Tag: Conscious Living

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‘Dying is so medicalised. It makes people fearful’

The founder of Soul Midwives on how greater compassion and care can lead to people having a more gentle, tranquil death

Felicity Warner: ‘We need to take the care of dying people back into the community.’

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Felicity Warner wants everyone to die well. She is the woman behind Soul Midwives: non-medical companions who provide one-to-one holistic and spiritual care to people who are dying. The term “midwife” is no accident. It refers to the similarities between drawing our first breath and our last. Just as there are certain stages for a woman in labour prior to giving birth, so are there certain end-of-life stages before someone eventually dies, says Warner. It’s the same idea as end-of-life doulas. “A soul midwife will recognise those stages and will work with them like a midwife would at birth.”

Soul midwives support a dying person to set out their wishes for the final days in a death plan. They listen, keep vigil, allow people to talk openly about their impending death and fears, and provide therapeutic support to help alleviate anxiety and pain. This can be through breathing techniques, massage, sound and music therapy and essential oils. As the “soul” in the title suggests, the role also offers a spiritual dimension linked to healing and detachment. But it’s not just about helping people to die without fear, loneliness or anxiety. It’s also about making people realise they are valued, says Warner. “I’m very keen on that because a lot of people we work with don’t have anyone in their lives. Making them feel that they are special is a very big part of our role and to honour them as the people that they have been, because you can be made to feel very anonymous when you’re dying, whether old or young”.

The daughter of the former Conservative MP David Mudd, Warner cites the “harrowing deaths” of her grandmother – with whom she had lived after her parents divorced when she was six, who died of lung cancer when Warner was 14 – and her stepfather two years later that forced “an enormous amount” of processing and reflection early on and led her to become a health journalist.

In the 1990s, Warner found herself writing a number of features about women dying of breast cancer. Interviewees revealed their loneliness and isolation and the sense of being locked in a room with an elephant in it. “The biggest thing was the feeling that they couldn’t talk to anybody honestly about the fact they knew they were going to die, because everybody kept saying ‘we’ll get you through this; you won’t die’.”

They talked and Warner listened. “I think there was a healing in that they could just talk frankly about how they really felt to somebody who wasn’t judgmental in any way.” But Warner saw her journalistic boundaries begin to slide as she stepped in to fill unmet needs, such as giving a massage after one of the women confided that “nobody touches me any more” because of her cancer. When the last of six women she had interviewed died, her decision to help dying people full-time was realised.

She began volunteering in her local hospice, where she noticed “big gaps” in care delivery: the “one-size-fits-all” approach, for example, that saw everyone “wrapped up with crocheted blankets” and “given plastic cups to suck out of”, regardless of their age or their personal needs.

“I sat there thinking it would be so useful if someone could join up the dots in what I was seeing with people who were dying. If there could be some kind of middle ground between the clinical care given and the sort of tender loving care that goes such a long way when you’re really feeling ill, because that seemed to be very lacking or offered very willy-nilly and not always to everybody.”

Warner began road-testing what would become her “gentle dying” approach – the basis of soul midwifery. “It was realising how little things can make such a difference to people at the end of life. Even just sitting and holding their hand is massive to someone who has got no one else sitting with them, and having time to do that is a big thing.”

Warner outlined her philosophy in a book in 2003, then began delivering training in Dorset, where she lives. So far, more than 1,000 individuals have paid to attend her courses, including Macmillan and Marie Curie nurses, doctors, chaplains, social workers and psychotherapists working in the NHS, as well as people from South Africa, Canada, the US and Australia. Around 40% of trainees have gone on to practice.

Warner runs a referral service from the Soul Midwives website. Many practitioners offer sliding scale charges, opt for a donation or charge nothing at all. “Nobody would ever be turned away if they could not pay,” says Warner. “It is not about the money. Nobody would be excluded on financial grounds.”

Soul midwives can now be found in care homes, hospices, hospitals and within the home throughout the UK. They liaise with GPs and district nurses if someone wants to die at home. Warner admits that it’s taken time to build trust with other care professionals, but adds, “this trust has grown as the value of our work is being understood and seen.”

For her, soul midwifery is a movement that can fill the gap once met through closer community networks and she views dying as a process rather than an event – something that she feels has been lost over the generations. Recently Warner has introduced the idea of soul midwife “residencies” so that end-of-life discussions leave the confines of hospitals and hospices. “We need to bring the care of dying people back into the community. It’s been so medicalised and taken out of most people’s normal environment, and that makes it very fearful [for people].”

She cites a recent example of a soul midwife pitching up at a library for a morning so that people could come and discuss various aspects of dying. She now hopes to persuade a coffee shop chain to host residencies.

What is clear is that ensuring a tranquil, gentle death for others is also good for Warner’s own soul. She says: “I feel it’s my reason for being here.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Not all Americans have a fair path to a good death – racial disparities are real

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What does it mean to “die well”?

The world got an idea recently from the 92-year-old Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh, who popularized mindfulness and meditation in the U.S. The monk returned to his home in Vietnam to pass his remaining years. Many admired his desire to live his remaining time in peace and dignity.

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego recently did a literature search to understand what Americans might consider to be a “good death” or “successful dying.” As can be expected, their findings varied. People’s views were determined by their religious, social and cultural norms and influences. The researchers urged health care providers, caregivers and the lay community to have open dialogues about preferences for the dying process.

As scholars who study social health and human services psychology, we found something missing in these conversations – how race impacts life span.

It’s important to recognize that not everyone has an equal chance at “dying well.”

Black population and ill health

Take the disease burden of the African American population.

African Americans experience an earlier onset and greater risk of what may be referred to as lifestyle-related diseases, including cardiovascular disease, stroke and diabetes. More than 40% of African Americans over the age of 20 are diagnosed with high blood pressure, compared to 32% of all Americans.

In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the likelihood of experiencing a first stroke is nearly twice as high for African Americans compared with whites. African Americans are more than two times more likely to experience a stroke before the age of 55. At age 45, the mortality rate from stroke is three times higher for blacks compared to whites.

This disease burden consequently leads to their higher mortality rates and overall shorter life expectancy for blacks compared to whites.

And while the life expectancy gap differs by only a few years, 75.3 for blacks and 78.9 for whites as of 2016, research suggests that African Americans suffer more sickness. This is due in part to the increased prevalence of high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes in this population.

Genetics, biological factors and lifestyle behaviors, such as diet and smoking, help explain a portion of these differences. However, researchers are still learning how race-related social experiences and physical environments affect health, illness and mortality.

Access to health care

factor is that African Americans have historically underutilized preventive medicine and health care services. They also delay seeking routine, necessary health care – or may not follow medical advice.

One study found that during an average month, 35% fewer blacks visited a physician’s office, and 27% fewer visited an outpatient clinic compared with whites.

“The only time I go to the doctor is when something is really hurting. But otherwise, I don’t even know my doctor’s name,” said a young African American male during a research study in Chicago, Illinois.

There are reasons for this mistrust. Researchers who study medical mistrust argue that high-profile cases of medical experiments are still playing a role in how African Americans view health care systems and providers. In the past, physicians have intentionally done harm against people of color. A well-known case is the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in African American men, which lasted from 1932 to 1972.

In this clinical study, 399 African American men, who had already contracted syphilis, were told that they were receiving free health care from the government. In fact, doctors, knowing their critical condition, were awaiting their deaths to subsequently conduct autopsies and study the disease’s progression.

Even though penicillin had been proven to treat syphilis by 1947, these men were denied the treatment.

Why discrimination matters for health

Other studies suggest that regardless of their knowledge of past medical abuse, many African Americans have low levels of trust in medical establishments.

“Doctors, like all other people, are subject to prejudice and discrimination,” writes Damon Tweedy, author of “Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine.” “While bias can be a problem in any profession, in medicine, the stakes are much higher.”

Unfortunately, these fears are underscored by empirical evidence that African Americans are less likely to receive pain medication management, higher-quality care or survive surgical procedures.

In addition, a growing body of literature has established that experiences of discrimination are extremely harmful for physical and mental health, particularly among African Americans.

This research adds to the body of evidence that experiences of discrimination harm people’s health and may contribute to the increased rates of premature decline and death among blacks.

What does it take to die well?

As African American scholars, we argue the “art of dying well” may be a distant and romantic notion for the African American community.

African Americans are also exposed to earlier and more frequent deaths of close loved ones, immediate family members and friends.

Their increased “vulnerability to untimely deaths,” writes Duke University scholar Karla Holloway, shows African Americans’ lack of access to equitable and fair paths in life.

Before defining “a good death,” American society must first begin to fundamentally address how to promote quality living and longevity across all racial groups.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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When the future is running out, narrating the past helps to prepare

By Dhruv Khullar

How should you live when you know you’re going to die?

It is perhaps the ultimate, eternal question — one we all have to grapple with, but mercifully, don’t have to, until the end is crystallized by our own illness or that of a loved one. Humans may be the only animal capable of grasping mortality, but it’s usually not something on our minds — until it is.

It’s a question I confront frequently as a physician caring for seriously ill patients. One morning some months ago, I met an older man with an aggressive cancer that had turned an avid runner into a voracious reader. He glanced up from his newspaper as I entered the hospital room.

“It’s [a] strange feeling, you know, reading about a world you’ll never get to see.”

After several rounds of chemotherapy — each more toxic than the last — he decided he had had enough. He could go long stretches without contemplating death, he said, until the sight of a far-off date or curiosity about some newly proposed legislation would bring into sharp focus the unavoidable reality: His days were limited.

“I mostly read biographies now,” he told me. “Reading about other lives helps me make sense of my own.”

I began to wonder whether the secret to a good death wasn’t looking forward, but peering backward — whether retrospective examination might be more therapeutic than prospective preparation. I thought of how often I’d focused solely on helping patients navigate the future: how many weeks or months of life they might expect, which procedures they should or shouldn’t consider. These discussions, while important, fail to address what research has revealed about the deeper wants and needs of seriously ill patients.

Nearly 20 years ago, a seminal study in the Journal of the American Medical Association explored what patients and doctors feel is most important at the end of life. Many responses were predictable and consistent across groups. Both doctors and patients, for example, thought it was important to maintain dignity, control pain and other symptoms, and have one’s financial affairs in order.

But where physicians and patients diverged is telling — and suggests both a missed opportunity and a path to progress.

Patients were far more likely to express that it was important to feel that their life was complete, to be at peace with God and to help others in some way.

In other words, to feel that their lives mattered.

A growing body of work suggests that a powerful but underused method of creating this sense of mattering is storytelling — reflecting on the past and creating a narrative of one’s life, what it has meant, who you’ve become and why.

Humans are natural story­tellers. We have tremendous power to frame a narrative. The same series of events — becoming a parent, getting a divorce, losing a loved one, finding a job — can be a tale of resilience and restoration or misfortune and regret. The process of bringing coherence to one’s life story is what psychologist Dan McAdams calls creating a “narrative identity.” People get better at identifying important life themes as they age, and those who are able to find the positive amid the negative are generally more satisfied with life.

Physicians are also storytellers by profession. But we’ve traditionally focused on narrating the course of disease instead of helping patients make sense of their lives with it. Creating opportunities for patients to reflect on life experiences, however, could offer an important avenue for healing — whether at the end of life or somewhere in the middle.

In a 2018 study, researchers assigned veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder to engage in either five 30-minute writing sessions in which they reflected on traumatic experiences, or a rigorous 12-week program of cognitive processing therapy (CPT), a first-line treatment for PTSD. The study found that the short writing sessions were just as effective at reducing PTSD symptoms as the resource-intensive CPT program.

Other work suggests that the particulars of storytelling matter. Simply looking back and listing life events doesn’t seem to help. It is the constructing of a narrative — exploring linkages, formulating a plotline — that’s critical for arriving at a coherent sense of self.

And even the pronouns seem to matter.

Using the first-, second- or third-person when reflecting on past experiences can each have strategic advantages. Using the third-person, for example, seems to allow us to better appreciate how we’ve changed over time, while the first-person primes us to look for continuity. Reflecting on challenges by using the generic “you” — “you win some, you lose some” or “what can you do?” — can help create psychological distance from a tough situation and universalize the experience. “I” makes the focus your response; “you” tethers it to the human condition.

When the future is running out, can we make more of the past? I often struggle with my role as a caregiver for patients at the end of life. I know the most healing things I can offer aren’t the things I usually do: pain medications, laxatives, intravenous fluids. Rather, they are at once more challenging and more elementary. To sit. To listen. To explore what it’s all meant.

“I tell myself,” my patient said. “Even if I won’t be around to see it, I helped shape the world of the future. At least my little part of it.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Living Well…

Embracing the natural stages of the dying process through hospice care

By Lauren Glendenning

When patients need hospice care, family members and other loved ones often feel overwhelmed with emotion. A caring and supportive hospice team can help alleviate some of these feelings.

We asked Kristine Cooper, executive director of Home Health and Hospice at Memorial Regional Health, to help readers understand more about hospice care at MRH and how it affects patients’ families.

What are some ways that hospice care can relieve stress for those who may be in charge of an elderly loved one?

Kristine Cooper: Hospice really provides support not only to the patient but also to the caregivers. We have nurses that spend time with caregivers, educating them about the disease and dying process. We also have our LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) who spends time with the patient and caregivers, discussing end-of-life planning. She also works with caregivers and families to address anticipatory grief.

Are there any myths about hospice care you’d like to clarify?

 

One myth would be that hospice hastens death. Hospice really embraces the natural stages of the dying process and neither intends to hasten or prolong death. Our team partners with the patient and family on the journey. Another myth is that hospice is expensive. Medicare actually covers the cost of hospice, including medications to treat symptoms related to the patient’s terminal diagnosis as well equipment needed to care for the patient safely in their home.

Why is it important for families to know about hospice care?

Hospice is not about giving up hope, it’s about refocusing hope. With hospice, there is hope that pain and other symptoms can be managed so that loved ones can live their best life in their final days. Hospice also offers hope to families and caregivers by providing support during this difficult time.

When is hospice care is necessary?

Hospice is here for patients who have been diagnosed with a life limiting or terminal illness with a life expectancy of 6 months or less to live.

What kind of care do hospice patients receive?

Hospice provides nursing, emotional and spiritual support. Hospice can also provide support from physical, occupational and speech therapy with the focus of helping patients move safely. We also have volunteers that can provide companionship and assist with light housekeeping and cooking. All these different services make up the patient’s care team that works closely with their doctor. The overarching theme about hospice is that it is really about what the patient or family needs.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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This is what it’s like to be a death doula

The founder of Going With Grace, Alua Arthur, shares how she found her way into death work and how she manages not to take her work home with her.

Alua Arthur

By Anisa Purbasari Horton

For many people, the thought of being surrounded by death (and have that be a central part of how they earn their living) can seem quite morbid. But for Alua Arthur, the founder of the end-of-life planning service Going With Grace, it feels exactly the opposite.

Arthur is a death doula—also often referred to as a “death midwife.” Arthur’s journey to becoming a death doula is a profoundly personal one, but she represents a number of professionals who are active in the growing “death wellness” and “death-positive” movement. As Fast Company‘s Rina Raphael previously reported, this movement rests on the notion that having a good death is “part of a good life.”

Fast Company recently spoke to Arthur about her motivations for becoming a death doula and how she copes with work-life balance as she helps others through the grieving (and often stressful) administrative process that comes before and after a loved one’s death. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Helping people become clear on what death looks like

A death doula is a non-medical professional who provides holistic support for the dying person of the family and the family members. I help the people who are close to death on what it looks like. After that, I help family members deal with their affairs.

I also work with healthy people. The way I conceive it, as soon as someone comes into any recognition that one day they’re going to die, that’s the time to start preparing for that, so I help them with an end-of-life plan. It’s where we write down all the stuff that’s going to be a pain. We get clear for what their desires are for life support, and who’s going to make the decisions for them. We walk through important information and documents, like where’s their birth certificate? Where is their retirement account? Where do they bank? 

I also help people who are terrified of death. I find that people are more afraid of the dying process than death itself, so with them, I do death meditations. This looks like us going through the eventual decline of the body, their systems shutting down, and their breathing becoming ragged. It’s an opportunity for the person to lay there with whatever it is they experienced. A lot of times, people experience a sense of peace after going through this process.

The desire to build a career around death

Growing up, I wanted to be lots of things. I really wanted to be an astronaut. I loved to read and immerse myself in another world. I also wanted to be a conductor. I applied to a music conservatory, but I ended up in a liberal arts school that had an okay music program. I got involved in student government and decided to go to law school. I worked in property law, starting with government benefits, and then I moved to domestic violence and then not-for-profit development. I fumbled around for 10 years and started getting really depressed, so I took a medical leave of absence. That’s how I found death work.

I met a woman in Cuba. She had cancer and was traveling, and we bonded. We spent 14 hours on the bus together, and I asked all the difficult questions. What would be undone in her life if the disease killed her? What does she think happens after she dies? Did she live with the recognition of death constantly? They were questions I never really had myself. That was the first time it hit me that death was very real and that we don’t talk about it enough. It became clear that I wanted to spend my career talking about death.

That was solidified when my brother-in-law got sick and died. It showed me how all the ways that we do it now are broken. We had so many questions—how do we transfer the title for his vehicle, and what should we do with his leftover medication? There was nobody to answer them.

A day in the life of a death doula

A typical day always includes a lot of emails. So many emails. The part of my job that stresses me out is the business part. God, it’s the worst! I need to go back to my vision of helping people feel less alone to keep me in clear focus.

I start my day checking on various things—with the people who are dying, how things were over the course of the night. I’ll also check on plans for any funeral procession. I do a lot of phone calls and talk to therapists who work with people that are dying. If I do have clients that are dying, I see them in the afternoon, or I will see my end-of-life planning clients.

These days, I also do a lot of education around death and dying. I’m doing a lot of talks to reach people about how to do this work because we’re all going to have to do it for somebody in our lives.

When it comes to work-life balance, I do things like meditate daily, exercise regularly, and drink a gallon of water every day. I just got my nails done. I don’t deny myself pretty things.

On death and relationships

I talk about death all the time with my friends and family. I think sometimes I can be a little bit annoying because I want people to be authentic in their decision-making. I tend not to tell people what to say or do, and I listen actively. My best friend and I, we always have challenges because she always wants to tell me what to do. It is a struggle for my friends who have a hard time with the concept of their own mortality, because I’m talking about it all the time.

I don’t push the issue with my friends who are uncomfortable, but with my family members, I do. For my dad, he first had to come around to the idea that I wasn’t going to be practicing law anymore. Being an African parent, he wanted me to be either a lawyer, doctor, or engineer. I was like, how about death? He was like, how about what? That was a little tricky. But eventually, we got around to talking about it. After all, I’m the one who’ll have to deal with it when it happens.

I think people actually want to talk about death, but they feel like they don’t have permission to do so because it’s “heavy.” Well, it’s a regular part of living. Without death we wouldn’t have life. It’s funny: when I meet someone for the first time and I tell them I’m a death doula, so many of them say, “Oh, when x died, I wish that you had been there.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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What Going To A Death Café Taught Me About Being Alive

By Nicola Appleton

“My name is Nicola and I’m here because… I’m frightened of dying,” I say to the group of strangers sat around the table in front of me. But that’s not what I mean, not really. What I meant to say is that I’m here because I’m frightened of not living – there’s a difference. I’m smiling but my heart is pounding and my palms are sweaty. I’m deeply uncomfortable.

It’s a dark and rainy Bank Holiday Sunday and I’m at my first death café meeting, held at the atmospheric Arnos Vale cemetery in Bristol. Until a few years ago, I shut down any thoughts I had about myself and those I loved dying. I was actively disconnected from death, the truth was too painful a prospect to consider.

But then both of my grandmothers passed away. They were 86 and 79 respectively, one had dementia and heart failure while the other had terminal breast cancer, yet their deaths had come as a huge shock to me. I had so fiercely avoided considering that death was even a possibility – let alone a probability – that I didn’t even say goodbye. I still grapple with this, along with the idea that two women that I had loved so much, who had been so vital in life, could one day just… cease to exist.

The death café, a not-for-profit social franchise, is the brainchild of a British man called Jon Underwood. It was Underwood’s belief that Western society doesn’t ‘do’ death particularly well. We have a tendency to avoid and ‘outsource’ it, handing over the handling of our loved ones in their final days to doctors, nurses and undertakers.

Inspired by the Swiss Café Mortel movement that aimed to removed the ‘tyrannical secrecy’ out of topic of death, Underwood wanted to create a place where people could drink tea, eat cake and talk about dying. And so, the first death café event was held in 2011 at his kitchen table in Hackney. His mum, Sue Barsky Reid, a psychotherapist, held the meeting. It was a huge success and, together with his mum, Jon wrote a guide to holding your own death café in 2012. There are now death café events held in 65 countries all over the world.

The objective of the death café is to ‘help people make the most of their (finite) lives’ and regain the control over arguably the most significant aspect of being alive. This message is made all the more poignant when I learn that Jon passed away suddenly two years ago, aged just 44.

In my family and friendship circle, we hardly ever broach the subject of death and if we do, it’s with a certain amount of gallows humour. When my mum asked my dad if he would like to be buried or cremated, he suggested she just put him out with the recycling on big bin day. We laughed, and quickly dropped the subject. I still don’t know what his wishes would be at the end of his life. I don’t know what the wishes are for anyone close to me for that matter, not even my own.

While the organisers of the death café carefully stipulate that this isn’t grief or bereavement counselling, everyone has their own personal reasons for attending. Some have lost someone close to them, others have started to think about the end of their own lives and others are simply curious.

My own reasons are that I had reached the age of thirty having never really acknowledging that people die. I mean, I knew, but until that point it remained a fairly abstract idea. When my grandmothers passed away, with their deaths came the realisation that at any point in the near or distant future, my life – along with those of everyone I love – will one day expire. This knowledge can sometimes feel like a crushing weight. Am I making the most of my life? Am I doing enough living?

The meeting is held by a facilitator, but she doesn’t set an agenda. Instead, the twelve of us sit around a table nursing teas and coffees and she allows the conversation to ebb and flow naturally. The strangers gathered are made up of a broad range of ages, genders and ethnicities, and we all hold varying ideas about what death means. Yet the meeting remains respectful, confronting and moving all at once.

I struggle to articulate my feelings around death without getting overcome with emotion. But I listen to the fears, hopes and beliefs of these strangers who share so honestly and freely, and we all laugh when I tell them I worry that if I die unexpectedly that my sons might one day read the half-finished novel lurking on my desktop before I’ve had chance to properly edit it. What if my legacy is just a few crap chapters of a yet-to-be completed book?

My head is still in the meeting long after I get home. I stand in the kitchen and look out at the tree in the middle of the garden. I recently learnt that the previous owners had planted it many years ago to commemorate the birth of their son, but he had sadly passed away. And so, as my own children play in the shadow of the tree that was planted in celebration of a life that has already ended, my mind wanders as it invariably does to this person, this stranger. How can he be dead if he’s alive in my thoughts? How can he cease to exist if those that loved him in life, love him still in death? My grandmothers might have passed away, but I feel them with me every day. To say that they no longer exist is simply not true.

There is still the fear, there is still the existential dread. But after my first meeting –and I plan on attending more – there’s also a renewed urgency to my life. We’re all here for a finite amount of time. Ignoring that fact doesn’t buy you a few extra years. We’re all born and we all die, but it’s the bit in the middle that really counts.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Planning Your Own Funeral & Memorial Service

by Anthony Martin

Planning your own funeral is not something anyone gets excited about. In all honestly, who would?

But you know what? There is great value in doing so.

Before we jump into the nitty-gritty, how about a funeral joke to lighten the mood?

Here’s a good one…

I was a little taken aback when I got my receipt from the funeral parlor. On the bottom of the receipt after the bill, it read, “Thank you. Please come again.”

In all seriousness, if you are considering planning your own funeral ahead of time we sincerely commend you. It takes courage to do so, and you will find it’s very rewarding once it’s done.

To help you on your quest, you’ll find in this article why you should plan your own memorial, how to do it, and discover four different ways you can ensure your funeral is paid for.

Why You Should Be Planning Your Own Funeral

The reason why you should plan your own funeral is quite simple.

If you don’t plan your own funeral, your family will have to while in their darkest hour.

Here’s the cold hard truth of it.

When you pass away, your family will be going through an incredibly dark time full of grief and sadness. They will miss you terribly.

Your loved ones having to make tough choices via planning your funeral only adds to the emotional stress they are enduring due to your passing.

Nobody likes to think of their own mortality, let alone plan for it. You should take the time to do it for your family, so they won’t have to while under the greatest emotional stress of their life.

Here’s some really good news.

Planning your own funeral is actually very easy! Not to mention, it won’t take as much time as you’d think to knock it out.

All you are really doing is documenting exactly how you would like to be remembered.

The best part is, once you’ve done it, you never have to do it again!

Taking a little time planning this ahead of time will pay huge dividends in the future. You’ll save your family from a lot of grief, and they will know how much you cared because of what you’ve done.

You Have To Document Your Plans Or They Do No Good

You could literally just use a blank piece of paper and that would suffice.

No matter how you do it, you must document your final wishes, or all your preparation is worthless.

Not to mention, however you choose to transcribe your funeral plan, you need to store them in a place where they are easily accessible by your family.

The idea is upon your passing, your family will naturally locate your final wishes, so they can follow your instructions. This will alleviate them from having to make these tough choices while they are grieving.

There are lots of free funeral planning guides online such as this one or this one, if you prefer to have something that pre-outlines everything.

Ultimately, it does not matter exactly how you document your final wishes. All that matters is that you do it, so your family can put it to use.

How To Plan Your Funeral

Planning out your own funeral has a process that will actually be very familiar to you.

No seriously, it will be.

Think of it this way.

Have you ever bought a vehicle? You likely have at some point in your life.

Think back to your last car buying experience. It probably went something like this…

  1. Calculated your budget
  2. Decided if you want a car, truck, van, etc.
  3. Identified which makes and models you were interested in
  4. Compared those models to see which one(s) you like most
  5. Selected a model
  6. Chose the color, interior & exterior options, etc.
  7. Bought the vehicle

The procedure to plan your own funeral will be just like that. The only real difference is A) You won’t take delivery of your product right now 😇 (at least we hope not), and B) you will be selecting options related to a funeral rather than a car.

Burial, Cremation, Or Donation

By far the biggest choice you will make is choosing to be buried, cremated, or donating your body to science.

Your budget may play a role in deciding which one of these you go with.

Remember, the cost of a funeral varies greatly among these three options. On average, a typical burial service will cost anywhere from $7,000-$10,000. At the same time, a cremation service will cost between $1,500-$5,000. Donating your body to science will usually cost nothing.

With the availability of affordable funeral life insurance plans to cover end-of-life costs, most people can adequately insure themselves for an amount necessary to cover whatever sort of memorial they prefer.

What To Do With The Remains If You Choose A Burial Or Cremation

If you choose to be buried, you then must select what you want done with the casket. If your wish is to be cremated, then you must choose where the urn or ashes are placed.

Believe it or not, there are quite a few options. There are pros and cons to each, so decide which one you think best suites you.

In Ground For A Burial

This is the stereotypical burial so to speak. The casket is placed inside a burial vault that is roughly six feet underground.

In Ground Lawn Crypt For A Burial

A lawn crypt is a pre-made tomb that is typically comprised of concrete and steel whereby multiple caskets can be stacked upon one another.

Lawn crypts are sometimes referred to as in ground mausoleums because they are essentially a completely enclosed shell that preserves the casket(s) far better than a burial vault will.

Above Ground Lawn Crypt For A Burial

This is identical to an in-ground lawn crypt, except that it’s above ground. It provides the proper water drainage to ensure the enclosed casket is preserved.

In A Private Mausoleum Above Ground For A Burial Or Cremation

A mausoleum is an above ground structure that is built specifically to hold the remains of single family. Private mausoleums are quite costly, but if you desire exclusivity and privacy for your whole family a private mausoleum is the way to get it done.

In A Community Mausoleum Above Ground For A Burial Or Cremation

Many cemeteries have mausoleums built that are public. This means anyone can elect to have their remains placed there. Usually those who elect this feature just don’t want their remains placed underground.

The most important thing to understand about a community mausoleum is that it’s public, so other people unrelated to you will also be stored alongside you.

Natural Burial

In this situation there are no embalming fluids, caskets, or burial vaults used. Instead, the remains are placed directly into the ground allowing the body to naturally decompose.

Sometimes with a natural burial, they will utilize some sort of biodegradable casket or shroud just as long as they don’t impede the decomposition of the remains.

Green Burial

This is almost identical to a natural burial with one key difference. For it to be a green burial, the cemetery where the remains will be buried must not use pesticides, and there must be no other bodies buried in the cemetery when embalming fluids or caskets were used.

Spreading Ashes For Cremation

For those who wish to be cremated, one of the most popular options is to have their ashes spread in a location of great significance.

Spreading ashes is certainly an option, but be sure to mind local and state laws. Every state is different, so don’t assume anything. Basically, some states and local ordinances allow it, and some don’t. In addition, those that do allow it often have restrictions regarding where you can spread the ashes, so be sure to double check before pursing this option.

Memorial Reef For Cremation

A memorial reef is a unique option whereby the ashes of the body can be infused with concrete and shaped into a statue of something (could be any shape you like) and placed on the ocean floor.

You will need to work with a business that provides these kinds of services. It’s not something you would want your family to do on their own.

Viewing Or No Viewing

Do you want your loved ones to have one final chance to visit your body? Some people do, and some people don’t. The choice is certainly yours, but it’s definitely something you must decide upon.

Viewings can take place at a funeral home, church, synagogue, or any other location of your preference (assuming the owner of the building agrees to it).

One thing to keep in mind is that if you prefer to donate your body to science and you want a viewing, you will be required to pay for the cost of the viewing.

Now Choose The Details To Round Out Your Plans

At this point, you’ve chosen between a burial, cremation, or donation. You’ve selected what to do with the remains, and you’ve decided whether or not to have a viewing.

All you have to do now is finalize the details such as location, flowers, music, etc.

Look the list below and decide which ones (if any) apply to you. Then document your preferences along with all the other stuff.

  • Memorial service location
  • Where the remains will be placed
  • Type of casket or urn
  • Flowers
  • Music
  • Attendees
  • Name(s) of those who you wish to make your arrangements
  • Open or closed casket for a service
  • Clothes, glasses, & jewelry to be worn for a viewing and/or final resting
  • Any military preferences for veterans
  • Marker/headstone preferences
  • Pallbearer suggestions
  • Obituary preferences (key points you want addressed in your obituary)
  • Post funeral reception preferences

4 Ways You Can Ensure Your Funeral Is Paid For

At this point, you’ve fully planned out your entire funeral which means your family won’t have to make these tough decisions while grieving your loss.

Now all you’ve got to do is put together a plan to ensure the expenses of your funeral don’t fall on your family.

Here’s the deal.

The greatest burden you can pass on to your loved ones is to saddle them with your unpaid funeral costs.

The truth is most families don’t have the cash needed to pay for the funeral outright. As a result, loved ones will resort to taking on debt in order to ensure you receive a respectable memorial service. Very often the debt they agree to takes years to pay off.

If you do nothing else, please make sure you financially prepare for your funeral to ensure your family doesn’t have to take on debt to do it for you.

Having said all of that, you have four basic options to pay for your final expenses.

1) Life Insurance

Life insurance to pay for burial expenses is a very popular option mainly because it affords immediate protection.

There are even life policies available that were designed specifically to cover end of life costs. They are often referred to as “burial insurance for seniors” or “final expense life insurance”.

They are small policies meant to provide just enough coverage to pay for final expenses. These policies are particularly helpful for folks over 80 who likely cannot qualify for a traditional life insurance policy. The cost of burial policies is generally affordable since the face amounts are low.

2) Save Money

This option should only be considered by those who are financially disciplined. In essence, you are electing to set aside a set amount each and every month until you have enough needed to cover all your final expenses.

The obvious drawback to this option is the fact that if you pass away before you’ve saved enough, your family will have to come up with the difference.

3) Pre-Need Contract

A pre-need policy is contract between you and a specific funeral home. Basically, you completely design your funeral service with them, and they tell you how much it will cost.

The policy is backed by a form of life insurance, but it’s a different kind of life policy compared to the one you obtain on an individual basis. The main difference between a pre-need life policy and an individually purchased life policy is that one day you will stop making payments on the pre-need policy.

Funeral homes that sell pre-need policies will try to get you pay off the balance of your funeral over the course of 3-5 years. Because of this, the monthly payments on a pre-need policy can be costly. They frequently end up being $100-$500 per month depending on the total cost and how long you give yourself to pay it off.

4) Funds From The Deceased’s Estate

Although not recommended, you could rely on your family liquidating your house, investments, or other valuable property as means to pay for your final expenses.

There’s no question that this is an option.

However, it should honestly be off the table for the most part.

Here’s why we say that.

It takes a lot of time for your family to be able to liquidate your estate. For one, the probate process can easily take months. That alone will condemn your family with having to temporarily generate funds to pay for your funeral.

Even after the probate process is complete, they would still need to sell off whatever valuables you own which takes even more time.

Again, this is an option, but because of the time involved, it should be a last resort.

Put Together A Will Or Living Trust

A will or living trust will address the legal matters associated with your death which is why it’s important you not leave this step out.

Now, whether you go should go with a will or living trust is purely a personal preference that will likely be determined by the complexity of your estate. This article gives a good outline about the pros and cons of each one.

The best thing to do is to consult with a wills and trust attorney, and let them help you decide which is best for you.

However, if you are the independent type and want to set up a will on your own that’s perfectly okay. Truthfully, a lot of people do with much success.

There are many online resources available to help you setup a will. If followed properly, it can be relatively simple and accurate.

If you do elect to setup a will without the assistance of an attorney, at least use a guide to ensure you do it properly.

On the other hand, a living trust is far more complex, and should be done with the assistance of a professional. From implementation to structure, they are very different and subject to different laws which is why professional legal help is suggested.

You might be wondering… Why do I need a will or trust anyways?

The reason is simple.

You want a will or trust to shore up the legal matters associated with death.

Just like all the other elements of your funeral, if you don’t prepare for the legal ones, you condemn your family with having to deal with them.

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