September 1999 my dear friend Linda lost her beloved husband suddenly and tragically in the middle of the night without warning.  We met in seminary and now Steve was a priest.  They had two small beautiful children.   One day I heard her beautiful voice on my voice mail wishing me a happy wedding anniversary and a few short days later another friend’s voice informed me that Fr. Steve had died in the night.  Even though I lived in Canada and they in Connecticut, my husband and I left immediately to attend the funeral.  My heart broke completely when I saw Linda enter the Church for the service.  Such an image of loss, I carry with me always.  How can such a young person who was just beginning his priestly life be taken from us, leaving behind a wife and two beautiful children?  I don’t know those kinds of answers.

When I returned home, I knew I had to do something with my grief.   I could not be a physical help to Linda since we now lived in different countries.   We did continue our email relationship soon after his death, but I could not be there physically for her. I could not make her soup, or come and do her laundry, or anything practical.  I wanted to do something, so I decided to plant tulips.   With each bulb, I planted and prayed for all of them.  In the following spring, the tulips came up, and I prayed some more. They gave me joy every spring when they came up and I remembered Fr. Steve and Linda and their love for each other and the gifts that love gave to those who knew them. I recalled my little conversations with Steve and remembered what a gift he was to us all in Seminary.  All too soon the tulips would wither especially if the spring was too hot.   I did live in that home ten more springs, and each spring brought me memories of Fr. Steve, Linda and the children.   I have since moved from that home, but I always carry them in my heart.

I know that Tulips are not indigenous plants to North America. I did not consider that at the time. I am not calling on folks to plant invasive plants that will destroy the ecosystem as we know it or as it should be.  What I am saying is that we can plant, as an act of memorialization for loved ones lost to us through death.  It need not be in the place where they rest.  It need not be something we pay lots of money for.  It needs to be from the heart.  It needs to be something for us to remember that person, a reminder that they are still a part of our life, even in death

 When my mother-in-law died, I did not know much about the death care industry.  My husband and I were left alone in the casket room.  I liked this flashy metal casket which I thought would suit Mama’s personality.  When the family service counselor came back into the room to make the sale, I asked her about that metal one.  The counselor said, “You know that this one forms a hermetical seal?”  She looked horrified, and I felt horrified.  We went with a nice wooden casket which turned out to have matched my father-in-law’s. 

In one year we will bury 90, 272 tons of steel, a nonrenewable resource, in the form of caskets each year. (green burial stats) Other precious metals including copper, brass, even gold ends up in the ground as well.  Why are all these precious resources going into the ground?   Is it because we have a need to show our wealth, or our love for the person we have lost?  Is it because the price presented to us is a medium price on the price list?  Do we long for a little color or flash, like I did for my mother-in-law?  I suspect most of us are not thinking about resources at the time we are planning the funeral of a loved one.  I think those who choose this option do so for price or because they assume the body will be more protected or preserved in a metal coffin.  I suspect those who choose more precious metals are thinking of the coffin as a casket, or a treasure box. The amount of money spent on our beloved at the time of death in no way reflects the amount of love we have in our hearts.  I do not judge.  Many of us do not think things through when we are in the midst of grief.

Metal caskets will not preserve the body of our loved one. Metal will rust, even in a vault.  Embalming won’t preserve a body indefinitely.  A funeral home cannot claim that embalming will preserve a body for more that five days.  In some cases, a body will be preserved longer, but no one can make that claim legally.  Metal sealing caskets won’t stop, and may even speed up the process of decomposition – especially a sealer casket.  Metal will not keep out the elements as metal rusts and falls apart.  Just think for a moment what might happen to a body hermetically sealed into a metal box, and add the process of decomposition.  Take my advice, and move on to a more natural material.

Let us look to the construction of the casket itself.  View this video at  3:13.  Pay attention to the bottom of the casket. The video narrator wants you to notice how they are reinforcing the casket and not the grooves.    Check the image of a platter I received at my wedding.  You might notice a certain similarity.  The casket company knows that the body will decompose   Look at the evidence in the construction of these coffins.  The companies make them knowing the body will decompose.  Do not believe anyone who tells you anything will preserve the body for any length of time.  In my opinion, metal caskets are not the best option for burial.  We have the right, by federal law, to purchase coffins, or shrouds anywhere we choose and not be penalized at the funeral home.  Check the Midwest Green Burial Society Resource page to check out some of your options.

Be kind to the earth in all things great and small

Secret Shopping #3

I prepared to secret shop by calling Josh Slocum of the Funeral Consumers Alliance and we came up with a plan. Because a family has talked funerals all the time and  were very conscious being kind to the earth, I wanted to shop for a simple, natural funeral.  I decided that I would be shopping for my mother who was not ready to use funeral home services, but was interested in looking at the services of funeral homes in the area. I was ready.  When I got to the funeral home the funeral director gave me right away a price list, fulfilling the FTC Funeral Rule. 

Basic Fee was $2,215.00.  This includes:
Time spent with funeral director and staff making arrangement for the funeral, consultations with the family and clergy, sheltering of remains, preparation/filling out of necessary notices, certificate, permits, obtaining authorizations/consents and coordinating with others involved with the funeral such as the cemetery, crematory and others, overhead expenses relative to the facility such as insurance cost, maintenance and utility, expenses, administrative and equipment.  This fee for our Basic Service of Funeral Director and Staff will be added to the total cost of the funeral arrangements you select.  This fee is already included in our charges for Direct Cremation, Immediate Burial, Forwarding of Remains and to Another Funeral Home, Receiving of Remains from Another Funeral Home, and Anatomical Gift.

Most businesses include overhead cost in the pricing of their services.  It’s what we expect we are paying for when we go get our haircut or go out for dinner.  We expect that within the price of the service or item we are paying  for the upkeep of the establishments, and the salary of those who are serving us.  In funeral homes, we pay this basic fee on top of the other services and products we need and use.  This basic fee we cannot negotiate or refuse according to law, which is why we need to shop around before hand to see what we are willing to pay for the services we need for our loved ones.  To me, this Basic Service Fee is a lot to pay for sheltering remains and filling out paperwork and calling the clergy and cemetery. 

Let’s look at those services that already include the basic service price: 

Forwarding of Remains to Another Funeral Home ($2,250.00
Receiving of Remains From Another Funeral Home ($1725.00)
Immediate Burial ($1725.00) (with a purchase of a casket from Funeral Home)
Immediate Burial ($1725.00) (with casket provided by the purchaser.)[This is great.  I have found other funeral homes offer a discount on the price of the casket when you purchase through them.  This in effect is a charge for purchasing your own coffin or shroud.  According to law, we have the right to bring our own, casket or shroud to the Funeral Home and they not allowed to charge you for that. Other funeral homes get around that by giving a discount for their caskets if you purchase through them.  I give this funeral home high points for respecting this law in this manner.]
Anatomical Gift  ($1365.00)

He then took me into the casket room.  I admit, I have always found that room very interesting.  Maybe it’s the artist in me-I like function form.  Here, he was very candid about vaults and informed me that vaults were not necessarily about protection and that he would be more than happy to sell me the lowest end vault because they were a cemetery requirement, not one required by law.  He showed me a vault he used for Jewish burials. It was a plain cement vault with a hole in it to allow the elements to come in contact with the body.  The Funeral Director told me the casket room was set up by the manufactures of the caskets, but I have to wonder. Caskets are traditionally an item that provides funeral homes with a good profit.  This casket room was beautifully laid out.  The most expensive caskets were located at the front of the room and the more modest caskets in the back.  He was very open to use an inexpensive cremation casket for my mother, and I did not feel pressured into purchasing a more expensive coffin. I made it clear we were not interested in embalming, but that we wanted a visitation in the church. Unfortunately, he said that if I wanted a visitation or wake for my mom, that would mean embalming.

Now lets look at the other charges that would pertain to the funeral I was shopping for, a simple funeral with very little extravagance:

Cosmetology and Casketing ($225.00)
Hairdressing and Refrigeration Non-embalmed[what I like to call a regular body] ($100.00/day)
[By the way that is what sheltering remains is all about and should already be included in the Basic Service Fee, but would be added to the price of the Basic Service Fee if we did not embalm.]
The casket he showed me $900.00 [there were a few, I am using an average price.]
Transfer of remains to the funeral home ($310.00) 
Hearse ($360.00) and a $2.50 charge per mile over 15 miles for all vehicles.

For the simple funeral my mother wants the cost would be over $4000.00 and with mileage  and other items we had not considered maybe closer to $5000.00 when all was said and done.  All she and those like her want is to remain natural in death, and to be buried without all the falderal in so many conventional funerals.  Overall, this funeral director was courteous, kind, and very open to working with us, but not as far as having a natural body in a funeral with an open coffin, which is too bad.  His was a very good law abiding funeral home, I just found the prices to be too high.  Many more people are becoming interested in simpler funerals.  When the market changes, maybe the industry will change along with them.  I have heard that in places with access to green burial, funeral homes are more likely to work with families who make these kinds of requests.  We have not even looked into the cemetery charges yet.  That will come later.

Today is ten years since my father-in-law, Mile Vujadinov, died.  I miss him very much.  My children never met him, but we tell them stories about him all the time.  He was a giant among men. Tata (Serbian for daddy) was imprisoned for three years for trying to defect from communist Yugoslavia, enduring many humiliations during that time.  After his final escape, Tata became a welder by reading a book about welding on his way to Australia.   He apprenticed as a blacksmith so he understood metal, but it was by reading this book that he learned how to weld.  What makes this story even more fantastic was that he never went to school because his family was too poor to afford proper shoes. By the time of his death Tata could speak five languages.  As you can see from the picture, he loved to dance.  I miss him.  Tata’s death was the first death in which I had any first hand experience with the death care industry.  We had no plan at the time of his death, so we did what people do – we did our best.

Saturday we met, prayed and remembered Tata in the church.  We are Orthodox Christians, and we remember the death of our loved ones all the time. We make and serve a sweet wheat dish, zito or koliva.  Basically zito reminds us in death, there is life.  We make it to remind ourselves of the resurrection, and the sweetness of the life-giving tomb.  What I find so interesting is that there are so many different ways to make this dish. I think it is so touching that in death and grief, we serve this sweet dish to remind us not to stay too long in the bitterness, because there will be sweetness again.

Even though I have a tradition that has that allows me to have time set aside to grieve and remember, I think we all can choose to do the same.  For those of us who have lost someone we love, it is good and fitting to remember them in ways that make sense to us.  Why not have a mini-memorial on a big anniversary to tell stories to the younger generation?  It is through the stories that they live in us.  I know stories about my great-great-grandfather and mother and I never met them, but to me they are alive to me in those stories.  Let us feel free to take the time, to remember those who we love and who have gone before us in ways that are meaningful for us.