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JULY 2014
FUNERAL HOME & CEMETERY NEWS
S ec t i on A
Your TFScanner is the ticket into
your community.
Many communities have unfunded
fingerprinting of school-aged children
—alarming in light of today’s security
consciousness.
With the TFScanner funeral homes
can
work with local law enforcement
to fingerprint our youth, store their
prints and produce identification cards
for the family. When your home takes
the lead with this program, both you
and the community benefit.
Your TFScanner can make the
difference for kids and your business.
Call for information: 877.848.6243
service. Chast and her parents never had what’s known
these days as “The Talk” — an acknowledgement that
their deaths were inevitable. This added much anguish
to the slow slide to their demise; inevitable yet still
avoided.
All mortuary school students should have this book
reviewed as part of their curriculum. The aspiring fu-
neral directors can fully comprehend what many fami-
lies have gone through before they arrive at the funeral
home’s arrangement office.
Chast’s decision on memorialization was disappoint-
ing but consistent with the relationship she had with
her parents. Not knowing what else to do, she placed
their cremated remains in two containers that were spe-
cial to each one and has them in her bedroom closet.
“I like having my parents in my closet,” Chast writes
in the book’s epilogue, “The thought of burying their
cremated remain in an arbitrary hole in the ground does
not appeal to me.” “Throwing their ashes off the side of
a boat makes as much sense to me as tossing them in
a wastebasket at Starbucks. And decanting them into
a decorative urn placed on the mantelpiece in the liv-
ing room is just…ugh.” “I think it (the bedroom clos-
et) makes a nice home for them. Every time I open the
door I see the boxes and I think of them.”
If these “Unpleasant” topics could be part of a dia-
logue that was as comfortable as planning a wedding,
anniversary or other family event, imagine some of the
different final care decisions that would be made. It tru-
ly is time to talk.
“When we move beyond the fear, the picture takes on
different hues. For what could make life more valuable
than the simple fact that it is limited? What could make
living more miraculous, more dizzying joyful, than the
mere knowledge that we don’t get to do it forever?”
–
Talking About Death
by Virginia Morris
Steven Palmer entered funeral service in 1971. He is an honors grad-
uate of the New England Institute of Applied Arts & Sciences. He has
been licensed on both coasts, he owns the Westcott Funeral Homes of
Cottonwood and Camp Verde, AZ. Steve offers his observations on cur-
rent funeral service issues. He may be reached by mail at PO Box 352,
Cottonwood, AZ 86326, by phone at (928)634-9566, by fax at (928)634-
5156, by e-mail at steve@westcottfuneralhome.com or through his web-
site a
r on Facebook.
Observations
Time to Talk
“Pulling death out from the shadows and examining it
in the light does not make death happen. In fact, it does
just the opposite. Thinking about death, learning about
it and accepting it makes life happen.”
–
Talking About Death
by Virginia Morris (2001)
New Yorker Magazine
cartoonist
Roz Chast
knows
about trying to discuss difficult topics with unwilling
parents:
Roz: “Do you guys ever think about things?
Her parents in their nineties: “What type of things?
Roz: You know things. Plans. I have no idea what you
guys want! (Both parents look at each other in great dis-
comfort). Let’s say something happened! (Both parents
smirk and giggle in awkward response). Am I the only
sane one here? (Pause, no parental response). You know
what forget it! (In full exasperation...) Never mind! Que
Sera Sera.” (After she leaves, both child and parents
breathe a sigh of relief that they didn’t have to have “the
discussion”).
Chast is the author of
Can We Talk About Something
More Pleasant?
(Bloomburg Press, 2014). She tells the
tale many know all too well. Parents are in decline, re-
fusing to discuss intimate feelings and plans, coping in
their own-with blinders on-manner. Chast tells her sto-
ry in cartoon and in journal style handwritten entries.
It follows from the first crisis (Mother’s injuries from a
fall) to the move to an assisted living facility, to Dad’s
fall and enfeeblement to his death and finally Mother’s
mental and physical degeneration until her death two
years later.
The visual images of recreated conversations are poi-
gnant and all too familiar for the many who stumble
through tough realities without discussion. The humor
takes the edge off the topic.
Why is it so tough to talk about life’s most important
decisions?
Bill Geist
(journalist and familiar face on CBS
Sunday Morning) and son
Willie Geist
(Today Show &
Morning Joe cohost) collaborated on an exploration
of this topic. “Good Talk Dad: The Birds and the Bees
and Other Conversations We Forgot To Have” relives
the many times they avoided heart to heart conversa-
tions. It seems both are comfortable with this avoid-
ance over their decades. The one exception was when
the elder Geist hid his diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease
for ten years. Son Willie and his sister heard the news
when the older Geist went public with the revelation.
This type of non-discussion seems to happen in many
families. Wille Geist reflected, “We kind of wondered,
what was it about us that we didn’t have these big con-
versations?”
Any funeral director or arrangement counselor has
experienced the utter frustration when the surviving
spouse and children sit before them to discuss deci-
sions that they have never dealt with before. Exaspera-
tion, surprise and frustration are usually the results of
such a meeting. The wife will commonly say “I could
never get him to discuss it.”
How do we encourage such conversations within a
family before these talks become necessary final deci-
sions? One such program is FAMIC (Funeral and Me-
morial Information Council)’s “Talk Of A Lifetime”.
Several funeral associations such as the
National Funer-
al Directors Association
are encouraging funeral homes
and final care providers to get these discussion tools in
the hands of families now. A short video available for
a website gives an overview of the program. Brochures
and toolkits are available. Community presentations
are encouraged. The idea is not just to discuss funeral
plans but to get generations or spouses to talk about
life issues. The brochure relays the program’s mission
in a palatable way for a family. Its message: “There is
a lot to talk about; Family, friends, hopes, dreams, ac-
complishments, pleasures, talents, values, the little de-
tails, the big events.” Now that is a discussion every
family would like to make happen.
Ed Defort
wrote
in the August 2013
Director
, “The campaign will help
people understand the value of talking with loved
ones, about life, the things that matter most to them
and how they want to be remembered when they die.”
This program will hopefully inspire many other tools
that can be used to promote conversation within fam-
ilies. If these programs succeed, it would change ad-
vance planning (Preneed) in a dramatic way. Families
would have great comfort in expressing their ideas. Pr-
eneed counselors would not have to explain (in exas-
peration) why preplanning is an intelligent part of late
life planning as the families would have already come
to this conclusion through their open talks with each
other.
Roz Chast’s book should be read by all in funeral
By Steven Palmer
Taking Business Mobile
They buried her with her smartphone in her hand
hind being buried with a pet’s ashes.
Given that it seems like there’s an app for ev-
erything, it’s easy to see why people think they
might be able to use mobile phones to keep in
touch with loved ones in the afterlife.
Here are four seemingly quirky ways people
are using mobile phones to keep in touch with
their deceased loved ones:
1. Saving a deceased’s last voice mail to listen
to again and again.
2. Saving the deceased’s mobile phone greet-
ing to listen to again and again. Some peo-
ple are even paying the carrier monthly to
keep the mobile phone number active so
they can continue to listen to the message!
3. Engraving a mobile phone number on a
deceased’s headstone so someone can call
it and either listen to the last greeting or
for someone to listen to a recorded mes-
sage from the family.
By Steve Holland
Steve Holland
Mobile phones are becom-
ing an essential component
of the funeral process, espe-
cially with religious ceremo-
nies becoming less common
and with mourners shifting
their focus more to remem-
bering the life of the de-
ceased.
In a recent survey of the
top funeral rites requests,
being buried with a mobile
phone came in as the second
highest request, right be-
4. Engraving a QR code
or a keyword and
shortcode (for exam-
ple, “Text JohnD to
72727”) on the head-
stone so that it can be
scanned or texted into
at the gravesite in order
to play a video or an au-
dio or open a photo gal-
lery on a mobile phone.
Some families are even
asking funeral directors to
make sure the mobile phone
is fully-charged and in power-saver mode
before putting it in the casket!
These new ways to remember the dead
may seem unusual now but it’s really only
a matter of time before most funeral di-
rectors are asked to put a mobile phone
in a casket with the deceased.
One word of advice when putting a
mobile phone in the casket:
make sure
to put the phone on mute
. The last thing
you want is a ringtone playing right in the
middle of your service!
Steven Holland, operations manager for
Mobits.org, is a graduate of the Kellogg Graduate
School of Management, Northwestern University.
Holland has several years of experience in helping
firms in a variety of industries implement mobile
marketing solutions. Holland was influential in
the launch of Mobits.org and is bringing several
mobile phone technologies to the deathcare in-
dustry. Steven can be reach
5,
StevenH@mobits.org. Visit
r
text “Mobits” to 72727 for more information.
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