Quickie Wednesday

Charles 3 Comments
Charles

Interesting piece from Canada on home funerals in which a ‘death midwife’ (gotta find a better term than that!) acknowledges that funeral directors can, in the right circumstances, do the job as well as her. She’s right, of course. Good funeral directors are not the enemy. Read it

From Pam Vetter’s newsletter, this tragic account of a car crash which killed three generations of a Mennonite family. They were musicians. Hear them sing here.

And now I’m off to spend the day with my friend Teresa Evans.

Pip-pip!

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Rupert Callender
Rupert Callender
13 years ago

Good stuff Charles. What springs out at me though, is only 24 hours passing between the mother dying and her removal to a crematorium. UK paperwork and doctor's certificates aside, I think this is an astonishingly quick turn around. The first thing we say to a family is "There's no rush," as one of the biggest regrets a family has is doing everything too quickly. They are missing an opportunity for the emotions to evolve. Let's not forget, we are in a different sort of time here.

yourfuneralguy
yourfuneralguy
13 years ago

Thanks for mentioning Pam Vetter's loving newsletter and the tragic car crash story.

Pam has been a great encouragement to me in advocating a better funeral industry. I do my best to follow her example of a servant with a pure heart.

Although i wail on the corruption in the funeral profession, the pure heart for serving families is the best weapon of all.

Your Funeral Guy

cynthia
13 years ago

Hello Charles, I agree with you about the term “death midwife.” Some of us have tried to discourage the use of that term and, so far, I prefer “home funeral guide” or “family directed funeral assistant.” The core shift is from the word “director” to that of “assistant” or “guide”. One of the main things we focus on is ensuring that it is the family-leader that clearly keeps in the empowered role (otherwise there’s just a replacement of the authority of the funeral director with the authority of the “guide”) I have also taken issue with a number of home-funeral… Read more »