Honest and Practical Talk about Wanting a Traditional Funeral When You Don’t Have Any Money
The biggest problem that I have with the funeral industry is that we’ve made honor a commodity.
Let me explain by taking you on a short imaginary journey where unicorns exist and Fred Rogers is still alive. Unfortunately, in this imaginary world, your Dad dies suddenly at 60 years of age. Your dad worked hard his entire life, was generally overlooked by his peers, and was never given the respect and honor you knew he deserved. For his funeral, you want to make things right. You want to give him an honorable and respectful send-off. And you want the works … embalming, a nice casket, a nice cemetery lot, upscale flowers, a big funeral luncheon with all your dad’s favorite foods … all of it.
One problem. You don’t have any money. What do you do?
I know, I know … you’re saying this isn’t you because in this imaginary world you’re choosing cremation, or sky burial, or a Viking Funeral. Maybe you plan to lay your body at the altar of science.
Back to the real world: This “making death a commodity” is a long-held tension, dating back thousands of years. The plainness of the Jewish funeral rites is a reaction to this tension. The rich were having opulent funerals while those less wealthy would “sell the farm” to give their family something on the same level as the rich. In the Babylonia Talmud, it’s written:
Formerly, (it was customary) to bring out the rich for burial on a dargesh (a tall, stately bed, ornamented and covered with rich coverlets) and the poor on a plain bier, and the poor felt shamed; they instituted … that all should be brought out on a plain bier, out of deference for the poor …
Today, things have flipped. The rich and those with higher education have a much higher cremation (per data collected by CANA).
Based on my experience, this is how I’d explain that data: those that have been disrespected in life often want to be respected in death. If a family or people group have been subjected to socioeconomic, political, legal, cultural, or institutional oppression, there’s a desire to give in death what wasn’t given in life: honor. Honor in death means many things, but here in American, it has too often meant a “traditional funeral” and burial. For many Americans who have felt dishonored, cremation — the less expensive option — is often seen as another layer of disrespect.
And when a family sees a traditional funeral and burial as THE ONLY WAY TO HONOR THEIR DEAD, therein lies the problem that’s been created by the American Funeral Industry.
Because …
If you want a full traditional burial, the cemetery lot, cemetery opening, the vault, and the casket (the vault and casket can be bought from third-party suppliers, or bought from the funeral home) are going to start at around $4,000 (this number varies by location … cemeteries cost more the closer you get to a city, so it could be more or less depending on where you live and where you die). If the funeral home charged NOTHING for their own professional service, there are still thousands of dollars in play just for plot purchase, plot opening, and the vault that 95% of cemeteries require.
I look forward to the day when that $4,000 can be cut in half with green cemeteries that don’t require a vault, use a less expensive and bio-degradable casket, and — in some circumstances — can have the grave dug by the families themselves. But until the day when there’s a green cemetery close to everyone’s home (because proximity is always a major concern), that $4,000 for a traditional funeral is a starting point even before the funeral director is involved.
On top of that estimated 4K, funeral homes — like ours — charge for our work, time, facilities, etc. Our funeral home charges approximately $3,000 for our “services” start to finish, which includes embalming, dressing and cosmetology, logistical and form filing work, the use of our cars and equipment, use of our facilities, the funeral directing itself, backrubs, vodka, dragon rides, and anything and everything else you want us to do (if you nix embalming, it’s less, obvs, much less if you nix the vodka).
Other funeral homes — especially the ones with exorbitant debt — can charge double or triple what we charge.
Let me throw some thoughts at you …
The fact is that many funeral homes are too expensive.
Any many funeral directors have a complicit and implicit bias towards poverty and those who find themselves a part of it.
But funeral homes aren’t banks. We don’t finance funerals. We don’t offer loans.
Most funeral homes require payment (or proof of payment, i.e. an insurance policy or irrevocable burial reserve) upfront because we have been beat one too many times.
If the price is a major concern, shop around. A funeral at our funeral home costs thousands less than our competitors. One phone call could be the deal-maker or deal-breaker.
Funeral homes do give pro-bono funerals, but those funerals are rarely for people who lack funds, and they rarely cover the cemetery fees. Pro-bono funerals are usually for tragic and complicated deaths, such as infants and children.
GoFundMe hardly ever works (and the funeral home won’t accept “I started a GoFundMe for grammy’s funeral” as proof of payment).
Asking churches for money can only do so much.
Trying to find an uncle or aunt or grandparent or distant relative to finance the funeral IS THE BEST OPTION.
But here’s the real honest talk. You ready?
A traditional funeral and burial is only ONE WAY to honor the deceased.
Honoring the deceased is about the community they’ve created.
It’s about that community coming together and expressing their love.
Honor doesn’t need ornate caskets, pretty hearses, and large gravestones.
Honor doesn’t need a funeral with flashy clothing in a flashy building with flashy flowers.
Honor is about love. And whenever love is shown in celebration of that person’s life, you’ve honored your loved one.
*****
If you like my writing, consider buying my 2017 Nautilus Book Award Gold Winner, Confession of a Funeral Director (click the image to go to the Amazon page):
“Will You Help Me Pick Up a Body?”
This is a question I’ve had to ask a few of my friends ever once upon a busy day at the funeral home.
House removals are different than hospital and nursing home removals. “House calls” as we call them often involves obstacles (like stairs, furniture, dogs etc.) that one person cannot overcome alone.
While hospital and nursing home removals usually only require ONE person to make the removal, house calls require TWO (sometimes more depending on the place of death and the size of the deceased).
There’s three of us at the funeral home who are capable of making house removals. When one out of those three is on vacation, leaving two behind, things can get sticky. Every once upon a busy day when we are picking up more bodies than our personnel can handle, I’ll have to randomly call in some back up … which usually ends of being one of my buddies.
Last year I called two separate friends on two separate occasions.
When I called both of them, I gave them this line:
“Do you want to make $150 dollars for an hour’s worth of work?”
“Sure!”, they said.
And when I told them HOW that $150 was to be made, both were still willing. After telling them what to wear, how the whole procedure would work and what they should expect, they both did a wonderful job. In fact, on one occasion, we arrived at the home of the deceased and the family fed us pizza. I paid my buddy $150 and he got free pizza too. Good deal.
This past Friday I was in the too-many-calls-with-too-little-personnel situation. Both of the friends I had called before were on vacation, so I called up another friend.
“Do you want to make $150 for an hours worth of work?”
“Sure”, he said. And then he asked, “Do I have to touch a dead body?”
“Yes.”, I said.
“Then $150 isn’t enough. I don’t want to touch a dead person.”, he stated.
I totally understood his position, told him I’d hold this over him forever and was able to find someone else who was willing to touch the dead.
So, how much would I have to pay you to help me go on a house call?
*****
If you like my writing, consider buying my 2017 Nautilus Book Award Gold Winner, Confession of a Funeral Director (click the image to go to the Amazon page):
Some of the Mistakes I’ve Made as a Funeral Director
Funeral directing can be a lot like parenting.
If you have just one kid, you can usually keep the chaos at bay. When there are two kids, life can get hectic real quick. When there are three kids or more? The six-month-old is crying because he’s hungry, your three-year-old has magically found the fragile wine glass you had left out the night before, and when you ask your six-year-old for help, he starts to sass you because “he was right in the middle of his game.” All that happens in the span of a minute while you’re trying to cook dinner. For those of us that know the chaos, it’s not “can I stop the chaos”, it’s “how much can I limit the chaos?”
Mistakes happen. The three-year-old drops the glass, you drop the egg that you were about to crack for the quiche, and your six-year-old slams down the PS4 controller in protest, while you trip over the six-month-old and cut your knee on remanents of your broken stemware.
Running funerals are the same (without the quiche and the wine … although wine at funerals isn’t an awful idea). You have one funeral going, and it’s fairly simple. You can give your undivided time to just that one family. But all of a sudden, two more people die and now you have three funerals that you’re juggling, doing your best to maintain a semblance of order.
At this point, mistakes can happen. You do your best to create checklists and accountability measures. You do your best to overcommunicate the small details, but sometimes mistakes still happen
“Well, why don’t you just hire more staff? When you have too many kids, you get some help.” Oh, sage-of-the-internet-who-assumes-everyone-has-less-intelligence, let me answer that by saying this: things can get so busy all at once (which is the weird and unpredictable nature of this business) that it’s like going from one child to 10 children in a matter of hours. One minute you have too many staff at the funeral home, and the next minute you’re short staffed.
I met with a family the other week who instructed me to place a specific t-shirt at the foot of their husband’s casket during the public viewing. The day I was supposed to dress him, I got sick (I get semi-yearly days of utter brain fog that supposedly results from my Lyme’s Disease), leaving my grandfather to do my work.
In my sickened state, I forgot to tell Pop-pop to put the t-shirt at the foot of the casket. He put the t-shirt on the deceased.
I pulled myself out of bed for the funeral the following day, and when I saw what had happened, my heart sank. I apologized profusely to the family. They forgave me. That was a couple weeks ago and I’m still upset about it all.
But shit happens in life and shit happens in death.
Have you misspelled words in an email? I’ve misspelled words in an obituary.
Have you dropped a cup of coffee before? When I first started, I had a loaded stretcher collapse on me in the middle of a parking lot.
Have you ever confused your kids and put one to sleep in the wrong bed? Funeral directors might put a body in the wrong casket.
Have you ever thrown something in a fire, only to have that thing explode and cause 10K worth of damage? Well, I’ve missed a pacemaker or two in my career and reaped the consequences.
Maybe you’ve had a random collapsible stretcher loaded with a dead body and you were trying to get it into the bed of a van at a nursing home and it just wouldn’t collapse … and you tried and tried and a crowd started to gather as they watched you struggle to get the loaded stretcher into a van, and you just couldn’t and you almost started crying, and then after five minutes of trying to get it in the van you realized you were pulling the wrong leaver and you were almost at the point where you just wanted to crawl in the back of the van with the dead person and be dead too?
No? Just me.
As a parent, I realize my mistakes. I learn from them. I correct them if I can. And I tell my kids when I’m wrong. I don’t act like a know-it-all around my kids. I don’t give them the impression I’m a saint.
It’s hard for funeral directors to be honest with their mistakes because the whole process of putting a funeral together is SO EMOTIONALLY CHARGED. It’s not like I gave you Quarter Pounder instead of the Big Mac that you wanted. I can correct that mistake. We get one shot to do everything right. A mispelled name in an obituary can cause a firestorm. A pacemaker exploding in a retort can cost $10,000. Combing the hair the wrong way on the deceased can incite a flood of tears in the family. Everything needs to be done right.
But let me tell you from experience, it’s so much easier to be honest with your mistakes than it is to put together an elaborate lie or blame it on someone else. As tempting as it is to make excuses, I’ve learned that mistakes are human and apologies cultivate our humanity.
Love you all 🙂
P.S. If you’re feeling brave, I’d love to hear about your mistakes as well!
*****
If you like my writing, consider buying my 2017 Nautilus Book Award Gold Winner, Confession of a Funeral Director (click the image to go to the Amazon page):
What a funeral director would say to someone who’s suicidal
If you’re suicidal, here is some perspective from a funeral director:
In the nearly 15 years I’ve been working in the funeral business, I’ve seen around 60 plus suicide victims. I’ve seen the hangings. I’ve seen the intentional ODs. The suicide cocktails. I’ve seen the carbon monoxide deal. I’ve seen the shotgun to the head (and, seriously, guys, don’t do it this way … no funeral director wants to show a shotgun face to your mother). There have been some creative ones as well, like slamming the car into tractor trailers (another bad idea), or listening to Nickelback for 48 hours on end (I kid).
Somewhat unlike police, coroners, or anyone else involved in the forensic side of death by suicide, funeral directors usually hear the personal story behind the suicide. Many times the family is still piecing together the puzzle of “why”, but they involve us in the puzzle. They tell us about the deceased’s life, what was going on, the hardships, the possible reasons. We’re in a unique position in that we not only see the physical result of the suicide, but we also hear the personal side as well.
The majority of suicides (I’d estimate 70% of the ones I’ve seen) are some type of “break-up suicide” (this can involve a romantic breakup that’s either your fault or your partner’s fault; a break-up having to do with a job [the firing kind]; or a sudden break-up of your identity).
Approximately 20% are from the exhaustive battle with mental illness.
The remaining 10% are those who are suffering from a physical illness and don’t want to continue with their pain (that 10 % is a demographic that I’ve addressed before … suffice it to say, if you’re terminal and you don’t want to prolong the inevitable, you should have the legal right to do so).
BREAK-UP SUICIDES
Most (certainly not all) break-up suicides are men … usually young men.
Let me speak to the men for a minute before I move on. Men struggle to cry at funerals. I’ve seen men get angry, but cry? Sometimes. And if they do, they try to hide it like something’s wrong with it. We’ve been taught that it’s not masculine to express our feelings unless those feelings are anger (and then it’s somehow okay). When we feel grief, or rejection, or worthlessness, depression, or real guilt we have absolutely little idea how to deal with it. I’m sorry that we live in a culture of toxic masculinity. But we do. And these emotions — as strong as they are now, and as impossible as they are right now — are apart of you as a human being, and they’re okay. Because as a human being, you’re capable of crying, of feeling worthless, of rejection, depression, and asking forgiveness, and coming out on the other side with your identity intact. If you’re feeling these things, you’re not “less of a man.” Because even though you may feel emasculated, your identity is NOT based on your penis, it’s based on your humanity.
Okay, let’s switch back to chatting with everyone thinking about “break-up suicide” (because this is a human problem, not just a man problem):
These are usually the messy ones. The one’s funeral directors hate from a technical basis. The shot-gun to the head kind. Often while drunk. Because for most of the “break-up suicides” your mind is feeling utterly overwhelmed and the emotions are so strong, so difficult that you don’t always think. You feel trapped. You feel like there’s no moving forward. No tomorrow. Because you feel like that one thing your identity was tied to … that thing that meant so much to you has either cheated on you, rejected you, or shit on you or vice versa.
I want to remind you of this: your life doesn’t exist in the vacuum of your relationship with your partner, or your work, or your perceived identity. There are options and there are other people who love you!!!
Even if you don’t see their love or feel it at this moment. YOU ARE LOVED. AND, if you really don’t think anyone loves you, I do. So there. But, you can’t come and live at my house unless you provide ample supplies of pizza and tacos.
You know all this. You know people love you. It’s probably the only thing that’s keeping you alive. It might be the reason you’ve stumbled upon this article about suicide written by a funeral director.
I’m not trying to add guilt, but let me recount my experience with those that are left behind:
I’ve held back a mother’s hair as she wept over the body of her son. I’ve grabbed a mother under her arms to keep her from falling. I’ve seen the blank stares of utter disbelief from children. I’ve watched a spouse crumble to his knees.
I’ve heard the cries:
“Why couldn’t I heal my baby’s heart?”
“Didn’t he know how much I loved him?”
“Why didn’t he just talk to me?”
“I’m so sorry … I didn’t know I hurt you this much!”
“I forgive you … it wasn’t this bad … it was never this bad!”
“Can I still call myself a ‘mother’?”
“If only it could be me instead.”
“What happened to daddy?”
“Get up, mommy. Get up.”
You get it. It hurts your parents, it hurts your kids, it hurts your partner. It even hurts your animals (do you have a plan for where your animal will go once it loses you?).
There’s a saying that goes something like this: “Suicide doesn’t end the pain, it just passes it on to someone else.” The saying isn’t entirely true (it’s unfair in some respects), but it certainly can be true.
Here’s what I’d say to you: IF YOU’VE JUST GONE THROUGH AN INTENSE BREAK-UP OF ANY KIND, AND YOU’RE THINKING ABOUT SUICIDE … TALK TO SOMEONE!!! Out of all the cries I’ve heard over “break-up suicides”, that’s the one I’ve heard the most: WHY DIDN’T HE/SHE JUST TALK TO ME? Talk to someone. They might be busy. Hell, they might be sleeping. But they’d rather talk to you now than weep over your body at my funeral home.
DEATH BY MENTAL ILLNESS
The second largest “suicide group” that I’ve dealt with at the funeral home are those who have experienced death by mental illness. I’m not a clinical psychologist, a clinical social worker, or a licensed professional counselor. I’m going to share my experiences with the families of those who have died from mental illness.
I have seen a couple of families who knew that their loved one’s mental illness was almost a terminal illness. They cast no shame towards their loved one. There was no condemnation. In fact, some of these families talk about how brave their loved one was. How she fought her mental illness for year and years and overcame so many obstacles. How she fought for them, for love. The suicide wasn’t a failure. She just recognized that enough is enough. And there was a degree of peace, knowing the fight was over.
You’re not giving up, you’ve probably just had enough.
You’re not stupid.
You’ve tried, and tried, and tried … more than is humanly possible. You have done your absolute best. You’ve fought as hard as you could for your loved ones.
You’re not selfish for wanting to end your pain.
You’re not a failure. You don’t call a kangaroo a failure if it can’t jump to the moon. If your pain is unstoppable, you’re not a failure for feeling it or responding to it.
Nobody grows up and has hopes and dreams of ending their life. We all want to live. We all want something wonderful in life: love, trust, friendship, commitment, dreams, hopes, pizza, tacos.
This isn’t something you want. It’s the lesser of two evils. Stopping your pain is better than letting it continue.
From the experiences I’ve had, there are two things that I think about you: you’re incredibly brave and incredibly selfless.
Can I offer some hope without shame? I’ve noticed something else about death by mental illness (which is a phrase I like better than the word “suicide”), most of these deaths tend to be in their mid-thirties to mid-fifties. Here’s my thought from that observation: there are some people who have made it through. Not because they were stronger, or more selfless. Not because “it got easier”. And maybe not because their lives got better (but I hope their lives did get better). Maybe they made it through that 20 plus years of mental illness hell because they found better companions for their journey. I don’t know. Really, I don’t. All I know is that I have no recollection of someone who died from mental illness in their sixties, seventies or eighties. And I’m hoping that the explanation for my observation is because it gets somewhat better.
HERE’S THE MAIN THING: No matter what your choice, do yourself a favor and find someone, anyone who listens and can hear you. You deserve to be heard. Your story needs to be told. Whether it’s a shrink or a random friend from decades ago that’s just a damn good listener. Tell your story before you go. Because I’ve heard those stories from your family and friends who shared about your fight. I need your story. You are the beauty of humanity.
*****
If you like my writing, consider buying my 2017 Nautilus Book Award Gold Winner, Confession of a Funeral Director (click the image to go to the Amazon page):
“Dad, it’s okay to die.”
Author: Beverly & Pack
Author URL: https://www.flickr.com/people/walkadog/
Year: 2009
Source URL: https://www.flickr.com
License: Creative Commons Attribution License
The death call came early in the morning. I put on my dress clothes, drove to the funeral home, and scooted out of the funeral home parking lot at around 4:30 AM to the Veteran’s Administration Hospice Center.
A half-hour later I rolled into the VA parking lot, pulled into the ambulance entrance, and hit the buzzer by the door to alert the nursing staff I had arrived.
He was a small guy, no more than 120lbs. He was 81 years old. There was a rolled hand towel underneath his chin to keep his mouth closed. He was in a fresh gown that the nurses had put on him after they cleaned him up for the final time. A patriotic honor blanket — used by the VA hospice for all deaths — was draped over his abdomen and legs.
I noticed immediately that his hands and feet were wrapped tightly in bandages, which usually means that the deceased has fragile skin that easily rips, or he or she was a diabetic with circulation problems that plague the extremities, especially near the end of life.
This man was going to be cremated. So, when I got back to the funeral home, I felt his chest area for a pacemaker and found nothing (if he had a pacemaker, I would have had to remove BECAUSE THEY EXPLODE WHEN CREMATED!). I then unwrapped his hands to check for rings. What I found surprised me: his fingers were totally necrotic. I had seen diabetic tissue necrosis, but it’s usually amputated before it gets this bad. His pinky finger was no longer attached to his hand. And it didn’t look like it had been cut off. There was no clean incision. It looked like it had fallen off or broken off.
I took the bandages off the right hand, mainly looking to make sure there weren’t any rings on that hand, but I was also curious to see if that hand was necrotic as well. It was worse. Black skin. Shriveled. And only two fingers remained on a hand that bore no resemblance to human flesh. You’ve seen the pictures of the bog bodies? That. It looked like that.
Part of me wanted to unwrap his feet, just to see what damage had been done to his toes. But there was no pragmatic reason to see what was hidden underneath those dressings, so I let them be. Had he lived any longer, I’m sure his hands and feet would have been removed. He would have been wheelchair bound and mostly dependent upon the help of others to do his daily tasks: eating, bathing, cleaning, brushing his teeth, combing his hair.
I met with his two daughters at 11 AM the same morning.
As is my custom, I like to ask questions about the deceased’s final days. It allows me to get to know him a little more, and understand where the family is at both practically and psychologically. It’s the little details I’m interested in, like:
Have you guys been able to sleep the last couple days?
Was your dad able to communicate with you guys until the end?
Did this all happen quickly, or was it a slow, downhill process?
As we talked, they painted a picture of a man who was a fighter.
This poor guy had it all.
He had developed type 2 diabetes in his late sixties; diabetic kidney disease in his early seventies; he had been on dialysis for years, and soon the heart problems came along.
“I’m going to beat this”, he would tell his daughters time and time again.
As things progressively got worse, he dug in deeper because he vowed “not to quit.”
Just a year early he was diagnosed with a heart problem (I forget what exactly the problem was) that could only be fixed with surgery. Even though the doctors gave him a 20% chance of making it through the surgery, he decided to do it. And he made it, but it left him weaker than he was before the surgery. Soon the necrosis came. The doctors recommended that his hands and feet be amputated.
“That’s when we had a heart to heart talk with him,” the girls said.
“‘I don’t want to give up’ was his battle cry”, they told me. “He didn’t want to fail. He was a vet. He came from a hard family life. He worked hard his whole life. He put us both through college. He had this mentality that he was going to pull through no matter what life threw at him.”
The girls recounted what they told him:
“Dad, you’re a strong man. You never gave up. You’ve loved us until the end. And Dad, it’s okay to die. Don’t look at this as a battle lost, look at it as an honorable discharge.”
“I don’t want to fail you girls,” he told us. Their eyes started to well up with tears as they recounted the conversation.
“We told him that he’s never failed us. We told him that knowing when enough is enough isn’t the same as giving up.”
“We wanted him to know that coming to the end of the journey isn’t a failure, but a victory.”
They continued by telling me that he found peace, stopped dialysis, and welcomed death towards the end. Because death isn’t a failure.
Because it’s okay to die.
It’s okay to die.
*****
If you like my writing, consider buying my 2017 Nautilus Book Award Gold Winner, Confession of a Funeral Director (click the image to go to the Amazon page):
