Funeral Words

Wizbang Caskets--Not

Wizbang products do not make a beautiful and meaningful funeral. For instance, I heard from my casket company representative that they have designed a "shelf" which can fold out from the foot cap of their caskets which provides a place to rest a photograph or other memory item.

I guess years ago I would have gotten giddy over such news. WOW something new and "special" to offer to my families.

I realize now, how little familes really care about caskets. They want something nice and of sound quality. We as funeral directors want something we can rely upon to look nice and not disrupt the conduct of the service (i.e. no odd noises or seam failures). Once you satisfy those needs, the casket is good enough for almost anyone, just provide a reasonable variety in terms of color and general style. Most of the other personalization stuff such as removable corners or elaborate engraving get wasted on an object (the casket) that serves no long term memory purpose.

In a world bereft of story and communication (the person to person kind, not the media kind), removable corners and changable panels and all the rest just cause the funeral director to overlook and ignore the real emotional needs of the people. In a very real sense, these wizbang caskets will actually hasten the demise of our industry rather than save it.

Instead of getting caught up in the distractions of magical caskets, families need more listening, more sharing and more help in gathering people together. That's the real challenge!! The casket will never help the family attract the crowd or make the funeral any more meaningful for the people who attend. More and more our jobs (our very future as a profession) depend upon our ability to help people share and remember and find meaning in gathering and remembering a loved one.

That part used to happen all by itself. Funeral directors did not have to take an active role in helping people tell their own stories. They were already great at doing that. In this changed world where people rarely talk with their neighbors and where life gets lived as much on media screens (computers, televisions, game boys, etc.) as in the back yard, we funeral directors must help knit these groups together when they come to the funeral home. In most cases, they won't manage to do it for themselves.

It's a fascinating challenge and I'm working on it every day.

BT

[Note: Yes caskets have a positive economic purpose for funeral directors and that part is still important. Just don't let the old line product companies distract you too much from the real work at hand. They (the product companies) only understand their direct customer (the funeral director). They rarely take time to really understand the grieving person and what it will take provide them with a meaningful experience. Afterall that's not their job. They sell to funeral directors, not the real consumers. It's up to us to filter out the funeral director oriented nonsense and make sure we serve our consumer in the most potent and meaningful ways.]

Today and Tomorrow: Part 2

No more looking back. We had a great run as funeral directors. We will have a great run once again--once we take the time and energy and allow the vulnerability necessary to actually listen to the consumers coming through our doors today. Most of them want better answers. Most of them feel confused themselves and they would love to talk with us and would love to hear from us about more varied options and possibilities for a funeral. That requires us to reinvest ourselves, especially emotionally, so that once again we bring to the arrangement conference answers that work, answers that meet needs in today's world instead of retread the traditions of the past.

At the same time, we need to redefine the challenge. So many of the thinkers in our industry see the baby boom "generation" coming along and assume that their wild-eyed Woodstock days will automatically take funerals through some sort of psychedelic transformation straight out of the 60's. I don't see that happening.

So far, the people I meet don't want tie-die funerals. Instead we just have millions and millions of inexperienced grievers. People who have no way to know how much they need a good funeral because they have never had the chance to attend any funeral--good or bad. If that's the case, then we need to help people learn (down deep emotional learning, not just facts and figures) the purpose behind the traditions of the past. Then they can embrace the need for grief, the need for gathering and remembering and the need for a ceremony which helps those left behind move on into the future.

The finished service might look a little different than before (but probably not a lot different). Then we become instruments of positive growth and change in our society. That's a much bigger "job" than we used to have as the "guided tour operators" of death. In the now and future reality we must become empathetic professionals, much more focused on healing.

BT

Today and Tomorrow: Part 1

What a confusing and conflicted time we funeral directors must endure. Our fathers and grandfathers taught us all the important bits of service they had carefully accumulated over 75 or 100 years, the bits that made every funeral tick and tock and click and clack to the mechanical rhythm of the industrial age. Such pride we have had in these miniature cogs and wheels of the funeral mechanism which got us to church on time and every car in its place and every person in their place and the right grave opened and closed and the whole thing done so that all could move on, content in the knowledge that through prayer and right ritual, through attending to detail and proper religious burial that our loved one was now right with God.

For generations, funeral directors had so little to do. Run the shop. Run the show. Keep the books. Wash the cars. Everything else pretty much took care of itself. People were satisfied. What else did you need to know? Except ever so slowly, people weren't quite so satisfied and no one knew why. The "symptoms" would arrise more and more often, yet the "dis-ease" of our communities, the "dis-ease" of our families and friends and even within our selves would pass year to year with little diagnosis.

Even today, after finger pointing and fretting and nostalgia laden advertisements by the bushel, we as a profession still miss the most important aspects of what has changed and what will never return. In fact, has no NEED to return, because the rituals and routines of the past, so carefully tinkered and meticulously learned have nothing to do with the future of this business (okay quasi-profession if you insist, though we have an awful lot of formal education to attain before we get to say "profession" proudly and without qualification).

The time has come to learn a new vocabulary, a whole new language, a whole new way of life that leads to spiritual and emotional healing for those who experience a death or loss or similar tragedy in their lives. (Note: Wouldn't some people benefit from having a grief and rebirth ceremony after a failed marriage? Never thought of that one before did you?)  Rather than define the work as moving the two "B"s (bodies and boxes). Define the work as creating temporary and sometimes permanent community networks which allow people to experience the same emotional comfort and release they used to receive with traditional community based ceremonies.

We don't live in stable neighborhoods any more. So what! Let's give people the next best thing through whatever means necessary. Create a community on the fly to help people grieve right here, right now, instead of dragging loss and unfinished business long into the future. That's where the opportunity lies. Create a safe place where people can share what's meaningful, relive the special stories, draw comfort from one another's sorrow and start that "divine momentum" toward healing that Wolfelt talks about.

It's not automatic like it used to be, but that is a topic for another post.

Have a fantastic day,

BT

And so we begin

I smile because I have found what I want to do. I want to lead in funeral service. I want to see people served by forward thinking, smart, growing professionals. I want to see my company grow and thrive and make a difference in people's lives. I want people to grieve and grow and find hope again in their future and in the remembering of the best things of the past.

I will take what time I can to jot down my thoughts here about how to make that happen in this world and those thoughts will become the basis for debate and growth in my business and in my profession. I look forward to the challenge. I look forward to the joy of making amazing things happen in this world.

Tom Peters has said, "Nobody can prevent you from being exceptional." Amen. Let's see what can happen next.

BT