Category: Cultural Expressions

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Millennials Aren’t Killing the Funeral Industry

— But It is Changing

By Heather Morrison

We haven’t figured out immortality, so it’s important to discuss the inevitable.

In 1997, The Onion published the article, “World Death Rate Holding Steady at 100 Percent.”

While immortality is a quest for lots of fictional characters — like Voldemort and the Cullens from “Twilight” — and a few Silicon Valley elites like Jeff Bezos, that headline from The Onion still holds true more than two decades later.

Duh. Everybody dies.

But a lingering taboo around death in the U.S. makes it hard to talk about. People in and around the funeral industry are hoping to change that.

“Talking about sex is not going to get you pregnant, and talking about death is not going to kill you,” said Darren Crouch, founder and president of Passages International Inc.

Not only are we not talking about death, we’re also trying not to think about it. Only 1 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds plan their own funeral before experiencing the death of a loved one. That number jumps to nearly 20 percent following the death of a loved one, according to CJP Field.

The Green Burial Council’s Holly Chan, 24, thinks it’s time for everyone to start talking about and planning for the inevitable.

At the end of October, she’s hosting a talk called “Death over Dim Sum” at the Reimagine End of Life festival in San Francisco that’s bringing together end-of-life experts and Asian Americans of all ages.

“Age doesn’t really change how much contact you have with death,” she said. “We could die at any time.”

Family members aren’t any better off not having discussed the wishes of a deceased loved one, she said. Instead, they’re often left with uncertainty and an expensive funeral.

“I think this conversation is relevant at any time,” she said, adding that it’s OK to change your idea of what your funeral might look like as your life changes.

Death influencers?

Caitlin Doughty runs the YouTube account Ask A Mortician, which has more than 900,000 subscribers. She vlogs about topics like budget-friendly funeral options, new types of caskets and scams within the funeral industry. She also talks about death positivity.

“Do not beat yourself up over where you are in your journey to accept death,” Doughty said in a video called “7 Habits of Highly Effective Death Positive People.”

“Yeah, there’s a lot about death that sucks,” she continued. “It’s OK to feel bad about death.”

But death is a journey that isn’t going away. It’s time to get comfy with it, she says.

Death doulas are trying to spread the same message by posting about their work on Instagram.

A doula is traditionally someone trained to support and comfort pregnant people and their partners during the pregnancy and birth process. Now, the same idea is being used in end-of-life care.

Chan has found comfort in the growing number of people on Instagram talking about the job of a death doula. She hopes it will bring more attention to the topic of death and dying and spark conversation.

Social media is already shifting some long-held taboos around death, said intergenerational expert Henry Rose Lee.

“Social media has removed many taboos about what can be seen, shared and discussed,” she said.

Younger generations are trying to confront topics that have been impolite to talk about in the past.

“Millennials don’t want to die any more than any other generation,” Lee said. They’re just “embracing the need to discuss quite tough subjects, like death.”

[ICYMI: We Asked a Mortician About the Death-Positive Movement, and This is What She Said]

Fireworks at a funeral

As more people talk about death, more people are moving away from the “traditional funeral” — the kind with a funeral home, casket and everyone standing around in black.

In the same way people are personalizing their wedding ceremonies more and more, people are wanting the same for their funerals, Lee said.

“I have even talked to some millennials who are planning a band or performers of some kind,” she said. “Many see the funeral as a chance to celebrate.”

Chan has heard people planning on an end of life celebration before they die, with firework displays, motorcycles and games.

Lee points out that all this can be done in addition to any traditions, religious or otherwise, you want to include.

“Religion does still have an impact on decisions about funerals and death,” she said.

However, nearly four in 10 adults ages 18 to 29 are religiously unaffiliated. And they are four times more likely as those a generation ago to identify that way, according to a study by the Public Religion Research Institute.

Due to that shift, “it is likely that, in the decades to come, millennials may move away from some of the older traditions,” Lee said. “Time will tell.”

Green burials aren’t just a fad

One of the biggest movements in the funeral industry is green funerals, including more environmentally friendly burial options.

In 2018, nearly 54 percent of Americans were considering a green burial, according to a survey released by the National Funeral Directors Association.

“Green burial is for everybody,” said Lee Webster of the Green Burial Council.

Traditional burial methods — like being embalmed and buried in a metal casket — take a toll on the environment. Green burial uses biodegradable plain wooden caskets, shrouds, tree pods or coral reefs. And the options are expanding.

One family Crouch talked to put a family member’s remains in a biodegradable turtle-shaped urn. They dropped the urn into the sea. A real-life turtle swam up next to it, he said.

“It’s very, very powerful,” he said. “That family is never going to forget that service.”

Though millennials are carrying on the push for greener funerals, boomers actually originated the idea. They were concerned about the land, what we were putting in it and how to conserve it, Webster said. It wasn’t a climate change issue then — but now it is.

“People are living greener and it would be an obvious extension that they may expect to die greener,” Crouch said. “The problem is the industry has been very slow to change.”

But millennials are normalizing the conversation around green burials, “and then everybody follows,” Webster said.

Textbook for the modern funeral director

The gap between what people want and what funeral homes currently offer means a person’s funeral might not line up with how they lived their life.

“The industry is so used to doing the cookie-cutter funeral,” Crouch said. “Even though they may have driven a hybrid vehicle, maybe they were avid gardeners, maybe they were environmentalists, it’s not uncommon for that person to be embalmed and buried in a metal casket.”

Webster literally wrote the textbook on potential solutions to this problem. Now mortuary school students are learning about environmentally friendly burials.

It’s in the best interest of funeral homes to start adapting to what people want, Crouch said. As more and more options become available, think about how you’d want to be celebrated and buried.

Washington just became the first state to allow “human composting” as a burial method. Who knows what could be next.

“There are a lot of unique things on the horizon,” Crouch said. “Some of them may or may not be practical.”

But, he said, the modern funeral director should listen to what was important to the person in life and present the family with all their options — not just what’s been done in the past.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Anger, sadness dominate day of mourning for homeless people who died in L.A. this year

Pancake, a community organizer, leads supporters as they march in downtown Los Angeles in tribute to homeless who died this year.

By Gale Holland

A joyous New Orleans-style Second Line parade to honor the roughly 1,000 homeless people who have died in Los Angeles County this year turned to anger on Friday, as skid row mourners stopped at City Hall to denounce elected officials for not halting the growing death toll.

Dozens of skid row residents and advocates, all decked out in Mardi Gras beads and flying black, gold and purple balloons, chanted: “Three a day! Too many!” They waved their fists at the windows of City Hall, where a homeless man in his 50s was found dead Tuesday night.

The parade and angry demonstration were part of National Homeless Persons Memorial Day, marked in dozens of cities.

Lorraine Morland speaks and sings to a crowd of supporters gathered outside City Hall to pay tribute to homeless people who have died this year in Los Angeles.

L.A.’s day of mourning began soberly at the James Wood Community Center with prayers, songs and the traditional recitation of the names of all people who died at skid row missions and programs. Later, advocates planned to release candles at Echo Park Lake, where dozens of people have been living and dying in tents over the past year.

The Los Angeles County Public Health found in October that deaths among homeless people have increased each year, from 536 in 2013 to 1,047 in 2018. The tally so far this year is 963, they said.

Pete White of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, the parade organizer, accused City Atty. Mike Feuer of hypocrisy for expressing sadness over the homeless man who died outside City Hall, the same week the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a landmark homelessness case that curbs police powers to clear homeless encampments when there aren’t enough shelter beds available.

Feuer and officials from several other cities and counties across California had asked the high court to either clarify or overturn the lower court ruling in City of Boise vs. Martin.

“The city attorney had the audacity to hold a press conference [about the death] … when, days before, his office was trying to figure out how to criminalize that man,” White said.

Rob Wilcox, the city attorney spokesman, said Feuer wanted the court to clarify the Boise ruling, not to extend police powers over homeless people.

Feuer announced the man’s death at a press conference on Wednesday morning.

“He was someone’s son. He might’ve been somebody’s dad or somebody’s brother,” Feuer said. “I don’t know. But I do know that he died alone, and if there is any truth to statistics, he is not alone.”

The first parade to mark National Homeless Persons Memorial Day took off at noon Friday from San Julian Park, accompanied by drums, a trumpet, a keyboard, bicycles festooned with beads and Christmas garlands, and a giant banner that included photos of skid row residents who had died. It was labeled “Death by neglect” and contained a dot map of every homeless death site in Los Angeles County in the past year.

Several singers led the crowd in “Wade in the Water” and other civil rights anthems. Stephanie Arnold Williams, a longtime skid row advocate, sped around the crowd in red sequined skates, live streaming the parade on Facebook from a solar-powered tablet strapped to her back.

“When death comes to the doorstep of City Hall, you know we must respond,” White said. “We are going to set up shrines to show our people didn’t die in vain.”

Several of the dead were remembered by name, including Rodney Evans, who died on skid row waiting to get housing.

The parade eventually returned to the skid row corner where Dwayne Fields, a longtime skid row street musician, was killed in August when his tent was set on fire in what authorities said was an intentional act.

A memorial sits Friday at the site where homeless man Darrel Fields was set on fire and died.

Jonathan Early, 38, who also was homeless, has been charged in Fields’ death. The death — and that of his partner, Valarie Wertlow, a month later — underscores the stakes in the epidemic of homeless deaths.

“Fields was a Jimi Hendrix impersonator in Las Vegas, and he was a better guitarist than Jimi Hendrix,” Anderson said. “It’s like genius is being snuffed out. This is all of our fight.”

In Echo Lake Park, homeless advocates place floating candles containing the names of homeless people who have died.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How Friendship Changes at the End of Life

“People become frightened at the end of life. Sometimes I see them moving away from friends as they get sicker.”

By Julie Beck

Julie Beck talks with two women who met through the nontheistic religion of Ethical Culture and have spent a significant amount of time ministering to aging and dying members of their congregation. They discuss how friendship changes at the end of life, and how they work to foster connection and community for members of all ages.

The Friends:

Anne Klaeysen, 68, a recently retired clergy leader for the New York Society for Ethical Culture and a humanist chaplain at New York University. She lives in Brooklyn.
Liz Singer, 71, a geriatric-care manager and the president of the New York Society for Ethical Culture. She lives in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Julie Beck: How did you two meet and begin ministering to the dying together?

Anne Klaeysen: Liz became a member of the New York society maybe seven years ago. I am always at the monthly newcomer reception, so we met there. She just dove right in, and shortly became the president of the board. I have to confess, Liz, I get a little worried when people dive in so quickly. I’m thinking, Oh dear, is she going to drown? Liz did not drown; she’s a strong swimmer. Liz came at a time when we really needed strong leadership. And she wasn’t afraid to take on a couple of the old boys. So I think there was certainly a feminist bond there. [We became] partners in crime, or [rather] partners in good works.strong>Liz Singer: We have a strong aging population. I think 30 percent of our members are probably over 70. And we started to see things like dementia. As Anne and I developed our friendship, we began having conversations on the very delicate process of aging and navigating our roles with the members.

Anne: Liz is a geriatric-care manager. Her expertise in this field was invaluable, but I was a little concerned because I didn’t want to take advantage of her. Members don’t mean to take advantage, but sometimes they do.

Also, our members are humanists. We’re a nontheistic religion of ethics. So most of our members don’t believe in a supernatural deity, nor in an afterlife. And they’re fiercely independent. One of our challenges has been to get them to tell us when they’re going through something. Very often we find out about things after they’re in the hospital. It’s not that they don’t trust us; they have a real fear of losing their dignity.

Another society member, Barbara Simpson, runs something called the Death Café. That’s an opportunity for folks to come and really speak about living. We know that we are mortal, and the gift of that is we can live life more completely and in connection with each other. It’s really a joyful experience for [our members]. Barbara has said that very often people are comfortable talking about [mortality], but their children aren’t. [They’ll say], “No, Mom, you’re never going to die; you’re not going to die yet.” People may have their life in order, their papers in order, but their children are in denial.

Anne Klaeysen (left) and Liz Singer (right) sharing a meal together.

Beck: Was there a turning point where you went from having a collegial relationship to more of a friendship?

Liz: The turning point was probably our first serious case, five or six years ago. There was a woman who was estranged from her daughter. Very stubborn. We were trying to bring the daughter back into the picture and make that relationship communicative. Because it was so difficult, Anne and I had to talk about it all the time. The trick was for Anne and I to work together very closely. Anne was having lunch with [the older woman], and gaining her trust. And I was trying to bring in oversight without activating her stubbornness.

Anne: [The woman] left the society for a while because she didn’t get along with people. People didn’t quite come up to her standards. When she came back I was thinking, How can we help her to fit in? How can we help her not be so judgmental? One really good connection was with the children [in our congregation]. I suggested that she come meet with the children, and tell them about her experience. She was a Holocaust survivor; she was on the kindertransport train from Germany to England. I wanted her to be connected with the children, because she was estranged from her own daughter. And she was kind of prickly around some of the adults. The children were so appreciative, and so affectionate with her. They wrote to her when she wasn’t well. They drew her pictures. That’s another thing that a community can do when it’s intergenerational: connect at all ages of one’s life.

Beck: Being with people at the end of life is very intense work. You are regularly seeing a part of life that a lot of people don’t see, or see very rarely. How do you feel that affects your relationships generally and your friendship specifically?

Anne: Generally I have a great appreciation for what the elderly are going through. A big challenge with one of our members was the lack of understanding among hospice and health-care staff for people who are humanists, who don’t believe in God, and don’t believe in an afterlife. It was really difficult for this person when others around her were saying, “Oh, don’t be afraid. God loves you.”

I’ve been on different panels to try to train people not to assume that they are caring for God-fearing people. Just listen to these people. Even when they have dementia. They may not know where they are, they may not remember things, but you’ve got to listen.

Liz: How does it affect my personal life? Number one, it [gives me] an appreciation for life. Number two, I have a reputation when I go to dinner parties. Don’t bring up any questions about aging or I’ll get on a soapbox.

Beck: You mentioned that sometimes you are ministering to people who are your friends, which I imagine is very special, but at the same time could make the balance harder.

Anne: It does. Keeping our work separate from [our personal lives] is a challenge. Where do you draw the line for someone who’s a friend and someone that you’re pastoring to in a professional capacity? But there’s a part of me that wants my life to be integrated. You don’t want to compartmentalize, but you also don’t want to become so involved that you lose perspective. One thing Liz and I do in our friendship is try to help each other keep that balance.

Beck: Is there anything that you’ve observed about how friendship changes at the end of life?

Liz: People become frightened at the end of life. Sometimes I see them moving away from friends as they get sicker. Once people get past that fear of what’s going on, they can be friends again.

Anne: Partly, [what changes is] a sense of loss. My dad died at 101. He was hale and hearty up until the end, and very sound of mind. I remember him saying that all of his friends had died on him. But because he was hard of hearing, it was difficult for him to make new friends. I think a lot of the infirmities that are experienced in advanced age make it difficult to make new friends. Often at the New York society, I see people who become a member after a spouse has died. They’re grateful to have a group of people with whom they can socialize.

I don’t want to sound stereotypical here, but women have been raised to develop those social skills. Men have very often relied on women to do that for them. What we find is that, in the aging population, women are able to cope better. Men who have relied on a spouse or a girlfriend lack those skills. They prefer to have a woman in their lives who can do that for them. That’s the way they were raised. It’s really difficult for them.

Beck: Because of this work, are there things you’re able to talk about with each other that are harder to talk about with your other friends?

Liz: [Anne and I have] skills around dealing with very deep conversations, where a lot of people don’t want to go.

Anne: Of course we’ve also had a lot of challenges in this political atmosphere of, How do you hear somebody with whom you profoundly disagree? We’ve seen that with members who may not be on speaking terms with family or friends. A lot of the work that we do is about—no matter what age somebody is—having respect for human worth, and seeing the other person as a full person.

Liz, you and I had a little rocky time when we weren’t really understanding each other.

Liz: It had to do with some organizational issues at the society. It was very political.

Anne: I thought, I’m going to assume that this is a misunderstanding. We just really need to go back and listen more carefully. What I really appreciated about Liz was that she not only listened to me but she also checked in with other Ethical Culture clergy. I really appreciated not only the deep listening, but also her checking to see, What’s the bigger story here? I think that comes back to being a religion of ethics. Friendships take work. And a lot of people aren’t willing to do that.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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The death doula: helping you prepare for the day you die

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What does it mean to have a good death? Leah Green meets with Aly Dickinson, an end-of-life doula. Aly helps clients to plan what they want to happen at the end of their lives, and she accompanies them as they transition from life to death. She helps Leah draw up a death plan, and takes her to a death cafe, where strangers discuss dying over tea and cake

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The world’s first human composting facility will let us recycle ourselves

In life, we strive to reduce and reuse. The human composting center Recompose aims to offer a more sustainable death.

by Lilly Smith

What happens to us when we die? It’s one of life’s most enigmatic and profound questions. And—let me clear this up now—I don’t have any insights to offer on the afterlife. But the first renderings of new after-death center Recompose (don’t call it a “funeral home”) reveal another option for the afterlife of our bodies here on earth: composting.

The flagship facility, expected to open in Seattle in spring 2021, is designed to reconnect human death rituals with nature and to offer a more sustainable alternative to conventional burial options. Today, burial often involves chemical-laden embalming, while cremation uses eight times more energy, according to the architects at Olson Kundig who designed the new facility. Recompose will offer a first-of-its-kind “natural organic reduction” service on-site, which will “convert human remains into soil in about 30 days, helping nourish new life after death.”

Recompose emerged as an idea in 2016—the result of a Creative Exchange Residency at the Seattle-based global design practice that brought Recompose founder and CEO Katrina Spade and her team into collaboration with the architects to create a prototype facility.

But the passage of a new bill “concerning human remains” in Washington State has quickly ushered their prototype into the realm of the possible. After Governor Jay Inslee signed SB-5001 this past May, Washington became the first state to recognize “natural organic reduction” as an alternative to cremation or burial. The law will go into effect May 1, 2020, according to the Seattle Times.

With the design of Recompose, the architects at Olson Kundig have brought a whole new meaning to the term “deathbed.” Their design for the facility is focused on a few key aspects of the experience, starting with the individual “vessels” where the organic reduction takes place. In typical funerary practice, they might be referred to as coffins; a person’s remains are placed in the vessel and covered with woodchips. There, the remains are aerated to create a suitable environment for thermophilic bacteria, according to Dezeen. That bacteria will then break the remains down into usable soil.

What’s the benefit of this process taking place in a controlled facility like Recompose, as opposed to a cemetery? “By converting human remains into soil, we minimize waste, avoid polluting groundwater with embalming fluid, and prevent the emissions of CO2 from cremation and from the manufacturing of caskets, headstones, and grave liners,” the company explains on its website. What’s more, it explains, “By allowing organic processes to transform our bodies and those of our loved ones into a useful soil amendment, we help to strengthen our relationship to the natural cycles while enriching the earth.”

Seventy-five of these individual spaces will be built as part of the first Recompose project. They’re arranged to surround a large, airy gathering space at the center of the 18,500-square-foot facility. This space will be used for services, and reads more New-Age health center than macabre funeral parlor: It’s bright and light-filled, punctuated by trees, and canopied by tall natural wood ceilings.

“This facility hosts the Recompose vessels, but it is also an important space for ritual and public gathering,” says Alan Maskin, principal and owner of Olson Kunig. “The project will ultimately foster a more direct, participatory experience and dialogue around death and the celebration of life.”

Although Recompose claims to be the first facility to offer organic reduction services, Recompose is not alone in trying to end the practice of keeping death and its associated after-care rituals at arm’s length—a movement that’s come to be known as “death positivity.”

Caitlin Doughty is one such person working in this space. She is the co-owner with Jeff Jorgensen of Clarity Funerals, which offers environmentally-friendly services like carbon neutral cremation, tree planting memorials, all natural products, and locally produced urns and caskets. Doughty is also the founder of the Order of the Good Death, “a group of funeral industry professionals, academics, and artists exploring ways to prepare a death-phobic culture for their inevitable mortality.” She had previously founded Undertaking LA, which Tara Chavez-Perez, a publicist for the Order of Good Death, said shut down earlier this year.

According the website, the business was an “alternative funeral service” that brought people closer to the experience of death by “placing the dying person and their family back in control of the dying process, the death itself, and the subsequent care of the dead body,” for instance by helping people take care of a loved one’s corpse at home. Undertaking LA offered more sustainable alternatives to typical practice as well, including biodegradable willow caskets, according to the New Yorker.

She also sits on Recompose’s board—and, as Chavez-Perez told me, “Caitlin’s an enthusiastic and avid supporter.”

New alternative burial companies (like the startup Better Place Forests, which sells the right to scatter your ashes beneath a redwood) are trying to bring nature back into the commercial funeral industry. Recompose, meanwhile, is trying to use nature as the framework for a better death. “We asked ourselves how we could use nature—which has perfected the life/death cycle—as a model for human death care,” Spade says in a statement. “We saw an opportunity for this profound moment to both give back to the earth and reconnect us with these natural cycles.”

With Recompose, Olson Kunig has designed a seemingly more sustainable alternative to burial or cremation—and perhaps a small way for you to leave the world better than you found it.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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South Koreans Take Part in ‘Living Funerals’ to Improve Lives

Participants sit inside coffins during a “living funeral” event as part of a “dying well” programme, in Seoul, South Korea, October 31, 2019.

by Bryan Lynn

Thousands of South Koreans have taken part in “living funeral” services in an effort to help improve their lives.

The experience is designed to simulate death for individuals seeking to increase their knowledge about their current lives.

More than 25,000 people have completed mass “living funerals” at the Hyowon Healing Center in Seoul since it opened in 2012.

“Once you become conscious of death, and experience it, you undertake a new approach to life,” said 75-year-old Cho Jae-hee. Cho took part in a living funeral that was part of a “dying well” program offered by her local community center.

The event was attended by many people from the area, both young and old. During the program, people are asked to lie down in a closed coffin for about 10 minutes. They can also write a will and take funeral pictures.

University student Choi Jin-kyu also took part in a “dying well” event. He told Reuters news agency the experience helped him realize that, too often, he considers others as competitors.

“When I was in the coffin, I wondered what use that is,” the 28-year-old said. Choi added that he now plans to start his own business after finishing school instead of trying to enter the highly-competitive job market.

Participants get into coffins during a “living funeral” event as part of a “dying well” program in Seoul, South Korea, October 31, 2019. Picture taken on October 31, 2019.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, has rated South Korea 33 out of 40 countries on its Better Life Index. The index considers many measures of personal well-being, including housing, income, employment and health.

Many younger South Koreans have high hopes for education and employment. But such hopes can be ruined because of economic conditions.

Professor Yu Eun-sil is a doctor at Seoul’s Asan Medical Center who has written a book about death. “It is important to learn and prepare for death even at a young age,” she told Reuters.

In 2016, the World Health Organization reported South Korea’s suicide rate was 20.2 per 100,000 people. That is nearly double the worldwide average of 10.53.

Hyowon Healing Center began offering living funerals to help people see the value in their current lives. The experience can also help people seeking forgiveness and better relationships with family and friends, said Jeong Yong-mun, the head of the center.

Jeong said he is pleased when people are able to reconcile at a family member’s funeral. But he is saddened that the connection could not happen sooner.

“We don’t have forever,” he said. “That’s why I think this experience is so important – we can apologize and reconcile sooner and live the rest of our lives happily.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Death Be Not Dull

U.K. restaurateur Oliver Peyton’s newest project, a style-forward funeral home called Exit Here, aims to shake up a very traditional industry.

A stylish new funeral parlor called Exit Here opened in London, promising that memorializing a loved one’s death doesn’t have to be grim experience.

By Kriston Capps

Oliver Peyton knows one thing about his death: Thin Lizzy will play at his funeral.

His Spotify playlist is already queued up. Peyton is Irish, and the ‘70s Dublin hard rockers behind “The Boys Are Back in Town” played the first concert he ever attended. He’s thinking that “Dancing in the Moonlight (It’s Caught Me in Its Spotlight),” off 1977’s Bad Reputation, might be the first song to kick things off.

Peyton’s funeral soundtrack doesn’t sound even slightly sepulchral. It also features ’90s groove tracks by Arrested Development, De La Soul, and A Tribe Called Quest, a nod to the first London establishment he ever opened (a hip-hop club). Peyton is nothing if not an entertainer: The longtime restaurateur is a judge on the BBC’s reality chef show, Great British Menu, and he earned an honorary British order of chivalry for his service as a caterer. When it all goes down, Peyton means for his funeral to be something special.

“I want every detail of my funeral to be choreographed,” Peyton says. “I don’t want my family or friends to think, ‘I wonder what Oliver would have liked.’ I think it’s so rude, in a way.”

Six years ago, when his father died, he came to realize that there isn’t enough choice in death. Since Victorian times, Peyton says, Great Britain’s death care industry has been served by a single prevailing model, a traditional means of commemorating life and ritualizing mortality—and it doesn’t suit him. So Peyton launched Exit Here, a funeral parlor, if that’s the word for it, in London’s Chiswick neighborhood.

“After my parents’ deaths, I just kept thinking, there’s no choice. You’re just on a conveyor belt,” Peyton says. “I didn’t achieve the things I know that certainly my father would have wanted. I was too traumatized.”

At first glance, Exit Here looks like a concept cafe, the sort of place where you might expect to order a flat white by day and a craft pour by night. The splashy, neon-backlit script over the entrance could be promoting a brasserie or raw bar (both of which Peyton has experience operating) instead of a funeral home. Nevertheless, Exit Here is a full-service provider of funerals and mortuary services, from traditional wakes to exotic possibilities.

“If you want a party on a beach in Goa, we’ll organize that for you,” Peyton says.

Three of the bespoke caskets available at Exit Here.

Style distinguishes Exit Here from the competition: It’s death, but hipper. The shop stands out for its considerable cheek (and chic). For example, Exit Here offers bright-colored urns shaped like capsules, a punny line called the “Bitter Pill” series. Bespoke caskets include a Día de los Muertos–inspired option and an English willow wicker coffin. Inside, teal and goldenrod hallways, blonde wood floors, and arched doorways (designed by Transit Studio) set Exit Here apart from traditional funeral-home interiors, with their dark woods and drab carpets.

There’s a growing movement to update the funeral business with offerings that reflect a wider range of customer choices. Los Angeles mortician and author Caitlin Doughty, who runs the Undertaking L.A. funeral service, also founded a collective of death care professionals and academics called the Order of the Good Death to help speed the adoption of more inclusive, less environmentally harmful, and more “death positive” practices within the industry. Other efforts, like the nonprofit Death Over Dinner and the Death Cafe initiative, encourage groups to talk openly about their demise, via public dinner events. Exit Here is entering an increasingly vibrant market for style-forward dying.

Since its opening a month ago, Exit Here has hosted four funerals. Peyton won’t talk about them in detail, but he says that the private services have ranged from the traditional to the extravagant. Everyone who has come through his doors has asked for something different. Funeral homes largely serve local neighborhoods and communities, and Exit Here is no different in this regard. Barry Pritchard, Peyton’s partner in the endeavor, is a third-generation funeral director who serves on the board of the U.K.’s National Association of Funeral Directors. All the services associated with a traditional funeral home, from collecting and preparing the body to hosting the reception, are available; the options simply go further.

A wicker coffin might be appropriate for a natural burial in Berkshire, a service provided by Exit Here.

When I ask him what an extravagant funeral might look like, he gives as an example the services for Aretha Franklin. Her televised 2018 funeral featured testimonials by the likes of Reverend Jesse L. Jackson and former President Bill Clinton, performances by Chaka Khan and Ariana Grande, and a procession of more than 100 pink Cadillacs. Peyton asks me whether I would describe the service as tasteful (I would). So why shouldn’t there be a category of funeral that falls somewhere between a faltering recitation of “Danny Boy” and a fantastic spectacle for the Queen of Soul?

Peyton outlines his philosophy on funerals this way: People plan their own birthdays, weddings, holidays, and vacations. Exit Here is for people who would like to plan their final departures as well. Plotting out the details, from the menu to the music, takes a burden off the shoulders of grieving loved ones and gives a person more control over the terms of their final departure. Peyton acknowledges the discomfort that some people might feel at the prospect of a trendy funeral home, but he says that’s ultimately discomfort with death itself. Convention does not ease a loved one’s passing, in the end.

So, what if I want to have a Star Wars-themed funeral? Somebody’s already asked him for a Star Wars casket, he replies, and he’s trying to figure out how to honor that request. Choice is the force behind Exit Here. In an increasingly secularized Britain, more people are searching for rituals that aren’t explicitly religious; other might like some extra flexibility within sacred traditions.

“Having spent most of my adult life in the restaurant business, you think you’re just helping people, and you are—you’re helping people to have a good time,” Peyton says. “But funerals are far more emotional. There’s far more attached to it. People’s grief manifests itself in different ways at different times. Being able to help people through that is a good thing.”

He adds, “It’s still, to me, a hospitality business. People say, ‘Oliver, why are you doing this?’ It’s about taking care of people.”

Costs for services at Exit Here run “a tiny bit above mid-market” for a traditional funeral, according to Peyton. The price point isn’t meant to be exclusionary. For services extending beyond traditional receptions, the prices run the gamut. “If you want a cheap funeral, you’re not going to come to us,” Peyton says, but “we’re definitely not out of reach.”

Death, curated.

Peyton and his partner weren’t expecting to do any funerals before Christmas. But there’s clearly a lively market for Exit Here: About four weeks in, Peyton is already thinking ahead to opening as many as four similar establishments in the future. He says that he is fielding regular queries about franchise opportunities, something he hadn’t predicted (and isn’t considering for now). While Exit Here might look like an effort to disrupt the industry of death, there isn’t any private equity backing the venture. A service is still a service.

Peyton is willing to describe one funeral in detail: his own. It will begin with a lunch, he says. At about 3:00 p.m., when everyone’s thinking about heading home, they’ll bring out the really good wine. From there it’s DJs spinning his favorite music from different periods of his life—Patti Smith, Desmond Dekker, the Ramones—so that people will leave with a lasting memory.

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