Some of you might remember that I drive a school bus. No one is as surprised as I am at how much I love driving a bus. If I could handle a lock down in a federal prison for women while visiting the general population, I could handle driving a school bus filled with wildly creative children. The truth is I more than just handle the bus, I truly love the adventure every day. From time to time I get to l listen to the narrative play of the younger passengers. Last year, I heard, “And then Jesus comes down and says, ‘You have lied for the last time.’ ” This particular fragment of narrative play might go down as my all-time favourite. Recently, I heard one of my little ones say, “They are all dead and then the principal comes out and says…” I never got to hear what the principal said, but it got me thinking about narrative play when we were kids. Perhaps I have always been a bit creepy, but we played funeral with the neighborhood kids. We’d sing songs like, “Mary is dead now, and no one knows why”. My grandparents found it a bit disturbing, but we had fun. I wonder how many countless times we ended the story with “and he died” because we did not know how to end a story. It seemed a simple and effective way to move on to the next narrative we wanted to explore. As children, my sister and I had experience with death. My grandmother died when I was seven years old. The fact was we did not understand what it meant to die. We did not understand the tragic nature of death and its finality in this world. We played about death, I believe as a way of dealing with death – trying to figure it out. Narrative play dealing with the idea of death helped us understand what death was about. Sure, it might have disturbed the adults who understood all too well what death meant, but I am ever grateful that my sister and I were given the opportunity to explore death as kids and in a kid way.
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One of my favourite comedies of all time is “Some Like It Hot”. I just love all the zaniness. During the drinking scene while Sugar chips away at ice lamenting her life she says, “Quarter of a century – makes a girl think.” Well last week I turned fifty. That really does make a girl think. I have been quite reflective about this particular birthday. It was not as difficult as thirty or forty, so perhaps I am growing up after all. I have thought long and hard about what the next part of my life will look like and what steps I can take for better health and longer life. For a few years now, I have been making small, but significant changes to my life for the sake of better health. I have lost a substantial amount of weight. I have a Fitbit, and while it is not perfect, it does help me monitor my activity. I need measurable data to look at and see what is going on. I seemed to have stalled in this particular aspect of my journey, and so on my birthday I joined a gym. Friday I go to make a plan that fits me so that I can make more changes for my better health.
Physical health is not my only concern. I am also concerned about spiritual health and things bring me into a fuller life and more in tuned with my spiritual perspective. I want to let go of things and patters that do not work for me and embrace what I know will bring me closer to what I know will bring me joy and those around me. Sure, when I was single and had no children, I could set more time aside for my spiritual life. Now at fifty, and in the thick of raising children and taking care of my mother, my spiritual life needs strengthening, and that takes effort and creativity. Spirituality also carries with it those things that bring me more alive, that connect me more to who I am. This is not some deep or airy-fairy thing. What I mean is that I need to continue to align my life and make good use of my gifts and talents and nurture that which I have been given. One of my great joys in life is creating. I love to create all kinds of things. At forty, I realized I was an artist. I knew that as a mom with wee ones I could not continue to work in clay. Clay takes too much time and requires a lot of equipment. I started to photograph. It was portable and in the beginning of the twenty-first century, easy to come by. Throughout that decade I added writer to that list. I had to first allow myself to embrace this aspect of who I am. As a person living with dyslexia, who all throughout my education struggled with academic writing and spelling, who was told over and over again that I could not write – had to finally allow myself to write from the heart. I will continue to write through this decade. I hope to finish this death book and figure out what kind of format this will take. For me, I know this is just another wild adventure. As my dad always told me life is an adventure, not a problem to be solved. I look forward to embracing what comes my way in the future. I hope that living well – with truth and joy – I will leave my part of the world a better place. The funeral market place is starting to change at least in the Chicagoland area. Funeral homes are seeing a decline in business due to the changing of attitudes of Americans towards death care and the real-estate market. Funeral homes are closing and in some cases consolidating. The desperate move few years back by the industry has done little to stave off the change in the market. By requiring the citizenry to hire them has not helped the death care industry in the Chicagoland area grow or remain steady. Funeral homes are closing. Much like the railroads at the turn of the last century who did not know they were in the transportation industry - the death care industry does not know it is part of the end of life industry. They think they are part of the embalming industry. This changing industry no longer follows the paths set down by the last generation. The larger death care industry has grown to include the return of family lead funerals and the rise of cremation. The current death care industry in this state has not let it sink in that the market can no longer sustain the older model. It can no longer keep raising the price of goods and services for a full embalmed body funeral while not making changes that allow the consumer to choose what he or she wants in an end of life ceremony.
As the US outlook on death changes, the market must change along with it. Change in markets other than the death care industry happens all the time. Service providers make changes to meet the needs and wants of the consumer. The problem with the death care industry is that they have an idea what a “traditional” funeral in the US must look like. These “traditional” funerals met the needs of US citizens who basically bought into the ideal the funeral homes presented. Embalming was king. Funerals handled by people outside the family was thought to be a step forward. Church funerals were the mainstay of the industry. The problem is the industry who views themselves as the professionals in the care of the dead are unwilling to change. They are unwilling to share the market place in states with laws that force families to hire a funeral director. In states that allow citizens to choose their own death care providers, the change to the market place will come organically. In the ten states that require citizens to hire a for-profit funeral director the changes will come painfully. As long as the State requires the citizens to hire one of these funeral directors, a family has no real choice, and the industry as we know it dies. Gentrification Chicago Funerals Closing Tragedy struck my home community this last weekend. A family lost two women through domestic violence. Now this family faces the impossible task of not only facing these public and tragic deaths, but also managing to set up memorials and burials as well. This article is not about how women must find ways to be safe in their own homes and communities. It is also not about the fact that when one of us is murdered, the police first look to those who are supposed to love and protect us most in the world. This article also will not address the fact that just because we are born female, we are already more at risk of facing such a violent death. Today we will look at the family in the aftermath of such an event. In cases of extreme stress due to such a violent ending, one need not imagine how hard walking through the process must be for the family. The family must muddle through. Adults, who themselves are dealing with this tragedy, must step forward and support the children. Everything changed for them in a moment, and now the community has a look inside this most difficult time. For a while the community will be hyper focused on the story. For a while the community will eat up every last bit of information. In time, however, the news accounts will fade. People will go back to what they were doing before the story broke. For most of the community, life will not have changed, but the family and friends of those lost will continue to grieve. They must try to sort out what happened and make sense of such a senseless act. Take a moment and think of what kinds of hardships families like this face. When a story of domestic violence breaks, take a moment and think of how much harder their lives have just become. Sudden and violent deaths can occur. Not one of us is immune to this. Try and not let stories like this become a spectator sport. Try to remember real people have died and real lives are forever changed.
Once you sit down with a funeral director and he or she hands you the general price list you might see a long list of goods and services. The funeral home will often list the basic fee as the first item on their general price list. What is this Basic Fee on funeral home general price lists? Why do funeral homes have a basic fee? How do these work? A basic fee in a funeral home covers many things, but mostly it covers the cost of running a business which most businesses already include in the prices of their goods and services. For example, when you go to get a haircut, you do not pay a basic fee plus the price of the haircut. The price listed is the cost of the haircut and the cost of the salon or barber to run the business. You can tip, but you know the price is the price. In the funeral home, this is not so. You pay a basic fee, and then you pay for goods and services.
According the Funeral Rule, the funeral home’s basic fee cannot be declined. We have a right to purchase whatever goods and services we choose, but this fee we may not decline. The funeral homes wanted a way to secure their interests in dealing with families in grief, and so this basic fee was allowed by the funeral rule to protect the funeral homes’ interest. The basic fee is the least you can expect to pay at the funeral home you choose. Basic fees often cover filling out forms and coordinating with cemeteries, etc. This fee can range wildly. One funeral home might charge $3000, while another might charge $900. You must shop around to find one that suits your needs and pocket book. You can order any shroud or coffin you choose, so picking a funeral home should be about how you see they do business. You might consider what services they might offer and if they fit what your family needs, but shop around to see what the local market offers your family. You might be surprised at the wide range of prices. |
Caroline Vuyadinov
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