Todd Van Beck

Todd Van Beck
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Email: [email protected]

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A True Act of Mercy

January 11, 2011 By TVBLeave a Comment

A TRUE ACT OF MERCY

Several months ago I made a speaking trip to Northampton Community College in Pennsylvania to give the annual Pearson Lectures. I always have enjoyed my trips to the “Keystone” or “Quaker” State, and as always I was treated with much courtesy and hospitality.

I am guessing that the lectures went alright. My host John Lunsford, who is a true gentleman, and the head of the mortuary science department at the college, said the evaluations looked good. Of course there were a few good people who took task with some of my thoughts, but then that is the risk and the reality of giving public presentations – you can’t be all things to all people.

However as enjoyable as my work with Northampton Community College was, and as gracious as my hosts were, one of the true impacts of my life and career happened just out of the blue when I was introduced to a couple by the name of Trish and Tom Quinn. The Quinn’s are funeral professionals in the Philadelphia area, and what I encountered both in listening and learning from them has had a great influence on my view of funeral service and the noble worthy ideal of our continued quest to improve our abilities and skills in helping bereaved human beings. Helping people always seemed so worthy to me.

The substance of my interaction and subsequent friendship with the Quinn’s has revolved around one primary subject, and that subject is the extremely sensitive and vulnerable topic of the death of a child, and the subsequent funeral activities or lack of them when a child dies.

I cannot remember a time in my career when children have not died. Certainly, and this is a great blessing, the death of a child is nothing today like it was at the turn of the century, or throughout history for that matter, but still even though the numbers of children death’s are less than ever before the impact of the death is more pronounced than ever before simply because CHILDREN ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO DIE ANYMORE.

There was a time, actually not that long ago, when people with good reason just expected that a child was going to die. Throughout history children have been particularly susceptible to the never ending work of the Grim Reaper. I remember looking at an old ancient funeral record book one time and I particularly remember being struck by the statistics that for the month of August, 1893 this undertaker had conducted 38 funerals, and 13 of them had been for children under the age of twelve. It was sobering reading I can tell you that!

Thank God things have improved concerning child mortality statistics in this country, but yet, as every funeral professional in this country can attest children still do die, and this cruel reality is the particular ministry and mission that the Quinn’s have focused their attention on – the subject of a child’s death.

Customarily such connection between a funeral professional and the subject of the death of a child is usually a psychological one. You know, the seminars which have been presented for years on the subjects of “How to Tell a Child” or “What Do Children Do” or “What Happens When A Parent Dies” or the never ending topic “Should A Child Go To A Funeral.” Now all these subjects have great worth, but the Quinn’s have focused on something else. Their focus is on the basic economic structure, or lack thereof, of a child’s funeral expenses, and to that end they have created what I consider one of the most innovative, worthy and creative organizations that I have ever heard of in our great profession which is called FINAL FAREWELL.

Let’s freeze this frame a moment and as usual I would like to dive into some funeral history. When I started out in funeral service the rock solid policy of the funeral home I was connected with was that is a child died, (and the criteria was if the body was too small to go into an adult sized casket), the funeral home treated the call as a child’s death and there was no charge made to the family – even if they could pay.

I knew several other funeral homes in the area in which I worked that had the same policy. My employer’s attitude was one of benevolence, kindness, generosity, and mercy. The truth was that most often when I child died the parents or the most closely affected were people without means. Most of the people we served when a child had died could not afford prenatal care, they might not have been married, some were shunned by their own families, and when the child’s death was not of a pathological nature then we seemed to always be dealing with accidental death and sadly homicides. It was clear that a child’s death placed the funeral home and our staff in a psychological position that many times tackled the very fiber of our service ability. To that end my employer made the decision that since the atmosphere of a child’s death was so charged with complications and sensitivities and trauma and drama, he was not going to add to these poor people’s problems with a funeral bill. He would just absorb the expenses and move on. Certainly today this approach might well annoy or cause some readers to react negatively, but I am just sharing history and not in the least suggesting how a funeral home owner ought to approach such a similar situation. This is just history, nothing else, and as we all know we can’t change history.

As time has marched on it seems evident to me that the death of a child still causes much anguish. It also seems evident that the social, psychological, and practical situations that people who have experienced the death of a child, whether in history or today, still experience poor prenatal care, might not be married, might well be shunned by their families, and children are still killed accidentally or intentionally. The Grim Reaper is still very busy with his never ending work.

However the approach my old employer took concerning his old-fashioned ideas concerning giving a child’s funeral away did have positive results for his career, and his business – his generous spirit simply translated into family loyalty, and while he gave a child’s funeral away, he did not give away the child’s grandparents funerals, or their aunts and uncles, or their parents funerals. In fact this great funeral directors generous spirit truly came back to him a thousand times, and what is more he slept well at night, but of course what I am writing about happened over 40 years ago, and I am not naïve that things have changed. The basic profit structure of a funeral has changed in a big way, today the economy has changed in a big way, and now in our present time the notion of giving anything away needs careful consideration, careful procedures, and most of all careful fiscal responsibility. Things have changed.

This is where the Quinn’s and their creative work in starting up the philanthropic foundation called FINAL FAREWELL comes in.

It has been a long time since I have seen a philanthropic effort concerning our profession being started that I personally believe has as much worth to it as does the Quinn’s FINAL FAREWELL ministry.

The basic idea behind Final Farewell is terribly simple: the foundation is a financial resource, a pool of funds, which are used to assist families when a child dies with funeral expenses. In other words based on each individual situation, case by case, the vision and now the work of Final Farewell is to help supplement funeral expenses on behalf of a bereaved family which goes directly to the serving funeral home, so that a type of win/win situation is created – if one can possibly even use the word “win” in reference to a child’s death. Worded another way, the Quinn’s, and their Final Farewell Foundation, when contacted will work in tandem with both the bereaved family and the serving funeral home to arrive at a figure which the foundation will contribute to simply defray the funeral expenses that occur when a child dies.

There are no complicated formulas, no complicated forms, no lengthy application processes, no bureaucracy, and no one is turned down. The amount of money given is always predicated upon how much money is in the Foundations account, and what the particular situations arise in each instance of a child’s death.

The Quinn’s also have been diligent in creating a non-profit recognized enterprise, which is overseen by a Board of Directors all of who are highly respected leaders from funeral service and other professions.

The amounts of money that are extended to a funeral home is based presently on the amounts of money that are sitting in the Foundation coffers, and the truth is the Foundations bank accounts is not piled high with cash, in fact the cash presently goes up and down depending on how many generous souls the Quinn’s can contact and attract and what the daily needs are concerning helping bereaved people when a child dies. Bluntly speaking the Foundation needs money, they need contributions, and they need it from us, and they need it now.

The Quinn’s have just begun their noble work, and I believe they are doing pioneering work, but also I believe they have their hearts precisely in the right place. They do not look at this work as a business I believe the Quinn’s look at this work as their mission in life, a ministry to the least of these, and in the end a true corporal act of mercy.

They need help. They need contributions. The need relationships out in the funeral service profession. They need a solid base so that the funds that are extended to the worthy people who experience a death of a child can be in time made entirely from the interest which will be in financial investment accounts in perpetuity and which are intended to last long after the Quinn’s are gone and other people take over the program.

The other side of the wisdom of Final Farewell is that it will help contribute to the financial security of funeral homes. Final Farewell might not be able to take care of all the financial obligations of a child’s funeral, but they can, and right now they are helping, but I know they want to help more.

I would ask any reader that before you make a decision to invest your time and/or monetary contributions you first explore Final Farewell on your own by looking at their website at: [email protected] Also you can easily contact the Quinn’s by calling this phone number: 1-800-238-8440. I believe you be happy you made the contact to get involved.

This is NOT a sales pitch, but it is a worthy call to action. I believe Final Farewell is a worthy ideal, and it is managed by two worthy and dedicated human beings: Trish and Tom Quinn. I believe their work deserved our attention and support.
Anyway that’s one old undertaker’s opinion.

TVB

Filed Under: Blog

All Funeral Service is Ultimately Local

November 22, 2010 By TVBLeave a Comment

The great, late, speaker of the House of Representatives, “Tip” O’Neil from Massachusetts once made this insightful remark, he said, “All politics is ultimately local.” I agreed with him when he said it, and I still agree with him today.

With that said allow me to humbly paraphrase the great “Tip.” According to TVB “All funeral service is ultimately local.”

In times such as these, when everything seems to be changing, and change has been the constant companion of funeral service for a mighty long time, in times such as these I find it helpful to sit back and remind myself of a couple of glaring and in the end comforting truths about our great and beloved profession. Here are a couple of truths, as I see them anyway:

  • The average funeral home in this country is not large, it is not owned by large companies, and it is located in relatively small communities. I believe that small communities still are more numerous than large metropolitan areas.
  • The success in funeral service is still relationship based. In other words the more relationships which are created through pre-need, at-need and after care translates into future security and success for funeral homes – regardless of who owns them.
  • Nothing happens until a relationship is created.

This is not Pollyanna stuff, nor is my list of funeral home strengths a feel good expression of pleasantries and platitudes, because even in view of these three mighty important strengths, things have changed. The buying habits of people have clearly changed, and if we as a profession continue to be addicted to using outdated financial models that worked very well in 1968, and persist in using these outdated and obsolete models in 2010 – well it doesn’t take a scientist to conclude what will happen.

There are many more sages and wise people in the funeral profession than I that can address the changing habits of the public, and what these continuing changes mean to our success. I will leave that analysis to people who are much more insightful and skilled than I am.

My list of funeral home strengths might be indeed short, but the length of the list ought not be confused with the truth that these strengths (and there are many more that I have certainly missed) are in reality a powerhouse of influence, a powerhouse of mission, a powerhouse of stability, a powerhouse of compassion, care, and comfort.

Local funeral homes are I believe potential and real powerhouses. In fact given that the death rate is 100% and the resulting misery that this glaring mortality fact creates in every community, the local funeral home truly emerges as a powerhouse of influence, or anyway a potential powerhouse of influence. The difference as to whether a funeral home is a powerhouse or not is always predicated on the attitude and what is in a funeral directors heart.

I grew up in Southwestern Iowa. It was somewhat of an isolated existence. Omaha was 35 miles away and that gave us some contact with another way of life, but the truth was that in the 1950’s my little town was a wonderful place, but it was also in a type of time warp, which looking back was NOT a bad thing.

Henry Blust
Henry Blust

Key to our little town’s mental health as a community was the presence and involvement our two beloved and eccentric undertakers – the Blust Brothers (Henry the older, and Norbert (nicknamed Nob) the younger). The Blust Brothers were absolutely a living truth concerning the reality that in the end all funeral service is local. In fact the Blust Brothers were what I call today funeral directors powerhouses, and here is the beauty of the Blust Brothers they didn’t even know it, which was part of their charm and success. These two men just loved being undertakers.

Today I marvel at the beautiful opulent magnificent funeral homes that are built. They seem to be getting nicer and more opulent each year. I knew as a young undertaker that in most towns the funeral home was indeed the most beautiful building in town. In the big cities this was not always the case. However in small town Iowa this aesthetic reality was a social more. Funeral homes in small towns were almost universally located in the most impressive homes in the community, and the Blust Brothers facility was no different. Outside the building was simply stunning, but this was not the case inside.

Not one piece of furniture matched in the Blust Bros. Funeral Home. Nothing matched. Pictures were hung either too high or too low. The furniture had cigarette burns in the fabric, because one of the Blust brothers was a chain smoker, and carpet was really tired (which was interesting given the fact that the Blust Brothers also operated the town’s only furniture store, which sold carpet), the rooms were dingy and dark, the wall paper ancient, the curtains were drab and heavy, and there was a water stained colored portrait of Jesus hung over the area where they placed the casket.

Then on top of all this were the eccentric Blust Brothers themselves. Their father, a chap named Ferdinand Blust, had opened the funeral home in 1871, two years after the town was founded, and his two sons Henry and Norbert took over the business at the turn of the century. Henry Blust was licensed in 1900 and his brother Norbert was licensed in 1908. They were still doing funerals in 1955. The Blust brothers were not perfect, they were not polished, they were not sophisticated, they were not cool, they were not socially adept, but they were local and very visible, and what is most important is the fact, and a fact it is, we liked them. For all their warts and faults the community liked these two eccentric brothers. They were both popular. They built relationships. They participated in the life of our community, and we liked them

Their eccentricities were legend. For instance no dead person entrusted to the Blust Brothers care would or could be laid out wearing eye glasses. The dead person’s eye glasses were placed carefully in the dead person’s hands. Nob Blust was firm on his no eye glass funeral conviction when he would declare “Dead people can’t see!” so thus ended the lesson, Nob hath spoken, and no one in town ever argued with Nob’s eye glass theory and logic. Everybody in town agreed, dead people can’t see, Nob is right.

The other difficulty, looking back, with the Blust Brother’s was the fact that both of them were almost stone deaf and they stubbornly refused to get hearing aids. So friends just let you imaginations go concerning how smoothly one of the Blust Brother’s funerals went. The brother’s made mistakes constantly simply because they could not hear and hence communications usually fell apart and became shambles. But that little human frailty didn’t make much difference to us folk in town, because remember we liked them, and hence we found it easy to forgive and forget the Blust Brother’s snafu’s on funerals. No matter what the Blust Brother’s both had good hearts. They like us, and we liked them.

I remember very well one funeral where Henry was in front of the living room where the funeral was set up, and he had run out of memorial folders. Nob was in the back of the living room and Henry shouted from the front in the presence of everybody “Nob I’ve run out of cards.” Nob replied “I’ll take care of it.” In about a minute Nob marched forward carrying a folding chair for his brother. Henry got annoyed, he did not need a folding chair he needed memorial folders, and dressed his brother down in front of everybody. Of course Nob could not hear one word that his brother was saying to him and off he went attending to other funeral duties. That kind of stuff happened all the time on a Blust Brother’s funeral. However I also well remember when this minor funeral infraction happened my grandmother leaned over to me and said “Todd, Nob means well.” Remember friends we liked the Blust Brothers.

In the age of high technology, high tech communication, high tech impersonal people, high tech greed, high tech fast lane living, high tech, high tech and then more high tech, is the thought that all funeral service is in the end local an old-fashioned, antiquated, terribly boorish concept? I believe that some good people will say that the good ole’ days of relationship building, the good ole’ days that all funeral service is ultimately local, and the good ole’ days that being well liked is essentially important are truly and indeed over with – they are days gone by, they are ancient history and never to be seen again. They might have a point, and of course the Blust Brothers have been dead for many years, but interestingly the funeral professionals who are the legacy of the Blust Brothers are also highly visible in the community, and people still like them. I wonder who they learned that idea about life and service from.

As I write these words I feel a tug in my mind that I am so out of step with what is going on. However I am equally tugged by the memory of what I learned made the Blust Brother’s so well liked in our little town, and we like them NOT because the Blust Brothers sat around in the coffee lounge waiting for the phone to ring. Those two old deaf eccentric men were out in the community, they participated in the life of the community, they were there with a mission in life to help people, and they earned every dime they made, and they possessed good hearts. They paid the price for their success because they gave of themselves relationally to our little town. Something to think about, is it not?

Oh, the last thought on the beloved Blust Brothers – they operated not only the furniture store, but the ambulance service as well. Now there is a scary thought of which I will have more to say about in a future writing.

All funeral service is local – what do you think? Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.

TVB

Filed Under: Blog

Survey About Funeral Home Communications

May 14, 2010 By TVBLeave a Comment

Filed Under: Blog

Humor and Death

May 1, 2010 By TVBLeave a Comment

On the surface of it, it would seem that humor and death are literally opposites of human emotions and experience. I have found nothing really funny about death, although some of the most hilarious events in my life and career have indeed happened on funerals.

There seems to be nothing funny about the painful emotions that death creates, namely deep, profound, acute grief – nothing funny about pain and grief. Grief hurts; death can be terribly untimely, unexpected, and inappropriate even though the death rate is always 100%.

The human emotions caused by death and grief can kill. People can and do self-destruct when confronted with such inevitable life situations. Not everybody, to be sure, but enough to capture our attention.

As a funeral director I have, as have colleagues, been subjected to death humor regularly. I need not elaborate; needless to say we all in funeral service have experienced it, and what is impressive is that most of us understand the genesis of such behaviors.

I have long felt that people have a natural built in fear of death. This seems a good thing in a way. A respectful fear of death certainly teaches people to avoid needless dangers in life. However this learning about death’s fearful possibilities is not something we are born with, it is developed learning, and in the absence of this type of learning people grow up with the meaningless idea that death has nothing to do with them, and if and when the subject pops up, humor is often used to distance a person from a subject that they are fearful of and hence causes them anxieties, and few if any people want to feel anxious. We have learned to laugh at death, laugh in the face of death, laugh at deaths power, laugh at people whose calling in life is to minister in this death world, laugh, make sport, ridicule, make jokes, laugh, laugh, laugh.

Being afraid of something is a mighty powerful motivator to create a language that distances people from reality – here is a sample of euphemisms that humans have made up to address the subjects of death/the dead/dying: Dirt nap, pushing up the daisies, passed, ex-, demised, expired, gone to meet their maker, stiff, resting in peace, kicked the bucket, in a better place, six feet under, crossed the bar, bought the farm, belly up, checked out, departed, done for, liquidated, perished, in repose, rubbed out, snuffed out, wasted, cashed their chips, cashed out, checked out, croaked, finished, kicked off, snuffed, gave up the ghost, wacked, terminated, put down, eternal rest, laid to rest, was a goner, rode into the sunset, that was all she wrote.

We have done an excellent job in making up an entire language that makes fun of grief and death, and add to this that certain comedians make big money and get big laughs on this subject and the conclusion can easily be make that laughing at death makes people feel safe, secure, comfortable, and also totally deluded. There is another story to be told to be sure.

I have found that in my seminars I can use humor, but only if it is directed at myself, and certainly if the humor concerning death and grief is not too honest, not too direct, not to disturbing. Interestingly during breaks at my seminars all kinds of people, hospice workers, clergy, funeral directors, cemeterians, come up to me and tell me humorous jokes and stories about grief and death, but oh my if they are told in public, or shared with the group, most everybody seems to freeze.

So humor abounds, jokes are told, people laugh, but concerning death and grief only under certain circumstances which almost always mirror the basic concept of being afraid of death. This environment needs an atmosphere of being safe, secure, and comfortable – and don’t share the death jokes you heard during a break in a seminar. There is a dynamic which makes something funny between two people during a break time, but totally off limits being shared with a group. Interesting?

I once saw a Catholic priest give a seminar to the Association for Death Education and Counseling in Portland, Oregon on humor and death. He had collected an array of cartoons from a variety of sources and all of them were irreverent, candid, blunt, raw but terribly honest. The audience at first was stunned into absolute silence, and I thought to myself “How are you going to get out of this one?” However by the end of the seminar most people were rolling in the aisles while at the same time trying not to laugh too much in front of their colleagues. Such is the utter power of laughing at death, and this was a group of death professionals, the cream of the crop so to speak. I remember when the priest finished and took a break the laughter had vanished and people were judging the rashness, the boldness, the offensiveness of the priest. Interesting? He was not invited back again, even though or in spite of the fact that people were laughing till their sides hurt.

It fascinated me to watch those dynamics – laughing one minute, utterly judgemental the next. Interesting dynamics.

Remember Johnny Carson? Anytime he ran into trouble in his opening monologue he would tell a joke about the world famous Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California. Johnny Carson, I thought anyway, gave the impressive Forest Lawn company free publicity on national television.

The queen of the muckrakers, none other than good old Jessica Mitford, went to the bank laughing at death and funerals. Hell she made almost an entire career on using humor and death and she perfected her anti-funeral craft with great skill and delivery.

My old professor the Rev. Dr. Edgar N. Jackson, who seriously took Jessica to task wrote in a book review in October of 1963 of Mitford’s book “The American Way of Death,” that “If this fear of death motivates attacks upon funeral directors, Jessica Mitford must be frightened to death of death.” No one ever said it better.

The great Union Theological professor and world acclaimed philosopher Paul Tillich said that death-anxiety is the basic human emotion. It underlies all our other fears and apprehensions about the process of living.

I have concluded that when dealing with such an all pervading and unfocused emotion such as grief and fear, it is not surprising that one’s anxiety leads one to forms of acting out that may seem incongruous, immature, and utterly fearful simply because we are operating in the area of non-rational. The death rate, rationally and bluntly speaking, is 100% but just try to get a group of people or one individual to rationally respond to this fact of life. Some get it, many do not, and the number of those who do not get this rational truth I want to suggest is growing day by day.

People who are fearful and anxious usually have a strong need to reduce the bothersome subject in size to something that can easily handled, or they think can be easily handled. This works sometimes, but usually not with larger than life subjects.

One hundred years ago sex was taboo. People were excellent at reducing the formation of babies to small size bites which they thought made the touchy subject of how every human being on the planet got here more manageable. Hence the small easy story of the “stork,” or the small easy story of the “cabbage patch.” Storks and cabbage patches were much preferred by many people over the honest and rational penis, ejaculation, vagina, sperm, egg – much preferred – and look what happened. Unwanted, untimely, unexpected pregnancies abounded in this country. Sex was too large a life subject to be relegated to the stork or the cabbage patch. Same is true about death and grief the defy reduction, can’t be done successfully.

I believe that each person on this earth is in reality in a fight for life. Though conditions concerning this fight differ greatly, none the less the fight continues and part of this battle is the balance between the tensions created by confronting the larger than life experience such as birth and death, and the necessary humor that we use to embrace these serious sobering issues and not become so overwhelmed by them that we are paralyzed. So at times and at certain places humor has its place.

My son fights in his life his own serious, sobering life issues which have taken time, love, more love and more time. However as serious as his challenges are, the other night he told a story about one of his roommates in the place that is trying to help him and the story involved this chap using crack cocaine. Trust me folks, I have never ever thought cocaine was a humorous subject, but by the time my son was finished telling this ridiculous story I was laughing my ass off.

It is not unusual then, based on the following analysis, that the more serious the human problem, the more likely it is to become a subject for humor. This I believe is the embryo of undertaker jokes. They hurt, they sting, and yes they are horribly boorish but I believe they stem from something much deeper, much more profound than a knock knock joke.

The other side of humor, while it can be caustic and rude, is that it also can be pure mental health. I had a professor in Boston once say that a good belly laugh was worth ten valium. I believe the good professor was correct.

Humor reduces stress, and this is clearly evident on funerals. I remember once a woman came running into the narthex of the church. The place was packed, and she saw me and came running over and in a loud voice said, “Do you have a car for the ball bearings?” I had no earthly idea what she was talking about. I asked her to repeat her question. She yelled in a loud excited voice “My son is one of the ball bearings, do you have a car to take him to the cemetery?” OK now I got it. Pall Bearers were today on this particular funeral transformed into Ball Bearings. Everyone in hearing distance started to laugh, and finally the woman blurted out, “Oh my God, I mean the pall bearers car – good God what did I say?”

Here were people in grief, and out of the blue humor popped its head up, and people released their tension. So yes, while death and grief are serious sobering larger than life experiences, grief and humor are too, and are related, and this relation can be and often is both useful and valid in expressing the natural human emotions which run high at such unique special times in life.

Looking closely at community rituals and practices one realizes quickly that there are many ways that people try to manage their anxiety about death – and usually some form of humorous acting out is a silent yet powerful companion on such activities. Let’s take Halloween for instance.

I used to love Halloween when I was a child. I still love Halloween and relish staying home and handing out all the goodies to the goblins, witches, ninja warriors, and Star War people who ring my doorbell. Great fun and I get a great laugh out of the vampires, ghosts, and monsters.

The theme and history of Halloween, no matter how well it is disguised, is unquestionably death. Interestingly on Halloween parents can without even knowing it act out their death anxieties in a socially accepted manner. They dress their children up in the symbols of death – skeleton suits, death masks, and ghostly dress. They send their children out into the dark of night, fully aware of the hazards, but willing to take that calculated risk (on a temporary basis) so as to have it all over with and then the little ones return back to normal, safe, secure ground in only a few hours. Once again the environment of risking death culminates hopefully in safe and secure ground, but still with the accompanying delusion present. The delusion of course is the reality of death is ever present because on the sobering serious side of life we all know that some little ones every year and at every Halloween never make it home from their night of trick or treats, some are poisoned, some are kidnapped, and some are murdered. Yet the risk is still taken, and to be sure it is a calculated risk on the parent’s part, for unquestionably they are skirting death. It is a powerful silent symbolic death lesson whether people are aware of it consciously or not.

If a person were to stand back and take an rational, clear objective look at the strange and bizarre behaviors that takes place on Halloween night, one would have difficulty making sense of it – unless that person sensed its deeper meaning, which many people do sense to be sure. All Soul’s Day after all is one of the major events in the Christian Church calendar. I believe that when parents accept the events of Halloween and take the calculated risks involved they are probably in the end expressing their need for a symbolic, socially approved way of getting close, in possibly dealing with, albeit it temporarily their own particular form of death-anxiety.

Possibly the intensity and frenzy with which Halloween is prepared for, commercialized, and socially approved may be a clue to the degree of death-anxiety that parents and the community feel in this culture. Halloween has all the ingredients necessary for personal death awareness. Death symbols, risk taking, and possibly hopefully a safe return to the nest. It is like putting one’s big toe in the deep end of the pool and safely pulling it out again. Yet once again even in this metaphor many people drown when they put their big toe in the deep end of the pool.

Certainly our behaviors at Halloween is lighthearted and humorous, but yet in the church calendar the holy drama of the death and resurrection of Jesus lacks humor, its function may well also be related in a big way to the emotional needs expressed in the sportive counterpart that occurs between Easter at one time, and the next Halloween. The theme of both is precisely the same: death.

While I personally do not like undertaker jokes (I have always been thin skinned and ultra sensitive, I can dish it out but can’t take it) I believe that when anybody confronts death honestly, whether it is in jest as in Halloween, or in all seriousness as in Easter, one may very well reduce the intense anxiety that surrounds the emotional hazard of personal death, personal grief, and personal dying.

I believe that in laughing we tend to reduce the magnitude of the perceived threat. I suspect the worst approach is to not laugh at death or take death seriously – but instead to be indifferent to the subject. That possibility, today a reality, frightens me. Death illiterate, death indifferent people I believe can and do dangerous things, for if one is numb, desensitized, neutral, immune, and utterly indifferent to death, I believe one will be the same to life, and can possess the ability to mow down one’s school chums without giving much concern or awareness to the literal, rational and honest permanency of their actions for onesself and others. I have been told that cold blooded killers have a soulless look in their eyes. I have a suspicion that it is better for young people to use humor with each other.

Grief and death are sobering subjects. Sex is a sobering subject. Financial security is a sobering subject. Health care is a sobering subject. These subjects are so sobering that if humor is not injected, if some light hearted comment is not made, the reverse of healing and help will certainly occur. Fear will take over, and while this might be a great motivator, too much fear stops the human experience questing for personal peace and contentment in its tracks.

Jack Benny made fun about his being a miser and he was hilarious. He made the obsession with financial security look ridiculous, while all the time watching him I knew that being serious about financial security was important.

George Burns made sport of being old and having sex. He quipped once “Making love after you are 80 is like playing pool with a rope.” Certainly intimacy is important, and it can be terribly sobering, but George Burns helped balance out the realities of aging with a quick joke, which I found really funny. However I told this joke at a seminar and was never asked back.

When the humor eventually comes my way about my job, my work, the endless undertaker jokes, I try to understand, have a laugh, and not take it too seriously. Not too long ago a man came up to me and said “Todd do you know the definition of self-control?” I did not know the answer, so the man replied, “It is the undertaker trying to look sad at an $80,000.00 funeral!” He laughed and laughed. I patted him on the back and said “That is a good one.”

Emotionally, physically, spiritually and socially it is just possible that the humor people employ to face death and grief may be many times a useful and necessary device for reducing one’s own anxieties to small size bites which are palpable and manageable. What I used to view as offensive and inappropriate is I believe, in context, quite valid and helpful.

Originally published at ICCFA.com

Filed Under: Articles

Reporters must all be using the same death/funeral thesaurus

April 21, 2009 By TVBLeave a Comment

I hope every funeral and cemetery professional will read the article by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post entitled “Funeral Business Feeling Six Feet Under.” I read it with great interest and have made some observations which I would like to share with my friends.

It is interesting that this news piece should come so closely on the tail of the “AARP – Rest In Peace” article which I responded to many month ago. What I at once found interesting about Mr. Milbank’s writing as I immediately did with the AARP piece was this endless supply of death/funeral one-liners that journalists seem addicted to using.

In my response to the AARP article, I listed the ones I personally have collected over the years and that was many to be sure, but I am going to have to own up to the fact that Mr. Milbank has taken the award for the most one-liners I have ever read in one brief article.

Here is the list I compiled. Honestly, there must be a death/funeral thesaurus out there somewhere. Anyway here goes:
1. “dying for more bad news”
2. “grave new indicator”
3. “is in a hole”
Now, these three literary gems were included in the first paragraph alone, which only contained 25 words in total. Let’s go on:

4. “the Grim Reaper tends not to”
5. “quite an undertaking”
6. “gets deep-sixed”
7. “funeral business is buried”
8. “shuffle off this mortal coil”
9. “or the stiffs”
10. “deadly serious”
11. “draped in black fabric”
12. “looks like death these days”
13. “cutting grass beats pushing up daisies”

This is an 18-paragraph article containing 13 one-liners. Great journalism!

Now on to content. The funeral profession is not particularly connected to economic trends, but the funeral is connected in a big way to social, cultural and religious trends. The increase in cremation, in shorter funerals, in changing casket preferences, is not based on economics – it is not based on a sudden consumer money spending movement that all of a sudden decided to “save” money on funerals due to 2009 conditions.

The social movements toward cremation and shorter funerals started years ago and have continued whether or not the economy is in the tank or is booming. To combine the Grim Reaper with the stock market is utterly absurd. Even the funeral corporations, which are connected to the stock market, do not represent the majority of funeral homes. The majority of funeral providers in this country are still mom and pop in small town USA.

Mr. Milbank makes reference to “funeral luncheons” in a manner in which the reader gets the impression that there are big bucks in funeral luncheons. Not true. Most times the funeral home has absolutely nothing to do with the typical funeral luncheon except for holding onto the hope that the funeral home staff will be invited to partake in some mighty fine food.

True, some funeral homes provide room for receptions and a few actually can make arrangements for a catered affair, but to imply that moving from a catered affair to cheese and crackers is a significant economic impact on the funeral indicates that Mr. Milbank has NOT attended many typical funeral luncheons in the basement of a church.

I almost burst out laughing when Mr. Milbank described the news conference and said the funeral representatives were sitting at a table “draped in black.” Give me a break, for God’s sake. I have given thousands of seminars in thousands of hotels, in the Mayflower itself, and all the tables are not draped but skirted in black – that’s what they call it, skirting.

Let’s move on. Lastly Mr. Milbank’s includes as one of the list of “woes” in the funeral profession as being “deadbeats who don’t pay their loved ones’ funeral bills.” Can he be serious? It is wrong for a funeral director who has performed essential services to the living and the dead to not get paid. Does Mr. Milbank live in a different country? Good heavens, how long would the Washington Post survive if “deadbeats” did not pay their subscription bill and the advertisers fudged on paying their bills? OK, enough about Milbank.

There are some essentials concerning this article that as a funeral director and a person who loves funeral services I need to express.

I have crossed the paths of many of the funeral representatives included in this article and I have found them to be level-headed, competent, caring and good individuals. Having a “summit” concerning funerals combined with money, combined with recessions, combined with products, combined with any of the items that Mr. Milbank wrote about is always an extremely challenging ticket for anybody. It just seems that the media cannot shake the fact that funeral directors need to make money – just like reporters do.

I cringed when I read the idea about federal help concerning funerals, and I suspect that much of what was in the article was misinterpreted, which happens all the time in working with the media. However, what the article failed in a big way to include was that for years the federal government has contributed to helping families financially in a significant way, as have most county governments in all states.

The Veterans Administration, Social Security, Medicaid, County Welfare and other government agencies have assisted, but of course not remotely in the direction of what was indicated in Milbank’s article – if indeed and in fact that is what was meant. I mean the members of the summit were really not quoted much; Milbank was more interested obviously in his pithy one-liners.

I have found it fascinating over the years that people in almost any other line of work can talk, analyze, project, complain, predict, speculate, review, report and fantasize about money – except funeral directors, and when they do discuss money, and the media is involved, there is sure to be trouble around the corner – NOT FAIR PLAY!

Years ago, I would have breakfast every morning with several other businessmen in my community. Every morning one or two of them would bemoan the state of their particular businesses. The hardware store operator would complain that nobody was buying hammers, and everybody would assure him that things would improve; the car dealer complained that car sales were in the bucket, and everybody would assure him that things would improve. Then if I chimed in and confessed that I had not had a funeral in over a month, all my “good buddies” would in unison say, “Good, great, that’s a good thing – NO ONE IS DEAD IN OUR TOWN.”

So in the end, my conclusion of Milbank’s article and the summit is that no one is ever going to feel sorry for the woes, concerns and problems of the undertaker – we can expect no sympathy from anyone even though we spend most of our lives extending sympathy to others. Anyway, that is one old undertaker’s opinion.

Filed Under: Blog

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