Funeral Words

Notes from the Field

Wow!! December 1st tomorrow, the year has almost ended and we soon turn the calendar on a new year. This seemed like a good time to compile a couple of the odds and ends I have come across the last few weeks and pass them along. Just clearing out the files in preparation for a new year.

Caskets--Critical Choices

I monitor and post to the FuneralWatch newsgroup hosted by the folks who publish the Funeral Service Insider and the American Funeral Director. Someone recently asked a question about collections policies and motivating staff to talk with families about the financial aspects of the arrangement conference. However, the discussion devolved into a torrent of commentary about pricing and other issues. As usual, the question of what to do with casket increases worked its way into the mix, since the casket companies have recently rolled out new price lists for the coming year.

Happy Thanksgiving

Allow me to wish every and all the best that a holiday can bring. Warm hearts, good food, close family and friends, and most important of all the best of story telling and sharing of family lore.

Thanksgiving is the PERFECT day to practice remembering the lives and experiences of the people you love. Grab a camcorder or simply a notebook and begin. Take down the precious memories so that everyone may have them and benefit from them later on and draw strength and wisdom from the triumphs and failures of generations past. Pull out a few photographs to help prime the pump and then get out of the way. Let the river of memory flow.

This is our job now as funeral directors, to help families uncover and document and share this precious knowledg so that it does not get lost forever. In order to do this well for others, we need to start practicing on ourselves today.

Many blessings and saftey in your travels,

BT

P.S. In order for me to thoroughly enjoy this holiday with my family, I will forgo my usual Wednesday  posting and pick up again on Sunday evening. Peace.

GM Right on Cue

Last night I wrote about the plight of the manufacturing middle class that in many ways feeds us in funeral service. Today, General Motors announced 30,000 job cuts and five plant closings with another seven plants likely to close in the coming years. Here's a couple of links if you have not already seen the news.

MSNBC on GM Plant Closings

If you are registered with the New York Times, you can follow this link to a more extensive article:

NY Times on GM cuts

Can any other industry or business replace those jobs within OUR core marketplace?? If not, we need to know.

BT

Shrinking Middle

What happens to funerals as the middle class disappears in this country and as the best union jobs and pensions dwindle and break and fall by the wayside or crumble under the weight of corporate bankruptcy? Has anyone realistically answered this question? I don’t think anyone has begun to notice but we all must pay attention or OUR plans for the future may get downsized just like so many of these manufacturing jobs.

TV Lessons

Have you seen that latest onslaught of announcements from the big media companies about offering a wide array of older television programs on-demand, on-line?? Warner Bros and AOL will offer classic reruns of everything from "Welcome Back Kotter," "F Troop," "Chico and the Man," and "Alice" to hour-long dramas such as "Lois & Clark" and "La Femme Nikita." You can read about it here or here.

Last week NBC News announced that they would offer the evening news each night on their website starting at 7:30 PM Pacific time each evening along with other pay-per-view options on some current NBC programming. This all comes on the heels of the surprise announcement by Apple Computer that ABC would post some of its prime programming on iTunes in a deal that put such hits as Lost and Desperate Housewives on the internet the day after the initial airing.

I know we in funeral service hate to think about social trends. We want to tell ourselves that people will continue to return to their traditions just dressed up a little differently here and there, a special casket corner, a memory board or video slideshow, these things will be enough. Still we have to admit that each year the “crowds” (the numbers of people attending funerals) continue to dwindle. This happens for many reasons and we can add one more thing to that list. As people become divorced from schedules and programming times throughout their lives, funerals will inevitably fall into the same category. I can hear it now, “Oh no, I cannot attend a funeral on Tuesday at 11:00 AM. Would you please email me a link to the recording on your website?”

Sound far fetched? Maybe it is. Still that’s the world we live in today. More and more people have come to expect that everything will happen on THEIR schedule, no one else’s. We have to start looking for ways to accomplish this for our families, with a high degree of quality (that means proper lighting, multiple cameras, graphics, music, proper audio mixing and all the rest). We need to start chasing our vendors for the resources to accomplish these things and we need to start training ourselves how to help families tell their story using modern media tools and techniques.

Will funerals become completely web based? No, certainly not. At the same time, the group that actually gathers around the physical casket could become much smaller in the years ahead, as the rest of the mourners and “rememberers” (people who knew someone only partially, not enough to truly grieve) will want to participate in more independent and self-directed formats. Video and web-based biographical presentations will become crucial competitive advantages for firms wanting to continue in servicing funerals beyond the basics of transfers and paperwork and retorts.

Think about it. Telling stories and helping families find MEANING. That’s the job of the 21st century funeral director. Ready or not, like it or not.

BT

Reader Question

I received the following question today from a reader, Fred Kitchen, CFSP. I think it leads to a fascinating discussion which we all must consider for the years ahead in funeral service. I will post my reply here on the blog and invite any and all to contribute with a comment.

Question: What do you feel will be they key to market share growth and ability to maintain current market share going forward for funeral service?

Hidden Gem--Online Guestbooks

An article appeared in the Providence Journal newspaper a few days before with the abiguous headline "Guest books offer a new type of mourning". Someone on my staff cut it out and passed it along, though I did not look at it closely until a few days ago. Turns out the "guest books" talked about in the article refer to ONLINE guest books such as you see through Legacy.com or through certain funeral homes websites.

In summary the article talks about an unexpected use that occurs with these online resources. After a period of time, family members start using these guest books as a message area to "speak" with the person now deceased, much as people have done in years past but stopping at a grave stone at the cemetery and "talking" to the person remember by the monument.

New Blog on the Scene

Kelly Baltzel willingly brings experience to funeral service that we could not possibly buy. She worked for years developing content and resources for online powerhouses like iVillage and AOL. In the process she learned a tremendous amount about serving people through the world wide web.

She has combined that expertise with her passion for counseling (read great listener) and grief recovery and in the process has developed a unique set of skills and tools that make online grief services work for people in need.

Kelly has started a weblog where she will post her thoughts on a weekly basis. Follow the link below and put this site on your favorites list. We as funeral directors can learn a great deal from her insights and philosophy. You will also find information about helpful books and resources.

Beyond Indigo Blog

Are We Really Satisfied???

I read an article yesterday in the New York Times online edition [link] which talked about the stresses and strains in China over arable land and the impact of urban and suburban sprawl on farmers. Unlike in America, where most hand labor gave way to machinery and technology years ago, in China much farm work continues in time honored ways. For instance the lead picture shows Mr. Xi sitting watch over thousands of ears of corn stretched out along the side of a road for drying. This man sits security watch over this crop as cars wiz by on the road. He looks very out of place.