 9 – Bleeding the Darkness
“It was meditative and created a sanctuary again for me – just like other art forms did for me as a child.”
Week 10 – The Mask
“Then, in the summer of 2012, my fiancé was killed very suddenly in a helicopter crash while working as a contract pilot.”
Week 11 – Sanctuary
“I was three months shy of my 30th birthday and my whole future vanished with one phone call.”
Week 12 – Waiting
“His death changed everything about my life.”
Week 13 – Frozen
Everything.
Week 14 – Debris
“His death made me realize I had walked away from my dreams… wandered off the path.”
Week 15 – Surrender
“I left my career behind as a designer, left the city we called home, and I began again out in the country, writing and making art.”
- Week 16 – The Listening Place
“Creating things has always been the only way I’ve been able to breathe in the midst of great loss.”
Week 17 – In the Ruins
“The only resting place, and the best vantage point from which to see myself and my own journey – both the pain and the joy.”
Week 18 – Battle On
“Photography helps me find my peace, and also helps me to express parts of my story and emotions in ways that cannot be said with words.”
Week 19 – Between Two Worlds
“My goal in sharing my work is to help others who are going through their own darkness to feel less alone.”
Week 20 – Mortal Coil
Follow Sarah on her blog or Facebook to see each week’s self-portrait and for prints of her photographs visit her Etsy shop.
Week 21 – Isolation
How Would You Feel about Seeing Your Loved One Loaded into a Truck?
Via Kait8:
Delivery truck-driver Ken McDaniel of Memphis snapped his smart phone pictures of (the funeral director loading a deceased body into the back of his pickup), while (Ken was) making a delivery at a Mid-South hospital. The pictures show (the funeral director). — by his own admission — loading a corpse into the covered bed of a 1997 Chevrolet pickup truck. Tennessee motor vehicle records indicated the truck is registered to (the funeral director) at his Tyne Street address.
“I just sat and watched him, and I just thought, ‘You know, this is not right,'” McDaniel said. “Just the sheer shock of watching him push that body in the truck like that with the tailgate down, you know, two or three times just push … I just couldn’t believe it.”
Per the news source, “Kait8”, the funeral director is being investigated for the possibility of “immoral or unprofessional conduct”.
How does this make you feel? Do you think this counts as “immoral and unprofessional conduct”?
Part of me says, “this isn’t a very wise move” and another part of me says, “why is it okay for funeral directors to use Suburbans (a SUV based on a truck platform) but not a fully-enclosed truck bed?
For the record, I would never do this. And I do think it’s unprofessional. I guess I just don’t think it counts as “immoral”. If this were an open truck bed, where the deceased would be exposed to the elements … then it’s a different story.
Mobile Mortuary in Texas
On Distinctive Life’s website, they state, ”
Distinctive Life is uniquely designed to bring our services to you.
We know that visiting the funeral home to make final arrangements can be uncomfortable and inconvenient. At Distinctive Life, our Mobile Funeral Directors will come to meet you at your home, church, office or anywhere else you find comfortable.
Distinctive Life is focused on meeting our families’ needs wherever they are.
Via KeyeTV:
HOUSTON (KHOU)– A Houston funeral home is taking a different approach to the afterlife. There is now a “mobile mortuary” moving around the city. “I think it will definitely become a conversation starter,” said Jeff Friedman with Distinctive Life Cremations and Funerals. Jeff drives through a southwest Houston neighborhood with a new idea. It may sound different, but he says that’s by design. “A lot of families aren’t looking for the cookie cutter funeral any longer” So Jeff Freidman put his funeral business “Distincive Life” on wheels. “Families that call us will request what time they want us to come to their house.” Friedman says it’s all about convenience and a changing industry. Like so many other services in this modern age, he says it’s time to bring the funeral business to people’s doorstep.
This is really a fantastic idea. Props to Distinctive Life. An idea that I hope catches on to other funeral homes.
In fact, this really isn’t entirely “modern”; in some sense, it’s old fashion. Most the of the mortuaries in the late nineteenth and twentieth century were entirely mobile. We didn’t even own a funeral home up until the 1920. Up until then we operated out of barn and we’d hop from home to home, church to church.
Good job, Distinctive Life!
