DIY Funerals

Source: http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2013/11/diy-death-natural-home-funerals

WELLFLEET, Mass. – When 20-month-old Adelaida Kay Van Meter died of a rare genetic disease last winter, her father, Murro, gently carried her body out of the house to his wood shop in the pines near Gull Pond. He placed her in a small cedar box and surrounded her with ice packs. For three days, the little girl’s grieving parents were able to visit her and kiss her and hug her. Then, on the third day, after the medical examiner came to sign the last bit of paperwork, Van Meter and his wife, Sophia Fox, said good-bye to their baby, screwed the lid on the box and drove to a Plymouth, Mass. crematorium, where they watched the little coffin enter the furnace.

“We took care of Adelaida when she was an infant, we took care of her when she was healthy, we advocated for her in the hospital, we took care of her when she was sick,” her father said. “Why wouldn’t we take care of her when she was dead?” Sophia Fox added: “There was no way I was going to hand her over to some stranger at a funeral parlor where she’d be put in a refrigerator with a bunch of other dead bodies. This way was so much more natural. We saw the life leave her body and we were better able to let go.”

Death remains a topic that many of us would rather avoid. And when it comes to the actual nuts and bolts of caring for the dead, most of us tend to think it’s best — and furthermore, required by law — to let professional funeral arrangers handle the arrangements.

Well, it turns out that in most states it’s perfectly legal to care for your own dead. And, with new momentum to shatter longstanding taboos and stop tip-toeing around death — from “death with dignity” measures sweeping the country to projects promoting kitchen table “conversations”about our deepest end-of-life wishes — a re-energized DIY death movement is emerging.

This “personal funeral” or “home death care” movement involves reclaiming various aspects of death: for instance, keeping the dead body at home for some time rather than having it whisked it away; rejecting embalming and other environmentally questionable measures to prettify the dead; personally transporting a loved one’s corpse to a cemetery; and even, in some cases, home burials. Families are learning to navigate these delicate tasks with help from a growing cadre of“death midwives” “doulas” or “home death guides.”


When Adelaida Van Meter died last winter, her parents kept her little body at home for three days to say good-bye. (Courtesy Murro Van Meter)

The DIY death movement is loosely knit, and motivations vary, ranging from environmental concerns to religious or financial considerations. (Traditional funerals can cost around $10,000 or more; when you do-it-yourself, the cost can be reduced into the hundreds, experts says.) Each case is fiercely personal — there’s no playbook — but they all share a very intimate sense that death should unfold as a family matter, not as a moment to relinquish loved ones to a paid stranger or parlor.

This Is Legal?

The highly personal nature of home funerals appealed to Janet Baczuk, 58, of Sandwich, Mass. So, when her 93-year-old father, Stephen, died in September, 2011, she said, “I thought, I’d like to do that for my dad.” “It’s more humane, more natural…and more environmentally sound.”

Baczuk and her sister washed their father’s dead body using essential oils, and got a permit to drive the corpse to the cemetery in their (covered) pickup truck. A World War II veteran, Stephen Baczuk was buried at Massachusetts National Cemetery in Bourne, where officials allowed his simple pine and cherry casket to be placed directly on the ground, covered by an inverted concrete vault with no lid, “like a butter dish,” Baczuk said. When her mother died back in 2006, Baczuk said, she had no inkling that home funerals were an option — but wishes she did. “I didn’t know it could be done,” she said. “I think a lot of lay people don’t know this is legal or possible.”

She’s right.

“When it comes to death, it doesn’t matter where you are on the scale of education or socioeconomics, many people are shocked to find that it’s legal to care for your own dead at home,” says Josh Slocum, Executive Director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a Burlington, Vermont, nonprofit that works on all aspects of funeral education, from helping consumers reduce costs to advocating on DIY methods. “And I think this speaks to how distant death has become for us in just over a century. In the late 1800s, even turn of the century, caring for the dead was as prosaic and ordinary as taking care of the children or milking the farm animals.”

Slocum offers this analogy: If a woman wants to run a restaurant, she needs approval from the health department and officials, of course, would be permitted to inspect her kitchen. But the health department would have no jurisdiction over the same woman’s own kitchen at home. “They cannot come in and tell her that her refrigerator is subpar, and they have no authority to tell her she is not allowed to cook dinner for her kids. They can’t compel her to order dinner from a commercial, licensed restaurant,” Slocum says. “The same holds with state funeral regulatory boards. Their job is to ensure public welfare and protect paying consumers. Bizarrely, however, many think their jurisdiction extends to telling families they must pay an unwanted third party funeral home to do something the family could do for themselves."

Kyle Gamboa, 1995-2013 (Courtesy Kymberlyrenee Gamboa)

What characterizes the DIY death experience is that it’s so very personal. Consider these vastly different snapshots:

• In northern California, Kimberlyrenee Gamboa’s son Kyle committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge in September, three weeks into his senior year in high school. A seemingly happy 18-year-old with lots of friends and into competitive lasertag, Kyle’s death was such a shock, his mother said, she doesn’t know how she’d have managed it through a typical funeral. Instead, with help from her church and and home death guide, Heidi Boucher, Kyle’s body was returned to the family home one day after his death. Boucher washed Kyle and helped arrange the body on dry ice changed every 24 hours; she gathered information to fill out Kyle’s death certificate and managed all coordination with the mortuary. For three full days, Kyle’s body lay in the family living room in an open casket, not embalmed. During that time, day and night, surrounded by pictures and candles and flowers, all of his friends and family could say good-bye and remember his short life. For Kyle’s mother, that time was critical to her healing.

“If I had to hand him over to funeral parlor, have him embalmed and get two hours on a Tuesday afternoon for everyone to see him — I couldn’t have done that,” she said. “It would have been extremely hard, not only for me, but for everyone who knew him…I still have my ups and downs, but I had three more days with my son — of him physically being there and accessible to me. I didn’t want to leave the house because I knew these were my last three days with him. Until you go through it, you don’t realize how very important that time is for your healing.”

• Kanta Lipsky, a yoga teacher in West Tisbury on Martha’s Vineyard, compared her 66-year-old husband John’s “home death” to a “home birth.” “A couple of days before I could see it coming,” Lipsky says. When he died of cancer in March 2011, she said, a nurse from the local hospital prepared his body. “We did a very beautiful ceremony at the house. Friends came over to wash John’s body, a rabbi said prayers during the washing. There was lots of water and towels all over the floor. We put him in the traditional Jewish white loose pajamas; my tradition is Hindu, so we placed rice balls in the casket and had a garland of roses. We did a waving of lights and we all sang — there were 20-25 people in the house. He was wrapped in beautiful comforter, and we lifted him up and passed him hand to hand through hallway. It was very moving…It was like a home birth, but it was a home death, very hands on…there were no rules, it just unfolded, evolved and we all felt really comfortable with it…it was such an easy slipping out, his spirit just slipped right out and we were with him, it was a part of life.”

• In Hubbardston, Mass. near Worcester, it took three months of haggling with town officialsbefore Paul Flint was allowed to bury his 14-year-old stepson, who died in a car accident in 2011, on the family’s property. Because the accident happened in Minnesota, Flint said, the family was keen on having the boy, Daniel Davis, laid to rest at home. “My wife wanted him buried on the property,” Flint said. “There’s a couple of favorite spots he liked and he’s buried there, near the rope bridge across the creek.”

Even Bill Cosby chose to bury his son the family property in Shelbourne, Mass., “beneath the hills and trees where young Ennis played as a child.”

Not All Victorian Sitting Rooms and Cadillacs

Obviously, families taking care of their dead loved ones isn’t new. Indeed, it was the norm until the last quarter of the 19th century, when a burgeoning funeral industry evolved. Today, “the funeral business is so effectively insulated from free-market competition that many families can’t even imagine a funeral home free of faux-Victorian sitting rooms and a fleet of Cadillacs,” writes Slocum, also the co-author of Final Rights: Reclaiming the American Way of Death.

The home funeral movement isn’t new either, Slocum says (think of Jessica Mitford’s The American Way of Death and on to the funeral business reformers of the 1960s and 70s). But even as interest grows in the DIY death movement, many people still believe that death should be left to the professionals. “Americans have a neurotic relationship with death,” Slocum says. “Most people are convinced they are physically or emotionally unable to handle it.” He says death should be no more legally controversial than any other “do it yourself” matter:

We’d never put up with this in any other sphere; it would be laughable to contemplate state workers going around forcing citizens to go to Jiffy Lube instead of changing their own oil, or to hire licensed daycare workers instead of staying home with the kids. But that’s what some funeral boards do. The only reason we accept this is that we’re so psychologically removed from and afraid of death that we assume such absurdities are normal even when we’d recognize how ridiculous they are in any other context.

But emotional complexity is another story. Many people are profoundly grateful to leave funeral arrangements to outside professionals. Still, there’s often an assumption that the grieving are simply too fragile to cope with death head on.

While caring for his wife through late stage melanoma, another Cape Cod man, Grey, who asked that his full name not be used, made a decision: in discussions with his dying wife and daughters the family decided to keep her body at home after death. But when Grey told a hospice worker what he planned to do, he said the worker spent half an hour on the phone trying to talk him out of it: “She said, ‘You’re going to be distraught and you’re going to have your wife’s dead body in the house and…you may think you can handle this, but so many things can go wrong, I think you should reconsider.’”

In the end, though, Grey stuck to his plan: he had attended to his wife at home through her brutal illness, and it was almost a relief (at least for a short time) to care for her after death, when she was no longer in pain. Grey and his daughters bathed her body with lavender oil, built her a cedar coffin and watched over her for three days in the house before taking her to the crematory. “We all felt it was a very important ritual,” he said. “I’m glad we did it that way.”

A National Movement

As a measure of how DIY death has flourished, Slocum says, ten years ago there were a handful of (mostly women) around the country helping families learn about home funerals. Now there’s a nationwide organization, the National Home Funeral Alliance, with about 300 members, a code of ethics and rules governing their practices (they can charge for educating individuals and families privately or at workshops, for instance, but can’t act as pseudo funeral directors.)

At their fourth annual meeting last month, about 70 home death guides, hospice nurses, doctors, students and funeral directors met in Raleigh, North Carolina, to talk about home death care and green burials, among other topics, says Lee Webster, vice president of the NHFA and a home funeral guide in Plymouth, New Hampshire. They also tried to figure out a way to more systematically collect data on home death care and build a central repository for consumer information.

Webster, a longtime hospice volunteer, says while data-gathering remains tricky, it’s clear the movement is growing. “There’s an explosion” of interest in home funerals or blended, hybrid funerals with some elements done personally and some left to traditional funeral directors, she says.

What’s driving this explosion? It’s a Boomer thing, according to Webster. “This is the generation that fought for breast-feeding in public and home births; and they want to bring back the idea of a natural death. It’s the ethic of this generation.”

Ecopods and Banana Leaf Urns

Cost and the environment are also driving factors. People like the idea of “fewer chemicals, no rainforest woods and Chinese steel,” Webster says, noting that when you avoid embalming you’re not “draining blood into the public septic system and not subjecting loved ones to violent procedures — the embalming process is quite brutal — just for cosmetic reasons and for no health benefits.”

(One casket designer in Arlington, Mass., for instance, offers artist-embellished Ecopods for burials, hand-made from recycled paper and covered with materials of silk-and-mulberry, as well as biodegradable coffins, caskets, and urns made of paper mache, bamboo, banana leaf, wicker, and cardboard.)

Webster adds: “Once people’s fears are relieved about body care, body mechanics, smells and fluids, a light goes off and they say, ‘Why would I not want to do this?” Even while many of us shudder at the prospect, Webster says the dead “can be very beautiful. To go back to the birth model: it’s like birthing people out in as natural a way as possible.”

You might think there’d be some funeral industry push-back against all this embrace of more personal, no-frills death care. (Of course, with no national numbers, it’s hard to know how many people are actually embracing the trend.) Still, it doesn’t seem like the industry is particularly threatened.

Daniel Higgins, a second-generation funeral director in Rockland, Mass., and spokesperson for theNational Funeral Directors Association, said he doesn’t have any direct experience with families interested in home funerals, but has no problem with people making their own choices.

Indeed, he said, more families want to personalize even traditional funerals to better reflect their lives. For instance, he said, last year he helped arrange a memorial service at a local golf course. The dead man, a golf fanatic, was cremated and placed in a biodegradable urn in the main pond at the course. “Several hundred people gathered around the pond,” Higgins said. “And all his friends hit a golf ball into the pond with a personal message as a final goodbye.”

The My-Choice Generation

Heidi Boucher, who says she’s helped over 100 families care for their dead loved ones, is completing a film, In The Parlour: The Final Goodbye, about the “resurgence” of the home death movement. A home death guide for over 25 years, she says: “I’ve watched from only a handful of us doing this in this country…to now, when it’s become vogue. A lot of this generation, we’re the ones who took control of where we’re going to send our kids to school, what car to drive. Our generation is the one that wants to find out what’s in it before we eat it.”

One problem is that states and local municipalities are all over the map when it comes to regulating death.

There remain nine states with laws or other impediments (from requiring a funeral director’s signature on a death certificate, to mandating that a funeral director be present at the final disposition of the body) that make it difficult for families who want to care for their own dead, Josh Slocum says.

On the other end of the spectrum, the state of Massachusetts offers clear instructions for home funerals right on its website, including what you need for a death certificate, guidance on burials and preparing the body. “The human body decomposes rapidly after death,” the website says. “Care must be taken to keep the body as cool as possible in order the slow the decomposition that results in noxious odors and the leakage of body fluids from body orifices. A human body can be kept in a cool room at least 24 hours before decomposition begins. Heat in the room should be turned off in winter, and air conditioning should be turned on in summer.”

Reclaiming A Death Tradition

But even in an evolved state like Massachusetts, many families’ first reaction to home funerals is something like: “‘You mean that’s legal?!’ says Heather Massey, a longtime home funeral guide who runs the education and consulting center “In Loving Hands” on Cape Cod. Massey says her goal is the creation of a robust home death support system, “a volunteer care circle, comprised of community members trained and experienced in home funerals, who can in turn assist and guide other families who wish to care for their own at death, thereby truly bringing this loving tradition back into the hands of family and community.”

For Adelaida Van Meter’s parents, taking personal control of their daughter’s death was “imperative,” said Sophia Fox. There were some obstacles, however. “I had several funeral homes tell me over the phone that what I was trying to do was illegal,” Van Meter said. “I didn’t try to argue with them, I just hung up.”

Eventually, with help from a pediatric social worker and Heather Massey, the family was able to fill out all the required paperwork and keep the baby’s body at home after she died.

I recently emailed Murro to check in and see if there’d been any news since we talked during the summer. It had been about a year and ten months since Adelaida died; the couple’s new daughter, Annabelle, was nearly 7 months old. Here’s what he said:

“The only news is that we continue to be head over heels in love with our daughter Annabelle, who is doing great. With that said, not a hour goes by that we don’t feel the loss of Adelaida. So I guess these things would qualify as no new news.”

Showtime’s ‘Time of Death’

From Washington Post- Article by Hank Stuever

Showtime’s ‘Time of Death’: An important and honest look at what death is really like.



D&J Productions/Showtime - The six-part Showtime documentary series "Time of Death" looks at people in their last days. Michael John Muth is pictured.

By Hank Stuever, Published: October 31 E-mail the writer

One of our great achievements in American culture over the last few decades has gone mostly, quietly unnoticed: We’re getting a lot better at death.

Despite botox and youth worship, baby boomers and Generation X are changing the rituals and customs of a frank and noble exit. Funerals are more casual, celebratory in tone — with biographical videos, favorite pop songs and even a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses worn by the deceased. Cremation is becoming a more popular and affordable option, dramatically shifting the definition of a final resting place. And enough of us now know first-hand that real angels and heroes work in the fields of hospice and palliative care.

I rarely insist that anybody watch anything on TV, but I strongly recommend that you watch as much as you can of “Time of Death,” Showtime’s unflinchingly honest docu-series (premiering Friday night) about what it’s like to die — and what it’s like for our loved ones to watch us go.

I get that it’s not going to be a TV show for all. It’s hard stuff. If you and your loved ones are planning to live forever then, by all means, skip it. If, on the other hand, you are an adult with a firm grip on reality (and perhaps faith), you will likely find yourself transfixed by the gentle and elegant ways that “Time of Death” takes us into the final weeks of eight women and men, ages 19 to 78, each losing a fight against a terminal illness.

Conceived and produced by some of the same people behind “Project Runway” and “Top Chef,” “Time of Death” bears the dignified, documentary-style traits that reality TV had in its earliest days: It is desperately interested in observing people up-close, as they are, and will not turn away when things get too real. It has a deep well of empathy that is unclouded by saccharine attempts at sympathy. The producers don’t try to guide what’s happening into narrative convenience. All the show has to do is wait patiently for its subjects to die.

Remarkably, this doesn’t feel intrusive. When death comes in each of the six episodes, it often feels like a beautiful release of stress for the dying person as well as for family and friends. And, in an almost profound way, for the viewer.

The series’s main through-line focuses on 48-year-old Maria Lencioni, a free-spirited single mom in Santa Cruz, Calif., who is facing the final stages of breast cancer. Maria’s story continues through each episode as she attempts a final round of chemotherapy and as her adult daughter, Nicole, prepares to take custody of Maria’s miscreant teenagers. It quickly becomes clear that Nicole isn’t ready to be a parent to her half-siblings; one of Maria’s last acts, heartbreakingly, is to put the teens in foster care.

Although the drama in Maria’s household would at first seem to stray from “Time of Death’s” trajectory toward deathbed scenes, it is very much in tune with the show’s real goal of showing how families will — and sometimes stubbornly won’t — come together when a loved one nears the end.

Laura Kovarik, 63, also at the end stage of breast cancer, embarks on a road trip from Long Beach, Calif., to Colorado Springs, accompanied by her single daughter (and care provider) Lisa. Laura hopes the drive will rekindle happy memories of family car trips and frequent stops at tourist traps, but after the first day, her energy flags. Meanwhile, Lisa must deal with resentment toward her older sister, Laura’s other daughter, who keeps death and the family discord at arm’s length.

There are others: A 47-year-old former mixed-martial arts fighter is paralyzed by ALS, but reunites with his estranged mother and the two sons that he never knew. He goes out with calm acceptance and a sharp sense of humor expressed in the robotic voice of his special computer. We also meet a 75-year-old grandmother and psychotherapist (who specialized in grief and death issues) as she throws herself a farewell party before the end in order to tell everyone how much she loves them.

In more than one episode, as the subjects began “actively dying” (in hospice parlance), the families who participated in “Time of Death” shut the bedroom door or asked the cameras to wait outside. The hesitation is understandable and yet vaguely disappointing. In still another episode, neither the camera nor the family members were present when the subject died; the camera is instead there when a relative arrives and discovers that this person died alone.

Most movingly, in episode 6, we meet Nicolle Kissee, a 19-year-old skin cancer patient whose swift decline left her in a fog of pain. Her younger sisters hover on the periphery; one is simply too frightened to join the family in Nicolle’s bedroom when the time comes. The Kissee family is the most open and expressive with their love and grief as they — and we — say goodbye to their daughter.

I watched all the episodes consecutively and came away exhausted, but I also came away with a sense of comfort that I still can’t quite describe. It was gratitude, in part, to the subjects and their families for letting the cameras in. “Time of Death” is vital and meaningful television; if you watch, I hope it gives you the same peace and understanding it gave me.

Funeral Consumer Tips, by Robert Falcon

FUNERAL CONSUMER TIPS FROM ROBERT FALCON

SOURCE: Robert Falcon's Facebook Timeline (October 30, 2013) and the
Funeral Consumers Alliance

"TIP : If you think funeral prices are high wait, until you get to the cemetery.

If your family has chosen to bury your loved one in a cemetery, the cost can be as little as $0 to as much as $100,000. How can this be possible?

Cemeteries are not the same when it comes to price or in some states regulation. So it is very easy for the rules of the game to be changed in the middle of it. You will find cemeteries vary from small family cemeteries, to church or non-profit cemeteries, National and State Veterans Cemeteries and Corporate Owned cemeteries. So how do you know who owns the cemetery? easy ...just ask?

So the basic strategy at a cemetery is to understand that spaces typically closer to a 'feature' (pond, tree, statue, etc) may be more expensive. There are mausoleums (single crypt, family crypt, private crypt to large buildings), lawn crypts ( a space with a glorified concrete container already in the ground). The next thing is to understand if you own the space or if you own the rights to be buried in a space? Many of the larger cemeteries will sell you 'interment rights' which means the cemetery owns the land and you have the right to be buried in the space.

Another consideration is wether the cemetery requires an outer container (gravebox, concrete liner, or vault) to be used. These outer containers are required by the cemetery for maintenance purposes and can add to the overall cost from $300 to as much as $ 40,000. I have encountered many cemeteries in 27 years that will use the term 'vault' when trying to sell this container, but when I ask "what their minimum requirement is?" they will say a gravebox or concrete liner is ok.

Opening and closing (digging the grave and closing the grave) cost can vary from $0-2,000 depending on the cemetery. Some cemeteries have contracts with particular grave services to and your are forced to use their service.

Many cemeteries will also sell monuments (gravestone, markers, memorials, headstone) and they may have some minimum requirements like flat markers only, bronze on granite, some may even have height and size restrictions. The important advice here is. If you are planning a funeral today for a loved one, leave buying a monument out of the discussion today. This is something that should be done in time but not a necessary immediate expense.

So my best strategies for saving at the cemetery.

1. If you are your loved one was a veteran, understand you have a grave space, opening and closing, grave liner and marker provided to you at no cost in a veterans cemetery.

2. If you are dealing with a immediate death. Purchase the items you need today- grave space, outer container, and opening and closing service. Understand the cemetery may have different fees for opening and closing based on weekday versus weekend service.

3. Buy the memorial later. A memorial will be the last thing you buy and the first thing you see every time you come to visit the cemetery. So take your time and shop around. You do not have to buy the memorial from the cemetery in most cases.

4. Understand that unlike a funeral home, a cemetery does not have to offer you a price list. Many cemeteries offer spaces based on location."

Facing Death Head On

From: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20131004_Facing_Death_Head_On.html#y95ksUTrRrkX02HP.99



Get-Well cards behind Mickey Hirsch, 61, is chronicling his dying days on facebook and has become a facebook sensation. He is termianlly ill with cancer. He is remodeler and has built his own casket (He calls it his hope chest) at his Forked River NJ home, Tuesday, September 17, 2013. ( Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer )
BARBARA LAKER, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
POSTED: Friday, October 4, 2013, 10:26 PM

MICKEY HIRSCH walked up to the counter at Home Depot as the store buzzed with do-it-yourselfers poring over tile, hardwoods, lights and faucets to spruce up their homes.
Hirsch asked a worker to saw slabs of pine. He had specific dimensions-four 25-by-78-inch sections, two 24-by-25-inch pieces."You making a cabinet?" the worker asked casually.

"No. I'm making my coffin," Hirsch replied.

The saw operator stared at Hirsch's sunken cheeks, hollow eyes and thin sprigs of fuzz hair. He looked uneasy, even horrified, as he took several steps back from Hirsch.

"Why would you do that?" he asked.

"Why wouldn't I? I'm a carpenter," said Hirsch, 61, a straight-talking fading fireball who has aged 20 years in two months from the cancer that is smothering his organs.

Other customers left the store excited about their next project.

Hirsch drove off, contemplating his last.

He took the wood to his neighbor's garage. His neighbor, Mike Tufano, helped him build a simple pine box. Then Hirsch's 17-year-old daughter, Erin, held the casket's handles (actually, garage-door handles) steady while Hirsch bolted them in tight. Perfect for pallbearers to grip.

It's unclear what Erin thinks of all this: She didn't return numerous phone calls from the Daily News. Hirsch's 26 year-old son, Matt, was taken aback.

"Only he would do that," Matt said. "He loves building and in his mind it gives him a little bit of closure.

"He's going above and beyond his call of duty," Matt added. "He's doing everything he can to help us."

Hirsch, who has lived in Northeast Philly most of his life, posted photos of his casket-in-the-making on Facebook, which made some friends uncomfortable. A few accused him of being morbid.

"So I asked them to send me some cards and I'd place them on top and I'd call it a hope chest," he said.

Hirsch received more than 900 cards, and his "hope chest" now sits in the living room of his modest 760-square-foot home in Forked River, N.J., like an eerie unfinished coffee table.

"In ways, it's heroic. In ways, it's kind of gross, but I give him a lot of credit," said longtime friend Penny Slakoff.

At a time when millions share triumphs, struggles and funny moments on social media, Hirsch is chronicling his life's end on Facebook, where he has almost 5,000 "friends" rooting for him. He claims to know or have met about 3,000 of them.

"Mickey likes to be the center of attention. He thrives on it," Slakoff said. "But if it makes the fight better for him, why not?"

Friends say he is inspiring those with failing health.

"He is 100 percent, no doubt in my mind, changing people's lives. His posts are real and raw," said Lisa Howser, who has known Hirsch for years and set up a GiveForward fundraising campaign for him.

"I'm terrified of death, but he taught me you face it with pride. Don't be ashamed. Don't hide. Get out there and live," she said.

Hirsch is sharing everything: The time he pulled his car over to the shoulder three times because he was so exhausted. His grueling chemo treatments, his weight loss, sleepless nights and scary temperature spikes.

"I do want to live. I do. But I'm making the most out of my death. I'm putting some meaning into it. I share these experiences so people are not scared to die," he said.

"I don't only accept my death. I embrace it," he added. "I have a psychotic lack of fear of death. Things are what they are. I won't let myself be nervous. What a useless emotion that is."

These days, Hirsch is unrecognizable to most friends who haven't seen him in awhile.

He says "hello," calling out their names, but they stare at him, mystified. If his voice doesn't tip them off, he has to tell them, "Yo. It's me - Mickey."

A year and a half ago, he packed 220 pounds on his 5-foot-10 frame. He had a full head of brown hair and could pass for at least 15 years younger. He dieted and trimmed down to an athletic 190 last August. He looked the best he had in years.

He now guzzles protein drinks and scarfs down as much food as he can, but it's hard to keep weight on. A few weeks ago, he dropped to a frail 150.

"On June 15th, I was a 61-year-old man who was like a strong 40-year-old who worked construction his whole life. Four weeks later I'm a 90-year-old man. No exaggeration," he said.

Hirsch grew up in the Bells Corner section of Northeast Philly, where he was a mischievous "Dennis the Menace"-type of kid who climbed out his bedroom window to land on and dent the roof of his dad's new Ford Fairlane, and threw rocks onto train tracks, waiting to see what happened.

A 1969 graduate of Northeast High School, he spent his formative years watching laborers build and remodel houses.

At 11, he earned $150 a week slapping together bologna-and-cheese sandwiches for construction workers.

"I had the instinct in my DNA to be in construction," said Hirsch, who has had several remodeling/handyman businesses over the years, mostly in the Philadelphia metro area.

He had two sons, Kevin and Matt, before he and his wife divorced in 1989. He had his daughter, Erin, in 1995, but separated from Erin's mom the next year. Erin's mom died on Christmas Day 2008 at the age of 44.

He has not been spared life's worst heartbreaks.

Kevin, who had a developmental disorder that gave him a "never-ending childhood," was 26 when he died of swine flu in November 2009.

"When you lose a child, you stand on the edge of an abyss about to fall in," he said. "I rose above it."

Hirsch spearheaded a campaign to urge everyone to get flu shots and has shuttled people back and forth to drugstores to get them.

But Hirsch admits he's "no angel."

In the mid 2000s, he was charged with several counts of deceptive-business practices, theft by receiving stolen property and related charges, mostly for taking deposit money and not finishing the jobs he promised.

Hirsch told a reporter that he was in North Carolina and his partner failed to do the work.

Hirsch pleaded guilty, was placed on five years' probation and ordered to pay restitution.

"I'm not making excuses. I was negligent and had bad judgment, but I didn't have criminal intent," he said.

"I'm a good human being, but I'm not a perfect citizen . . . It's one major blemish in my life. I'm as sorry as I can be.

"Whatever transgressions I committed, I want the last chapter of my life to be about doing good. I want to pay it forward. I want to atone for my sins."

Hirsch went to a doctor in June because he felt a dull pain in his upper mid-section between his ribs.

The doctor immediately sent him for tests. Blood work seemed good. Chest X-ray showed nothing. Then came the CT scan.

"I thought maybe I had acid reflux," he said. "I never ever thought cancer even though everyone on my mother's side of the family died of cancer."

The solemn-faced doctor told him to come to her office.

"I knew that didn't sound good," he said.

The cancer, which started in his pancreas, had spread to his stomach, liver and lungs. Doctors can't predict how much longer he'll live, but 80 percent of people with pancreatic cancer don't live longer than a year.

He told his daughter, Erin, that they would make the most of the time he has left, but deal with death head-on. So when his hair started to fall out on his pillow, Erin gave him a close-cropped haircut.

"She's a thousand times stronger than me. She lost two grandfathers, a mother, a brother and a dog in one year," he said.

That's why he fights to live. He wants to see Erin graduate from high school next June.

He's undergoing chemo, which he calls "an ungodly out-of-body inhumane suffering beyond comprehension. . . . One day before chemo I was a 35-year-old man who could run. The next I'm an old man who has trouble going up one step."

After six chemo treatments, Hirsch recently learned the tumors in his liver and pancreas have shrunk to half the size they were. Maybe the chemo bought him time, he said.

He injects a blood thinner into his "love handles" every day to prevent clots that could kill him.

He had no health insurance but Cooper University Hospital agreed to cover his chemo and medical care until December. He just found out Wednesday that he was approved for Medicaid. "Best day ever," he said, "at least in the last four months."

Void of bitterness, Hirsch doesn't ask why he has to die.

"There's no mystery to it," said Hirsch, who never smoked or drank. "It's just science and biology. I had a defective cell and it multiplied."

Despite support from his Facebook friends, he feels alone and posted that he wants a girlfriend/partner.

"I envy anyone in my situation who has a husband or wife or significant other in their life at this time," he said.

Hirsch continues to take on remodeling jobs with his son, Matt, even the same day as his chemo treatments.

"My son does 90 percent of the work. I do 90 percent of the talking," he said.

"I prefer dying in someone's back yard with a handful of broken concrete rather than in my living room sitting on the couch with a remote in my hand," he said.

His friends have helped raise money for him. Since August, the GiveForward campaign established by Lisa Howser has raised $6,700 to help pay for Hirsch's funeral and finish the headstone for his son, Kevin.

"Dying sucks," Hirsch said. "But I'm a dying guy who feels special."

Howser also helped organize a Mickey's Beef & Beer, slated for Oct. 18 at Paddy Whacks Pub in the Northeast.

Until then, Hirsch has preparations to make.

He recently shuffled into the office at Montefiore Cemetery in Jenkintown that dates back to 1910. His parents and grandparents are among thousands buried there.

He sat gingerly as if every bone radiated pain. As he spoke with cemetery directors, each breath seemed labored; his skin, an ashen gray.

Hirsch placed two photos - one of himself and one of Kevin - on the table. Erin helped pick them out. He wants each image etched into their gray granite gravestones.

He then opened a binder filled with photos of headstones and prepared to write the words for his.

"Do you like devoted dad or dedicated dad?" he asked a reporter.

"Devoted," the reporter replied. "Dedicated sounds more work-related."

He settled on this:

Edmond "Mickey" Hirsch

Devoted Dad

Craftsman

And Friend to All

Feb. 6, 1952-

Father of Kevin, Matthew & Erin

He leaned forward in his chair, staring at the words on paper and smiled. He then walked across patches of rutted grass to Kevin's fresh-looking grave under an immense maple tree at the edge of the cemetery near a baseball field.

"Kevin loved baseball," he said. "I will be buried next to him."

The cemetery marketing director told him he's courageous.

"It's not courage," Hirsch said. "It's just the way you're supposed to do it."

Up to the end, Hirsch will face death his way.

He has squirreled away Ambien, a sedative used to treat insomnia.

"I have 30 of them. I have to make sure that's enough to kill me," he said.

"Whatever I have to take, I will. I don't want to end my life in diapers, helpless, unable to function.

"I want to have control over the end of my life. I want to be able to say goodbye."

How to Make it Dusty in One Minute...

From: http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/10/01/final-homework-assignment-from-dearly-departed-teacher-will-bring-you-to-tears/

Rachel Tackett 5 days ago




Death is indeed the final departure, but that does not mean that the echoes of our lives can’t have some lasting effects on the lives of those who survive us. One Japanese school teacher understood that he was nearing the end of his time on earth and did what he could to dispel the certain grief of his beloved students the only way he knew how. He gave them one last homework assignment.

Here’s a translation of the assignment as pictured above:

Final homework assignment

No due date

Please be happy.

By the time you are ready to turn in this assignment, I will probably be in heaven.

Don’t rush your report. Feel free to take your time.

But someday, please turn to me and say “I did it. I’ve become happy.”

I’ll be waiting.

According to the Twitter post that shared this heartwarming homework assignment, the teacher who gave it has since passed away, but what an awesome impression to leave on the students that he must have cared for so very much. Now, please excuse me while I find a fresh box of tissues. These tears refuse to stop.

Source: Ajajashita (Japanese)

Image: kandoh_hanashi on Twitter

Should have some plastic hammers...

Ladies and Gentleman, This Guy Wins the Obit-ernet.

Same-Sex Marriage and Death

Same-Sex Marriage and Death


Article from: http://www.calebwilde.com

"Today’s guest post is written by Chad Harris. This from Chad: I’m a graduate student at Hood College in Maryland, where I am pursuing coursework in thanatology for eventual certification as a thanatologist and death educator. Upon graduating (hopefully in May!), It’s my hope to work with military families and veterans, a passion I first discovered while working within the Department of Veterans Affairs health-care system.

I also have a master’s degree in social work from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Central Arkansas."

"What if you were told that your spouse cannot be buried next to you?

Or that you’ll have to pay a large tax bill upon your spouse’s death that your neighbors, who have been married a shorter time than you and your loved one were, won’t have to?

Though the tide has begun to turn, these are among the struggles that same-sex couples have had to face for years, and the hurdles which these couples have had to face serve as a reminder to all of us that with the inevitability of death, we have to strive to make our end-of-life wishes are known and that they can be fully carried out.

Imagine you get a call from your spouse’s sister that your loved one has taken a turn for the worse at the hospital, and the doctors expect them to die very soon. You rush to the hospital, but find that not only will the doctors not tell you what’s going on, but you are barred from entering the room where your partner of 25 years lay dying. For many, this heart-wrenching scenario was all too real until 2011, when the federal government issued a directive that all hospitals that receive federal aid must allow people to designate those who can visit or speak for them in the hospital. Sadly, as recently as this year, there have been cases where individuals have had those rights infringed upon by individual hospitals.





While the movement for same-sex marriage has gained ground on a state-by-state level, with 13 states, the District of Columbia, and several federally recognized Native American tribes all issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, there were until recently many hurdles on the federal level – and the dust is far from settled in Washington. Add to this the states that have passed laws expressly forbidding same-sex marriage, and you’re potentially adding layer upon layer of struggle on top of the grief someone experiences at the death of someone who has stood by them for years.


Even as the United States Supreme Court ruled that the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) – passed in 1996 and defining legal marriage as between one man and one woman – unconstitutional in June, the picture for same-sex couples became even murkier. Suddenly, depending on which part of the federal government you asked, you were either entitled to benefits or you weren’t. The same week that DOMA was ruled on by the Supreme Court, the Department of Defense began providing equal benefits to same-sex couples, including death benefits.


Among these was the right for same-sex spouses of those eligible to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. However, the majority of the remaining national cemeteries in the United States are overseen by the Department of Veterans Affairs. It wasn’t until the beginning of September that the VA was directed to begin offering all the same benefits to same-sex couples that others had been entitled to for years, including the right to be buried in a national cemetery operated by the VA’s National Cemetery Administration. In fact, before that directive from the Department of Justice, same-sex couples had to apply for special waivers for burial – and only one had ever been granted. With such dissonance between two parts of the same government, there are no doubt still hurdles to climb and red tape to cut!


Also, in late August, the IRS announced that it would treat same-sex spouses married in states that recognize their marriages for tax purposes, even if the couple officially resided in a state that either does not recognize or officially bans same-sex marriages. These couples can now file jointly, and are entitled to all the same federal tax benefits other married couples are.


Though there have obviously been significant steps forward for same-sex couples in the last few months, the recency of these decisions may still lead to a great deal of confusion for many, and the pace and inconsistency of these changes highlights the fact that, regardless of legal marital status, it remains vitally important for everyone – especially same-sex couples — to discuss end-of-life issues with their loved ones. Do not simply assume that because you hold a marriage license and are extended certain benefits, you’ll be extended those benefits and courtesies across the board, regardless of where you are in the United States. Communication has long been cited as an important component of any long-lasting, loving relationship. Put those skills to use. Talk to each other about your wishes and write them down.


Avoiding talking about death and dying doesn’t postpone the inevitable, and especially in cases such as the ones mentioned above where the law has been rapidly evolving, it can make things even more difficult. You’ve been partners throughout life, supporting one another no matter the hurdles along the way. Don’t shrink from that teamwork now. Do all that you can to help prepare one another for all of life’s events – especially the ones at the end of it."

From the "Morbid Anatomy" Blog: Anthropomorphic Victorian Taxidermist Walter Potter...

Morbid Anatomy: Anthropomorphic Victorian Taxidermist Walter Potte...:


Mind you...this is *Victorian* Taxidermy. Likely not the preferred artwork for all...



For more information, go to http://www.walterpottertaxidermy.com

From the "Morbid Anatomy" Blog: The Ossuary at St. Leonard's Church, Hythe, Kent, England

Morbid Anatomy: The Ossuary at St. Leonard's Church, Hythe, Kent, ...:




All photos © Joanna Ebenstein; click on image to larger images; To see additional images, click here.

What is the All Souls Cottage Anyhow?

If you found out that you were dying today, what would you do?

If you were told you likely won't be here a year from now, what would you want? How would you prepare? What would you like your last impression to be, the last time your loved ones saw you?

We spend so much of our time as a society and a community preparing for each soul's birth into the world, but have fallen into a bubble, we are easily led, bullied almost, as to how one should take the leaving of each soul from here. How we should leave. How we should grieve. Consult the professionals. Look up the right etiquette. Why?

I am a psychiatric LPN, currently training to be a soul midwife, someone that helps the transition of a spirit out of life as much as a birth doula would help one come in. When you think on it, our mental processes and what we can handle in life is very similar as the processes we handle in death. We all have our thresholds. We all have our limits. We have a place where we wish we didn't have to make these choices anymore. This is where "others" come in. The ones happy to help you make those tough decisions. In dying, it is often medical professionals and our bewildered loved ones. In death, it is usually the funeral industry and the bereaved loved ones. The professional always coupled with the vulnerable. Listen to the words that they use to soften the blows, to gently coax you with soothing ideas.

But let's strip all that away, shall we? Just for a moment. Taking away other's opinions, how would you like to face your final moments in life? What would you like to have done for you to keep you comfortable, to keep all the good emotions and memories close? How would you like to be remembered when you die? What kind of ceremonies or memorials would you like to have? What of the legacy of your memory? And sure, what of the money? I sure wouldn't want my insurance money paying for my funeral. It's supposed to be for my family. Death is supposed to be about the family.

These are difficult things for many to think about. I will admit myself to being a thanaphobic. I am afraid of dying, and of the Unknown, about the What After. I am afraid of leaving my loved ones behind. I share these fears with many. As I go about my path, I keep this in mind. I strive to rejoice in people's individuality, their own paths. Making any transition their own.

There is the concept of "The Good Death" stretching back to the Victorians up until our perceptions changed with wars. Up to then, the goal was dying around family and friends, imparting sacred moments, having them take care of the dying and the ones who have died. Bathing, dressing, vigiling, remembering their "last words". Wearing mementos. Setting up a last portrait. This was all a part of the dying and grieving process back then. This is, what I believe we need more of now in a time where dying is a business. Death is an industry.

I am not trying to sell anything. I will not say what is or isn't a good way to die. I will not say you should suffer dying with grace and dignity. Such personal decisions these are. What I am doing is raising awareness, bringing forth information, hopefully inspiring confidence that someone can make choices that they feel comfortable with, and will not be forced into having the end of life they would have never wanted for themselves or their loved ones not for the sake of money, peer pressure, or politeness toward society. 

Someday, I hope to offer my services (as a service, not as a career or business) as a soul midwife, advocating for you to make your transitions the way you would like. To keep such important decisions yours. To help you navigate though the nebulous options.

This blog isn't so much about death, but really it's about life- making every moment count, especially the last ones. To be here and present. Making as many as people feel as welcomed and loved when they shed their skins as they did when they were given those very same skins. It will have some deep thinking, some controversy, some advice, and some humor- maybe a history lesson here and there.

And it may give you a place to face our fears together.

CNBC- "Death, It's a Living"

A documentary that debuted just a few months ago, a look at the funeral industry business.

Season 2, Episode 29 Death: It's a Living(43 min)

CNN & Funeral Consumer Group Tells All

From the Funeral Consumer Alliance:

CNN & Funeral Consumer Group Tells All

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o15rDQEJnkY

The Ideal Death Show

The ideal death show

Article in today’s Spectator by Clarissa Tan.

I am in a yurt, talking about death. Everyone is seated in a circle, and I am the next-to-last person to share. The last of the summer sun is shining through the entrance. At one end is a display coffin of biodegradable willow — there’s also tea and coffee, and coffin-shaped biscuits with skeleton-shaped icing.

‘I am a reporter,’ I say. ‘I’ve come to cover this event. But don’t worry, I won’t report what you share in this yurt. Also, I have cancer. I have been in treatment for one year, but now the treatment is over. I take one day at a time.’

There is silence, then hugs. I thought I would cry, but I don’t. Instead, I feel acceptance and a strange kernel of satisfaction. For the rest of my time here I am Death Girl, shrouded in drama.

The yurt is on the grounds of a beachfront hotel in Bournemouth. I am attending the Good Funeral Awards, meant to honour the best in the business. Running up to the awards dinner there are a series of activities such as the ‘death cafe’ I am participating in, where people mingle to mull mortality. Death cafes are now taking place all over the world, as Mark Mason has written in this magazine, but the weekend also will feature a number of speakers on subjects such as the use of LSD in the care of the terminally ill, memorial tattoos and what to wear for your final journey. An award will go to the embalmer of the year — a miniature coffin in the style of an Oscar.

I arrived expecting a weekend of black comedy. This is what I find, but there’s something else — a sincerity and straightforwardness that takes me by surprise. Many of the attendees are involved in the death business, as coffin makers and corpse tailors and funeral celebrants, because they feel our society does not pay enough attention to death. We avoid it, plaster over it, try to pretty it up and Botox it out of existence.

Even old age is taboo. As we all live longer and longer, so our actors and actresses, politicians and pop stars get younger every decade.

‘Why do we do this, when death is something that happens to all of us?’ lamented one woman.

Why, indeed? I’d done it too, until I discovered my illness. Then I thought of little else — about the fragility of life, the permanence of death. Friends sent me amulets, prayers, ginseng, ‘positive energy’. My heart opened, and something flooded in. What if death were not disconnection, but connection? What if we were just going to meet our Maker? Then death would not be severance, but reunion. It is not at all a fashionable point of view, but I believe in God — and a good one, at that. The belief fills me with healing, wonderful hope. It is the hope not that I will live. It is the hope that I am loved.

The awards dinner is actually a happy affair. The great and good of the funeral industry quaff champagne and exchange jokes. Opposite me at my table is a woman who runs a funeral company. She is flanked by her husband, who also manages the business, and her brother, who is up for gravedigger of the year. The actress Pam St Clement, whose EastEnders character Pat Butcher died on-screen in January last year, is here to present the prizes. Everyone claps and cheers. In the midst of death, we are in life.

It’s a fine line between the two. Looking at the people around me, women in evening dress and men in black tie, it strikes me that death can be a glamorous affair. I wonder if, working with funerals and the bereaved, one can also be too attached to the idea of death, taking refuge in it. That’s another thing I’ve realised, too. Twelve months of ill health, hospitals, medicines — while they were tough, they also gave me an identity. I am a journalist and death gave me a story.

I realise that although I am frightened of dying, there’s a also a tiny part of me that’s always been scared of living. The finality of death is hard. The uncertainties of life can be harder.

After the dinner, the winners and losers of the Good Funeral Awards get up to dance. I peek into the ballroom bespeckled with lights. What will they play? ‘Born to Die’? ‘Forever Young’? Perhaps ‘I Will Survive’? Or ‘Stayin’ Alive’? I decide I’ll take a cab back to my bed-and-breakfast and watch Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow on telly. Perhaps this is not the time for me to dance with death.

This Woman’s Obituary is the Best Thing You’ll Read Today

From: http://www.viralnova.com/womans-amazing-obituary/

September 12, 2013 Stories

When Mary A. “Pink” Mullaney passed away on September 1st, she left behind 6 children and 17 grandchildren. “Pink” was so adored by her family that they wrote the most amazing obituary for her. Read it, it’ll put a smile on your face:


If you’re about to throw away an old pair of pantyhose, stop. Consider: Mary Agnes Mullaney (you probably knew her as “Pink”) who entered eternal life on Sunday, September 1, 2013. Her spirit is carried on by her six children, 17 grandchildren, three surviving siblings in New “Joisey”, and an extended family of relations and friends from every walk of life. We were blessed to learn many valuable lessons from Pink during her 85 years, among them: Never throw away old pantyhose. Use the old ones to tie gutters, child-proof cabinets, tie toilet flappers, or hang Christmas ornaments.





Also: If a possum takes up residence in your shed, grab a barbecue brush to coax him out. If he doesn’t leave, brush him for twenty minutes and let him stay.


Let a dog (or two or three) share your bed. Say the rosary while you walk them.


Go to church with a chicken sandwich in your purse. Cry at the consecration, every time. Give the chicken sandwich to your homeless friend after mass.





Go to a nursing home and kiss everyone. When you learn someone’s name, share their patron saint’s story, and their feast day, so they can celebrate. Invite new friends to Thanksgiving dinner. If they are from another country and you have trouble understanding them, learn to “listen with an accent.”


Never say mean things about anybody; they are “poor souls to pray for.”


Put picky-eating children in the box at the bottom of the laundry chute, tell them they are hungry lions in a cage, and feed them veggies through the slats.


Correspond with the imprisoned and have lunch with the cognitively challenged.





Do the Jumble every morning.


Keep the car keys under the front seat so they don’t get lost.


Make the car dance by lightly tapping the brakes to the beat of songs on the radio.


Offer rides to people carrying a big load or caught in the rain or summer heat. Believe the hitchhiker you pick up who says he is a landscaper and his name is “Peat Moss.”


Help anyone struggling to get their kids into a car or shopping cart or across a parking lot.


Give to every charity that asks. Choose to believe the best about what they do with your money, no matter what your children say they discovered online.


Allow the homeless to keep warm in your car while you are at Mass.


Take magazines you’ve already read to your doctors’ office for others to enjoy. Do not tear off the mailing label, “Because if someone wants to contact me, that would be nice.”


In her lifetime, Pink made contact time after time. Those who’ve taken her lessons to heart will continue to ensure that a cold drink will be left for the overheated garbage collector and mail carrier, every baby will be kissed, every nursing home resident will be visited, the hungry will have a sandwich, the guest will have a warm bed and soft nightlight, and the encroaching possum will know the soothing sensation of a barbecue brush upon its back.


Above all, Pink wrote — to everyone, about everything. You may read this and recall a letter from her that touched your heart, tickled your funny bone, or maybe made you say “huh?”


She is survived by her children and grandchildren whose photos she would share with prospective friends in the checkout line: Tim (wife Janice, children Timmy, Joey, T.J., Miki and Danny); Kevin (wife Kathy, children Kacey, Ryan, Jordan and Kevin); Jerry (wife Gita, children Nisha and Cathan); MaryAnne; Peter (wife Maria Jose, children Rodrigo and Paulo); and Meg (husband David Vartanian, children Peter, Lily, Jerry and Blase); siblings Anne, Helen, and Robert; and many in-laws, nieces, nephews, friends and family too numerous to list but not forgotten.


Pink is reunited with her husband and favorite dance and political debate partner, Dr. Gerald L. Mullaney, and is predeceased by six siblings.

Why Do We Do It?

        Why do we do everything to make a loved one's entry into this world so wonderful, unique, and special- yet are content being talked into pre-boxed (so to speak), impersonal, McFuneral when a loved one leaves this world?

        Is it that it's too hard? Too nebulous? Too locked into doing what our moms and dads did for their loved ones? When does our impressions start about what dying and death means, and how we are supposed to handle it?

I was eight when my Aunt died, and this was my first 'death in the family'. I had no experience in such loss other than television or classmates with big families. Our family was small, contained.  We did not see death directly often, nor was it even talked about outside a whisper, perhaps as a Halloween costume. Even to ask if an elderly person was dying, or old enough to die was worthy of getting punished. Pets simply disappeared. I didn't even know what a funeral home was, let alone what happens in one, or what a viewing was supposed to be, until I went to Aunt D's.

The first thing I was told after my mother told me that my aunt was dead was not about what I understood of the sentence "Your aunt died last night.” Rather it was “We are still having Easter dinner at Grandma's. Don’t talk to your grandmother about anything. Don’t talk to your cousins [my aunt’s son and daughter]. Be quiet and stay out of the way of the adults". Yes, we did have Easter dinner, in uncomfortable silence, with just a hint of 'plans' being discussed among the adults...funeral plans- but just called 'plans'. What I found out later was from newspaper articles and my mother's jerk boyfriend at the time. My aunt had some drinks, drove home, never made it. My mother was the car behind her- she was the one my aunt was out having drinks with. She was following her home in that old 80's way of following someone home to make sure that they got there safely. She was the one who called the ambulance.  Just imagine the family dynamics under the surface. Imagine it still, always just under the surface.

Pictures of my Aunt were put away right after the funeral, only to be looked at secretly by us kids when no one was around for years. When me and my cousin got ‘caught’ once, about year later, re-reading letters that we children left for Diane’s casket as a goodbye, that we promised would bring fish we caught to her grave. That I would take care of the clock my mother gave me from my Aunts now empty apartment. We were yelled at for going into those things without permission. 

There were many facets to how it affected me- for one it was my first impression of death, and my aunt was treated as if she had gone on a walkabout indefinitely instead of that she had died. The viewing I went to showed someone in a box who looked nothing like my aunt, wearing clothes she never would have worn in life, (for good reason, it was actually an outfit of my mother's). The funeral directors had gotten the makeup wrong, covering the accident marks, it looked like a mannequin, taking the detachment a further step.

        I was not to go to the funeral, it being ‘not for children’, even though the viewing was okay. My cousins we allowed to go to the viewing, so it was okay for me to go...required, actually. They did not go to the funeral, and since no other kids were going to be there, I shouldn't be. I was now required not to be there. That was the thinking. I was sent to school as normal instead. My teacher saw the obit, pulled me aside and asked me to not mention anything since it may scare other kids.  I essentially had a self grieving process, since no one wished to talk about death and grieving with me. My mother could not share her own emotions and was traumatized, my grandparents just lost their 28 year old child, so I was rather left to my own devices in figuring things out. 

I had been told by classmates that a soul stays on earth for three days after death, so I was convinced that my aunt would return as a zombie. Every sound and creak in the apartment was my aunt returning to take someone to heaven with her, I was convinced. I did not sleep for three nights after Easter that year. Then had nightmares about the viewing for years after. 

        There were also a lot of cakes post funeral showing up at my grandmothers house, and I called them "Going to Heaven Cakes", as if it was a going away party, we all got gifts, things from my Aunt's house, my Aunt got lots and lots of flowers...again a misunderstanding (or a child’s pure understanding) of how death was being treated around me. Then I was told it was cruel to my cousins to think of it like that.

        But a going away party I think would have been more my Aunt's personality. She was full of life. A bold personality. A modern Huntress. She got a funeral that was respectful, traditional, but lifeless and not filled with my Aunts being. Perhaps this was the seed, a small thing buried in the concrete of my mind for over 30 years before sprouting into the path I've only recently started...

Chinese American Funerals

Fascinating (if brief) look at a Chinese American funeral service...

Thanks to The Daily Undertaker...

American Chinese Funeral - Documentary by Sylvana Chau

Unearthed Catacombs

From Abcnews.com

Unearthed Catacombs in Rome; Jeweled Skull Beards...

This guy is wearing more jewelry than the entire worth of my Ford Fiesta...