These grave markers are as sad as they are sweet. These dollhouses were built by grieving parents for their beloved daughters, complete with favorite toys and other significant items. Though they are plagued by vandalism through the years, they continue to be kept up and restored when need be.
Dorothy Marie Harvey (1926-1931)
Dorothy Marie Harvey and her family were passing through Medina, Tennessee on their way North to find work. When Dorothy got measles and died, the townfolk helped her family bury her in Hope Hill Cemetery.
Her parents left her behind and continued on.
Vivian Mae Allison (1894-1899)
The dollhouse of Vivian Mae Allison is located in the Connersville City Cemetery in Connersville, Indiana.
Lova Cline (1902-1908)
Lova Cline’s dollhouse memorial is in the Arlington East Hill Cemetery in Arlington, Indiana.
Nadine Earles (1929-1933)
The grave of Nadine Earles is in the Oakwood Cemetery in Lanett, Alabama.
The story goes that Nadine wanted a dollhouse for Christmas. Since she died just before the holiday, her parents built her a dollhouse on her grave and filled it with her toys and personal belongings.
I’M HOLDING A thick wad of paper towels against my dog’s hip, shushing her and patting her head. I’m fairly timid at first, worried that pressing against her burst cyst could hurt her. But instead of yelping, she just stares at me with pleading “pet me more” eyes and settles her chin against my free hand. I gently, and then more firmly, push into the spot of wet, matted fur where it seems one of her various growths has burst. The liquid isn’t pussy or filmy. It’s just clear, like water. But it’s the third time in as many days that I’ve found her with a soaked spot, sort of moping around while it leaks. I’m just hoping it’s not urine, because that would mean the end is nearer than I want it to be.
Meanwhile, the canine fitness tracker she’s wearing—a coin-sized silver disc that attaches to her collar—reports everything is going great. This can’t be great, right?
I’ve been living away from Gypsy (that is to say, out of my parents’ home) for 10 years now. But when I moved abroad I decided: I need to be able to know as much about my pup as possible, even in my absence. Second-hand reports weren’t enough. So, I decided to strap an activity reader to her and watch the cold, hard data pour in.
I know that everyone says they love their dog, but I really love my dog. My family adopted Gypsy (also known as Roo, Roo Roo, Ooo Roo, Jibba, or Jibba Jabba) when I was in high school—my mom shocked us all when she brought home an intensely affectionate Border Collie-Australian Shepherd mix who was terrified of fireworks and bicycles and loved ice cubes. She is, to be totally honest, the best dog.
Gypsy
When I went to college, I lived close enough that I could see Gypsy every few months. After graduation, I moved a mere 45 minutes away and saw my dog even more often. But life got busier: My parents didn’t bring her on trips to see me (she was getting older, getting into the car became more difficult), and I didn’t have as much time to drive home. When I moved to Seattle, about four and a half hours away, I saw her even less. And then, when I moved to the Caribbean, it hit me: Gypsy might die while I’m gone. I might not get a call, telling me to come say goodbye, because it would be impossible.
I was home a few months ago, visiting my family—and my dog. She’s always had the manic energy of her breed, coupled with an endearing sweetness; she’s seemed like a puppy since the day she came home. But I finally noticed it: She had cysts, her fur was getting matted more easily. Her eyes were a little cloudier and didn’t follow you as well. Her back legs struggled to push her up on the hardwood floors; she would slide a bit, sometimes fall down. She definitely couldn’t sprint like she used to anymore. She was old.
That’s when I decided that if I couldn’t be around physically for Gypsy’s last months, I would be around digitally. I figured if I couldn’t actually be with her, I would use technology to… “be” with her. So I got a Fitbit for my dog.
Not actually a Fitbit, but a Whistle, a $99 canine activity tracker which you often hear described by people who own one as “the Fitbit for dogs.” Whistle has a motion sensor and a GPS sensor, so you can see how much exercise and rest your dog is getting. You can include additional info, like how much she’s eating. Within the app, you can attach photos you’ve taken.
At first, it was fun—adorable, even! I could see how active and playful Gypsy was compared to other dogs similar to her. I could see when she was out on a walk, and how much sleep she was getting. Whistle told me that she had an 82 percent success rate of hitting her goals (75 out of 91 days) and her best streak for doing so was a whopping 20 days. In fact, she’s better at meeting her activity goals than most dogs like her, so says Whistle. (She would get an average of 84 minutes of activity a day—similar dogs apparently get around 59.)
I watched from abroad as Gypsy hit her daily quota for activity and zipped past her exercise requirements. I noted to myself that it seemed like she wasn’t getting as much sleep as a dog her age and size should (a stat Whistle helps calculate), but hey, too little sleep was surely a sign she was more energetic and less lethargic! A good thing! Each evening, an alert would roll in, “Gypsy hit her goal!” and I felt soothed, comforted: She was old, but was doing fine.
As it turns out, she was only sort of “technically” doing fine. After moving back to the U.S., I made a trip to visit to my parents. While there, I would get Whistle alerts while sitting in the same room as Roo. Her activity report rolls in while I listen to her pant for no reason, or I get her sleep status while her paws struggle against the hardwood floors.
It’s not that Whistle is inaccurate—hardly. It’s just that when you’re not there, actually seeing your dog, the reports don’t spell out the entirety of what’s happening. Sure, she still meets her activity goals, but Whistle doesn’t record how she slipped on a stair. I can see that she’s still eating her dinner, which is fantastic, but the device can’t show me how confused and panicked she seems when she wakes up—all very obvious differences now that, despite her relative health, are startling. I was somewhat lured into thinking everything was fine, that I would come home to my dog, the ageless wonder. Because on paper (or, screen, rather), that’s what I’d convinced myself she was.
To be honest though, when I jump out and ignore the day-to-day reports and look at Whistle’s overall data, I can see the decline—which is such a strange thing to see defined in an app. Usually, these sorts of services are about living better: We want to lose weight or monitor our heart rates, and Fitbits, Fuelbands, and Apple Watches give us shiny charts and graphs so we can analyze ourselves and do so. But what about when a tracker isn’t showing that you’re getting better—what if it says you’re getting worse? If someone were to wear one of these things forever, they’d notice a change from improving their body to watching it die.
Now, I get nervous that I’ll see her activity plummet—maybe stop completely. That I’ll have a chart that shows me the moment she gave up, or even the moment she died.
Yesterday, we took Gypsy back to the vet to inspect her cysts. The vet told us, though, that it looks like there’s a lot of urine in her fur, too—and that she’s becoming incontinent. Which means, of course, that her health is worse than we thought. I went and bought pads to put underneath her beds, gave her a thorough bath, and took her for a walk. And despite the vet’s warning, she tugged at the leash, wanting to go faster, jumping back and forth (albeit it a little feebly) like a dog half her age.
I’m about to leave and move away again. I know it’s even more possible I won’t see Roo after this. So I figured it’s time to decide: Do I leave the Whistle on and continue to track her health, even if that means being able to zoom out on the data and literally watch her die? Even though it’s scary and sad (because you know, death is scary and sad), I want to. When I can’t physically be there to pet her while she falls asleep or take her for a walk, I can log in and see she’s resting, or that she just had a particularly active ten minutes.
I know no amount of trackers and technology will keep her alive, but those push notifications remain a comfort. Every time Gypsy meets her activity goal, that alert says that even though she’s old and even though she’s probably dying, she’s still my dog and she’s still out there, living as much and as best as she can. The reality isn’t as easy to parse as a few colorful pixels—she has good days and bad days, sometimes it’s clear she’s struggling and other times she acts like she’ll live another ten years. The tiny window Whistle gives me isn’t the whole story, but it’s a little piece of it, and if I’m going to be gone for the end of Gypsy’s story, then I’ll take whatever part of it I can.
Celebrities and business tycoons with multimillion-dollar estates in Connecticut are getting some unwelcome news: Their state has become the most expensive place to die in the U.S. because of hefty new fees for settling estates, according to state officials.
In fact, probate officials are warning that some invoices they will be sending out shortly could top $100,000 or even $1 million in a few cases, when the maximum fee in the past was $12,500.
The fees took effect July 1 as part of the new state budget approved by Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the Democrat-controlled legislature. They’re also retroactive to all deaths dating back to Jan. 1.
The budget cut all state government funding to the probate court system, a total of $32 million over two years. To make up for the loss of that money, Malloy and lawmakers eliminated the $12,500 cap on probate court fees and doubled the fee on estates worth more than $2 million to 0.5 percent of the value. They also increased fees for most probate court filings from $150 to $225.
“It’s outrageous,” said Westport attorney Amy Day. “We always had a cap on probate fees of $12,500. Now it’s not going to be unusual for people to pay upward of $50,000.”
The probate court system surveyed all 50 states and determined that the 0.5 percent fee on the value of estates of at least $2 million was the highest in the country, surpassing the 0.4 percent fee charged by both New Jersey and North Carolina, said Vincent Russo, a spokesman for the state probate court system. New Jersey also has no cap on probate fees, while North Carolina has a maximum fee of $6,000, he said.
Russo said many states don’t charge fees based on total estate value. He said it was difficult to determine which states have the least expensive probate costs because of differences in law and policy.
The very wealthy often protect their assets by forming trusts, which helps them avoid some probate costs.
Connecticut also has an estate tax on all estates worth more than $2 million, with rates ranging from 7.2 percent to 12 percent.
Malloy spokesman Devon Puglia said Tuesday that the probate fee increases were among difficult budget decisions that had to be made this year.
Judge Paul Knierim, Connecticut’s probate court administrator, said if the new fees were applied last year, two estates worth more than $200 million apiece would have paid more than $1 million in probate costs and about a dozen worth over $20 million would have paid more than $100,000.
“I think the fundamental problem is that the change in decedents’ estate fees imposes the burden of running the probate court system on a very small portion of the population,” Knierim said.
Knierim and some state lawmakers say they plan to urge the General Assembly next year to dump the new fees and go back to the old system.
Vincent Carissimi, a Philadelphia lawyer who is executor of his uncle’s estate in Westport, Connecticut, said the new fees will increase probate costs for the estate by about $2,000, bringing the total to over $8,000.
“You usually expect to pay a nominal or moderate fee but you don’t expect to get soaked,” Carissimi said. “The most surprising thing is it’s a function of the funding being cut. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. I’ve never heard a state not providing funding to its courts.” Complete Article HERE!
The same feeling socks me in the gut every time I walk into a wake or make a shiva call: “I don’t want to be here. This is sad and uncomfortable.” Then my heart and my head take over, and tell me, “You should be here. Take care of the mourners. Honor the deceased.” And that I know how to do, because I’ve been attending funerals since I was a small child.My children’s great-grandfather passed away last week at age 90. Just as surely as we took our 9, 7, and 4-year-olds to visit him (though not enough – it’s never enough), we took them in hand to Great-Grandpa’s wake and funeral.
Why?
My kids got to see their extended family at its best and closest: telling stories, crying and laughing together, holding hands. The family was a strong, united One over those days, and we were part of that One. My children belong to something bigger than our little family of five.
They have a chance to see their relatives as whole, complex people. They can learn to empathize, and to provide comfort, instead of seeing Nana only as the bearer of fun and gifts. She had a Daddy too. It was hard for my children to see her sad, but it was also inspiring to see her strength.
Children provide hope. Immediately before the funeral, we made our last prayers at the casket and gave Great-Grandma hugs. As my wide-eyed 4-year-old tumbled towards her for an embrace, Great-Grandma exclaimed, “Precious girl!” and she meant it. Sometimes we need to see something whole and young and perfect when there is sadness all around us, and that’s what a (well-behaved) preschooler can offer at a funeral.
They don’t need to be protected — usually. Kids know about crying. Many of them do it every day. Usually we want them to stop, because it’s uncomfortable for us, and we very badly want our children to be happy. But hard feelings are important too, and we can learn to guide kids through feeling sorrow and discomfort and coming out okay on the other side of those emotions. I would think carefully before bringing my children to an especially tragic funeral, perhaps one for a child or a young parent – something that could be truly frightening – but the funeral of an older relative? This sadness they can manage, and it will strengthen them.
They need practice with funerals. Nobody likes them, but they have to happen. Wakes and funerals can be foreign territory with their singular requirements for etiquette, dress, and behavior. Better to get practice early, when it’s someone the child isn’t as close to, than to layer a sea of funeral-manners confusion on top of truly deep mourning. Just a few months ago, my kids stopped with us at the wake of a quiet, kind man our family knew from church, just to quickly pay our respects. The children didn’t really know Elmer, but they learned what to do and say, and because we’d gone to his viewing, Great-Grandpa’s body wasn’t the first one they’d seen in an open casket.
In learning about death, children learn to treasure human life.My kids’ normal experience with death is throwing a dead tree in a brush pile or squashing ants on our kitchen floor. Perhaps some families also have small goodbyes for beloved pets. But the elaborate ceremony and seriousness of human funerals says something else: This is different, and this is big. We are not trees or ants. In respectful loss, we pass to children a reverence for the irreplaceable gift of each human life.
Funerals connect generations, past and future. Great-Grandpa was a World War II veteran, and uniformed Navy came to his graveside and performed a beautifully moving flag ceremony. It ended with a presentation of the flag to Great-Grandma, and the heart-stopping words: “On behalf of the President of the United States, the United States Navy, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service.” Afterwards, I reminded my 9-year-old that in 80 years, he will be able to tell his grandchildren the story of honoring his great-grandpa who served in that important, tragic war that will then be 150 years past. He was just as awed as he should have been by this fact.
It’s not easy going to funerals, nor taking kids to them. But it is not our job to make our children’s lives easy, and it is our job to parent and guide through the hard things too. You can do it, and so can they.
The US Supreme Court ruled in favor of same sex marriage nationwide on what would have been my 28th anniversary with my late partner. Though we were never able to marry, I still consider myself a widower.
Those are four words I never imagined myself saying at my age. Maybe at 70 or 80. Mid-60s, if something terrible, like a plane crash or a terrorist attack, took one of us. Or never, if I was the first to go.
None of those scenarios took place.
I lost my partner, Gary Lussier, to liver disease two years ago. He was a wonderful man — a former dancer, handsome with a wicked sense of humor and a way of embracing the world that would shame most people. He didn’t get to embrace the world for long enough, though. He was 52 and I was 53 on the day I walked out of NY Presbyterian Hospital/Cornell Medical Center, dazed, confused and alone.
He died less than 24 hours before he might have had a successful liver transplant, slightly more than three days after I rushed him to the hospital, over a year since his illness began to manifest itself and about a quarter-century since we had joined our lives. Even though I was well past 50, I found myself in the “he’s too young for this to happen” category.
Michael and Gary
And, of course, there was another complication: I was not married to Gary, even though we had been together 24.5 years. Though we had no legal document, ours was as true a union as any other. Emotionally supported by our two good families and a phalanx of friends, having the benefit of treatment in New York City’s best hospital and embraced by the staff of my company, St. Martin’s Press, I had the rare luxury of being able to consider my place in the world free from legal battles and financial concerns that can be real, threatening and, occasionally, life-shattering for the one left behind.
In the days after his death I began to ask myself, “What am I now?” I was no longer “partner.” I searched and searched for a word that defined me. Finally, I settled on the most obvious and yet, for me, most problematic word: widower. In choosing it I set myself the task of understanding its meaning.
I was also trying to find the courage to say it out loud.
Of course, “widower” implies “marriage,” “husband,” “deceased wife” and — in our world — “heterosexual.” We weren’t married. We referred to each other as “partners.” I am gay. The first time I said it out loud — “I am a widower” — I was alone in my apartment. The silence was so loud it threatened to crush me.
When that sentence broke the isolation I’d been living in. I knew I had found a word that would take me forward, but one that would provoke surprise in others. “Did he say ‘widower’?” I imagined people thinking to themselves at cocktail parties. “I didn’t know they were married…” they might say, in private, when they took off their pearls or undid their ties. Worse might come from hate mongers I didn’t even know. The question obsessed me: How could I call myself “Gary’s widower” and be true about it?
For me, the ability to say “widower” came down to the question of what the word “marriage” means. We’ve all been taught “marriage” refers to the moment when two people profess vows of love before a governmental or religious authority, rings are exchanged, documents are signed and the couple runs off to Happily Ever After. They are “married.”
There is, though, a deeper meaning, I think, of the verb “to marry,” a more private one concerning itself less with ceremony and legality than with the intimacy and commitment between two people: “to take as an intimate life partner by a formal exchange of promises in the manner of a traditional marriage ceremony.” Had Gary and I done that over the years? Did we have some formal exchange of promises?
Stephen Sondheim has a song about marriage describing it as “…the little things you do together…” We certainly had our fill of them throughout the years: Not just Thanksgivings and Christmases and Easters or trips abroad or weeks on the Ogunquit beach. No, we had more than that. We had almost a quarter century of eating pizza while watching television, having dinners with friends, arguing about how best to do the laundry, having a bang-up row in public, commiserating over each other’s daily work woes and celebrating each other’s triumphs. So, in that way, we did indeed have a marriage. Through millions of small acts, private and public, we were intimate life partners.
But, did we have a “formal exchange of promises” I wondered? Over the years, every night, we said “I love you” to each other before falling asleep. Were those not exchanges of a mutual promise renewed each day? I think they were. But, were they enough to pronounce us “married”? Did we have some deeper and more formal promise? In looking back, we did, though no clergy or justice of the peace was present.
We met when a legal marriage between two men was unthinkable. We also heard the revolutionary roar of “We’ll live together unmarried!” from both straight and gay couples. Now that marriage was actually possible, I had begun to think about how wonderful it would be to have a “husband,” someone to call my own, someone defined by a word that could not be mistaken for a business associate: “husband,” not “partner.” Just thinking of those words made me feel different: stronger, safer and — in a corny way — a man-in-love.
When the New York State gay marriage law was finally passed in 2011, we were at our house in Massachusetts where gay marriage was already legal. It was a beautiful day and we were in the garden, weeding. Gary seemed to be on the mend after his initial diagnosis and treatment. I had felt a strong “are we going to get married?” vibe from him since we heard the news. There in the garden, down on one knee as I was weeding around the boxwoods, I said, “Gary, will you marry me?” He was shocked. So was I. He said, in a typically Gary way, “Well, I don’t see a ring…” And, then, to my surprise, he said “No … not until you get me a ring …” as much with shock that I had asked as he was by the need to answer. I was crushed. I had never asked anyone to marry me before, but there it was. “No.”
Not long after that day, Gary began to spiral downward again and the incident was pushed aside by multiple hospital stays, the imperfect weekly calculation of his place on the liver transplant list, the day-to-day monitoring of weight, at-home visits from medical workers, frantic expeditions to specialty pharmacies and, most wrenchingly, the ups-and-downs of watching the person you love most in the world become increasingly and dangerously ill.
My marriage proposal remained buried in our garden until about an hour before Gary began to die. He was in the ICU, his liver failing (unbeknownst to me). He was drifting in and out of consciousness. During one lucid moment, he grabbed my hand, pulled me to him, eyes wide-open staring straight into mine, and said, “I do!” with such vehemence that it startled me.
I was speechless; but, since I was his chief cheerleader on the road to transplant, I said “Oh, no you don’t… we’ll do this right once you get your liver …” He laughed a little. If God or The Idea of God has to do with love, I like to think that He or She was present when that vow was made because, if true love has ever made itself manifest, it was in that moment. We finally had our formal ceremony and I clasped his hands tightly. An hour later, the massive hemorrhage that ended his life began and he lost all consciousness. Months later, I told a friend that I wished I’d said “I do, too!” and he said, “You did, on that day in your garden.”
I now understand that we were, indeed, married in so many ways that I have come to say, “I am a widower” with confidence, if with little joy. It’s not a nice thing to have to say. It puts people off, or — even worse — makes them want to take care of you when you least need it. That statement’s message is “I lost my spouse, but I am still alive. I’m standing on my own two feet and intend to go on living for as long as I can.” It means you freely have given a significant part of your life to someone who is now gone and that you are alone. It means, “I remain while he has moved on.” It also now, thankfully, has less relationship to gender preference. As Wendy Wasserstein wrote: “Love is love. Gender is just spare parts.”
How, then, do you say, “I am a widower”? It has nothing to do with age. Young or old, you say it plainly, like saying “armor,” knowing that nothing else can ever hurt you as much as your spouse’s death. You say it in the full knowledge that the union you had with your deceased spouse was as deep and as rich and as true as any other. You say it with remembrance and, most of all, you say it with love and pride for the spouse who has passed on — that singular, unforgettable human being who taught you, truly, how to love and to be loved.
So, you’re a funeral professional, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what makes your products and services valuable to your families. And if you’re really good at what you do, you’ve probably memorized the value statements for all of your products and know how to pitch your families on just about everything.
But did you know that there are valuable products out there that can actually inspire and help your families, even when you’re not around? For example, funeral products that can bring light to the darkness, not just for family, but for friends and loved ones all over the world. This is something I’ve spent some time thinking about, particularly when it comes to the value behind social memorial pages.
Since releasing our own social memorial websites over a decade ago, I’ve spent a great deal of time observing the true meaning and value that they bring to families – both during and after the funeral service. I’ve seen them turned into books that families keep on their coffee table. Heck, I’ve even seen them printed and kept on people’s desks as a reminder that they can get through their grief. And through all of these observations, I’ve come up with a few foundational ways that social memorial websites have added value to families’ lives over the years, and ways they can add value to yours, too.
1. Continue the conversation of life after death
If you’ve ever lost someone, you may have had an experience like this before: You’re doing something that reminds you of your loved one and really want to tell them about it, but you can’t… who do you share it with? That’s where social memorial websites come in. They give you a space to write these thoughts, experiences and messages down. And when it comes to grieving, we all know the only way to heal is to speak your heart.
Another great feature of social memorial pages? People will see the message you wrote to your loved one and recognize it, respond to it, or maybe even share a new memory that they, themselves, created with your loved one. And they will be able to do this on your website for days, weeks, and even years to come, as f1Connect’s social memorial pages are hosted online forever. After all, the healing process is never really over, and we believe your family should be able to always come back to their loved one’s memorial page to reflect and share memories whenever they need to. It’s an ongoing conversation, and a really important one.
As you can see above, it’s easy for family and friends to continue the conversation of the loved one’s life by sharing memories, stories, and more. To view a live social memorial website, click on the photo.
2. Help families receive continuous support and healing
While going through a few social memorial websites, I read a message that someone wrote on their co-worker’s social memorial page when they heard the news of his passing. Once they came across the memorial page, they decided to share their own story of the co-worker, and what he meant to them. This gave the loved one’s mother, Cindi, a glimpse into a new story about her son that she had never heard before.
This beautiful story from the deceased’s co-worker was very healing to his mother, who may not have known this side to her son. Hearing how he impacted other people’s lives and was a positive influence can help with the healing process.
The situation might not have played out like this if it had happened any other way, or on any other platform. The co-worker may have been alone in his grief, because he wouldn’t have had this healing outlet to share his story and he may not have known about the funeral. And the mother may have never heard the heart-warming, caring story about her son if his co-worker wouldn’t have shared his sympathy online.
Social memorial pages allow us to do things a bit differently than we did before. Maybe we can even grieve in a more complete way because we have access to more memories, more people, and more support. In this case, I think it’s especially true.
3. Family and friends can see the real impact of their loved one’s life
One of the biggest advantages of a social memorial page is that they allow family and friends to share their own stories and memories of how a loved one affected their lives. This process is not only healing for the people who are sharing these moments, but also for the family of the loved one who may be hearing these stories for the first time. After all, it’s powerful to read just how many lives have been touched and changed just from the impact of one person.
One great example of this is the social memorial page for Benjamin Wheeler, a six-year-old who passed away in the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy that made national headlines. Even though his death occurred back in 2012, many people are still leaving stories and memories of how his life and his story have touched them on his social memorial page.
Just read the following message written on Benjamin’s social memorial page, from a family in Australia who heard about Benjamin’s tale and felt compelled to share their own story with those closest to him.
Keeping Benjamin’s social memorial page online forever on B.C. Bailey’s website allows family, friends, and others impacted by his story to leave their own memories and stories for years to come. This is a powerful healing tool for the family, as they know his legacy lives on long after he has gone.
4. They can help in unexpected, surprising ways
I’ll never forget the day that one of funeralOne’s employees ran up to me in tears and said, “Come quick, you have to see this!” She just witnessed a powerful moment that, through a twist of fate, could have only happened because of the existence of the social memorial websites our team created.
What had happened was, a man had been searching for a friend who he hadn’t seen in years (maybe even decades) and thought he had disappeared. After long hours spent on Google, he came across his friend’s social memorial page on a funeral home’s website. Finding out that his friend had passed away was sad news, but ultimately, it gave him closure to an unclosed chapter in his life. And through reading all the wonderful messages friends and family wrote on his tribute wall, he was able to feel close to his friend one last time.
This story goes to show that, when you introduce a new way to grieve and share memories, unexpected things will occur that help your families heal and remember, long after they step out of your funeral home.
How else will social memorial websites add value to your families?
As you can see, social memorial websites can play a pretty amazing part in families’ lives. And the great thing is, they’re only just beginning to change the way we deal with life, death and grief. In the future, social memorial websites could become an important, if not essential, part of our stages of grief. And with an ever-growing integration between our lives and technology, it’s pretty amazing to think about all the possibilities.
If you’d like to see the value of f1Connect’s social memorial websites first hand, be sure to click here and find out more about the website features your families are craving.
