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Cemeteries - Home Owners Associations?

7/22/2015

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 Last week, a friend of mine had a disagreement with a cemetery regarding a grave marker.  I began thinking about grave markers and the power cemetery owners/corporations have over our choices in marking the graves of those we love.  Memorialization and grave marking are two related, but different things.  As I have stated many times, how and where we remember those we love does not belong to the cemetery, but to our hearts and minds.   Grave marking differs from memorialization in that markers indicate the earthly remains of those we love. For many, the grave is sacred because it holds the remains of the loved one. The marker becomes the lasting word as the physical proclamation of the person’s life and a focal point of the grave.

When dealing with a cemetery for your grave marker or gravestone, you must remember that they are like a Home Owners Association.  They set the rules by which you must abide and they can change them at will.  Unlike a Home Owners Association, you will not have a voice in the rules or in any change.  The cemetery wishes to maintain a certain look.  For a time you might be allowed to keep things on a grave and then the cemetery might be sold to a different owner or corporation and rules change. The cemetery also just might want to change their look, and then the rules change. You need to make sure you know what the rules of the cemetery are before you purchase the right for burial.  Some cemeteries require flush stones or markers and will not allow upright stones.  Some cemeteries require bronze on the marker, others will not.  Some might specify what kind of stone you must have for the marker.  Different sections of a cemetery might have different rules about what kind of marker is allowed.  Again, you must check before you buy. 

You do not have to purchase a marker through the cemetery.  The cemetery might tack on fees if you do not, but you have a right to purchase elsewhere.  They might insist that you pay for a survey of the site or for installation the stone.  If you purchase a marker somewhere other than your cemetery, you most likely will have to send in a sketch or specs on the marker you wish to use.  They will have the final say as to what kind of marker is placed in their cemetery.  Do not purchase the marker without the go ahead from the cemetery. You have the right of burial, but they can tell you how a grave will look.

Sometimes cemeteries get mixed up in family conflicts regarding grave markers.  If you want to place a stone on a grave, make sure you have the right to do so.  At the time of death, sometimes old family wounds that have never healed properly, get reopened.  Sometimes these conflicts are fought out over the grave marker.  Try to make peace in the family before it gets to the point of a war over a gravestone.  Remember, the stone on a grave marks the final resting place of our loved ones remains, and should not become a battleground.  Family service counselors do not know the family histories and might not realize a conflict is brewing.  Let them know that there might be a conflict.  By doing so, the cemetery will know that a potential problem exists and might be able to assist in a resolution before a problem takes root. 

Grave markers tell a story.  People take a great deal of time with wording and design of the marker for the person they love.  I love to walk in old cemeteries and read the engraved stones.  I feel connected to the person and sometimes what I read on their markers stays with me.  Grave markers communicate who the person was.  They are important for families looking for family history.  While the cemetery does not hold the monopoly on memory, the fact that they create the rules about markers means they hold quite a bit of power as to how the marker will look.  Take the time to research the cemeteries you like in your area and figure out which ones fit your vision on marking your grave. 

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Visiting Graves -Serbian Orthodox Style

6/24/2015

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This last weekend when we went to my father’s grave, we grabbed what we call our portable church and small bottle of red wine and headed out.  I don’t always take the box or wine with me, but the portable church comes in handy when we gather as a group at the grave.  My husband and I put together the portable church when his father died so that we would have everything we needed when we visited the grave.  In this dollar store box we gathered: coal, incense, foil for the coal, candles and printed prayers.  Over the years we added the small hand cross and a book of prayers for the sick and suffering, which we added when my mother-in-law was in the hospital after her fall.  We added the coal tongs, something I inherited from my father after his death, which makes lighting coal for the incense so much easier.  We keep the candles in the box even though the cemeteries we frequent have no place to leave candles.  I suppose hope springs eternal. 

Why do we bring wine to a grave?  I know I would have wondered too.  My father-in-law’s death taught me many things, but one of the most important things was what we do at the graves of our loved ones-Serbian Style.  The day following his funeral, when all the fervor died down, the closest family members got into a car and drove to the cemetery.   We brought wine with us.  My husband prayed and blessed the grave with the wine.   There we were in our grief, just those closest to Tata, blessing the grave.  It remains such a beautiful and sorrowful memory for me.  My husband later worried that no one would pour wine on his grave.  He need not have worried.  Our first-born was born just a month and a half following my father-in-law’s death so our children have visited graves all their lives.  When they were very little I would take the boys to Deda’s (Grandfather’s) grave.  They must have seen us use wine because my youngest realizing I had no wine with us, poured some juice from his sippy cup on his Deda’s grave.  This last weekend, it was he who volunteered to bless his Granddad’s grave with wine.

Why would we bless graves with wine?  It seems perhaps pagan.  Quite possibly it began in pre-Christian times.  I am almost sure of that.  What I love so much about Orthodoxy is that we can incorporate different cultural and religious aspects into the prayer life of the church.  We “baptize” them so to speak. The wine is simply a blessing of the grave done by the laity (those not ordained to the priesthood). 

We gather at graves and offer prayers for our loved ones.  Prayer for us is an act of love.  When we pray for the dead, we affirm our belief that even though we die, we are alive in Christ.  Since Orthodoxy has a strong belief in the holiness of the created, we incorporate different aspects of creation when we pray: incense from the tree, beeswax candles from the bees, wine from grapes etc.   Not all orthodox take wine to graves, not all bring incense with them, but we all pray at the graves.  I married into a Serbian family, so I have taken on Serbian traditions.  I cannot speak to Russian, Greek or Arabic traditions.  I would love to know how we differ on visiting graves.  The next time you see people gathered at a grave pouring wine on a grave, you might have a better understanding as to what is going on. 

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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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Remembering Loved Ones at Holiday Meals

12/10/2014

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My grandma made this wreath.
The holidays are upon us.  Do not be persuaded otherwise.  For those of us who have put things off, I am here to say we can wait no longer.  For many of us, holidays remind us of all the people who are not here to celebrate with us.  Our sadness over missing people at the celebrations might be a contributing factor in our not engaging earlier in preparations.  I know I am guilty of this.  In an effort to bring my grief along with me as I prepare, I do little things to help me remember the love I have for them and celebrate their love for me in my life.  For example, I like to set the table with some reminders of those I miss.  It makes me feel that they are still participating in our gathering.  I also like to incorporate recipes in my menus that remind me of people I love, but have died.   In our Thanksgiving celebration, my family makes a creamed onion recipe that has been served at family Thanksgivings for at least four generations.  It comes down through the female line and I think every woman has put her own spin on it.  I like these traditions because they tie the generations through love and joy.  If we find ourselves without family plates or recipes, we always have story.  Stories bind family together, teaching the younger generation family history and values.  We might use a dish as a jumping off point, but the stories we share allows us to remember we are part of a larger whole that struggled, loved and lived.  By story telling we unite the past and the present through our memories of those who no longer grace our tables.  May we find peace in the memories of those who have gone before us this holiday season. 

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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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Public Grief: Hamilton Mourns Cpl. Nathan Cirillo

10/29/2014

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Hamilton known for having over a hundred waterfalls, lit the Albion Falls in honor of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo and WO. Patrice Vincent. Photograph courtesy of Kelly Anne P.
My husband and I were having a day out last Wednesday when he turned to me and said that the Leafs and Senators’ game was cancelled because something happened in Ottawa.  We both started surfing madly through our phones for information. Some of you may not know this, but I lived in Canada for thirteen years and called Hamilton, Ontario my home.  When I read that a gunman killed Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, one of the Hamilton Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada, my heart broke. How often I would see young men dressed in fatigues walking with their comrades up and down James Street.  I am not a lover of war, but I am deeply moved by those who feel it is their job to protect the rest of us while we sleep snuggly in our beds.  This young man was one of them.  He died in service to his country and his people.

Today, I would like to remember Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, honouring his memory and the loving acts performed by Hamiltonians in their grief. 

Special thanks for this post goes to Mr. Zayne Waymen, a dear friend, who lives in Hamilton, for taking these wonderful pictures of the memorial for Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the Armory.  Thank you.

Earlier last week in Canada, W.O. Patrice Vincent lost his life in another act of violence.   While this post is about Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, I ask that we not forget W.O. Patrice Vincent and his service to Canada.

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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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Kings and Queens Under the Earth

7/23/2014

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Friends of mine visiting a cemetery in New Orleans in 1992
To begin our quest, we need to begin in the eighteenth and nineteenth century when people were looking to the past to create the future of their nations.  One need only take a walk through Washington DC to see what I am saying is true.  DC is filled with classical temples. At the turn of the eighteenth century, Napoleon conquered Egypt where he not only took treasure, but also had a group of men who mapped the Valley of the Kings and the discovered of the Temple of Luxor.  If any of you have been to Paris, you have seen the Obelisk, which originally stood at the entrance of the Temple of Luxor. These Napoleon experts published their finding and images made there way throughout the western world, and mark the first wave of Egyptian craze.  Other men would follow in their footsteps and archeology would be born.  The deep-seated desire to look back at our roots would cause nations to seek out their cultural roots.  Museums also were born from this desire.  People began to collect things from their cultural past and display them.  What began as small curios cabinets became treasure houses for nations.  We need only look to such museums as The Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC.  I could go on to discuss the impact of this craze on the cultures that were giving up their treasure, but that is a subject for another time and the reason I do not work in museums.

In this soup of nationalism and love of Egypt, we began embalming our dead.  I am not surprised that in the US Civil war, we romanticized embalming as a way of emulating the great Egyptian Kings and Queens.  At first, embalming could only be done for the very rich.  (A regular soldier’s monthly pay was $13 and embalming for him would be $25, where an officer would have to pay $50 whose pay was about $100+ depending on rank.) Probably the image that most imprinted our national psyche was the death of the beloved Abraham Lincoln. His body was embalmed and traveled many miles on the railway making stops for people to pay their last respects to the fallen leader.  I believe our society began its journey idealizing embalming and vaults in this climate of love for things ancient and Egyptian, and our admiration of Lincoln.

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In 1922, Howard Carter and George Herbert found King Tutankhamen’s tomb.  The find of a nearly intact tomb sparked an even greater Egyptian Craze.  In the US, the construction of the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Buildings, most dramatically demonstrate our love for all things Egyptian.  The Chrysler Burling with its stylized papyrus leaves and a year later the streamlined form of an Egyptian temple in the Empire State Building.  The Egyptian craze gives birth to art deco. 

The 1920s also marks the when most Americans began to be embalmed and funeral homes became the place of private homes were visitations took place.  We were becoming an urbanized society and no longer had front parlors to receive visitors wanting to pay their respects and offer condolences.  It’s so easy to see our society who was looking backward to move forward, who wanted to emulate kings and queens of the past and our own fallen leader.  Now, in the midst of the Egyptian craze, we wanted to be just like the King and Queens of old.

So here we are today, with acres of cemetery plots filled with kings and queens under the earth, in some cases above the earth like the Pharaohs of old. Do we really think we are ancient kings and queen and that our bodies should be preserved forever?  Then again, that is so American.  We stand against such class differences.  If it’s good enough for the king, it’s good enough for Aunt Suzie.  I understand that.  I am an American after all.  What I wonder about is do we want to continue our conventional funeral practices as normative?  Do we really want to keep the bodies of our loved ones preserved forever?  Look at the mummies of Egypt in the nineteenth century.  They were not treated well, especially if they really weren’t really a king or queen. Some were turned to medicine, made into paint, dug up and unwrapped for scientific study or entertainment. I am sure I do not want to end up in a museum.   I am also sure I do not want to end up as paint or medicine.  Why do we want to keep our loved ones bodies sealed up under the earth so that in several hundred years or so their tombs might be open again by people who may or may not share our same sensibilities?  For me, I want to return to the earth from which I came.  I have no desire to have my body treated in death in any extravagant manner. Please, place me in a shroud, and return me to the earth.  If my body helps preserve land, and especially a forest, that would be even better.  I do not want to be a queen sealed in a tomb under the earth.  Please treat my body in death as a simple human being that I am in life.  I am not a queen. I am just a woman trying to do her best in this world. 

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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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