Speaking of Death Prepare to Die!

 

Talking about death and what kind of arrangements need to be made at the end of your life isn’t an easy conversation for anyone. Many people don’t know how to discuss their wishes with their family because it makes them uncomfortable, and then when the individual becomes medically unable to make his or her wishes known, family members are left to handle a number of difficult decisions. As a result, this makes those choices twice as hard. If you’re looking for ways to have this discussion with your family in way that will open up the conversation in a positive manner, then The Conversation Project can help. This project is committed to helping individuals talk about the end of their lives and their wishes concerning hospice, medical care, and other end-of-life decisions so that their families aren’t left to make the choices on their own and so that they can celebrate the life of their loved one instead of feeling overwhelmed. A well planned funeral is one of the greatest gifts you can give.

Funeral PlanningAbout The Conversation Project

The Conversation Project is the brainchild of Ellen Goodman, whose own experience with caring for her mother at the end of her life and the challenges she faced spurred her into discussing the subject with friends, colleagues, and even doctors and clergymen. Goodman found herself overwhelmed with medical decisions when her mother could no longer make them, and after talking with others who’d had the same experience, Goodman and those like her launched The Conversation Project in 2010. The goal of the Conversation Project is to help people talk to their families about the end of their lives, the decisions they need to make concerning the care they receive, and how to honor those wishes so that they can be carried out when the time comes. So many people are aware of what they want to happen as they get older and are no longer to care for or make decisions for themselves, but sadly, they never discuss it with those closest to them because the subjects of death and dying are so difficult to broach. It is the ultimate goal of The Conversation Project to shed light on this issue and help people see that the best time to discuss these topics is before people become unable to, not after.

Presently, The Conversation Project works with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). The project began to work with IHI, a non-profit organization that is dedicated to better health care for individuals all over the world, in 2011. Along with a number of other committed professionals, The Conversation Project has already helped a number of people make this difficult subject easier for their loved ones, has brought them closer together through these conversations, and has allowed people to make arrangements for their aging loved ones so that the end of their lives can be peaceful instead of fraught with uncertainty and pain.

Why Are These Conversations Necessary?

While some individuals put funeral directives in their wills, very few people include directives concerning their desires if they should become unable to make decisions for themselves, and this is a conversation that everyone needs to have before it happens, not after. While this may make you and other people uncomfortable, consider what might happen if you should develop dementia, Alzheimer’s, or have a stroke that rendered you unable to make medical decisions for yourself. This would leave your children or your spouse to make these choices in your place, which may make them uneasy, guilty, or frightened about what you may have wanted. By having these talks early on, you can make your wishes known and what they need to do in the event of medical emergencies and the events that may follow. While many people talk about writing down about the type of care they want at the end of their lives, few people actually follow through. These conversations are more than just talking about what you want to happen after a medical emergency or if you want medical intervention: it’s a conversation about long-term care, your happiness as you reach the end of your life, and communicating your desires about funeral arrangements as well.

These Talks Can Ease Your Family’s Grief and Allow Them to Celebrate Your Life

It's Your FuneralWhile it’s difficult to discuss what kind of decisions should be made for the end of your life, it’s even harder to talk about your wishes concerning your funeral, but The Conversation Project can help you learn about how to approach the topic with your loved ones. It could be that you have even tried to have this discussion with your family in the past but they were unwilling to talk about it. This is a common reaction, as talking about the death of a loved one with that person makes many people feel awkward and uncomfortable. However, there are many advantages to starting these conversations, especially if you and your children or spouse have any disagreements about your wishes. When these conversations happen and your wishes are made clear, your family members can celebrate your life in a more meaningful way instead of feeling guilty that they made the wrong choices. The Conversation Project can help you talk to your loved ones about how understanding your wishes can benefit them as well.

How The Conversation Project May Benefit Survivors

When people become incapacitated at the end of their life and their loved ones are forced to make decisions for them, such as whether they wished to pass away at home, wanted full-time medical care, or what type of medical procedures they wanted in order to prolong their lives, when that person dies, those who live on are usually not only grieving but burdened with grief as well. Some of the questions they often ask themselves after their loved one has died are:

  • Did I carry out all of my loved one’s wishes while they were alive?
  • Were they happy at the end of their life?
  • Were they unhappy and simply couldn’t communicate it?
  • Was there anything I could have done to make their passing easier?
  • Are the final arrangements I made what they really wanted?

All of these questions can affect people emotionally and mentally long after their loved ones have passed, affecting their lives on a day-to-day basis and adding to the grief that they are already feeling over their loss. This is another way that The Conversation Project can help; by teaching you how to approach the topic of your final wishes with your family and getting together to put it in writing, those who live on will never have to wonder about whether the decisions they made on your behalf were the right ones.

Vermont Cremation Services
Let Your Wishes Be Known

Talking about what you want the most when it comes to your final arrangements will also help those who are left behind focus on carrying out those wishes with dignity instead of having to agonize over every choice they make because you never discussed them. Burial, cremation, and the location of the final interment or placement can be carried out without your family members squabbling over what they think you would have wanted.

Pass on Your Beliefs and Goals

Good Funerals
Here’ To You!

Your family can’t carry out your end-of-life goals and wishes if they are not made aware of them. By using The Conversation Project’s Starter Kit, you can let your family know that discussing your wishes and how you want to live at the end of your life isn’t really such a frightening thing. In fact, it may ease their minds because in many cases, those with elderly parents are just as worried about these issues but don’t know how to discuss them either. By using the starter kit together, you and your family can get the conversation going about how you’d like to live out your final days, what kind of medical care you’d approve of if you were able to, and even where you’d like to be laid to rest and how. By talking these issues out beforehand, you might even discover that your loved ones are curious about your beliefs and why you have made these choices.

Make Your Wishes Known Today

Talking about how you’d like to live out your final days is never an easy conversation for anyone to have, but with The Conversation Project, you can open up a frank discussion about decisions that will have a great deal of impact on your life and the lives of your loved ones as you approach the end of your life. Weather you prefer cremation services or burial. urns or caskets, clergy or a celebrant, let your wishes be known. Having this talk today with those who are going to be making these decisions will not only ease any feelings of guilt or fear they might feel later on, but it will also give them peace of mind when they carry out those wishes. If you would like to learn more about how The Conversation Project can help you, log onto theconversationproject.org and download their free starter kit today or talk to your doctor about what’s most important to you when it comes to living your final years with dignity and happiness.

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Bad Grief! When No Body Comes Home

Missed PersonEach year, more than 1.8 million American men, women and children are reported missing. Although the majority of these people are located, many stay missing, leaving their families to wonder for years and years if the person they love is dead or alive. Sometimes, this situation is the result of a monumental tragedy, like 9/11, that strikes an entire community or nation. Other times, it’s as simple and as devastating as a woman with dementia walking away from her caregiver, never to be seen again. Whatever the circumstances, the uncertainty, pain and isolation felt by the person’s family and friends is the same…and unimaginable to those who haven’t experienced it.

When tragedy strikes and people are presumed dead, but no body is recovered, it changes everything that traditionally surrounds the natural process of grief. Two recent news stories have included just such situations–the missing Malaysian aircraft and the big mud slide in Washington State. Families and friends of those involved in these situations are experiencing this rare types of loss. They yearn for both answers and a starting point from which to confront their loss. However, without a body, the mind still wants to believe anything but the truth. Such deaths, called “ambiguous deaths” by the psychiatric community, require unique handling and sensitivity from family and friends as well as funeral professionals called upon to oversee the final arrangements.

Death in the news

Missing  370 Missing 370 in Sand  On March 8, 2014, Malaysian flight 370 disappeared without a trace. The nightly news has focused regularly on the recovery efforts by crews from more than a dozen different nations. More than one month later, not one fragment of the plane or its occupants has been found. The latest speculation is that the plane is at the bottom of a particularly deep part of the Indian Ocean, more than 2.8 miles from the surface. If this is true, there is little likelihood of the plane and its dead will ever be recovered. The pressure at such depths makes it impossible for any manned craft to navigate the area where the plane likely lies.

The 238 passengers and crew members of MH370 came from 13 different countries, but their families share a common pain, the roller coaster ride of hope and the despair of not knowing what happened to their mother, husband, daughter, father, wife or son.

Washington_Mudslide-088c6Another situation with unrecoverable bodies occurred recently in Washington State last month when a rain-soaked hill collapsed without warning, engulfing more than three dozen homes in a massive mudslide. As I write this, 36 bodies have been found and 10 people are still missing, including two children. Recovery efforts continue more than four weeks after the disaster.

Why are such enormous resources–both in manpower and money–expended trying to recover bodies long after it is reasonable to assume that a person could have survived? After 9/11, the recovery effort continues for more than eight months and ended with a solemn ceremony at the site. Our culture associates death with a body. Not having that body of our loved one disrupts the entire grieving process.

Grieving without a body

Grief On Hold
Grief Stuck In Limbo

In our society, we associate death and grieving with a physical body. Most funeral arrangements involve a viewing, where friends and family can share memories and get a last glimpse of the body that once was their friend or loved one. We usually follow that with a service that culminates in the lowering of the casket in the ground or the handing of the ashes to the survivors. Without a body, all of those traditions are disrupted.

Denial is one of the classic stages of grief. Our mind naturally wants to assume that our dead loved one will walk through the front door any minute. When their is no body, our mind can get stuck in this stage, even when all evidence points to the fact that the person is gone. This is why enormous amounts of time and money are spent on recovery efforts in situations like the mud slide and the disappearance of the Malaysian airliner even when the likelihood of finding a live person has long since passed.

Planning funerals without a body

Deaths where there is no body present challenges for funeral professionals as well as for family and friends. Like loved ones, funeral professionals are used to dealing with a physical body as part of the funeral rites, either as a burial or a cremation. A death without a body throws this traditional system out of alignment, while at the same time offering the challenge of trying to comfort a family during the most terrible time in their lives.

When Hope and Grief CollideDeaths without a body, while rare, are not unique to current events. After 9/11, friends and family of thousands of men and women missing from the Twin Towers had to deal with their grief even though fewer than a quarter of the bodies of those in the buildings had been recovered. Some chose to use an empty casket at the funeral to give the service a sense of normalcy. Others used caskets for whatever part of their loved one had been found, even if it was just a finger.

Often funerals without a body are handled similarly to memorial services, with photos and/or videos of the deceased adorning the service, so that family and friends are able to “see” the person who died one last time. Having the family put together these images, even making a video or a few photo collages can help in the healing process. Take it a step further and have the family create a memorial table filled with items that were important to the life being mourned .

When dealing with deaths where people are presumed dead but there is no body, it is important for funeral professionals as well as friends to be especially empathetic and willing to listen. Any death of a relative or loved one is somewhat isolating, but a death without a body can make the survivors feel that they are the only ones who have ever had to go through this anguish.
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It’s Not Easy Being The Last One To Let You Down!

Good Old Bernie
Good Old Bernie

The job of a funeral director is often misunderstood. Most people in this profession are driven by passion as much as the desire to pursue a career, some are just born into it. Being a funeral director is one of the most stressful jobs there is. You have to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and you see people going through some of the toughest times of their lives. Even people who are usually easy going become sensitized and hard to please. Details are everything and unlike wedding, you have very little time to pull it all together. It’s really hard to make and keep plans and your own family often suffers from your absence.

Funeral Guy
Going Doooown

The suits and fancy cars can mask alcoholism, depression and divorce are all part of the territory for funeral directors. Most people that go into the funeral biz are out of it in three to five years. Often portrayed as as opportunists and vultures, funeral directors don’t have an easy life. No wonder they prefer to keep to a rigid day-to-day routine and seek the shelter of tradition. Today, as funerals are quickly moving away from tradition, due to internet searches and the Baby Boomers’ desire to create new traditions. Funeral professionals are faced with even more challenges as they are forced to venture out of their protective, traditional bubbles. They need to either find a way to adapt to today’s needs or face extinction. Some are adjusting well but most are not!

Funeral Directors: a Final Friend

Funeral directors sometimes get a bad  press. However, the truth is that the vast majority of the more than 23,000 such professionals working in the United States are dedicated, compassionate and committed to facilitating the last wishes of the deceased and making it easier for their families. The best funeral directors are the best listeners and ensure that the funeral and burial rites go smoothly without imposing themselves into the proceedings. There is a fine balance between explaining the many new options while not coming off as a salesman of opportunity. That’s not as easy as it sounds.

What a funeral director does

A funeral director plays a number of roles. He or She is usually the first person that a family meets with when they visit the funeral home to begin planning a funeral. They are event planners that have one chance to get it right.  In that function, he or she is both marketing director and customer service representative, not to mention grief counselor.  They are also small business owners, who must order and maintain inventory (caskets, vaults, etc.), market their services and manage the bookkeeping. Funeral directors also act as human resource directors for their own staff, handling the hiring and firing, coordinating benefit programs and assigning work schedules. Funeral directors are also involved in transporting the dead (at all hours) preparing the deceased for viewings and burial, an art and science in itself.

The future of funeral homes

funeralhome1The way the American public looks at funerals and burial rites is changing quickly and dramatically. In an experienced based society funeral pros better step up to new challenges or go the way of the neighborhood butcher, baker and travel agent! Independent funeral homes, once fixtures in every town, have now mostly been absorbed by large, national corporations. As an industry, funeral professionals can do a better job, but to do so, they must be willing to come out of their comfort zones.

Just a few of the ways funeral professionals can embrace and adapt to changing views about the end of life include:

1. Your best form of advertising is to do good funerals!
Good FuneralsEach funeral / memorial is a custom created event that draws from all involved and weaves it into a special event that allows social healing and an open environment that provides a safe haven for people to share in their support for each other.
On the surface, if using the latest bells and whistles available to us such s video tributes, custom blankets, programs, funeral favors, memorial websites ect. will help support the goal of creating a healing experience, then why not use them to the best of our ability. If a specially trained MC that knows just how to draw on all aspects of a life lived and craft all that information into a well balanced and touching ceremony would help, then you should be hiring the best Certified Life Celebrant you can find. If you cannot find a good Celebrant in your area, you should find a person that you think would be good and pay for their training.

2. Using social media. A funeral home on Facebook? Why not? Increasingly, Americans are making plans for their funerals before they die and are shopping online for a funeral home just as they shop for someone to fix their furnace or landscape their front yard. However, less than half of funeral homes are using social media in their marketing plans.

By using social media platforms, like Facebook, funeral directors can take some of the “scary” out of the funeral profession, put a face on the business and become a more human part of the community. Show them how proud you are of your grand kids, while at the same time establishing themselves as experts in the industry.

3. Content marketing. Content marketing, the art and science of boosting your website’s–and your company’s–visibility by adding regular new, valuable and interesting content to your site is a natural for funeral homes. If someone searches on Google or other search engine for funeral home in (insert your geographic area), you what them to find your business, not the competition. Since most people plan very few funerals in their lifetime, you want to be the first business they encounter online. Content marketing, done well, can help you head the list in search engine results. Write about whats going on in your community and become a source for local news.

While more than 80 percent of funeral homes have a website, many use it primarily for information about funerals currently being planned by the business and/or for message books for friends and family of the deceased. While these functions are both important, funeral homes that don’t use their websites to marketing their services are missing a huge opportunity.

3. Blogging. Funeral Home SEOWhereas more than 65 percent of funeral homes use traditional newspaper advertising, less than 10 percent include blogging in their marketing mix. Adding regular blog posts to your marketing plan has several advantage. First of all, such posts will help your SEO efforts and make you more visible to families looking for someone to help plan their loved one’s funeral. In addition, the cost of blogging is negligible, especially when compared to the cost of print advertising.

The way the American public views and shops for funeral services is changing, and funeral directors need to be changing with it. There will always be a place for a competent, compassionate, efficient funeral director. The trick is getting the word to those who need such services in this increasingly digital marketplace.It’s Not Easy Being The Last One To Let You Down!
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Cremation Solutions on TV to Help Joan Rivers with her Dog’s Funeral

Dog Funeral
Joan and Her Beloved Max

Sometimes life–and death–surprises you. I certainly wasn’t expecting to hear from the producers of the “Joan and Melissa: Joan Knows Best?” reality TV show when they called me. It turns out that comedian, Joan Rivers is aware of our pet funerals and the urns, cremation jewelry and keepsakes we offer for people who have lost a beloved pet. Joan’s 12-year-old rescue Pekingese, Max had died and she wanted to do a show about a funeral for the dog. Of course, I said we would help, although I had no idea what to expect.

Planning a dog’s funeral

We started the funeral for Max by finding a location that worked well for Joan as well as hiring a New York celebrant to write and officiate at the service, Chris Shelly rose to the occasion. My friend Nancy Burban help us search for a location in New York City. One of the things Joan was most concerned about, and one of the reasons she called us, was the many options we have for displaying Max’s ashes. One of the scenes in the show takes place in Joan’s New York City apartment, where I’ve brought several of our urns, cremation jewelry and pet keepsakes to show her. Of course, with Joan, even funerals can be funny and she makes jokes about the different options. It was perfect blend of fun and serious.

Farewell to Max

Love Urns
Max’s Round Simplicity Urn

Joan decided on an urn during the segment and also wanted to get some jewelry to hold a few of Max’s ashes. She choose one of our Pandora-style cremation beads that matches the colors of Max’s coat, a charcoal, almost black hue.

She also decided to use our new “Loved One Launcher” to blast Max’s ashes all over his favorite stomping grounds. This piece of equipment can blast your loved one’s ashes up to 70 feet. The ashes can be mixed with confetti to give the launch a festive, party-like atmosphere. It’s a perfect salute to a being, like Max, who loved life.

We ended the show with Max’s funeral.

Admittedly, the funeral was a little bizarre, but the grief was real. As the owner of a rescue dog myself, I can relate.

You never know what you’re going to encounter in this business. I had fun doing the show. I think Joan and I had a little chemistry and the spontaneous jokes were streaming. This really was reality TV; nothing was rehearsed.

About “Joan and Melissa: Joan Knows Best”

Joan and Melissa: Joan Knows Best” is a reality

Scattering Ashes
Joan Holds The Loved One Launcher Ash scattering  Cannon

series on WEtv, featuring comedian, Joan Rivers and her daughter Melissa as they try to keep the peace while living under one roof. The 30-minute show debuted in 2011 when Rivers moved from Los Angeles to New York City and moved in with her grown daughter, Melissa. The show is just beginning its fourth season.

About Cremation Solutions

Although all of the attention and excitement of doing a TV show is nice (and kind of rare in our business), Cremation Solutions doesn’t just cater to celebrity dogs. We

Dod Funerals
Jeff Staab, Joan, Melissa and Padfoot

have a whole range of affordable pet funeral services as well as cremation urns, jewelry, keepsakes and art to help you remember all of your loved ones and keep them close to you even when they have passed. Check out the beautiful tapestry behind Joan and Melissa. It was a gift from Funeral Home Gifts.

Our episode on the “Joan and Melissa: Joan Knows Best” show airs on WEtv on April 12, 10 PM EST on the WE TV network. We hope you’ll tune in.
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