Last night on 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper reported on abuses by cemeteries and asked if dishonesty and mismanagement was rampant in the industry.
Here was Cooper’s introduction:
Everyday in this country, grieving families spend thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of dollars on funerals, cremations and burials. They often have to make decisions quickly, at a difficult time, without doing much research or reading the fine print on contracts. And while the bereaved may believe they’re dealing with mom-and-pop operations that have been in the community for many years, a lot of funeral homes and cemeteries these days are owned by big corporations, part of a multibillion dollar industry known as the “death-care” business.
The nation’s graveyards are a lucrative and little-noticed part of the industry. Most of the time they’re every bit as orderly and peaceful as they seem. But when things go wrong, they can go very wrong, for many years, without anyone noticing. And for the families involved, it can be a nightmare.
You can watch (and read) the story through this link.
As you might imagine, the International Cemetery Cremation and Funeral Association (ICCFA) had some words in rebuttal to the story. Below is the official ICCFA statement sent to the media in response to the CBS 60 Minutes segment, “Final Resting Places,” broadcast on Sunday, May 20, 2012:
The ICCFA understands that a 12-minute television segment does not permit much detail or nuances. However, since 60 Minutes chose to relate the atrocities that occurred at Burr Oak Cemetery in 2009, we believe that it had a journalistic responsibility to also report that the cemetery staff involved were prosecuted and are now serving prison terms. No mention was made of this.
More troubling, there are several misstatements of fact, especially by the consumer advocate, Mr. Slocum. For example, he states that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) does not regulate cemeteries. This is incorrect: Section 5 of the FTC Act prohibits misleading and unfair sales practices and there exists no exemption or exclusion for cemeteries, funeral homes or crematories. References to the FTC Funeral Rule not covering cemeteries ignores the fact the Rule is mainly a price disclosure requirement and the problems highlighted at Burr Oak and other cemeteries are not addressed, prevented or remedied even if cemeteries were covered under the Funeral Rule.
More significant, unsubstantiated claims were made of “a wild west out there” in terms of the lack of cemetery regulations and oversight. The segment made no reference to the December 2011 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) of State Funeral/Cemetery Laws that found specific regulations for cemeteries at 88 percent, up from 77 percent in 2003, based on responses from 42 states. Also, references to the proposed Bereaved Consumers Bill of Rights Act (H.R. 900) made no mention that the bill addresses none of the issues at Burr Oak Cemetery with the exception of recordkeeping.
Unsubstantiated claims of the volume of cemetery complaints should have been questioned, especially since the FTC reported earlier this year that out of a total of 1.8 million consumer complaints filed during 2011, including reports from all North American Better Business Bureaus, funeral-related complaints tallied at 1,228 or 0.07% of the total amount.
Again, the ICCFA understands that the limited nature of television restrict an extended exploration of the issues. However, extravagant claims should be subject to increased scrutiny, especially given the recent and publicly available reports from the FTC and the GAO. The fact is that out of the daily 5,000 to 6,000 funerals, burials, cremations and related services, there are a remarkably low number of problems and complaints. The ICCFA believes that even one complaint is one too many but it is important to place such issues into context to avoid misleading the public.
The ICCFA Government and Legal Affairs Committee has developed a set of 28 model guidelines for state laws and regulations, which have been approved by the Board of Directors. The guidelines combine a sensitivity to consumer protection issues with the need for all industry members, whether for-profit or not-for-profit, cemeteries, funeral homes, retail monument dealers or crematories, to conduct their operations according to sound business principles.
Founded in 1887, the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association is the only international trade association representing all segments of the cemetery, cremation, funeral and memorialization profession. It’s membership is composed of more than 7,500 cemeteries, funeral homes, memorial designers, crematories and related businesses worldwide.
A great piece about funeral planning trends appeared in the Wall Street Journal a while ago. It offers great insights about making the party no one wants to plan a true reflection of a life.
Planning That Final Party by Kathleen A. Hughes
When my friend Margaret Goldsmith, a stylish Los Angeles real-estate agent, was battling ovarian cancer, she spent hours on the phone with her sister, Elizabeth, planning the details of her own memorial service.
“She called herself the ultimate party planner,” says Elizabeth. Margaret wanted the gathering at the Ebell of Los Angeles, a historic landmark; she wanted a friend to play bagpipes and another to sing “I’ll Fly Away” from the film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
After she passed away last year, at age 55, the service was spectacular and moving. Her husband, a cinematographer, assembled a slide show about her life. Her best friend told hilarious stories about their European travels in the 1970s. Her brother-in-law, a screenwriter, delivered an entertaining story about his entry into the family.
Laughing and crying, I had another thought: If something suddenly happened to my husband, how would I ever put together such a wonderful ceremony in a state of grief? And what if something happens to me suddenly? My husband is really busy. Maybe I should make my own memorial slide show now, at age 55. He’ll never get it done.
While religion and family tradition have dictated last rites for hundreds of years, funerals today are changing dramatically. Baby boomers, in particular, are shifting to more personalized-and less religious-memorial services, often calling them “A Celebration of Life.”
The Internet is helping propel and shape the changes. Some funeral homes will stream a funeral service or create a webcast for those who can’t attend. Online videos offer tutorials to help choose between cremation and burial. Burial plots are now listed on eBay.
“A lot of this is happening so fast that we are grappling to keep up,” says Ronald K. Barrett, who specializes in death and dying as head of the psychology department at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. “It’s having a major impact on how people grieve.”
And on how they plan. A website launched three years ago, MyWonderfulLife.com, helps people design their own funerals. Those who sign up can enter their wishes in an online book and send loved ones a link by email.
The home page of the site-which has almost 10,000 members, according to its owners-says, “You only get one chance to make a last impression.” There are sections on trends in funerals, including “going green in the grave” with a biodegradable coffin, and fall-themed tips on flowers and on pumpkin cocktails for toasts to the deceased.
Starting the Conversation
Logging on may make it easier to have a conversation about death. After Bobbie Jo Ryan’s father, Robert Cox, was placed in hospice care two years ago, she called him and said, “I’m coming up there to plan your funeral with you.” Ms. Ryan, a 33-year-old graphic designer, drove for 20 hours to her father’s home in Linn Grove, Iowa.
After a day of visiting, Ms. Ryan took out her laptop and logged on to the site. Her father told her he wanted a fishing theme. He had been an avid fisherman and hunter until arthritis and a boating accident left him disabled in a wheelchair. He didn’t want a church full of flowers. He wanted donations to a charity that helps disabled children learn how to ice fish. He also requested a cookout by a river with a keg of beer. They calculated the exact cost in advance together.
“He wasn’t a famous person. He wasn’t rich. He always felt like he wasn’t worthy of his family and couldn’t provide for us through work because of his disability,” says Ms. Ryan. “This gave him the ability to leave this earth knowing that he meant something to other people and that he was making a difference.”
Some people become interested in planning a funeral after attending someone else’s. Even the most uninspired funeral can be inspirational. When Kathy Cartwright, a real-estate agent in Palos Verdes Estates, Calif., went to a funeral with her parents, both in their early 80s, the service seemed impersonal. There were doughnuts left over from an earlier church service, and no coffee. “It was really awful,” she says.
On the way home, Ms. Cartwright told her parents, “We need to talk about what you want. What kind of food? What kind of dessert? I need a budget, and I need it now.” They quickly agreed.
Then there are those who start planning early simply because they enjoy it. Kimba Hills says her mother, Sylvia Hills, who lived in Jackson, Tenn., started planning her own funeral 40 years ago when she was in perfect health. “My wedding and her funeral were the two most important events in her life,” Ms. Hills says. The elder Ms. Hills loved the idea of departing in a hot-air balloon but finally rejected that plan as “treacherous.”
When Ms. Hills became terminally ill from breast cancer, she began to plan with great detail. She chose a casket and pallbearers, the scripture readings and the hymns. She wanted a soloist, because, she explained, the congregation “is always off-key.” She selected white silk pajamas to wear in the closed casket. Her daughter, the owner of Rumba, a furniture store in Santa Monica, Calif., wrote her mother’s eulogy and read it at her bedside. Her mother gave critiques: “I liked it better when you read it the first time,” she said in her Southern drawl. “You put more emphasis on ‘when you go h-o-o-o-m-e.’ “
The service went beautifully. Ms. Hills says she thinks the funeral planning helped take her mother’s mind off her own death. “Being proactive takes the anxiety out of it,” she says.
A Laugh and a Shrug
All this led me to call my 81-year-old father, James Hughes, to at least broach the issue of funeral planning. He has had a stroke but is otherwise healthy. So I was surprised to find he has been hard at work on his own obituary. My stepmother asked him to begin writing it, saying she will be too distraught when he passes away. He is now trying to shorten it after discovering that newspapers charge by the line.
“In my zeal to be honored with glorious words, I chose too many glorious words,” he says with a laugh. “It’s not something I was enthusiastic about doing. But you don’t want it to suddenly fall to everyone else.”
Indeed. I logged on to MyWonderfulLife.com and tried to plan my own funeral. But the job is…daunting. I picked cremation, but I’m having a hard time deciding where to be scattered. The ocean seems cold.
When I asked my husband, he said he hasn’t decided whether to be buried or cremated. “It doesn’t seem imminent,” he explained, shrugging.
I have warned him that if he doesn’t decide soon, I’ll cremate him.
The Federal Trade Commission has The Funeral Rule to help protect consumers when they shop for funeral goods and services. The FTC conducts undercover inspections of funeral homes to check up on compliance with the rules. In 2011, 23 of 102 funeral homes were out of compliance.
I’m disappointed. So many of the funeral directors I know are honest, caring, and do the right thing. While 77% may be following the rules, 23% is far too many falling short. Here’s the news release about the story from the FTC.
FTC Conducts Undercover Inspections of Funeral Homes in Nine States to Press Funeral Homes to Comply with Consumer Protection Law
FTC’s Funeral Rule Requires Funeral Homes to Provide Price Lists to Consumers
Investigators working undercover in nine states detected significant violations of Federal Trade Commission consumer protection requirements in 23 of 102 funeral homes they visited during 2011.
The FTC conducts undercover inspections every year to make sure that funeral homes are complying with the agency’s Funeral Rule. The Rule, issued in 1984, gives consumers important rights when making funeral arrangements. Key provisions of the Rule require funeral homes to provide consumers with an itemized price list at the start of an in-person discussion of funeral arrangements, as well as a casket price list before consumers view any caskets. The Rule also prohibits funeral homes from requiring consumers to buy any item, such as a casket, as a condition of obtaining any other funeral good or service. By requiring itemized prices, the Funeral Rule enables consumers to compare prices and buy only the goods and services they want.
Funeral homes with significant violations can enter a training program designed to increase compliance with the Funeral Rule. The three-year program is known as the Funeral Rule Offenders Program (FROP), and is an alternative to an FTC lawsuit that could lead to a federal court order and civil penalties of up to $16,000 per violation. It is run by the National Funeral Directors Association and provides participants with a legal review of the price disclosures required by the Funeral Rule, and on-going training, testing and monitoring for compliance with the Rule. In addition, funeral homes that participate in the program make a voluntary payment to the U.S. Treasury in place of a civil penalty, and pay annual administrative fees to the Association.
FTC inspections during 2011 encountered varying levels of compliance:
- In Northwest Indiana, one of 12 funeral homes inspected had significant violations;
- In Maui, Hawaii, none of the four funeral homes inspected had significant violations;
- In the New York City area, as well as parts of Connecticut and New Jersey, one of 22 funeral homes inspected had significant violations;
- In Cleveland, Ohio, four of 16 funeral homes inspected had significant violations;
- In Columbia, South Carolina, five significant violations were found in 10 funeral homes inspected;
- In Austin, Texas, four of 19 funeral homes inspected had significant violations; and
- In Richmond and Fredericksburg, Virginia, eight of 19 funeral homes inspected had significant violations.
In addition, the FTC identified 33 funeral homes, within the nine states, with only minor compliance deficiencies. In such cases, the FTC contacts the funeral home and requires it to provide evidence that it has corrected the problems.
Since the FROP program began in 1996, the FTC has inspected more than 2,500 funeral homes and found fewer than 400 engaged in significant Rule violations. In conducting its annual enforcement sweeps, the agency has received assistance from several state attorneys general. This year, the FTC wishes to thank Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine for the valuable assistance provided by his office.
The FTC educates consumers in English and Spanish about their rights under the Funeral Rule, and provides guidance to businesses in how to comply. For more information read Paying Final Respects: Your Rights When Buying Funeral Goods & Services, Funerals: A Consumer Guide, and Complying with the Funeral Rule.
The Federal Trade Commission works for consumers to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices and to provide information to help spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint in English or Spanish, visit the FTC’s online Complaint Assistant or call 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357). The FTC enters complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to more than 2,000 civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad. The FTC’s website provides free information on a variety of consumer topics.
News out of Rochester, New Hampshire: Diane Bozzi regularly took the ashes of her mother to Bingo games for good luck. Then she had a run of bad luck – the urn containing her good luck ashes was stolen out of her van last week. But, oh happy day! – the urn has been returned.
Diane Bozzi and her mother loved playing Bingo together. Before her mother died in 2002, Bozzi promised her mother to take some of her ashes with her to play. Her mother agreed, saying she would bring Bozzi luck.
The urn with Mom’s ashes was sitting in a bag in Bozzi’s van, ready to go to a Bingo game, when it was stolen out of the vehicle. Bozzi made a public plea for the urn’s return (with the ashes).
Police said the urn was returned to Diane Bozzi sometime between Monday night and Tuesday morning. They have no suspects. The story doesn’t indicate how the urn was returned (put on the daughter’s front step? placed back in the van?).
This is an interesting development in the living’s use of the deceased’s remains. The problem with portability is the ability to lose ashes.
When ashes are buried or placed in a niche, at least you know the remains are reasonably safe to stay where they are. And if they are scattered in a particular place that is special to the deceased or their family, at least those living individuals know where to find them.
The moral of the story: Keep your lucky ashes as if they were diamonds – don’t leave them in the car!
Filed under: Funeral News Bits | Tags: cremated remains, military funerals, veterans
Thousands of unclaimed cremated remains of veterans have been languishing on dusty shelves at funeral homes for years, even decades. This Veterans Day, think about honoring the fallen, especially who have no one left to remember them.
In the Santa Fe National Cemetery
Last week, the unclaimed cremated remains of ten U.S. veterans, most who died in the 1970s and 1980s, were buried with military honors in the Santa Fe National Cemetery.
According to the Missing in America Project (MIAP), there are thousands more to be found, identified, and given a proper burial and final resting place. Since the project was launched nationwide in January, 2007, the organization has:
- Visited 1,968 funeral homes.
- Found cremated remains of 14,420 individuals in storage.
- Identified 1,730 of the remains as veterans.
- Interred 1,584 of those veterans with honors in a national cemetery.
How does it come to this? Linda Smith, the national operations coordinator for MIAP, offered several reasons:
- The family has no money.
- The veteran died alone.
- The family thinks that the funeral home will handle it.
- Some families are just estranged and want nothing to do with the remains.
“It’s good that the funeral homes store the remains, rather than just scattering them,” said Smith. “This allows us to locate veterans and memorialize them for their service to our country.”
MIAP works with funeral homes, mortuaries, coroners, the American Legion, state funeral commissions, and state and national veterans administration agencies to locate remains and any surviving family to get the permission to bury the veteran with full military honors. Those honors include a flag folding ceremony and presentation, 21-gun salute, and the playing of Taps.
The Missing in America Project is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit corporation. Their ongoing efforts to locate, identify and inter with military honors the unclaimed cremains of American veterans take many man-hours of effort.
Think about their efforts, especially given the recent news about desecration of war dead returned from Afghanistan and Iraq. You can read these stories in The Washington Post:
Dover Embalmer Objected to Cutting Marine’s Arm
Remains of War Dead Dumped in Landfill
Dover Air Force Base is Nation’s Latest Military Site to be Accused in Scandal
And here’s an interesting story on the many memorial objects left in the Iran/Afghanistan war dead section of Arlington National Cemetery.
We need to blanket every mortuary and cemetery in the United States and let them know there are people who desire to claim our veterans. We need to let them know it is our desire to see they are interred with the honor and respect they deserve. They served our great nation. It is now our great nation’s turn to serve them.
The veterans languishing on shelves need us. They need America to step forward and ensure they are buried with honor. They need America to show their thanks for their service. Without them, we would not have the freedoms we enjoy today.
To our armed forces, both active and veteran, I salute your service.
Filed under: Funeral News Bits | Tags: alkaline hydrolysis, cremation, green burial
There’s a great article on new trends in environmentally friendly disposal methods that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle online recently. It’s titled “The greening of death – eco-friendly burials boom” by Eric Spitznagel with Bloomberg Businessweek.
Jeff Edwards, owner of Edwards Funeral Service in Columbus, Ohio, wants to make one thing clear: He isn’t flushing your grandmother down the toilet.
That, he says, is the biggest misconception about alkaline hydrolysis, a green alternative to cremation that involves liquefying human remains with potassium hydroxide and 300-degree heat. The environmental benefits of hydrolysis are hard to argue with: The process results in only a fraction of the carbon emissions of a traditional cremation.
But when Edwards began offering the service in January – he says he’s the first funeral home in the United States to do so – the media “distorted the facts,” alleging that the liquid created by hydrolysis (only the bone residue is saved for an urn) gets flushed.
“I mean, for all intents and purposes, the liquid remains are released back into the water treatment facility,” Edwards concedes. “So yeah, that does mean they go down the drain. But it doesn’t mean somebody is standing behind a machine with a great big … commode, and you’re flushing grandma down the drain.”
After Edwards used hydrolysis on just 19 bodies, the Health Department of Ohio intervened, announcing in March that it would no longer accept death certificates from or issue burial transit permits to any funeral home using hydrolysis, essentially making the procedure illegal in Ohio. Edwards sued the state, and he’ll have his day in court in February, which he’s confident he’ll win. Alkaline hydrolysis is already legal in seven states, he says, and the numbers are expected to rise.
“The funeral business is changing,” he says. “Green is the future. It’s better for the world, and families are demanding it.”
Cemeteries and funeral homes across the country have been offering eco-friendly death care, from biodegradable caskets to formaldehyde-free body preparation, for much of the past decade. But in recent years the green burial business has gotten bigger – there are close to 300 funeral homes in 40 states offering green services in 2011, as opposed to roughly a dozen in 2008 – and noticeably more eccentric.
Just a few years ago a green funeral might have meant a pine or wicker coffin made without toxic materials.
Acorn-shaped urn
Today it could mean burying the dearly departed in an acorn-shaped urn made of recycled paper, erecting a tombstone with a solar-powered Serenity Panel that plays the deceased’s favorite songs and videos, or casting out to sea a “reef ball” made of cement mixed with cremated ashes – your loved one’s and others’.
“The funeral industry hasn’t had a new idea since the 1870s,” says Joe Sehee, the executive director of the New Mexico-based Green Burial Council. “We’re still burying people like they buried Abraham Lincoln.” While he admits that green burials are a small part of the $12 billion funeral industry – exact numbers have yet to be documented – he believes they’re poised to become a dominant force.
“This is not a fringe market,” he says. “There is an end-of-life revolution at hand.”
For it to succeed, the eco-friendly funeral movement has to convince not only the public that green burials are best, but also the funeral industry.
Thus far, the public has been more receptive. In a 2008 survey conducted by funeral industry publishers Kates-Boylston Publications, 43 percent of respondents said they would consider a green burial. That’s a big increase from a similar survey done in 2007 by AARP, in which 21 percent of those polled were curious about green burials.
One explanation for this rise in interest could be the price tag. According to the National Funeral Directors Association, the average cost of a funeral is around $6,560 – and that doesn’t include a cemetery plot, tombstone and miscellaneous items such as flowers and hearses.
Dig your own grave
“Going green can be half to two-thirds the price” of a conventional burial, Sehee says. And there are numerous ways to cut corners and save money. At the Honey Creek Woodland Cemetery, a green grave site in Conyers, Ga., future customers can save $500 if they’re willing to dig their own graves (or if the bereaved are willing to do it for them).
But the savings isn’t always the selling point.
“When I ask (clients) why they’ve come to us, the answer always comes back: They don’t like cemeteries,” says Jack Lowe, president and founder of EcoEternity, an East Coast green memorial service offering forests instead of graveyards and existing trees instead of tombstones. “Cemeteries remind them of death. These forests are beautiful, and they remind (the families) of life. It’s only when we’re writing up all the contracts that they go, ‘Hey, these costs are really great!’ “
Also, green funerals are just more fun. Nature’s Caskets in Longmont, Colo., offers a do-it-yourself, biodegradable pine coffin kit for the industrious preplanner. And for an extra $100, your coffin can come with shelves, so you can use it as a bookcase while you wait for the end.
“It’s a fun idea,” says Luc Nadeau, who began Nature’s Caskets in 2009. “It’s like facing your mortality every day. And it looks quite nice.”
The old guard of the funeral industry remains the biggest hurdle for green burials. Some undertakers are wary of eco-friendly funerals for aesthetic reasons but, more often, detractors cite health concerns.
The rate of cremations in North America is expected to top 40% this year according to figures just released by the Cremation Association of North America (CANA). At its joint convention with the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA), CANA projected that 40.62 percent of all deaths in the United States in 2010 would result in cremation.
Final 2009 statistics put the actual number of cremations in 2009 at 930,429, as the cremation rate reached 38.14 percent. The figures represent a 1.92 percentage point increase over the 36.22 percent reported in CANA’s final 2008 statistics and 4.04 percent higher than the 34.10 percent reported in 2007.
Based on statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, CANA’s preliminary 2010 figures found that the number of deaths dipped 0.5 percent to 2.452 million from 2.473 million in 2009, while the number of cremations is expected to increase 7.3 percent to 998,547 in 2010 from 930,429 in 2009.
CANA noted that the annual growth rate of cremation over the last five years was 1.3 percent each year. The annual growth rate is the difference between the percentage of deaths cremated in 2009 and 2004, averaged over the five-year period. Between 2004 and 09, the percent increase in cremations was 6.9 percent.
With the continuing rise in cremation comes an increase in the number of crematories. Since 2007, when CANA reported 2,026 crematories in the United States, the figure has grown 8.8 percent in 2010, to 2,204 crematories. Despite the increase in the number of crematories, the average number of cremations per facility rose from 408 cases in 2007 to 453 cases in 2010.
To no one’s surprise, CANA predicts the numbers to increase steadily. In 2015, the association projects a cremation rate of 46.57 percent based on 2.4 million deaths and 1.3 million cremations, which is an increase of nearly 135,000 cremation cases, while the number of actual deaths decreases by 25,566. The number of non-cremations is expected to decrease about 11 percent – from the 1,459,475 estimated for 2010 to 1,299,661 in 2015.
“We did a slight change in methodology this year because it appears that the cremation trend is growing at a faster rate in certain states,” said Mark Matthews, CANA past president. “But as you get to higher numbers, it stops because once you get to the 60 or 70 percent range, it slows down because there are fewer people to convert.”
In the United States, the cremation rate has been rising while the death rate has been rather flat and in fact has gone down, which means more people are opting for cremation at the time of death.
Matthews noted that hidden under the data is the statistical proof that the cremation rate is growing at a faster percentage as a result of the economy. “In my business, some families are not able to afford the costs associated with earth burial in the cemetery,” he said. “They may even own cemetery property and have another family member buried there and still opt for cremation for financial reasons.”
Even ethnic families that would ordinarily bury their dead are opting for cremation due to economic reasons.
Four regions outpaced the national cremation average, according to CANA’s 2010 preliminary numbers:
- Pacific states (Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington) led with a rate of 59.87%
- Mountain states (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico Utah and Wyoming) – 59.13%
- New England states (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont) – 44.45%
- South Atlantic states (Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia) – 36.38%
Falling well below the national average were the East North Central states (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin) at 37.59%, West North Central states (Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota) at 37.11%, the Middle Atlantic states (New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania) at 36.06%, the West South Central states (Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas) at 29.80% and the East South Central states (Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee) at 20.60%.
You can read more about all the details at this story on the Connecting Directors website.
Filed under: Funeral News Bits | Tags: A Good Goodbye, funeral planning, funerals
There are lots of folks eulogizing Andy Rooney yesterday and today. He died at the age of 92 on Friday, only one month after his last commentary on “60 Minutes” before he retired. The funeral services will be private. We can only hope there will be a public memorial service later for the legions of people who admired the man.
Almost a year ago, on the November 28, 2010 program, Rooney did a commentary about living to be 100 years old. He said that there are currently 70,000 Americans over the age of 100. He noted that many said having a sense of humor and laughing help you live longer.
Rooney said, “I’m pretty old already (he was 91 at the time) and I don’t feel as if I’m about to die tomorrow, either. If I’m not here next week, you’ll know I was wrong.”
His commentary the previous week was about not starting his Christmas shopping yet. I was inspired to send him a copy of A Good Goodbye: Funeral Planning for Those Who Don’t Plan to Die as an early Christmas gift. Whether he or his children took advantage of the advice, I don’t know. I sure hope so.
Perhaps we can have an Andy Rooney comment-a-thon in his honor. What is it about the cotton in pill bottles and all the junk we have floating around in our lives? His ability to say what was on all of our minds in such an engaging and curmudgeonly fashion will be missed.
Filed under: Funeral News Bits | Tags: cemeteries, cremated remains, religion
Today is the last day to register to give any cremated remains you may have hanging around your house a free final resting place, courtesy of the Catholic Cemetery Association.
Back on September 30, the association announced it is offering a free program that allows families to properly bury the cremated remains of loved ones now being kept at home. The amnesty for ashes program will provide free placement in a crypt at either Mount Calvary Cemetery in Albuquerque or Rosario Cemetery in Santa Fe.
Here’s the catch: you need to register and bring the ashes to either cemetery by close of business today. They need the information and ashes so they can prepare a plaque to mark everyone’s name before the committal ceremony on Wednesday, November 2, All Souls Day.
It is a religious tradition in the Catholic faith, as well as in the Jewish and Muslim religions, to give every body a final resting place. The growth of cremation has loosened up the final committal of mortal remains, as ashes can easily stay on book shelves, in closets, and other places around the house.
As we saw in a news story not too long ago, a fancy urn holding someone’s mother’s remains was stolen in a home burglary. Don’t let this happen to you!
The deceased does not need to be Catholic for you to take advantage of this offer.
And your loved ones will get grandpoohbahs presiding! Archbishop Michael Sheehan will preside over the service at 11:00 a.m. at Rosario Cemetery in Santa Fe. The Very Rev. John Cannon will preside at 2:00 p.m. at Mount Calvary Cemetery in Albuquerque.
Here are the numbers to get this taken care of now!
Mount Calvary Cemetery in Albuquerque: 505-243-0218
Rosario Cemetery in Santa Fe: 505-983-2322
Here’s a sort of funeral etiquette question about blacking out the name of the deceased on return address labels used by widows. This didn’t show up in the online Dear Abby column, but it ran in today’s Albuquerque Journal.
DEAR ABBY:
In years past, I have lost three friends. Because we lived far apart, I learned the sad news when their widows informed me by letter of their deaths.
In each case, the widow had blacked out the name of her spouse on the return address labels. My mother-in-law did the same thing when her husband died.
What prompts these women to eliminate evidence of their loved one so quickly?
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
DEAR GONE: Pragmatism.
——————————————————–
Do you think it’s a good idea to black out the deceased’s name and keep using those existing mailing labels? If so, when’s the right time to start erasing the deceased’s name? There’s no evidence of the time frame in the above question. Wouldn’t it be life affirming to make up new labels with one’s own name?
