I am asking for a favor
In my last column, I pondered some of the questions facing funeral service in the near future. As I was driving up to Greenville to attend The American Legion Department of SC convention last week, I had an idea. Even though my column is only a few months old, my analytics tell me that approximately 300 people a week are reading “A Simple Village Undertaker”. There was a big spike for a few days when a very good friend of mine, referenced one of my articles on his blog; http://www.eclecitpundit.com and then one of his readers posted it on his blog; http://www.culturaloffering.com. Both of these are interesting and entertaining sites and I encourage my readers to add them to your regular reads.
Anyone recognize this?
OK, where am I going with all this? I am very curious about the public’s changing perception of funeral service. I hope to perform, stealing a trendy term, a variation of a SWOT analysis….Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. I want to casually poll some people who are Internet savvy and willing to take a few minutes to put down their thoughts.
So, here are my two requests: First, please take a few minutes to share your stories. Keep it simple, or make it as in-depth as you like. Good stories, disaster stories, what you, as a consumer, expect from a death care provider, (funeral home) and as importantly, what you don’t expect or want. If you had to make funeral arrangements for someone you love tomorrow, what would you do? What kind of service would you arrange for them and why?
Second, I am asking that if you have a blog, that you reference/post this column and maybe, if I can get a couple of thousand people to read this, maybe a hundred will take the time to jot down a few ideas. A hundred data points will be very useful to me and I would be eternally (no pun intended) grateful for your time. As an added bonus, this “cross pollination” will surely allow readers to discover new sites, driving readership up and down the chain.
Just down the hill from the 1st photo....
Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you.
A Simple, Village Undertaker 
Plus points:
The personal the better – encourage/facilitate people who knew the deceased to play a speaking role at the service.
Inform the family of the variety of options – i.e. alternatives to the traditional – for instance woodland burial.
Negatives:
Funeral parties stacking – bumping into each other as they wait their turn.
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having just discussed this with my children; we are looking for a much more ‘green’ funeral. i wish my organs to be donated and whatever is left to be cremated and scattered over some body of water. i understand the need for a gathering, for them, so a small memorial service held nearby will suffice. i can’t stand the thought of money and time wasted on a traditional funeral.
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Ray,
I just found your blog last week and I love it. I too am a funeral director and I just got my own blog started a few weeks ago. You can find it at http://www.daletime.wordpress.com. My blog is geared towards funeral folks like you and me but I too would love comments from the general public. I think some of my comments will help with what you’re looking for too. Keep up the good work
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A couple of things I thought of today that trended towards the digital side of things, just ideas, but as people become more tech savvy these things might be considered basic and essential soon enough:
1) A digital memorial that people could visit whenever they want to to remember the person. This most likely would be some kind of permanent website where the funeral home would charge for and keep up or teach the the family to keep up. Allow people to post memories, there could be lots of pix. There could be the decedent’s favorite music (for others to listen to) , favorite books, favorite quotes, old home videos…. digital memories that could last… (just like we were told CDs would) forever. Really the possibilities are endless. A brainstorming session with interested parties would give you plenty of ideas to design something like this. Sound weird but what I’m talking about is a digital grave marker of sort: “Beloved Father of Five” Lots of pix with dad and the kids through the years….. you get the idea.
2) Why not ask the family if they would like you to retrieve the decedent’s email address book so that they could be notified in a very dignified way that they had lost a friend or a loved one. Of course the family may want to do this themselves, but maybe not and maybe the funeral home could facilitate this process. You could go over the email list with them, make sure you wouldn’t be spamming anyone with the news, but…
I hate to hear way later that someone had died, even if I didn’t talk to them much. A dignified email could really help get the word out. Constant contact could be used and send all the notices out in one fell swoop. Very inexpensive for a funeral home to do but there could be a significant upcharge for the service.
More ideas later maybe. These things are tough to think about frankly.
I like your other reader’s idea about letting / facilitating others to share things at the service. There could be a handout provided by the Funeral Home that could actually give some short instruction that encourages people to stand up and share something… how it might help that person themselves as well as help the group as a whole there.
Enough! E.
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1) A digital memorial that people could visit whenever they want to to remember the person. This most likely would be some kind of permanent website where the funeral home would charge for and keep up or teach the the family to keep up. Allow people to post memories, there could be lots of pix. There could be the decedent’s favorite music (for others to listen to) , favorite books, favorite quotes, old home videos…. digital memories that could last… (just like we were told CDs would) forever. Really the possibilities are endless. A brainstorming session with interested parties would give you plenty of ideas to design something like this. Sound weird but what I’m talking about is a digital grave marker of sort: “Beloved Father of Five” Lots of pix with dad and the kids through the years….. you get the idea.
+1
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