Saying Goodbye – Page 55 – The Amateur's Guide To Death & Dying

May 8, 2016May 8, 2016

Her secret history: I discovered my mother’s digital life after her death

The contents of my mom’s laptop were like a breadcrumb trail: her interests, her hopes and her plans for the future, even those that would never come true

‘I wondered about the clues I found: were they hints for how I should live my life? Suggestions for places I should go? Ideas to discover?’

Not long after my mother died in 2014, less than eight months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, my dad and I performed a ritual familiar to anyone who has lost someone they love: we went through her closet to decide what to hold on to. We kept her favorite pieces, like the cozy purple cardigan in which her scent still lingered, a few items of jewelry and her scarves.

A few months later, my father gave me her laptop. I needed a new computer and was grateful to have it. But its contents – photos from trips, a draft of her thesis from divinity school, Van Morrison albums in her iTunes – kept pulling me down rabbit holes. Whenever I sat down to do some work, I’d find myself lost in her files, searching for ways to feel close to her again.

Her computer activity was like a breadcrumb trail through her inner life: her interests, her hopes and her plans for the future, even those that would never come true.

The bookmarks in her Safari browser served as a compass on a journey into my mother’s mind. She used them like sticky notes, saving articles to return to, museum exhibitions to attend and beautiful hotels to visit. She bookmarked things like EssentialVermeer.com, a Wikipedia entry for Theological aesthetics, How to Dress Like a Parisian, and endless recommended reading lists.

As I scrolled through them, I wondered about these clues: were they hints for how I should live my life? Suggestions for places I should go? Ideas to discover? The very first bookmark was “Resources for a Spiritual Journey.” Was that a little nudge from her? I explored each site methodically, not wanting to miss a word or a photograph, just in case I overlooked something from my mom: here’s what you need to know, here’s what I really loved, here’s how much I loved you.

Of course, not all bookmarks were treasure troves. Her health insurance company, for example, and some links no longer work. One took me to the old site of the Opera National de Paris. “You are looking for something?” the 404 error message read in broken English. “Yeah, my mom,” I think. “You seen her?”

Each bookmark corresponded to a time in her life. I pinpointed when she moved to London (places to stay in Cornwall and upcoming shows at the Tate) and when I got married (my wedding website). And there, toward the end of the list, a YouTube video of Kenneth Branagh delivering the St Crispin’s Day Speech from Henry V marked when cancer entered her life: my little brother sent it to the family when her chemo began, preparing us for the battle ahead.

A month later, she sent us Mel Gibson’s “Freedom” speech from Braveheart. I clicked on the bookmark and re-watched Gibson in his blue face paint, yelling: “They may take our lives, but they may never take our freedom!” That was my mom, the William Wallace of chemo: our fearless chief, bravely leading us into a gruesome battle.

But walking in mom’s online footsteps was also like crossing a field riddled with landmines. Without warning something would trigger my grief and my heart was ripped open again. The most painful were those that came just before the cancer battle speeches, before she knew she was sick. There, plain as day, were her plans and hopes for a future she thought stretched out before her.

“15 Ideas for a Children’s Discovery Garden,” read one bookmark from not long ago. This was my mom looking for ways to make her house magical for her grandchildren. At the time she had just one, my one-year-old daughter Maeve, and I could see that being a grandmother was going to be the defining role of the rest of her life.

Recently, I stumbled upon her bookmark of a CS Lewis quote: “We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”

This is what my mom sought throughout her life, and was more successful than most at finding it. For me, the quote also evokes the day she died and how I’ve come to understand her death. She died on 15 December 2014, eight months after she was diagnosed.

The days and weeks in late November and early December that preceded my mother’s death had been dark, overcast and cold. The grim scenery seemed to reflect the sorrow and fear that had overtaken my family. I kept taking photos at twilight of the dark silhouettes of tree branches set against the purple sky.

But the day my mom died was different. I came downstairs early that morning to relieve my older brother who had kept vigil by her bed all night. I sat alone with her as sunlight flooded in through the windows, filtering through the pink orchids that lined the windowsill.

As I sat there, I remembered what my mom had told me about the day I was born. The hospital had been busy that August morning but soon after she gave birth to me, my mom and I were left in a room alone. When she told the story, she always emphasized how wonderful it was to be on our own, just the two of us, how peacefully we slept. That’s how I started my life.

And that’s how the last day of my mom’s life began: just the two of us. I held her hand and watched her labored breathing. Looking at her, I thought about how I must have slept on her chest as a baby, taking in her warmth and feeling so safe in her arms.

That afternoon, my mother took her final breath. My two brothers and I left my father sobbing next to her hospital bed, which had been set up in the living room, and sat next to each other on a bench outside, watching the day’s final rays of sunlight bathe the front yard. After days and weeks of grim winter darkness, the scenery was radiant.

I couldn’t help but think my mom had become part of the beauty around us. The light seemed more intense, the beauty more vibrant because she was there in it. I was surprised that such a feeling of peace could be felt in the midst of that horrifying loss. I still cling to it and try to revive it in my memory.

My mom’s very last bookmark is for the Phillips House at Mass General Hospital, a place where she could get medical care and maybe spend her final days. The bookmark signifies to me that it was an idea she wanted to return to – an option to consider.

But her decline accelerated so fast. She died in hospice care at her home on Martha’s Vineyard.

The next bookmark is mine. I created it eight months after she died. It just says “Life Begins,” and it’s for the program for expectant mothers at New York Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn, where my son was born 14 months after my mom died.

When I first noticed these bookmarks back-to-back it took my breath away, like I’d stumbled on an essential clue to some mystery. Sitting right there was my mom’s disappearance from the world and then my son’s miraculous entry.

I’ve kept adding my own bookmarks to my mother’s list: 99 “essential” restaurants in Brooklyn, 25 weekend getaways from New York City, places where Maeve could maybe take dance lessons. Now my daydreams and thoughts for the future are piled onto my mom’s. From my mom’s happy life to its tragic ending to me trying to figure out how to be a person in the world without her, it’s all there.

Complete Article HERE!

May 6, 2016May 5, 2016

Duck, Death and the Tulip: An Uncommonly Tender Illustrated Meditation on the Cycle of Life

“When you’re dead, the pond will be gone, too — at least for you.”

BY MARIA POPOVA

“Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love,” Rilke wrote in contemplatinghow befriending our mortality can help us feel more alive. Nearly a century later, John Updike echoed this sentiment: “Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?” And yet however poetic this notion might be, it remains one of the hardest for us to befriend and reconcile with our irrepressible impulse for aliveness. How, then, are those only just plunging into the lush river of life to confront the prospect of its flow’s cessation?

The German children’s book author and illustrator Wolf Erlbruch offers a wonderfully warm and assuring answer in Duck, Death and the Tulip (public library) — a marvelous addition to the handful of intelligent and imaginative children’s books about death and loss.

One day, Duck turns around to find Death standing behind her. Terrified, she asks whether he has come to take her, but he remarks rather matter-of-factly that he has been there her entire life.

At first chilled by the notion of Death’s lifelong proximity, Duck slowly, cautiously, curiously acquaints herself with him.

Death gave her a friendly smile.

Actually he was nice (if you forgot for a moment who he was).
Really quite nice.

With great economy of words and minimalist yet enormously expressive illustrations, Erlbruch conveys the quiet ease that develops between the two as they relax into an unlikely camaraderie.

Duck suggests they go to the pond together, and although Death has always dreaded that, he reluctantly agrees. But the water is too much for him.

“Are you cold?” Duck asked. “Shall I warm you a little?”
Nobody had ever offered to do that for Death.

They awake together in the morning and Duck is overjoyed to discover that she is not dead. Here, Erlbruch injects the lightheartedness always necessary for keeping the profound from slipping into the overly sentimental:

She poked Death in the ribs. “I’m not dead!” she quacked, utterly delighted.

“I’m pleased for you,” Death said, stretching.

“And if I’d died?”

“Then I wouldn’t have been able to sleep in,” Death yawned.

That wasn’t a nice thing to say, thought Duck.

But since any friendship is woven of “a continued, mutual forgiveness,” Duck eventually metabolizes her hurt feelings and the two find their way into a conversation about the common mythologies of the afterlife central to our human delusion of immortality:

“Some ducks say you become an angel and sit on a cloud, looking over the earth.”

“Quite possibly.” Death rose to his feet. “You have the wings already.”

“Some ducks say that deep in the earth there’s a place where you’ll be roasted if you haven’t been good.”

“You ducks come up with some amazing stories, but who knows.”

“So you don’t know either,” Duck snapped.

Death just looked at her.

Having failed to resolve the existential perplexity of nonexistence, they return to the simple satisfactions of living and decide to climb a tree.

They could see the pond far below. There it lay. So still. And so lonely.

“That’s what it will be like when I’m dead,” Duck thought. “The pond alone, without me.”

Death sometimes read minds. “When you’re dead, the pond will be gone, too — at least for you.”

“Are you sure?” Duck was astonished.

“As sure as can be,” Death said.

“That’s a comfort. I won’t have to mourn over it when…”

“…when you’re dead.” Death finished the sentence. He wasn’t coy about the subject.

As summer winds down, the two friends visit the pond less and less, and sit quietly in the grass together more and more. When autumn arrives, Duck feels the chill in her feathers for the first time, perhaps in the way that one suddenly feels old one day — the unannounced arrival of a chilling new awareness of one’s finitude, wedged between an unredeemable yesterday and an inevitable tomorrow.

“I’m cold,” she said one evening. “Will you warm me a little?”

Snowflakes drifted down.

Something had happened. Death looked at the duck.

She’d stopped breathing. She lay quite still.

Stroking her disheveled feathers back into a temporary perfection, Death picks Duck up and carries her tenderly to the river, then lays her on the water and releases her into its unstoppable flow, watching wistfully as she floats away. It’s the visual counterpart to that unforgettable line from Elizabeth Alexander’s sublime memoir:“Perhaps tragedies are only tragedies in the presence of love, which confers meaning to loss.”

For a long time he watched her.

When she was lost to sight, he was almost a little moved.

“But that’s life,” thought Death.

As the river spills off the book and we turn to the last page, we see Death surrounded by other animals — a subtle reminder that he will escort the fox and the rabbit and you and me down the river of life, just as he did Duck. And perhaps that’s okay.

Complement the immeasurably beautiful and poetic Duck, Death and the Tulip with the Danish masterpiece Cry, Heart, But Never Break and Oliver Jeffers’s The Heart and the Bottle, then revisit a Zen master’s explanation of death and the life-force to a child.

Complete Article HERE!

May 4, 2016May 4, 2016

We think our attitudes to death are unchanging. They’re not

Death rituals such as the anglers who turned their friend’s ashes into fishing bait are nothing new. In the west, we could learn much from other cultures

By Lindsey Fitzharris

‘In Tana Toraja in Indonesia, they hold a festival called Ma’nene, during which they remove the bodies of favoured ancestors from their coffins and clean and dress them. Sometimes they even walk them around the village.’

The 18th-century printer and type designer John Baskerville (he of the “Baskerville font”) was so averse to religion and its conventions that he requested that, upon his death, his body be buried upright in a specially prepared vault in an old mill on his property. In 1775, his wishes were fulfilled. In 1821, however, a canal was built locally and the mill was destroyed. The landowner at the time put Baskerville’s body on display until his descendants had it moved to a crypt in Christ Church, Birmingham. In 1897, the church was demolished and poor Baskerville’s remains were moved again, this time to the catacombs of Warstone Lane Cemetery. In 1963, a petition was put forward to the Birmingham city council that what little remained of John Baskerville be moved a fifth time to unconsecrated grounds, in keeping with his original wishes.

The petition was denied.

Baskerville wasn’t the only person in the 18th century (or indeed any century) to flout traditional death practices. Since time immemorial, people have sought alternative solutions to disposing of human remains. The news stories we see today – like the man whose ashes were turned into fishing bait and used by his friends to catch a 180lb fish – are nothing new.

Dr John Troyer, who heads the Centre for Death & Society at the University of Bath, is currently spearheading the Future Cemetery project in conjunction with Arnos Vale cemetery in Bristol. “The idea was to deliver a large-scale project that experimented with new approaches like projection, augmented reality, and Bluetooth soundscapes to engage visitors with this stunning but sensitive space.” In other words, you may someday be able to walk into a cemetery and listen to a hologram of a dead loved one speak about his or her life.

Although some people might be averse to these developments, we should remember that new technologies and death have often gone hand-in-hand in the past. For instance, postmortem photos began to emerge shortly after commercial photography itself became available in 1839, and carried on being popular into the early 20th century. Today, we might liken this to the trend among millennials to take “funeral selfies”.

The desire for alternative death practices is growing, especially among an ageing population of baby boomers who have been accustomed to having a wide range of choice in their lives.

Caitlin Doughty – mortician, writer and founder of the Order of the Good Death – educates the public about their options through her popular YouTube series, Ask a Mortician. She recently opened a new funeral parlour, Undertaking LA, which “allows families to reclaim rightful control of the dying process and care of the dead body”. The bereaved can wash and dress the bodies of their loved ones in preparation for burial. This process brings a mourner closer to death, and breaks down unwarranted fears of the dead body. “It’s what everyone did 150 years ago,” Doughty says, “and it can be a beautiful way to mourn.”

Although this type of intimacy with a corpse might seem alien to us in the west, there are many cultures around the world that have no problem interacting with the dead. Dr Paul Koudounaris – author of The Empire of Death – has travelled to more than 70 different countries and encountered countless cultures and belief systems along the way. His book features hundreds of photographs of the dead.

“In Tana Toraja [in Indonesia],” he tells me, “they periodically hold a festival called Ma’nene, during which they remove the bodies of favoured ancestors from their coffins and clean and dress them. Sometimes they even walk them around the village.” This past year, Koudounaris attended Ma’nene. After the festival was over, some villagers asked Koudounaris as an afterthought if he wanted to see their grandmother, whose dead body had been laid out in the hut next to his for the past month. “It was the casualness of it that was really striking,” he says. “In the USA, that would not be a casual situation that would slip one’s mind.”

Koudounaris rightly reminds me that we need to be careful about “treating ‘western culture’ as some homogeneous thing,” and that death rituals in westernised society can vary greatly. That said, the more intimate practices tend to come from non-western areas of the world. What Koudounaris hopes we learn from these cultures is that “the dead can still have a role in society, and that death need not be fatalistic”. Like Doughty, he hopes we can reclaim something from the past that we’ve lost: “The irony is that we once understood this in western society, we were much the same way. We forgot it over the past 200 years, and now we’re seeing a nascent movement to relearn that exact lesson.”

Back in Britain, Troyer continues to push the boundaries with the Future Cemetery project. He reminds us that: “What’s weird today is almost always normalised, forgotten about over time, rediscovered, turned into an ‘alternative’ that seems weird and then becomes normal again.”

Cremation was once considered a radical alternative to burial in Britain. The first woman cremated in this country was Honoretta Pratt in 1769. Today, approximately 75% of Britons are cremated. What will the next big thing in death be for us as we head towards the 22nd century?

Complete Article HERE!

April 26, 2016April 25, 2016

Death with options: How we bury our loved ones is changing

By Sybil Fix

Death with options1 — The family of Mrs. Jean Dukes lowers her simple casket into the grave at Greenhaven Preserve. The natural burial is an alternative to traditional mortuary practices.

After burying her mother a few years ago, Sheila Holt found herself contemplating her own death.

There was no urgency to it: she was in her early 50s and in good health. But the Summerville health services online school teacher was not inclined to look at death shyly. With a career in nursing behind her, she felt an urge to plan for it and, specifically, for the disposal of her body.

Meditating, envisioning a reel of sensations, Holt quickly excluded embalming, for both the chemicals and the removal of the organs, which felt violating. And then caskets, too.

She considered cremation, and quickly discarded that option: Fire felt violent and destructive.

“It did not feel free to me. I want to view my death as freeing,” she said.

Frustrated, she turned to Google and read about something called natural burials and three places in South Carolina that offered them. On a rainy winter day, she and her husband drove two hours north to Eastover to visit Greenhaven Preserve, a 360-acre nature land trust where one can be buried in a simple shroud in the thick of the woods.

Walking the grounds, they came to a small clearing big enough to park a large SUV and framed gracefully by four hollies. The space seemed to suggest a bucolic grave. Suddenly, the sun came out and the dappled rays came to rest there.

“That was it. I looked at my husband and said, this is it. This is my afterlife spot,” Holt said. She paused in thought. “I have the deed and everything … I could not be more prepared and happy.”

Confronting our mortality and planning for it continue to be hard things to do. Yet, Holt may be representative of a significant shift not only in willingness to discuss death but to chart it so it can unfold in a way that is more truthful what we want for ourselves.

Once, said Archie Willis, president of McAlister-Smith funeral homes here, people did whatever the family did, on a spit of land that had meaning to them, united by the same religion and tradition.

Now families often are split by distance, divorce, second marriages and different religions. Those things complicate decisions regarding burial.

But other influences are budding as people question embalming and caskets, want ritual without artifice, want more individual choice and question their impact on the planet, even in death.

“There is an awareness and a demand for public information about choice that is unprecedented,”said Kate Kalanick, executive director of the Green Burial Council, based in California, which created standards for environmentally conscious deathcare.

College of Charleston professor George Dickinson, who has taught a class called Death and Dying for some 30 years now, calls us “a death-denying society.” But, he said, “the conversation is coming to the forefront. We don’t have to do what Mom and Pop did anymore and we are freer to be frank about it.”

Changing conversation

Every couple of months, people gather in small groups to talk about death. Called Death Cafes (and elsewhere, Death Over Dinner), people venture over food and drink into an uncomfortable conversation, but one that nearly everyone yearns to have.

The group’s foundational belief, “is that if we talk about death in an open way, people will make the most of their lives,” said Jan Schreiber, who retired to Charleston and founded the Death Cafe chapter here. “Talking about death clarifies your life.”

Some people come to talk about coping with dying; others want suggestions on how to discuss death with their aging parents. And some of the conversation is about planning, which nationally many are expressing a need to discuss.

According to the Funeral and Memorial Information Council’s Study of American Attitudes toward Ritualization and Memorialization, in 2015, 69 percent of adults over the age of 40 say they would prefer to prearrange their own service. It may sound like a chore, but, interestingly, the more planned it is, the better we feel about it.

Death with options2 — Greenhaven Preserve offers spaces for natural burials.

“I think people are taking more control over their relationship with death,” said Dickinson.

In one large way, that means that people are beginning to question or revisit practices that, in some cases, have survived and been tweaked over thousands of years: among them, embalming and protecting the body in heavy containers that separate us as much as possible from nature. Now there are more options.

Ashes to ashes

The most obvious revolution in deathcare is the meteoric increase in cremation rates, which have gone from 25 percent in 2009 to nearly 50 percent in 2014 and is estimated to exceed 60 percent by 2025, according to the Cremation Association of North America. In favoring cremation, people cite lower costs, practicality and sometimes wanting to save space on Earth.

In Charleston, mecca for retirees and second-home owners, cremation rates exceed 60 percent, said Willis.

At McAlister-Smith, they handle so many that they have changed their logo. Meanwhile, the ways to memorialize cremated remains have grown proportionally: They can be made into diamonds, art, bird baths and reef balls. They can be launched into space or divided in vials that fit easily in a purse. A deceased loved one can come with us everywhere.

Memorial services for the cremated are often more elaborate and painstakingly planned than funerals at which the body is present, said Cynthia Linhart, McAlister-Smith’s director of support.

“Cremation opens the door to the possibility of multiple services and unique locations outside of church,” Linhart said. “They are real celebrations of life … I hear the most romantic of stories.”

But a newer urge is to achieve true dust to dust, the body returning to the soil, as it were, in its immediacy and purity.

Interest in green burial options has gone from 43 percent to 64 percent over the past five years, according to the FMIC study. In the past 10 years, since it began certifying green burial sites, the Green Burial Council has certified 54 cemeteries around the country; another 50 or so practice green burials though they are not certified, Kalanick said.

Green burial requires the use of nontoxic and biodegradable materials such as pine or sweetgrass caskets and cotton shrouds. It appeals to environmentally minded people but also people who feel connected to the land and, Kalanick said, observers of religions that cherish the belief in ashes to ashes. There is a newfound spirituality in the simplicity of nature, she said.

“It’s the most natural thing on Earth,” said Ronnie Watts, an amiable man who started Greenhaven Preserve with his nephew after reading an article on natural burials. “They were walking a pine box through the woods in jeans. I said, ‘That sounds good. I’ve never worn a suit in my life and I don’t want to wear one when I’m buried.’ ”

In the woods

The practice may sound revolutionary, but it’s ancient and legal.

In South Carolina (and most other states), it is legal not only to handle your deceased, but to bury them without funeral home or director, casket or embalming. While many may continue to rely on someone to take and transport a body — and funeral directors continue to be the preferred professionals to call for help — many people are also trending now toward rituals that seem less artificial and cumbersome.

At Greenhaven people get to choose a plot 10 feet by 10 in expanses of woods over rolling hills. Walking the grounds among the hollies, the dogwoods in bloom, the Bradford pears and pines reaching to the sky, the shrieks of birds and dodging of deer, one barely sees the natural stones marking the graves here and there.

Often the deceased are shrouded and lowered in the ground by their own family members. Families plant blooming bulbs on the graves and trees to shade them. There is no danger of tripping over another grave or cars driving by. And, said Watts, you can have a whole funeral for $2,500, including the cost of the plot, opening and closing the grave, and a shroud or pine casket.

“And you can come and stay as long as you want,” he said.

Pamela Horton, of Irmo, buried her husband, William “Steve,” at Greenhaven in 2014. They visited there after Steve was diagnosed with lung cancer, at 63. He wasn’t too keen on cremation; for her part, she didn’t want a casket or embalming. The concept of a natural burial appealed to them spiritually.

When they toured the grounds, they saw a spot they liked at the foot of a hill, facing the rising sun, a Biblical reference to Jesus’s return. They lay down on the ground together, side by side, like children making snow angels, “to figure out how we wanted to be,” Pam said, tenderness in her voice.

Some months later, Steve died, at home. He was washed and shrouded in a white sheet they had slept in together. The family had a gathering in the woods and they all shoveled in the dirt.

“It felt natural and right. It’s a good way to be buried. It’s the way it’s supposed to be,” she said.

Dying as we live

To accommodate this new appeal is a plethora of green products, including biodegradable shrouds, cardboard caskets and biodegradable containers for cremated remains that look like turtles and dissolve in water.

And ingenuity is taking it further.

An Italian company, Capsula Mundi, is proposing treed pod burial capsules in which tree saplings are planted in the earth with a body folded in a fetal position.

From death sprouts life, truly.

And a company called Coeio, in New York, is poised to release something called the Infinity Burial Shroud, a burial cloth woven of mushroom spores that degrade contaminants in the body as it decomposes.

“It would not be a far cry to say that people want to die the way they live,” said Mike Ma, co-founder and president of Coeio, citing market demand for hybrid cars and organic foods.

Since word of the company got out in the past several months, its mailing list has grown to thousands; they also have a list of hundreds interested in being early adopters of the death infinity suit.

“It’s growing into a movement that people are willing to put themselves into, literally,” Ma said.

Personally, development of the company clarified Ma’s life.

“If we come to grips with our death, we have the potential to live life better,” he said.

Complete Article HERE!

April 24, 2016April 24, 2016

Executive Producing Your Own Goodbye

My father-in-law was a planner his entire life. The end was no exception.

By Jane Condon

Hollywood film industry producers or directors in a sound stage

We’re better at welcoming new life into this world than we are at saying goodbye. But some point we all end up on the off ramp, regardless of whether we choose to realize it.

But before we hit the exit, there are a few important things to consider: the body, the obituary, the service, and the afterparty. And my father-in-law, Hank, taught all of us how it’s done.

Hank died last January at 92. In December, two doctors declined to operate on his leaky heart valve. They didn’t think he’d survive. So we had a wistful but wonderful Christmas with him as he furniture-walked around the house, grabbing at table and counter tops with labored breathing until he finally settled in on the TV room couch.

Fortunately for all of us, Hank was an engineer and a planner. Years earlier we’d received a blue folder filled with notes on what to do in the event of his death.

He sent us these thoughts in the year 2000. He re-sent them in 2008, complete with an addendum from his wife called “When We Drop Dead.”

First was the body. Yale Medical School was supposed to get it. He left us the phone number and a name. This is actually more complicated than it sounds. You have to die in Connecticut. Yale has to receive the body quickly. And you need an authentic death certificate before they’ll take the body away.

Next, the obituary. Hank kindly provided the name and number of the New Haven Register obit section. And The New York Times’. My husband wrote it. That’s hard to do when you’re grieving. If at all possible, might I recommend writing an obituary in advance, when your head is clear and you have time to check the facts.

There are two kinds of obituaries: paid and unpaid. The paid have a just the facts, ma’am format. My husband wrote this long, heart-tugging piece about his dad’s rags-to-riches story of working hard and rising through the ranks until he was head of a manufacturing company. How his dad had never thought of going to college until a friend off-handedly told him, “Hey, you’re pretty smart. You should.” How he trained in World War II to be a dive bomber pilot (a profession in which half the men died). How when he was 13, he watched his own father drop dead of a heart attack while placing a star on top of the Christmas tree.

It was a lovely obituary. It was WAY too long. My husband eventually wrote a shorter, more bloodless, just the facts one for the paid section but it made him sad. His dad had been a prominent local philanthropist in New Haven. He’d given to hospitals, universities and schools.

Onto the service. I’m a comedian. Twice before he died, Hank asked me to host his memorial service. I said, “But Grandpa, I’ve never emceed a funeral.” He said, “Jane, it’s not a funeral. It’s a celebration of life. I want people to have fun. Tell them how I loved Scott Joplin and Broadway musicals like Oklahoma and South Pacific. How every year we went to the Messiah sing along at Yale because I loved classical music. And keep it to 90 minutes.”

I emceed. His two sons spoke—one at the beginning of the service and one at the end. So did all four grandchildren, who wanted to share stories about the great guy they knew: how he windsurfed until he was 85, let them drive as kids in his beat-up station wagon as they sat in his lap—unbeknownst to Grandma or their parents. Three representatives from his favorite organizations spoke. And two Scott Joplin piano interludes and one soprano singing Handel’s Messiah were woven into the program.

The obit that had been too long? That went into the program. The grandchildren put a copy on every seat.

The New Haven Register sent a reporter and a photographer. So much of New Haven showed up that it became the next day’s front-page story.

It would have been enough. But ever the planner, Hank had one last idea: the after party. At the end of the service, Charlie Salerno and the Clamdiggers their festive red-striped jackets playing Hank’s all-time favorite song, “When The Saints Go Marching In!” He had left us their card—the brass section marched to the stage and led a procession out the hall and directly toward the two bars that he’d drawn in his notes.

Hank was a terrific planner in life. And he did a bang-up job executive producing how we managed the time right after his death. If only he could have done that for others, he’d certainly have found a great second career.

Complete Article HERE!

April 20, 2016April 17, 2016

The new trend is ‘fun-erals’ with a rise in personalised ceremonies

By Amy Molloy

Memeroial candles might be a thing of the past.

I DON’T know where my first husband is buried. That might sound odd — especially as I attended the funeral in a cemetery somewhere in Dublin — but I have total amnesia when it comes to the exact location, and most of the service.

I remember I wore a white dress I bought at a charity shop; I remember it was cloudy and the cemetery was next to a school soccer pitch where a match was playing.

I’m sure it was a beautiful funeral and I’m grateful to my late husband’s family for arranging it at a time when I was incapable of even brushing my teeth. But I felt no connection to the occasion, even though I was the widow.

During the traditional service, I tuned out and focused on the sounds of the soccer match and the ecstatic cheers of the children as they scored goals against each other. To me, their enthusiastic celebrations were more representative of my husband than a cold, grey cemetery. And I’m not the only mourner to feel this way.

Traditionally, how we commemorate death is dictated by dogma — you must wear black, look sombre and serve curled-up sandwiches. Increasingly, however, modern mourners want a more personalised service that reflects their loved one’s true character — even if it goes against social and religious etiquette.

It used to only be celebrities who had flamboyant farewells (the funeral wishes of Joan Rivers included a wind machine near her casket so that her hair was “blowing just like Beyoncé’s”).

But these days, “fun-erals” aren’t just for performers with deep pockets.

The National Funeral Directors Association has highlighted a rise in personalised ceremonies, including a heightened interest in eco-friendly options.

In Australia, you can order a casket made from handwoven willow, be laid to rest in a coffin made from 100 per cent biodegradable cardboard, or even have your ashes buried in an “organic eco pod” which sprouts into a tree.

Another survey by funeral services company The Co-operative Funeralcare in the UK found 54 per cent of people would prefer their funeral be a “celebration of life”, and 48 per cent would like to incorporate their favourite “hobby, colour, football team or music”.

We want choices — even in death — rather than a cookie-cutter approach to commiseration. And now an Australian funeral home, set to launch this month, is taking “imaginative mourning” one step further.

The House, a Sydney-based service founded by friends Morna Seres, Kylee Stevens and Christian Willis, will offer “memory services” as opposed to traditional funerals.

What’s the difference? First of all, location. Instead of churches, chapels or other traditional places, services will be held at unique venues around the city, including dance studios and art galleries, who have agreed to hold private events — with a casket as part of the decor.

Instead of churches and chapels, funerals are being held in art galleries.

Unusually, the three entrepreneurs have no previous experience of funeral care, instead coming from careers in art, fashion and styling. But they believe the funeral industry needs an injection of creativity. “I was stimulated [to start the business] by my own father’s funeral,” says Seres. “He wasn’t religious, so we didn’t want it to be in a church or chapel. The only other option we were offered was a graveside burial. It was a rainy day and the sound system didn’t work in the open. It just didn’t feel like a true reflection of who he was.”

The idea was further encouraged by the funeral of a mutual friend, where Seres and Stevens were both struck by the impersonal experience.

“From the service to the sensory elements surrounding the day, it just didn’t feel relevant to my friend or their family,” says Stevens. “Coming from a background in the fashion industry, I started thinking about how the design process could be applied to how we say goodbye.”

Funerals can feel like bleak occasions — for obvious reasons — but do they really need to be? The House believes a funeral should be a “transitional experience” for attendees, using art, design and “sensory experiences” to help with the grieving process.

This could include setting up an art exhibition or photos and videos. Instead of sitting on rows of chairs like a conference, they encourage mourners to move around the coffin, chatting freely instead of feeling confined by tradition.

They may be onto something.

A survey by the not-for-profit organisation Include a Charity found that Australians would prefer their funeral to be a “more casual send-off”. When questioned about their ideal ceremony, 71 per cent said they’d like their loved ones to wear bright colours and 98 per cent said laughing at a funeral was an appropriate way to remember someone.

We’re also breaking out of the mindset that a funeral has to be uncomfortable for attendees — and it’s all about the small touches. Some people even said they’d like “a barista to serve good coffee” at their service.

Instead of traditional hymns, people are also opting for modern music (Green Day’sTime Of Your Life is a popular choice, apparently). I have a friend who, when his 22-year-old brother died, organised a silent disco by the graveside — imagine spotting a crowd of mourners with headphones on, dancing in silence.

Then there’s the debate around digital documentation. Many funeral parlours now offer webcams so that overseas relatives can tune into a service.

When 13-year-old YouTube star Caleb Logan Bratayley died last October, more than 47,000 people tuned into watch a live-stream of his funeral on Periscope. On YouTube there is a GoPro video of a Buddhist funeral shot from a drone flying above it. Insensitive? That’s just a matter of opinion.

Ceremonies should honour a loved one’s memory.

“Many ceremonies, like weddings and birthdays, have evolved from a traditional style of celebration to a reflection of an individual’s personality,” says psychologist Barbara Jensen. “This is now also true of funerals, although the change has happened at a slower rate because death is still very much taboo in our society. The important thing to remember here is that there is no right or wrong way to do things, and this is important if a funeral is going to be healing for the attendees.”

This type of healing, however, costs. How much will a multi-sensory, personalised funeral reduce a next-of-kin’s inheritance? The House says it can match the average cost of a funeral in Australia (from $4000 for a basic cremation, according to government finance website moneysmart.gov.au).

“Our cost does vary on the requirements of the individual,” says Seres. “But it is important to us that, if someone walks through our door and doesn’t have a lot of money, we’re still able to service them.”

Final costs can also be reduced by enlisting family and friends to help with certain elements.

The danger is that personalised funerals could go the same way as children’s birthday parties, becoming just another pressure. A decade ago, kids were content with jelly, ice-cream and pass-the-parcel, but now a parent feels like a failure if they don’t hire a full petting zoo and the cast of a Disney musical.

Ceremonies that honour a loved one’s memory, though, as well as providing friends and family with closure, are a wonderful farewell.

Complete Article HERE!

April 19, 2016April 17, 2016

Woodlawn Cemetery Memorial Tells A Coney Island Story Of Unusual Death

Brighton Beach Lightning Strike Felt By Thousands, Kills Six – July 30, 1905

When walking through Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, you can come across fancy mausoleums and simple grave markers of the famous and infamous. F.W. Woolworth, Fiorello LaGuardia, Duke Ellington, Bat Masterson and Herman Melville are among the half million souls interred in this historic place.

Then out of the blue you may stumble across the lives of ordinary New Yorker’s memorialized in an extraordinary way. Such is the Demmerle monument.

Unlike many other tombstones which record a name and birth and death years with a short epitaph, the Demmerle memorial is an ornate series of carved monuments which tells and shows the story of one family’s tragedy.

Sunday July 30, 1905 started out as a beautiful, sun-filled, hot day and an estimated 250,000 New Yorker’s sought out the seashore of Coney Island for pleasure and a refuge from the heat. Charles Demmerle age 51, his wife Emilie age 49 and their two sons, Frank C. age 23, and Charles R. age 22 all residing at 372 East 16th Street Flatbush, spent the day with their cousin Robert T. Wasch age 16 at Brighton Beach.

After a day of swimming the weather started changing. At 4 pm the sky darkened and swimmers left the water as rain began to fall, coming down heavier and heavier as the minutes passed. Many took refuge near the Parkway Baths on the beach at Ocean Parkway.

As the rain fell, thunder and lightning approached the beach, a large flagpole topped by an eagle on the Boardwalk near the Parkway Baths became a gathering spot for thousands of beach goers seeking shelter. They congregated around the pole, on the boardwalk and under the boardwalk which covered the beach.

There were a few vivid flashes accompanied by thunder cracks before the big one came.

John Manzer, a witness standing on the boardwalk and looking up described what happened next. “A ball of fire seemed to start right up at the eagle’s beak and travel downward around and around the pole. Right at the crosstrees it spread out and seemed to drop into the earth with a noise I will never forget.”

The flagpole was split in half. Everyone on or under the wet conductive boardwalk and sand beneath it was given a jolt and those nearest the flagpole were literally thrown to the ground. Thousands of people felt the electrical shock. After the screaming subsided, it was noticed that five people were blue from head to toe and stone dead. Frank and Charles Demmerle, their cousin Robert and two others, all near the base of the flagpole were killed instantly. At least nine others suffered serious burns. Simultaneously, a sixth man standing under a tree in nearby Gravesend was killed by what was believed by some to be the same bolt that had struck in Brighton Beach.

The dead were taken to a nearby room when Mrs. Demmerle came by looking for her missing boys.

The New York Times reported that she took one look at the bodies stretched out on the floor and fell forward crying “Oh, my boys! The dear boys to whose future I had looked forward with so much pride. I warned them not to go into the water when the storm came up. I feared even then that some evil was about to befall”

The Demmerle’s put up this poignant monument to commemorate their loss. The large memorial stone has three bronze reliefs showing the young men. The monument also has set into the stone in bronze relief the depiction of the lightning bolt striking the flagpole and the boardwalk.

The words on the front of the monument read simply “Our Fondest Hopes Lie Buried Here!” with the names and ages of the three young men. Beneath that it says “TAKEN SUDDENLY IN AN HOUR OF HAPPINESS. STRUCK BY A BOLT OF LIGHTNING.” The rear of the monument contains a long anguished poem.

Parents, Emilie and Charles’ Demmerle’s monument to the left of their sons and nephew depicts a life size statue of mother Emilie, sitting on a tree stump, offering flowers, her head cast down in mourning, with a broken tree limb above her.

It is truly a magnificent work of funereal art and it certainly calls attention today to the fact that this family’s anguish is worthy of remembrance and a retelling.

Complete Article HERE!