Help Us, Social Media. You Are Our Only Hope.
The funeral industry is too often known for its worst practitioners. The practitioners who take financial advantage of the bereaved in their most helpless state. Those who price gouge and exploit. Those who use the dark side of the Force.
So how can you – the consumer – distinguish between the funeral homes that genuinely want to serve you and those that want to weasel their way into your wallet?
Some suggest that the distinction is as easy as corporate vs. family run, that corporate run funeral homes are the bad guys and family owned are suit wearing angels (i.e. Six Feet Under). And while it may be true that corporate tends to be more about the bottom line, the assumption that all family owned funeral homes are good is just plain FALSE. I’ve seen many family funeral directors that hide horns underneath their greased hair and will stop at nothing to “up sell” families into buying a more expensive funeral.
Years ago, Jessica Mitford with her “You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty” Jedi journalistic mantra managed to expose many a guilty funeral director. In her “American Way of Death”, Mitford wittingly embarrassed the abuses of the funeral industry in the 1960s and paved the way for the “Funeral Rule” in the early 1980s … the “Funeral Rule” that is meant “to protect consumers by requiring that they receive adequate information concerning the goods and services they may purchase from a funeral provider.”
The “Funeral Rule” externally demanded disclosure and transparency from the funeral industry. And yet, despite the “Funeral Rule” we are still seeing reports such as this:
In 2012, 23 of the 127 funeral homes, or about 18%, that the FTC visited undercover “significantly violated” the federal agency’s Funeral Rule, a 1984 law that requires funeral homes to give consumers itemized price lists, prohibits them from requiring the purchase of certain items like caskets as a condition to get other products and services, and bars aggressive selling of services not required by law, like embalming.
FOR THE SAKE OF THE CUSTOMER, HOW CAN THE GOOD, HONEST FUNERAL HOMES DISTINGUISH OURSELVES FROM THESE BAD FUNERAL HOMES?
Let’s be clear. Secrecy in this industry is the cloak for criminality. Just as the dark side feeds off emotions of anger, so the “bad” funeral directors feed off closed doors The funeral industry needed Jessica Mitford. And it’s a shame that someone had to come in from the outside to expose us.
Today, with the transparency of social media, the GOOD, honest funeral homes can disclose ourselves from the inside out. I’m not talking about a funeral home having a website. I’m talking about a funeral home having a blog, a facebook page, a twitter account, etc … a forum that invites feedback, that invites questions, criticism and praise … from you, our customers. I’m talking about voluntarily disclosing ourselves to the world. Fighting the dark side with the lightsaber of transparency.
Through the communication space afforded by the web, funeral directors can open the doors to the public. We reveal those places and practices that were previously held in secrecy. We take off the tie and let the public see the man and woman behind the suit. We create an environment where the consumer is NOT afraid to ask questions. We educate the consumer about their burial options. We explain to the consumer the laws that protect them. We set price standards. We tear down the veil of secrecy and the shroud of feigned “professionalism.”
The internet and the transparency it affords is a friend to the good funeral home. It’s an enemy for those funeral homes that have practices they’d rather hide. Simply put: If you want to hide, you stay away from opening yourself up on the web ’cause the web will eat you up with it’s questions and it’s brutal honesty. If you don’t have anything to hide, the web will (for the most part) love you. If we make transparency the industry standard, those who can’t be transparent will slowly (and sometimes suddenly) lose their business.
And that’s part of my goal at Confessions of a Funeral Director. The more I tell consumers about the industry, the more educated they become, the easier they’ll be able find us good guys. Empower the people.
And it’s those good funeral directors that need to take full advantage of social media outlets. Educate. Empower. Disclose. Accept the questions. The vulnerability. And by doing so you’ll create a group of consumers who will — on their own — be able to distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys. Secrecy is friend to the bad funeral homes. While social is friend to the good.
With transparency and social media, we can slowly set a new industry standard. And you, the consumer … the ones we want to serve … will be better off for it.
Use the force, my friends.
“The First Day of the Rest of Your Life”
Today’s guest post is written by PreetamDas Kirtana
It always seems to be assumed that if we knew, actually knew when we were going to die or if we could get in touch in a visceral way of how short our time is that we would suddenly be, if not more productive, definitely more generous, more forgiving, and more loving. There’s a dozen or so modern little refrigerator magnet adages meant, I think, to inspire. There’s the classic: “Today is the first day of the rest of your life,” which, frankly, always just made me feel exhausted every time that I heard it, not inspired.
Sometimes I’m not sure that all of the Hallmark presents-Touched by an Angel-lives miraculously transformed after near death experiences aren’t the spiritual equivalent of high fructose corn syrup; a great high and a completely malevolent diet. Another classic handicap meant to inspire, of course, is “Live each day like it’s your last.” This assumption that this knowledge of our death would suddenly compel everyone to finally feed the hungry, not cut off other drivers in traffic, and tip their server takes too much for granted I’m afraid; namely assuming our innate goodwill and integrity.
At the risk of admitting even a little bit of my humanity and a fraction of my capacity for inhumanity, I’m not totally convinced that if I Knew that this was the last day of my life that that would necessarily inspire me to act with the um, higher good in mind. Maybe I’m the only asshole here, I don’t know, but assure me that this day is the last day of my life and feeding the hungry may not even cross my mind, but eating more of whatever I want is virtually guaranteed. I would probably not only be tempted to cut off whoever I wanted to in traffic, but there’s also the chance that I’d give in to the previously only fleeting flirtation to exact revenge on someone who cut me off by just going ahead and ramming their car. Tipping the server could possibly depend not on their fine dining serving skills and not even on just how cute they were, but possibly, on how graciously they lied after I slept with them. Hey, I know; it takes a big man to admit he’s at least a good quarter pig.
All of these messages frequently appear to be predicated on the presumed present-time benefits of life after death. The thinking seems to be that if we just absolutely knew that we’re eternal beings and that we are just one flattening by a city bus away from suddenly leaving here and rocketing to wherever “there” is, that we’d shape up. We’d be like Ebeneezer Scrooge and let the spirits do it all in one night. We’d be changed people; people changed for the better.
But what if?
What if maybe there are some benefits in believing that you’re Not eternal. Maybe this is sometimes where atheists may arguably, have a perspective worth considering, as they focus so much on the present. It’s a great day-to-day, practical, relational theology, well, belief system; sorry. It’s worth considering, if at least, a true, present time, real life living out of “doing unto others”, rather than a constant focus on hell avoidance, heaven entry, and sin management, isn’t one of the better ideologies no matter where it’s lived out, in addition to The Beatitudes, of course; but clearly no one wants to really even talk about them.
Of course, I don’t think that I could personally be an atheist again as I’ve witnessed too much grace and mercy in my own life and first hand in the lives of others to believe otherwise. While my evolving answers may not ever exactly match anyone else’s theology profile, I do believe. As I told a friend last Easter who asked if I really believed in resurrection, “I do believe in resurrection, and not only because Jesus rose from the tomb, but because I left the house today; because I got out of bed today. Because I’m standing here, now, with my head up talking about resurrection is enough reason to continue to believe in resurrection.”
While atheists may deny the Source of Grace that believers proclaim, it’s undeniable that, too often, atheists may do a better job of living grace while making no profession at all. It’s worth noting that they don’t seem to eat their own so consistently and with such relish. I wonder if “faith without works is dead, what, then, are works without faith? Maybe not a ticket to Heaven City with it’s golden streets and virgins, if that’s your belief system, but it sure does make this place, this day-to-day, this day with your coworker, with your neighbor, your spouse, your children, even your ex-, a lot more pleasant. Perhaps, it could even be a mustard seed beginning for the prophesied New heaven and New earth; a return to the garden with the banquet table where confession and compassion are more important than what we profess.
But, for some of us, maybe the very real pressure of believing “This is It. Period.” is as motivational for us as the religionist’s fear of eternal hellfire is for them. Hindus and Christians, among other religious traditions, believe in some kind of life again later. Personally, I find this belief motivational. I mean I think there’s a real element of the kick in the hindquarters that I often need to go ahead and make that apology; maybe resolve that situation now since there’s the risk or guarantee, depending on your tradition, of running in to them Again! Now, I understand that forgiveness, and reconciliation, or any act of ours is not a ticket to heaven. That’s not how grace works. And I would not be treating it as a ticket to heaven, but instead I’d be trying to use it as an assurance that when we did see each other again, that we’d speak.
I admit to laughing when comedian, Daniel Tosh jokes, “It’s like when I meet a girl and she says ‘I’m not reeaaligious, I’m just spirit-chill.’ and he jokes that he would like to say, ‘ I’m not honest, but that’s really interesting.” Brutal? Maybe, but pretty funny and I think, may have a point. Goodness knows I’ve explored at least a few traditions in some depth, even becoming somewhat immersed occasionally. But, it does feel important to pick a path, if only because in following that path we smooth the path, we prepare the way. Author William Paul Young addresses the question of whether all roads lead to God by saying something to the effect of “I don’t know if all roads lead to God. I know that God will use any road to get to us.” I like that. That has been my experience: the experience of how this idea of radical grace and the God that has a furious longing for a relationship with us slowly, incrementally, steadily growing from a shocking idea to tiny moments of getting It in our real life.
Maybe there is more later, something after this;
something better, something divine even.
I hope so.
I believe so.
But just maybe, this is one more situation that isn’t an “either/or” equation.
Even if, or when “heaven”, or the afterlife, or that part of eternity is cued for us,
it doesn’t negate the fact that this exact, particular moment will not happen again,
no matter the truth of eternity.
This moment, that person,
this circumstance, this opportunity,
those words,
not again,
not ever,
not like this.
Maybe we can still “be here now”, even if, after this, we will always be somewhere relishing the “out of time” that eternity provides without regrets of being “out of time” in the moment.
No more ideas of time to be “out of”, no more ideas that grace and Love could ever be conditional.
I’ll take That heaven.
– PreetamDas Kirtana 12/17/13
My Visit to a Green Cemetery
A photo of Green Meadow in late summer.
There are only a few green cemeteries in the Eastern part of Pennsylvania, none of which are close to my funeral home’s location. Based solely on the information on their website, I decided to visit “Green Meadow” Cemetery some two hours away in Lehigh Valley. I called the “contact” number and soon heard a woman’s pleasant voice on the other end. “Hello”, she said cheerfully. As much as I was pleased to find such cheerfulness, I was also somewhat confused as I expected her to say, “Hello. Green Meadow Cemetery.” It seemed as though I had called someone’s home telephone number. I started, “Hi. My name is Caleb. Is Ed available?” “One minute”, she replied. Ed – the name attached to the website’s contact number — grabbed the phone and we chatted for 15 minutes about Green Meadow and the philosophy behind it. I explained that I was writing a small paper on green cemeteries for my post-grad class and we set a date for me to come up to Green Meadow and take a tour.
I arrived on time to find Ed already waiting. He was a young man in his seventies. I say “young” because it seemed Green Meadow was an inspiration for him that brought out the energy of youth. He explained that twelve years ago the Fountain Hill Cemetery (founded in 1872) had exhausted its perpetual care funding and – like many cemeteries – was on the brink of death.
The cemetery was unassociated with a church or organization and was simply a non-profit with no owner or director. Ed and a few others took it upon themselves to revive the dying cemetery and after 12 years of volunteer work the cemetery was just starting to stand on its own. Part of the revival of the old cemetery has been the inclusion of Green Meadow, which sits within the boundaries of Fountain Hill Cemetery on a half-acre of wildflowers, grasses and shrubs.
Through a mutual friend, Ed was introduced to Mark Harris, the author of a Green Burial standard entitled “Grave Matters: A Journey through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Way of Natural Burial.” After numerous conversations, Ed and the board at Fountain Hill partnered with Mark to create a philosophically sound green cemetery some four years ago. Ed said that “Mark remains the cemetery’s greatest proponent.” Mark writes in his book, “The modern funeral has become so entrenched, so routinized, in fact, that most families believe it’s all but required when death comes calling (Harris 2007; 47). Green Meadow cemetery calls into question the “all but required” traditional American funeral.
On a larger front, the green burial movement is interrelated with the natural death movement, home funerals and the natural birth movement as it underscores the desire to move away from the Promethean attempts of industrialized science and technology (Verhey 2011; 32 – 33). Paula Hendrick, who surveyed the natural death movement in America notes that “our focus on personal autonomy and self-development have made it very hard for us to accept the inevitability of death” (Albery and Wienrich 2000; 11). Michael Ignatieff writing for “The New Republic” echoes Hendrick when he states, “’Cultures that live by the values of self-realisation and self-mastery are not especially good at dying, at submitting to those experiences where freedom ends and biological fate begins. Why should they be? Their strong side is Promethean ambition: the defiance and transcendence of fate, the material and social limit. Their weak side is submitting to the inevitable” (Albery and Wienrich 2000; 12).
Indeed, buried beneath a full ten-acre American cemetery is enough wood to build forty houses, twenty thousand tons of concrete from the vaults, over nine-hundred tons of casket steel, and enough embalming fluid to fill a small swimming pool (Harris 2007; 38). The idea of natural burial accepts the inevitable that despite concrete, wood, steel, preservative agents and the idealized attempt at physical immortality, the body will eventually decompose back to dust. Natural burial will, per Mark Harris,
allow and even invite, the decay of one’s physical body … and return what remains to the very elements it sprang from, as directly and simply as possible. In their last, final act, the deceased … have taken care in death to give back to the earth some very small measure of the vast resources they drew from it in life, and in the process, perpetuate the cycles of nature, of growth and decay, of death and rebirth, that sustain all of us. (Harris 2007; 42).
Mark’s ideas are the heart behind the little cemetery “Green Meadows”, a place where one can “degrade naturally and rejoin the elements, to use what’s left of a life to regenerate new life, to return dust to dust” (http://www.greenmeadowpa.org/about-us/). As Ed and I walked through the snow covered cemetery – stamped with the snow tracks of deer and birds — Ed pointed out the various graves. He noted that the first prominent burial in Green Meadow spurred some media attention. Patrick B. Ytsma, a well known local bicyclist, was struck and killed while riding his bicycle. His decision to be buried in Green Meadow inspired a newspaper article featuring the cemetery as well as the donation of labor and supplies for the erection of the cemetery’s sign.
And yet despite Mark’s advocacy and the attention that Ytsma’s burial gained, the demand for green burial in the Lehigh Valley remains small with only an average of two burials per year. Ed – a generation ahead of his time – anticipates that the young generation that have been inspired by the larger green movement will slowly but surely begin to fill the beautiful little natural hillside that is Green Meadow. This, in many respects, is Ed’s heritage to the next generation and gift to a brighter, greener future.
15 Slogans for Death’s New PR Campaign
Death’s taken some heat lately … he’s taken James Gandolfini. Paul Bearer. Tom Clancy. And let’s be honest, Death is due all the criticism he gets. But, Death isn’t really that bad of a guy. He’s just a normal dude with a difficult job.
As an effort to vault Death’s public perception, Death is looking to create a slogan that the world’s public will buy into. A slogan that will help change the world’s perceptions.
Here are 15 slogans. You’re the first test group, so feel free to criticize or change any of the slogan’s you see; or add any slogans you can create.
1. “10 out of 10 human’s are doing it!”
2. “It’s natural. It’s good for the environment. It’s green. It’s death.”
3. “I felt great when it happened to me.*” — Elvis Presley.
*Individual results may vary.
4. “Taking care of business since the beginning of time!”
5. “Death: It eases all your pain.”
6. “만나서 반갑습니다.*” — Kim Jong Il (right before he ordered Death to take him to his next kingdom.)
7. “Come on over to the light.”
8. “Death: I’m Your Heavenly chauffeur.*”
*Results may vary.
9. “If it wasn’t for Me, you’d never have bacon.”
10. “Be apart of something larger. Donate yourself back to the universe. Die.”
11. “10 out of 10 people who die lose weight.”
12. “Death: It will leave you breathless.”
13. “It really helped my political campaign.” — William Wallace.
14. “Without me, you’d still have Hitler, Stalin and bin Laden.”
15. “Death: Here for you in your darkest hour.”
****
Lend your creative genius to this effort and don’t let Death down … or he’ll let you down. Seriously, don’t make him
Holidays: The Days that Death Works Overtime
I was lucky this Christmas. I watched my one year old son rip into his Christmas presents unencumbered by work. In fact, this is the first year in the last five that I haven’t been called in for a holiday death call.
Today, though, is New Year’s Day. My family is home right now watching the parade on TV. We have two meals we’re supposed to attend later on in the day. But I’m here at work awaiting the two families that are coming in to arrange funerals for their loved ones who died last night.
When I’m home for the holidays there’s this gnawing fear that at any moment I’ll be called in. That at any moment Death will keep its schedule of inconvenience. It’s not that I dislike work. I am, by professional accounts, a workaholic. It’s the reactions I get when I break the news to my family. “Don’t go, Caleb”, says my wife, “find someone else to go.”
“Daddy, daddy, daddy” comes from my son. Today is supposed to be special. Instead, it’s a disappointment. A huge disappointment. It’s almost easier when I’m at work on the holidays. Once I’m at work, I can’t disappoint anyone. Once I’m at work, the expectations can’t go unmet. I’ve already failed.
And as much as I want to complain. As much as I want to make this all about me, I go to work, I see the grieving faces, I see the holidays that have been completely ruined, and I’m snapped out of my little perspective. Today, I’m writing the obituary for the married father of three young children. Cancer stole him from his kids. At least I get to go home to my son. This man’s three children will have a holiday that will ever haunt their memories.
I look into their empty faces. Faces that see no future. Only the present. And the present is full of confusion, darkness and pain. This is no holiday. This is no day for celebration.
Damn you Death. Seriously. It’s almost as though you work the hardest on holidays. That you save your best work for the special times of the year. The suicides. The night deaths. The tragic demises. It’s like you whisper in the ears of the dying, “Hold off. Just hold off a couple more weeks. The holidays are right around the corner. The holidays. Yes, the holidays! Die on the holidays!”
And they listen to your whispers. And the families who had plans to celebrate must now plan to mourn. And what is meant for rest … what is meant for life … becomes a time that creates unrest as it all accentuates what’s missing … or rather who’s missing … from the family table, from the celebrations.
Do you know how many families’ holidays you ruin each year? Do you enjoying having us huddled around the beds of the dying instead of the tables of celebration? Are you jealous of us and all the life and living we do around the holidays? Or, are you just trying to include yourself in our events? Well, we don’t want you. Stay away from us. Let us live and enjoy each other for this short little time of the year. Our lives are short. Stop reminding us of mortality during these times we are allowed to really live.
I’ve come to fear the holidays because of you. I fear the disappointed faces. The empty seats at the dinner tables.
And to the living. To those of you celebrating today. If you are unencumbered by Death today. If Death hasn’t touched your holiday, then celebrate. Embrace your loved ones and friends. Tell them you love them. Hold them. Smile. Enjoy the holidays. Because the day will come when Death will demand his inclusion. And you too may come to fear the holidays.
If Death has found a place at your holiday table, then rebel against him. Raise your fist to him. And show him that you can still live. That you can still love. That you can still smile. That you can still be thankful. Raise your glass to life and love. Make Death jealous and live.
