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

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.