Larry arranged talks at two Reform synagogues, Congregation Emanuel in Chicago and Congregation Beth Am in Buffalo Grove, IL. My thanks to those folks who hosted these “Jewish Funeral Traditions on Film” talks and came out to laugh and learn.

Larry Mandel also hosted a “Funny Films for Serious Funeral Planning Conversations” talk at Piser’s funeral chapel in Skokie. Many thanks to the folks with Elderwerks who provided continuing education credits to the social workers who attended. Thanks to family and friends who turned out as well!

Kudos and thanks to Carol Schrieber, Executive Director of the Funeral Directors Services Association of Greater Chicago, who arranged for the continuing education presentation to local funeral directors on new community outreach ideas. Thank you to Stephanie Kann at Worsham College of Mortuary Science for hosting the event.

Thanks to WGN Midday Program and producer Tom Barnas for having me on the show on January 25. This link to the program goes right to the interview!

And a hearty thank you to my cousin David Seide, a fabulous architectural photographer (his company is Defined Space) who gave me a great tour of the Windy City before I came back to Albuquerque. He introduced me to the Windy City Rollers (women’s roller derby) and their great skull and crossbones logo. He also took me by this biker bar for a photo opportunity.

The YouTube video below provides a panoramic view of the skyline from Millennium Park, by the lakefront, recorded on Friday morning. Thanks again to everyone in Chicago! Hope to make it back before the Morbid Curiosity show at the Chicago Cultural Center closes on July 8. Live long and prosper!

While waiting to go on the air, my gracious host Larry Mandel, funeral director at Piser Funeral Services, took me around. He worked at WGN early in his career. Did you know the Bozo the Clown show originated here?

Tonight we’re expecting over 100 people to attend my “Funny Films for Serious Funeral Planning Conversations” talk at Piser Funeral Services, 9200 Skokie Blvd., Skokie, IL. The champagne reception starts at 4:00 p.m. and the talk starts at 5:00. If you’re in the neighborhood, come on by!

While walking along Michigan Avenue this morning, I stopped in at the Chicago Cultural Center, the old public library building. It’s a spectacular building, and there’s an awesome skylight dome by Tiffany. What really caught my eye is the sign for an exhibition that’s opening tomorrow called Morbid Curiosity: The Richard Harris Collection.

Apparently, Richard Harris collected nearly 1,000 works of art which explore the iconography of death. Some creations in the collection include work by some of the greatest artists of our time. However, I’m going to be on a plane going back to Albuquerque during the opening reception. Drat! Maybe another organization will bring me back to speak in Chicago again before the exhibit closes on July 8.

Chicago Book Tour!

Tuesday, January 24: Jewish Funeral Traditions Talk in Chicago 7:30 p.m. until 9 p.m. Emanuel Congregation with Congregation Or Chadash, Chicago Jewish Day School, 5959 N. Sheridan Road, Chicago PH: 773-561-5173 – Sponsored by Piser Funeral Services

Wednesday, January 25: Gail is interviewed on WGN-TV Midday News program.

3 p.m. until 5 p.m. Presentation on community outreach to the Funeral Director Services Association of Greater Chicago at Worsham College of Mortuary Science, 495 Northgate Parkway, Wheeling, IL, 847-808-8444

7 p.m. until 9 p.m. Jewish Funeral Traditions Talk, Congregation Beth Am, 225 N. McHenry Road, Buffalo Grove, IL, PH: 847-459-1677 – Sponsored by Weinstein Funeral Home and Piser Funeral Services

Thursday, January 26: Funny Films for Serious Subjects Presentation in Skokie, IL to hospice care workers and the general community, co-sponsored by Elderwerks, Skokie Chamber of Commerce and Piser Funeral Services. 4:00 p.m. until 6:30 p.m. at Piser Funeral Services, 9200 N. Skokie Blvd. (at Church St.) Skokie, IL, PH: 847-679-4740

If you’re in the neighborhood, come on by!

• Why most people avoid talking about funeral planning
• What it’s like to talk with a funeral director when there’s no death imminent
• Why the cremation rate in the U.S. has skyrocketed over the past five years
• How to “green” your final arrangements
• What funerals cost these days – and how to pay for this major expense
• A short comparison of Christian, Jewish and Muslim funeral traditions
• Q&A with the audience

This talk does not use funny film clips as I have done in other presentations. For more information on talks such as “Funny Films for Serious Funeral Planning Conversations,” “Ashes to Ashes, Dust in Your Face: Cremation, Comedy and Creativity,” “Doctor, How Long Do I Have?” and “Jewish Funeral Traditions on Film,” visit this page at AGoodGoodbye.com.

This recording is one hour and seven minutes long.

I didn’t find out about his death until a few months after the fact. He was such an active blogger, to see that he hadn’t posted in two months was a sign of concern. I left a message on his cell phone, but didn’t get a return call until months later when his wife Mary was able to access his account.

I wrote this obituary about him after talking to his wife, and many fellow funeral bloggers commented on the loss. On this first anniversary of his death, here it is again.

Your Funeral Guy R. Brian Burkhardt

Robert Brian Burkhardt, the funeral director who wrote the Your Funeral Guy blog, died after a heart attack on January 19, 2011. He was 58 years old.

In a sad irony, while he was a crusader for funeral consumers, he left his family totally unprepared – no life insurance, no wishes to follow, no computer passwords on file.

Under the nom de plume R. Brian Burkhardt, to distinguish himself from others with the same name, his Your Funeral Guy blog challenged the practices of the funeral industry, from suppliers to funeral homes to cemeteries.

He wrote about wide cost variations for funeral products and services, news, scams and trends in the funeral industry, and he reviewed funeral related books. He started the blog in November 2007 and his last posting was January 17, 2011.

Burkhardt also wrote Rest in Peace: Insider’s Tips to the Low Cost Less Stress Funeral. The book, released in 2008, reveals hidden tricks and costs charged by funeral directors and guarantees to lower the cost and stress of any funeral.

He was quoted in stories by The New York Times, Newsweek, Dow Jones Newswires, Fox News, MSN.com Money Central, and other news outlets.

His crusade against the excesses of the funeral industry came out of his personal experiences as a funeral director in Washington, D.C., Wisconsin and Illinois. He witnessed some consumers getting exquisite traditional funerals for thousands of dollars less than normal cost. He vowed to help the ordinary consumer reduce their funeral expenses.

Burkhardt worked for nine years as a newspaper distribution manager for the Naperville Sun. After being laid off when the company was sold in 2000, he decided to become a funeral director and minister to families in their time of need.

He obtained his mortuary associates degree from Worsham College of Mortuary Science. He also held a degree in political science from Illinois State University.

“He loved to serve families and didn’t want to take them for as much money as possible at the time of the funeral,” said his wife Mary. “He worked for some really unethical people. He admired the profession but not those people who take advantage of the bereaved.”

A news junkie who loved history, Burkhardt enjoyed taking the family to visit sites such as Mount Vernon and Williamsburg, Virginia when the family lived in the Washington, D.C. area. He and his wife Mary have two daughters, Alexandra and Sarah.

Burkhardt was born September 19, 1952 in Berwyn, Illinois and grew up in Elmhurst, IL. He was diagnosed with diabetes in 1995 and developed lung embolisms in 2008. He spent a year recovering at home, during which time he wrote his book and worked on the Your Funeral Guy blog.

“I can’t believe Bob didn’t tell me a thing,” observed Mary Burkhardt. “It would have helped me have better closure to have information. I had no wishes to follow.”

The family was left financially destitute, with no money for funeral services or an obituary in the newspaper. They used cheapest cremation service they could find nearby.

Ironically, on Your Funeral Guy blog, Burkhardt had responded to a comment on a page about free online memorials, Dead Facebook Society, on January 14, 2011, just five days before he died.

His body was cremated after organs were harvested for donation. May Bob Burkhardt’s memory be a blessing.

Of special interest is how he suggests a secular use of the shiva period of mourning, a Jewish tradition where the family retreats to the home for a week and receives the support of their community. Many contemporary Jews are shortening the number of days they retreat for this mourning period, if they are observing it at all.

Shiva (or shivah, depending on who’s doing the translation) is the Hebrew word for seven. The traditional seven-day shiva mourning period is rife with rules – no shaving or bathing for pleasure, no sex, no leaving the house (except for Shabbat services), no wearing of leather shoes, no expressions of joy, and no greeting of visitors. Mirrors and photos are covered, prayer services are held in the home, and mourners sit on low chairs or cushions.

Feiler’s article talks about bringing community together in support of the mourners, without all these rules. Notable differences of the secular shiva from the Jewish traditions that were crucial for their success include:

• Create the event for both Jews and non-Jews
• Avoid holding prayer services or any other religious rituals
• Hold the event away from the home of the griever to reduce the burden of “hosting”
• Offer the mourner the opportunity to speak about the deceased, something not customarily done at a Jewish funeral.

A few pointers on pulling such events together:

• Don’t wait for the griever to plan
• Make the event by invitation only
• Ask the mourner if he or she would like to share any stories about the deceased
• Unite a circle of friends to find comfort in a crowd

Feiler ended the piece saying:

“Six months after my string of losses began, it hardly feels over. What I’ve taken away from the experience is a reminder of what I’ve seen often in looking at contemporary religion. Rather than chuck aside time-tested customs in favor of whiz-bang digital solutions, a freshening of those rituals is often more effective. Our “secular shivas” took some advantages of the Internet (e-mail organizing, ordering food online); coupled them with some oft-forgotten benefits of slowing down and reuniting; and created a nondenominational, one-size-doesn’t-fit-all tradition that can be tinkered to fit countless situations.

Like all such traditions, they may not soften the blow of a loss, but they had the unmistakable boon of reaffirming the community itself.”

Yesterday was my husband’s 60th birthday. My brother gave him this “Celebrity Death Quiz” card, and Dave, who has an amazing capacity to remember trivial information, got all the answers right. The challenge – match the celebrity to their death. Here’s the list of ways they died and who they were:

1. Decapitation                         a. Mama Cass

2. Plane Crash                          b. John Belushi

3. Drowned                               c. Lupé Velez

4. Drowned in Toilet                  d. Ricky Nelson

5. Ham Sandwich                     e. Jayne Mansfield

6. Anorexia                               f. Nelson Rockefeller

7. Speedball                             g. Natalie Wood

8. Blow Job                               h. Karen Carpenter

Can you guess who went how?

Answer Key (Don’t Peek!):

1-e; 2-d; 3-g; 4-c; 5-a; 6-h; 7-b; 8-f

I recently gave a Toastmasters talk about cremation trends titled The Crème de la “Crem.” You can watch the YouTube video (would love to get your feedback!) or read the written version of the talk below.

In the film, Hereafter, directed by Clint Eastwood, there’s a scene set in London. Ten-year-old Marcus is attending the funeral of his twin brother, Jason, who was killed in a car accident. Marcus, his mother, and five other people have gathered in a gray church-like chapel. It has wooden pews and tall stained glass windows. This chapel is actually a crematory, or “crem” as the Brits call it.

A minister comes out and says a few quick words about Jason being in heaven and his remains being committed to dust. At a nod of the minister’s head, the coffin sinks down through the floor to the crematorium below. Even before Marcus and his mother leave the chapel, a huge East Indian family hustles in for the next funeral.

Now, the film Hereafter is a crashing bore, yet this scene intrigued me. Do the English really treat their living and dead in this way? I posed the question to the Good Funeral Guide Coffee House, an online discussion group of celebrants in the U.K. In fact, Clint Eastwood got it right.

The U.K. has a cremation rate of 72%, almost three-quarters of the population. Some say it’s because they live on a tiny island and burial space is scarce. These “crems” are used frequently. Funerals in these chapels are almost always rushed affairs. The more families moved through, the more money can be made. It’s hard to slow down the proceedings to allow for a meaningful, healing farewell ceremony.

Thank goodness it hasn’t come to this in the United States. However, more and more people here are choosing cremation. A recent report by CANA, the Cremation Association of North America, noted that the average national rate of those opting for cremation has jumped. It was 15% in 1985, 34% in 2007 and almost 41% in 2010. CANA projects a 50% cremation rate will be achieved by 2018.

In some parts of the U.S., that rate has already been exceeded. The Pacific and Mountain regions, including New Mexico, have already reached a 59% rate of cremation.

According to a recent New York Times story, a big reason for this boom in cremations is cost cutting. In these tough economic times, people are looking for ways to save money any way they can, including final disposition.

The story focused on a woman named Toni Kelly who battled lymphoma for four years. She worried that her costly chemotherapy treatments would destroy the family’s finances. In fact, she died on September 29 leaving her family with two hundred thousand dollars in medical debt. Before she died, though, she planned and saved money on her funeral expenses by being cremated.

Ms. Kelly’s disposition cost about sixteen hundred dollars, including a death notice, a death certificate and an urn. This is a fraction of the ten to sixteen thousand dollars typically spent on a traditional funeral and burial. The cheapest direct cremation you can get in Albuquerque today is about nine hundred dollars. The Social Security death benefit is two hundred and fifty five dollars, which paid the costs of a funeral in 1937. Today it might get you a decent sized obituary in the Albuquerque Journal.

And this was the first cremation in Toni Kelly’s family. Chances are, it won’t be that family’s last one. According to CANA, once a family has done a cremation, that family will likely cremate again. Ironically, the cremation rate is higher for individuals with more education and higher family income. Asian populations and those in urban communities also cremate at a higher rate. African-Americans have a lower cremation rate, preferring the traditions related to funerals.

When I did my 30 Funerals in 30 Days back in October, many of the creative memorial services were made possible by cremation.

Sidney Stone’s remains were front and center at the jazz-themed celebration of his life at the German American Club. The memorial service, complete with a New Orleans second line parade with participants holding umbrellas, was held three months after he died. You can’t wait three months to hold a party with a body.

At Erika Langholf’s celebration of life, her cremated remains were part of a Southwest-themed display festooned with the red chile ristras she loved to make. Her ashes were presented in a beautiful urn of Himalayan rock salt. It wouldn’t have been the same with a casket plunked into the middle of this display.

Sam Houston’s ashes were there at Balloon Fiesta Park early on the Saturday morning his family and friends held a mini-balloon fiesta in his honor. His remains were later scattered from a balloon over the red rocks near Gallup. Try doing that with a body.

These three creative examples were probably not dictated by economics. Yet, just the other day, I saw an obituary in the newspaper that read, “In lieu of flowers, please make donations to William’s memorial at Wells Fargo Bank.”

It has come to the point where families are asking for donations to pay for memorial services. One insurance executive I interviewed said he has seen collection jars at funerals.

The rate of cremation will continue to grow in the United States. People choose this disposition method for different reasons. What’s the right choice for you and your family? The only way to answer that question is to get educated about funeral and cremation costs, make some plans about what would be meaningful, and figure out how you will pay those expenses.

Whether you are concerned about cost, convenience, or creativity, think ahead to make your final exit the crème de la “crem.”

William S. Breitbart, MD

Breitbart has dedicated much of his career to helping people find hope and meaning as they face their own mortality. He helped establish the American Psycho-Oncology Society (APOS) and has worked with dying cancer patients for a long time. He is Chief and Vice Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He is also the child of Holocaust survivors, so he grew up with parents who talked about death a lot yet had a vital, loving outlook on life.

He presented two key ideas as we face our mortality. One, the philosophy and the wisdom of the ages has something important to impart to us, and, two, the importance of the integration of mind-body-spirit to our contentment and happiness.

In ancient times, philosophers were the doctors of the soul. They prescribed the proper attitudes and practices to foster health and happiness. After polling the audience for nominations, some of today’s philosophers might be Oprah, Deepak Chopra, and Lady Gaga.

Breitbart said that we can’t look at death constantly. Our minds won’t allow it. Human beings are animals designed to form meaning and identity. “We start cancer centers and have plastic surgery,” he joked.

And still, we are a death-denying society. He shared that great Woody Allen quote, “It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Allen also is credited with the line, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality by not dying.”

The Search for Meaning

Awareness of death is a call to life. It raises three fundamental existential questions: Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going (i.e. what lies beyond death)?

Human beings can objectively contemplate ourselves. We’re aware that we are alive. We also stand in wonder, awe and dread that we can die. To address this awe and dread, this death anxiety and existential terror, we create culture to offset death. To make meaning is the defining characteristic of human beings as a species.

The search for meaning is almost more important than finding it. Breitbart showed a chart titled Cancer and Meaning. Cancer can lead to three things:

• Suffering – When we encounter a limitation of our lives, it opens the door to enhance meaning in our lives
• Death – Ironically, death can help maintain meaning
• Guilt – This is when we have a loss of meaning, feeling like we have not accomplished enough with the life we were given, or failed to live up to our full potential

Breitbart quoted Albert Einstein’s last words before he died: “If only I had known more mathematics.” Can you believe Einstein felt he failed to live up to his full potential?

Cancer causes us to ask the existential questions. It gives us a sense of urgency and an awareness of the preciousness of life. But not everyone. Some don’t experience any type of meaning, and often those people become depressed, disconnected and hopeless.

Cancer as a Transformation Agent

Cancer is an interruption, an obstacle that causes a deviation in the trajectory of the arc of a life story. It prompts a transition, moving into a new phase that takes a while to incorporate into one’s psyche and accommodate the new information. Our physical limitations reveal our vulnerability and make us more aware of our existential guilt (not living up to our full potential).

In the face of cancer, it takes courage and will to find meaning. We still have the freedom to make our lives as we will, to create meaning in the lives that we still live. The task of facing death is to relieve that existential guilt, forgive and accept ourselves, and restore or sustain meaning.

Attitude is a Choice

The choice of one’s attitude in the face of death informs meaning. One can choose to form a connection to others, foster meaningful, authentic relationships, dedicate oneself to someone else or something greater than self, and seek transcendence with hope and acceptance. Or one can choose depression, anger, blame, judgement, shame and demoralization.

How to live in the face of the fact of our mortality? Breitbart suggests these three keys:

• Be Upright: Realize you are still alive and standing. You’re not dead yet. You still have wants and wishes and can exert your will. Continue having the courage to live, despite the finiteness of life.
• Be Whole: Remain connected to all that gives your life meaning. Relate to others, don’t isolate yourself, engage in the activities you love as you can.
• Be Careful: Care for yourself and those you love. Be aware of your legacy and have compassion for yourself and others.

“The only thing uncertain about death is when it happens and how it happens,” said Breitbart. “Even when people lose hope for a cure, they still have hopes. Acceptance of death is the acceptance of the live that you’ve lived.”

So the task is to accept how you live your life, today and every day. The meaning in your life can’t be given to you, you have to find it in yourself.

Reminds me of what the Good Witch Glinda told to Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Thank you, Dr. Breitbart, for an illuminating talk!

Grim Reapers as claims adjusters – kinda stacking the deck, don’t you think? Even though we’re all going to die someday, do you think the HMO’s are managing our health care to death?