This week’s news is filled with stories that give us insight into people who work in an end-of-life environment–from a palliative care nurse to a guitaring playing funeral director. We also get gain unique perspectives on death and the funeral industry by hearing about our views of death and mortality, green funerals, and fashion for funerals. Speaking of the industry, how are weddings shaping the business of funerals and what does mini golf have to do with anything? Read on to find out.
New on the blog this week:
How Much Death is Too Much Death? A Visit to New Orleans’ Newly Opened Museum of Death
Taking the James Gurney Grave Challenge: Down Among the Dead Men
In case you missed it:
Death And Dying: Surprising Ways Death Anxiety Influences Your Behavior
Weekly News 11/2/15: Working in an end-of-life environment.
In the shadow of death: life as a palliative care nurse
11/2/15-abc.net.au: Karuna Hospice nurses Renee Wilson and Lea-Anne Tuaoi on finding joy and meaning in a life lived in the presence of death… Read the full story
Coffin paraded through the streets ahead of death festival
11/1/15-theargus.co.uk: A festival which aims to break the taboo around death has been held in Hove. A coffin was paraded through the streets ahead of the Brighton Death Festival which was jointly run by Arka Funerals, The Modern Funeral, and Wild Arts, and aimed to dispel the secrecy around death… Read the full story
Preplanning for end of life when you don’t have kids, close relatives
10/31/15-siouxcityjournal.com: Looking ahead to end-of-life decisions is never easy. But having children, or close family members, sometimes tidies the to-do list. You choose a burial site where your kids can easily travel. There’s an obvious loved one to handle all the decisions and paperwork…Read the full story
A recent wedding Flanner and Buchanan Funeral Center (Photo Source: Flanner and Buchanan Funeral Home via cbsnews.com)
How weddings are giving funeral homes new life
10/31/15-cbsnews.com: More couples are choosing non-religious sites for weddings as church membership continues to decline, but more people are living longer, which leaves funeral homes open. Many couples are booking them for weddings… Read the full story
What will it take to improve the death care industry?
10/31/15-greenbiz.com: A more than $15 billion machine, the death care industry is made up of funeral homes and their directors, product companies — caskets, chemicals, vaults — insurance companies that manage prepaid funerals, and cemeteries. The NFDA has a long and storied history of advocating for the robust industry… Read the full story
Funeral director by day and outlaw guitarist by night
10/31/15-hamptonroads.com: By day, Ryan Moore dresses in a three-piece suit and maneuvers the often emotional world of the funeral business for Altmeyer Funeral Homes. He comforts families, embalms or does restorative work, writes obituaries and performs services as an ordained minister. By evening, Moore dons a different persona: He cruises on his Harley, shreds his electric guitar, runs a business dealing in “oddities,” or restores a 1941 hearse to retro perfection… Read the full story
Dying in a digital world means life after death
10/30/15-torontosun.com: Following the memorial service or with the deceased? Smiling or looking mournful? Snapping funeral selfies is alive and well, even though it’s a hotly debated topic and considered sacrilege by some. Actually one in five millennials are super chill with funeral selfies, reports a U.S. study by Lustre Premium White, a maker of teeth-whitening products… Read the full story
Attention to detail is important in the funeral-service and mini-golf industries. (Photo by B. David Zarley via sports.vice.com)
Six Strokes Under
10/30/15-sports.vice.com: Bradford Hein is a broad shouldered man in a dark suit, and looks like the kind of guy who would have been perfectly capable of putting a bolt in some beast’s head back when Chicago was hog butcher to the world. We were in the basement of his workplace, in the town of Palatine, Illinois, just outside Chicago. Various pinball and video game machines hummed to life and drowned out the wind and spitting rain which had draped Palatine like a veil—yes, it was literally a dark and… Read the full story
10/30/15-thewhig.com: By changing the face of the urn, a Kingston company hopes to change the business of cremation. Eturnal Memorials by FuneralTech offers families the ability to design an urn for a family member, or themselves, with an artist and then have it 3-D printed. “The beautiful part of this is that there are no limitations, sky’s the limit,” Jon Clare, CEO of FuneralTech, said. “If you can think it, and our artists can draw it, we can print it.” Read the full story
Antoinette Grenfell in front of the projected imagery that forms part of the production. (Michael Prior) via abc.net.au
Fashion for funerals: Bringing death back into life at fringe festival production
10/30/15-abc.net.au: “It absolutely floored me,” she said, speaking to ABC Central Victoria’s Mornings. Being an artist, she said the ultimate purpose of art was catharsis, and from this the idea Fashion for Funerals and Fantasy Eulogies — Putting the FUN back into Funerals was born. The theatrical production will be performed as part of the ninth Nati Frinj Biennale in the tiny town of Natimuk, in the middle of western Victoria’s wheatbelt. It examines the experience of death by looking at history, culture, art and science, bringing together 50 cast and crew members, and featuring costumes with screen-printed blood cells, choreographed dancing and projected imagery… Read the full story
Shop around so funeral homes don’t make a killing
10/29/15-star-telegram.com: Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary made an interesting comment recently on the show about consumer spending. “I like three times in people’s lives: when they’re born, when they get married and when they die, because they throw caution to the wind on pricing,” he said. Sadly, there are many companies that take advantage of poor decision-making based on emotions, but that doesn’t mean you have to buy in… Read the full story (link no longer available)
Why more Americans are considering ‘green’ funerals
10/29/15-marketwatch.com: Barbara Glick has known for decades exactly how she wants to be laid to rest when she dies. No embalming; no casket; no cremation. “Even when I was in my 20s, I had this idea that I wanted to just be buried naked, near a tree, and just decompose,” says Glick, a nurse consultant who lives in Greenbelt, Md… Read the full story
>Related: How To Die Green
Why are doctors afraid of the word “death”?
10/26/15-washingtonpost.com: When I began as a medical student on the wards, I discovered that there was a word that physicians almost never used. In fact, they often played elaborate language games to avoid it. My first encounter with this occurred one night on call. The resident and I were eating dinner in the cafeteria when he got a page. He excused himself saying, “I need to go declare a patient …” I remember thinking, “You need to ‘declare’ a patient … what?” He avoided saying that he was going to declare a patient dead… Read the full story
