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A Place of Memory

7/8/2015

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When I trained at the cemetery to be a family service counselor, we were taught a variety of sales technique.  One of them was how to sell niches for cremation.  We were instructed to emphasize that having a place such as a niche was a better place to hold a memory than the mantle or scattering to the wind. Cremation is the final disposition of a body and you need not by law bury the cremains. Cremation affords a family a many different ways to create a place of memory. You can scatter on your own land, be placed in bullets, pressed into a favourite record album or made into a jewel, just to name a few.  Cremation attracts people who do not want a lot of falderal in their funeral planning. The industry, knowing this, would like very much to be part of your decision-making and sell you a niche or a place in the lawn for burial.

I treasure the time I spend visiting graves.  When I was in High School, I went to Chaucer’s grave in Westminster Abby.  I remember standing there filled with awe and admiration.  I carry that memory always.  Standing by a grave is a powerful feeling at times be it your grandparents or a great poet.  Far be it from me to tell folks not to have a place in a cemetery or burial ground for those they love.  The place of memory is not my issue.  I take issue with making people think that a place of memory belongs to the corporate death care industry.

We have options for making a place of memory.  Cremains can always be scattered or buried on your own property rural or otherwise without having to make a notation on the deed. You can dedicate a place on your own property for full body burial through following your state’s laws. Full body burial might be easier in a rural setting, but it can be done. Always make sure you know and follow the laws in your state.  In ancient times, Christian communities formed around burial societies.  Old churches still have burial ground attached for members of the church.  I do not see why we cannot have more church run cemeteries or cemeteries associated with other groups.  Why don’t environmental groups set aside places for their members who wish to have a green burial?  Why don’t urban groups create burial coops?  I know cemeteries are tough to run, but we have options if we only look. We have options if only we take to time to create them for those around us.  We never have options if we take the industry representatives at their word.  We need to know our rights.  Modest burial grounds need not be moneymakers.  The municipal cemetery down the street from where I live sells plots for $250 – a far cry from the $18000+ in corporate run cemeteries.   

Many of us do not want to end up in a corporate run cemetery.  We need to face the fact that none of us have yet gotten out of this life alive, and research and plan our own deaths.  The time to make decisions is not at the time of someone’s death where grief can make the process more difficult, but when we calmly and logically look at what we and our family wants for a funeral and burial plan.  If we want to have the kind of funeral and burial we want, we need to start now looking at local resources. We might have to create the place of memory for our body at the end of our time on earth.  I do not recommend ever purchasing a plot for burial long before the time that it will be needed.  Once you purchase a right of burial, the cemetery will not likely return your purchase once the time for cooling off has past.  I do recommend setting money aside for the purpose of your final acts and let your money work for you, and not the cemetery’s corporation. 

The true place of memory will always reside in our hearts.  How we live our lives matters the most and remains with those who love and know us. Sometimes if we are lucky, our lives will be remembered from generation to generation. Having a place to visit at a graveside is useful for many.  Any place that reminds us of someone who has died becomes a place of memory. We need not pay a corporation for a place of memory.

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Burials for the Most Vulnerable

4/8/2015

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I usually do not speak about local events in this blog, but this week, the governor of Illinois Bruce Rauner, suspended monies for social services including money to pay for burial for those receiving public assistance. The scope of the action is quite large, and will affect those who are most vulnerable and lack the resources for a loud voice in the government.  I wish to focus on those who will die, and their families who will face either leaving the bodies behind, or trying to find funding for a burial.  Some people will of course die without loved ones and who then will bury their bodies? When people are dying, and living far below the poverty line, does it matter how they are buried?  I think it matters quite a lot.  When we in Illinois are faced with an unjust law that forces us to contract with a for profit funeral director, it is no wonder to me that people are not able to bury their loved ones.  Some create source-funding sites to raise the money to do so.  Why should it cost so much to bury someone?  It really shouldn’t.  What about those who have no one?  What happens to their bodies when no one is there to speak for them?

It all comes back to us and our choices.  What kind of people do we want to be?  What kinds of responsibility do we want to have to each other?  When will we ever take on an industry that in many places will not allow a free market to bear out the changes that only demand can make happen? Do we want to live in isolation from our neighbors? Do we want to let the fear of death keep us from just laws? I don’t know, maybe we do.  Maybe we do not wish to think about those who have so much less than we do that they can’t bury their loved ones?  Maybe this makes us uncomfortable.  Maybe we don’t mind if someone has to leave their loved one in a morgue and walk away? Do we want to be a people where only the rich can afford to be buried without paying in installments or crowd funding?

 I recall a few years back that the Chicago morgues were overcrowded and backlogged.  I do not want us to go back to this.  What we do for those most vulnerable and those who can no longer do anything for us tells us or themselves who we want to be as a people. I hope we take a good long look at how the budget is set.  Maybe the burials cost too much.  I am sure they do, but that too is a simple issue to solve.  Open our market place so that there can be a free exchange of ideas and services offered to people.   Maybe there will be a more creative and gentler approach offered.  I don’t know.  What I do know is that our laws surrounding burial are unjust for everyone, and especially those who have few resources.  This can’t go on. Make a change, and call your state representatives and speak your mind.  Contact the Midwest Green Burial Society we can further assist you in the process.

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The High Price of the Fear of Death

4/1/2015

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Last week a woman from a local new agency called to talk to me about green burial in Illinois and more precisely the Chicagoland area.   She asked if it was legal and I told her that green burial is legal in every state.  I told her, however, it was more complicated than that.  Sure we could ask a funeral director to keep the body natural.  I have.  I was met with all kinds of resistance to it.  A few funeral directors were open to that idea, but very few.   What I know is that when someone dies and you are left in charge of planning the funeral, it feels so easy to leave it up to the “professionals”. Eight states in the United States hinder a family’s right to choose: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Louisiana, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey by requiring its citizens to hire a for-profit, private entity to take care of the dead.  What would possess a state to require its citizens to hire a private, for profit entity especially at a vulnerable time?  The simple answer would be greed, but I think the answer is a bit more complicated than that.

First, let us look at greed for a moment.  How were these states able to take rights from families and require families and persons to hire a for profit enterprise. The simple and cheap answer is greed. The death care industry lobbied for a law and they got it.  When you live in a state with these kinds of requirements, you are forced to seek out a funeral director.  Clients are funneled into funeral homes where they are faced with a number of services and products and an average citizen might not know his or her rights.  One can not call this a real monopoly, but there is not room for true competition in the market place either.  Without true competition consumers cannot put pressure on the market to change.  If you live in one of these states, you can have a home funeral.  You can have a green funeral.  It makes it more expensive and more difficult to acquire, but it can be done.  People have to know their rights and do a lot of work, but you can have a simple funeral. I know that not all funeral directors are out there trying to upsell clients.  What I do know is that this kind of law places vulnerable people where they can be taken advantage of more easily.

As I said before, the real reason we have laws like this is more complex than just simple greed.  Yes, I think the death care industry has more than enough influence on the public, but does the public really want to know what their rights are when it comes to death?  This might be the real issue.  If we all decided that this nonsense of requiring people to hire a funeral director was unfair and unjust, which it is, then we would have the laws changed, and people would be free to choose.  Our stumbling block most likely is our own sense of fear.  We fear death.  We fear death more than wanting to know our rights.  We fear death more than making decisions for ourselves upon our death. We fear death more than we fear paying for things we might not want or need.  We fear death more than we fear having our loved ones sit in an office and not know what to do because we too afraid to tell them. We fear death more than we fear what might happen to the earth with our use of terrible chemicals and the burying of precious resources.  We fear death rather than look at it square on and know that one-day, death will come to us, and those we love.  We fear death, and we don’t look at what it has cost us all.  What it costs us is our voice and our rights to have a simple burial without influence from the state or an industry.  So many people come to me and tell me they want to be buried in a simple pine box and I know that they can have it, but I know that it can be quite difficult to get because we have allowed the death care industry to dictate what is a conventional burial. 

I know that modern life is busy.  Who has time to look into things we want to do let alone things we would rather never look into like death?  I know that the fear of death is very real and keeps us from truly living a full life.  What I hope is that we can set aside our fears for a short time and do some reading into the death care industry.  Maybe if enough of us do this, maybe the rights of families can be restored.  The industry will do what industries do; try to make money enough for profit and to stay in business.  What we can do is shine light where people do not want to look in hopes of bringing about change.

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So, How Much is That Funeral?

3/18/2015

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I remember when my father died.  He had a plan and spoke to a fellow priest and me about his plan the January before his death. When he told me, I remember thinking that I did not need this information for twenty years and forgot much about what he said when the time came.  Several other things went wrong in the end that made it impossible for us to exactly follow his plan.  In the first place, he did not write the plan down.  He had a plan, but not any of it was concrete. We were caught flatfooted and had very little idea of what to do.  We did what most people do; we followed advice from loved ones and those in the industry to help us through the process.  We did not shop around, and even if we did, I know we did not know our rights.  I know we were not in a frame of mind to decide from among a variety of vendors.  I think our story is rather typical of most people.  We were caught in grief, and did what seemed the easiest thing to do.  The situation we found ourselves in was the reason the Funeral Rule was passed in the first place.  The Funeral Rule was created to protect consumers from making emotional decisions or decisions without having all the facts in planning a funeral. It does not, however, cover cemeteries.

Since working in and leaving the industry, I have done my fair share of funeral shopping.  I must say that I enjoy it.  I love finding out who gives good service and who is lacking.  According to the Funeral Rule, consumers are supposed to be given prices over the phone.  One time, while looking around for funeral information, I made an email inquiry of a funeral home that was recommended by a national funeral group.  They would not respond by email and wanted me to either call or come in and have a chat.  I found that off-putting.  I was looking for information for personal and professional use, and that just made me not want to work with them. Back in 1984 when the Funeral Rule was passed, most people either went to the place of business or called the business to ask about the services they provided.  We did not have the Internet.  The Internet has so changed the way we live our lives. I know it’s wishful thinking, but I think the Funeral Rule should be updated to reflect the way business is done in the first part of the Twenty-First Century and require funeral directors to answer inquiries by email. Some funeral homes do and some do not.  Baring a change to the Funeral Rule, I am hoping that the market place will put pressure in funeral providers to change the way they do business.   Maybe then, more the industry will move toward a more modern approach to business, and offer full disclosure through electronic means.  In the meantime, they are not required to give information through email or provide a full GPL (general price list) on their webpages.

As with many things, change in the death care industry will happen when people face the unpleasant nature of death.  We need to start acting like everyone does die, then maybe the industry can change and there will be more openness about price and services.  Everywhere, people are afraid to talk about death. It’s still the number one killer of conversations I know of.  Still, I write on.  As stated above, Cemeteries are not under the Funeral Rule.  They do not need to give you a pricelist when you walk in.  They do not need to show you all the options and do not need to disclose the cheaper options they might offer. We have a long way to go when it comes to consumer’s rights when making final plans.  The only idea I can offer when dealing with the cemetery is to be direct with the family service counselor about what you want and about price point.  If you do not feel comfortable with any service provider, leave the office.  You should not work with people you do not feel comfortable with.  Only you know what is right for you and your family. 

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The "Memory Picture" Is Not the Property of the Death Care Industry

12/3/2014

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How many coffins have I stood by, looking at the body of a person I have known and loved? I don’t know.  What I do know is that I have never seen what could be described as beautiful “memory picture”.  The death care industry used this term “memory picture” to sell embalming to families.  “Memory pictures” are supposed to make grieving easier for the family if the loved one looks as if they are at peace. For me, the “memory picture” embalmers speak of has been a total fail for me.  Why do we have to pretend that they are asleep or at rest as if this “memory picture” is the best way to accept the reality of death?  For some, perhaps these “memory pictures” gives them peace.  I have not met any of them.

In my research of the embalming process, I know that the mouth always looks weird because the jaw has been wired shut. To me, this makes their mouths look like a puppet’s mouth, and I have never found this to give me peace. I am not here to bash all embalmers.  In fact, I know that most embalmers want to truly help the family in grief.  Their education as funeral director teaches them that families need a  “memory picture” for them to move through grief peacefully. When my mother-in-law died, the embalmer was able to fix her hair so that no one could tell she had had surgery.  I know that looking good was very important to her and was pleased with the work they did for her.  What I take issue with is Funeral Directors using the term as a way to justify embalming, or their professionalism in the private mourning of a family.  Memory pictures do not belong to the death care industry, memory pictures belong to those who love the person who has died.  Do not be manipulated into thinking you need to have an embalmed body made-up and placed in a coffin to have closure.  Our bodies are generally not disgusting and embalming is not a requirement for burial.  Funeral homes make a requirement for viewings and for their “memory pictures”.  The industry, in doing this, has insinuated themselves into the family’s private grieving process, and appointed themselves as professionals in this process. Only the family knows what is best for their own family.

Memory pictures are those memories we hold dear of our loved one.  They are the many memories we have of our loved ones who have died that bring us joy and make us remember just how wonderful they were, or maybe they are the memories of things that drove us most crazy about them when they were alive. No industry can direct the memoires of our loved ones.  I think if we all took the time to talk about death, and what we need to do at the time of death, our loved ones would be at the mercy of the “professionals” that present choices that fit their belief system but not ours.  In this season, let us make memories of those we love, and take the time to express to those around us what we want as our final wishes. 

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What is a Decent Burial?

10/1/2014

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Sitting in the back of a limousine on the way to the cemetery, seven and a half months pregnant with our first child and first grandbaby on both sides of the family, stricken with the grief of the loss of my beloved father-in-law, I mused on what aspects of the funeral were absolutely necessary.  His death was the first death my husband and I had to deal with in helping to make final arrangements.  We would grab snippets of time during the visitation, giving each other notes on what we did and did not want for our funeral.  Today I wonder, what constitutes a decent burial?

A decent burial must respect the person who has died.  It must reflect his or her beliefs about life and death.   We have all heard about Joan Rivers’ funeral with all the fanfare of a Hollywood event.  For her, that was a perfect and decent burial.  Through my work in the cemetery and meeting people through our events with the Midwest Green Burial Society, I know that each one of us has a specific idea about our final wishes.  Some of them are very interesting.  Some people really do not want their bodies to go back to the earth and are afraid of the elements reaching their bodies.  For me, I do not ever want to be put in a mausoleum because I don’t know how I would get out.  I realize that just does not make much sense, but there you have it.

Maybe the question is: What is a bad burial?  Maybe a bad burial is one that takes place without much forethought.  Maybe it is one where afterwards the family realizes they have spent too much money on what they did not want to or need to have for a beautiful and meaningful event.  Maybe a bad burial is one that does not reflect the person’s ideals or way of life.  Maybe a bad burial is one where families fight over little things because they do not realize how their grief has affected them.

Perhaps the question should be:  What is a shameful burial?  Are they burials that take place because the family does not have the money to bury?  I don’t think so.  I think a shameful burial is one where the system fails, when laws do not allow families to fill out forms for burial because they do not have an education to embalm, or when there are not affordable options open to them.  The shame is on our society, not the families.  How can we allow our fellow citizens the difficult task to bury their loved ones by crowd sourcing the bill?  How did we get to a place where an average funeral is $10,000.00 before cemetery costs?  I think this has everything to do with our fear of death and our fear of talking about death.  Since death is such a difficult topic for so many of us, we are willing to stand by while the price of a conventional burial rises so far out of reach.  It seems too ridiculous to me that the average cost is so high, and I wonder who can really afford to die these days, and why are there not more accessible means available for us? 

When I think of the many funerals and burials I have been to, I know that they have all received decent burials surrounded by those who loved them.   We all gathered, prayed with those who pray, listened to poetry with those who did not.  In the end, we all told stories, wept and remembered the person who had died.  To me, a decent burial is one where people gather and love each other in their grief. What is it that they want when they want a decent burial?  Ultimately, I think this can only be answered on a personal level. The trouble comes in when our ideas clash with the conventional death care industry and our pocketbooks.  I would like to see more variety for families making plans so that they do not have to go into debt simply because someone they love has died.  I would like to see more support within faith communities, and social communities to help support their members in grief.  It might be asking too much for a revolution in the hearts of our society to turn and face the fact of death and help those around us to make simple and decent choices.  I hope not.  I hope we can mature enough to break free from our fear and love those in need.  In the end, a decent burial is what you decide to think of as a decent burial; it does not have to be what convention dictates to us.

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The Choices We Make

8/27/2014

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We face choices everyday of our lives.  Some choices appear to be small, while others we make form the rest of our lives.  I grew up in a family that spoke freely about death and choices we make at the time of death.  It was generally agreed upon that cremation was the most earth friendly method.  We all wanted to go back to the earth as easily as possible. Having said this, I have not always made the most earth friendly choice for those I loved at the time of their death, mostly because I did not know my rights and the impacts my choices would make on the earth.  I did not always educate my clients at the cemetery about the most ecological manner of burial, but it was through working in the conventional death care industry that lead me to the work I do now. I have and insider understanding of the industry as well as having been I been a client. Today, I advocate for people’s rights and wishes at the time of death and hope that people choose more earth friendly choices. I believe that everyone should have his or her last wishes met if possible, providing it is according to the law. I wish to educate, not make people feel uncomfortable about their choices.

The ideal and greenest of the green burials scenario would be a conservation burial adjacent to conservation land.  In this scenario, the person would be buried in a shroud, preferably a shroud made of a recycled natural material like an old quilt.  The body would be lowered in the grave by ropes or with a shroud board made of local wood, perhaps that even repurposed.  The grave would be dug and filled in by hand.  There would not be a marker, but GPS coordinates that would allow loved ones to find and visit the grave.

Ideals can be hard to reach.  Sometimes we must do what we can and aim in the general direction of our ideals.  We must never feel guilty because we could not accomplish the ideal.  In fact, some of us do not want the greenest of green burials.  Some of us want a marker of some kind. Several certified green cemeteries allow for stone markers, others do not. If you can get local stone, not import it from India or China, you are going down a better road.  Educate yourself and make wise choices.  If you need a few other hints, check out my Five Simple Green Burial Hacks.

Our choices make us who we are.  If we choose to go green, we need to look at our lives and make changes in that direction.  Not many of us are able to go off the grid and live on a homestead raising our own food and generating our own energy.  I, for one, would love to have solar panels on my house, but I cannot do that today.  When we make arrangements or prepare our own plans for burial, we have to take into consideration what we can realistically do.  If we do not have a certified green burial cemetery near by, we make do with what we have.  Like the rest of life, making burial choices is a balancing act.  It might not be possible for us to achieve the ideal state where we do not negatively impact the earth, so make choices with which you can live. Do not be angry with yourself for your past choices; move forward in the knowledge you have gained.  Know that not one of us is perfect.  We are trying to do the best we can.

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Mt Thabor Cemetery, Crystal Lake, IL

7/30/2014

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I always enjoy a walk through a graveyard.  Monuments fascinate me.  Last summer I found this nearly abandoned cemetery.  I use mostly my own photographs on this blog, so many of the old monuments were interesting and I have used their images here.  In the back of the cemetery, I found these lonely markers.  Some were stones, but most of them were these little tag markers.  Today, I want to pay tribute to these short little lives that left behind them broken hearts.  I have known parents who grieve short lives, and I think most of us who have never known that grief often wonder when the grief will end and do not know what to say.  Today, let us remember that the lives the little ones left behind grieved sometimes in secret and carried these lives in their hearts the rest of their lives.
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Speaking of Vaults....

7/16/2014

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I was trained and worked in a cemetery run by one of the largest death care corporations.  We had a brief training on vaults.  Much of our training was brief because the purpose of a family service councilor is to sell.  We were told that vaults maintain the integrity of the grave, help keep the ground level for the cemetery and lined vaults kept out the elements (or nature) from reaching the casket. We sold all kinds of vaults from the simple to the high-end precious metal lined vaults.  To be quite fair, we were never trained to push the high-end vaults.  Our training also made it clear that vaults were not a legal requirement, but a requirement of the cemetery.

Let us look at this video demonstrating how tough the vault is.

My first comment about this video is about their scientific process.  We have no idea how long this vault remained buried before it was dug up again.  We have no idea if heavy equipment rode over this spot. Finally, the casket is empty.  We have no idea about the state of an occupied coffin buried for an unspecified amount of time.  I realize that they are selling vaults not coffins, but to be sure coffins and vaults are used together.   When I was a family service counselor, I became close to the grounds workers at the cemetery.  One member of the team who had been a grave digger for many, many years, told me that whenever he has been present at a disinterment, the vaults have always been cracked or otherwise breached.  Sometimes the breach was dramatic, other times, not so much.  Once interred, there is very little way of knowing the quality of the structure of a vault.  Some vaults are sturdier than others.  I do not mean to imply that vaults are designed to break or that all vaults do not stand up to the pressure.  What I am saying is no one really knows how tough any vault can be until you dig it up after use. 

Here is another video:

This one plays at the heartstrings.  As you know, I am all in favour of personalization of death rituals.  I find it odd that personalized vault that will spend most of its time underground, and that the only people who will be seeing it again will be those who would dig up the grave.  We are told in this video that a lined vault secures the casket and contents from water and insects.  It makes me wonder what it is we think we are doing when we bury our loved ones.  Do we really want to keep their bodies preserved for generations in hopes that one day an archeologist will dig them back up again? I think perhaps vaults are a hold over from the anti-theft devices developed for higher end burials in the 18th and 19th centuries when corpses were sometime dug up for scientists to study anatomy.  It’s not a pretty thought, but there you have it.  It’s not a huge leap from protecting bodies from body snatcher to protecting bodies from anything and everything. 

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Body Snatching Device
There are solutions for vaults in graves.  I suggest that vaults are not a necessity at all, providing steps are taken to prevent sunken graves. In green burial the grave is filled mounded with dirt on the graven so that once the settling of the grave takes place, the grave is not sunken.  A shrouded body creates less concern for grave settling than those using a biodegradable coffin because there is much less matter be broken down. In green certified burials, care is given to maintain the ground.  Green Burial does not mean haphazard burials without forethought.  To the contrary, certified green burial grounds undergo extensive planning and go through a strict process for certification.  Thought is given to preserving and restoring the land and in that maintaining the integrity of graves and the land in general.

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Green Burial Grave
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Memorial Idea for the Nonspiritual

6/25/2014

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I recognize that not everyone has a spiritual or religious structure in his or her life.  I understand that some people do not believe in the divine.  I grew up with one set of atheist grandparents, while my father was a priest.  This gave me a great perspective on life.  When these grandparents died it took awhile to have a memorial service for them.  For each, poetry played a dominant role in the memorial.  Grandpa was a poet and both were lovers of the English language.  I think it took time to create these services because not everyone finds rituals easy to create.  We are creatures of ritual.  Sleep and waking rituals are among the most common.  At the time of loss, ritual might help us put into action what we cannot yet put into words, and for this reason, I am providing a simple ritual outline for a memorial.  You can make it as complicated or as simple as needed or wanted.  You might add a party and either begin or end with the memorial.  That is up to you.  The ritual is designed to make it easy to have a memorial and give a physical expression of grief.

Candle Story Telling Memorial

When someone we love dies, it leaves a hole in our lives. We remember them in stories, and if they live big enough, those stories go down through the generations.  This is a simple ritual.  You need only people candles, stories, table and a place for people to gather.   You might also need Kleenex. The idea is to have loved ones gather, each can bring his or her own candle, or candle holder.  Someone should lead the event. 

Suggested Opening Remarks:

I’m glad you all could come today as we remember Joe.  We all love him and miss him.  Today, we gather to remember our favourite moments, stories or poems.  Feel free to step forward or speak from where you stand.  After you have spoken, please bring up your light place it on the table and then the next person can speak.  No one should feel obligated to speak tonight if he or she does not wish to. (Leader begins the story telling or memory.)

After a long time when no one has spoken, the leader asks if there is anyone else who wishes to speak, if not then the remainder should bring up the lights they have.

 Suggested Closing Remarks:

Thank you all for coming.  We will all miss Joe, but let us remember the light he gave us when he was alive and let us remember our connection to each other through knowing him.  In the coming days, weeks and months, let us remember the light we shared here of what his life meant to us. 

Variation:

This could work for a bonfire where people add in their own sticks to the fire while they speak. 

One can always add in food and music to the event, as this is also a time where sharing and storytelling takes place and gives people a sense of connection to the person who has died and to those who also loved them. The memorial can either be at the opening of the gathering or the close.  You might want to up it in the middle.  The point is this is a framework should make creating a memorial easier.  Use it anyway that makes sense for you and those you love.

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    Caroline Vuyadinov


    I graduated from St. Vladamir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood, New York with a Master of Divinity.  I trained as a chaplain following graduation and worked with a wide variety of people. 

    When I moved to Canada, I began work in a women's halfway house in Hamilton, Ontario which worked with women in conflict with the law on a federal level.  I became the program manager and  loved working alongside the women, creating their plans for their reintegration back to the community.  I also worked as a liaison with the parole board, parole officers and other community service providers.

    Upon my return to the United States, I worked in the Death Care Industry as a Family Service Counselor, which lead me to become a green burial advocate. I co-founded Midwest Green Burial Society with Juliann Salinas. I speak  to community groups and have developed practical seminars for a variety of audiences.  I have been interviewed on a national podcast and was featured on a WGN spot dealing with green burial. 

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