A Serious Undertaking

My father went the pre-arranged route three years before he died. I was with him at the time he made the final arrangements for both himself and my mother who was in a nursing home with someone else taking care of her needs since she was unable to take care of herself. That was one of the best things my father ever did and it removed the burden of wondering the rest of your life if we did it the way he would have wanted it done. My father was very much a take charge man among men. He did it his way and my sister and I will forever be greatful. I do not think my family could have done a home funeral, some things are better left to the experts. When a loved one passes on most of us are in no mental state of mind to take care of the final arrangements. I do think the funeral industry needs a watchdog group looking over their shoulder to make sure they are not charging more than a fair amount for their services. As for my wife and I we are thinking about cremation since we have no children or grand children that would want to come to a grave site. If you have not seen the movie "The Bucket List" watch it, great movie and it will give you something to think about.

I apologize for the insertion of question marks where there ought to be apostrophes. Apparently Newsweek's site has some problems when one cuts and pastes from a MS Word document.

allergictostupid wrote:

???Comment: Mr. Slocum,

For goodness sakes you have no idea how many people have been found dead and decomposing. You are a loon. Tell me how would feel if you had to clean your son or daughters body after being ran over by a tractor? There's nothing left. They are flat...literally. You tell me you would pick up their body and clean up waht was left of it and bury him or her without losing your mind???????????????????


Oh honestly. I can???t figure out what you???re so upset about, but it???s clearly not about any of the things funeral consumer advocates have said. No one has suggested that families would want to scrape their loved ones??? bodies off the road after a gruesome accident. Where did you get this idea? If you???d actually read the article, and visit some of the Web sites we???ve suggested, I think you???d see that you???re railing against something none of us have ever said. Families that care for their own dead at home are not ???loons??? - they???re ordinary people from every walk of life who are returning to a tradition that even your American ancestors participated in. There???s no need to hyper-ventilate about this; no one is suggesting any of the macabre things you???re writing about.


Josh Slocum
Executive Director
FCA

Who cares about a dead body. If it was legal and someone close to me died I'd go pick up the body, wherever it was, in whatever condition it was in, burn it, and spread the ashes around a growing tree. Now, that's Green folks.

y r these companies selling out to these corps? MONEY.

Google "SCI"

Mr. Slocum,

For goodness sakes you have no idea how many people have been found dead and decomposing. You are a loon. Tell me how would feel if you had to clean your son or daughters body after being ran over by a tractor? There's nothing left. They are flat...literally. You tell me you would pick up their body and clean up waht was left of it and bury him or her without losing your mind????????????????

If you really want to read what's going on Google "Funeralgate" and follow all the links. You WILL be shocked.

Or here's one...you get a call that your son or daughter has been killed in a car accident and you need to pick their body up.
You get there...the steering wheel has crushed their chest and theleft side of their face is is now on their right. Okay, you are going pick them up and hurl them into the ground? Yeah. Sure. I don't work for a funeral co but some of this stuf is beyond stupid.

And and oh yeah, please remember rubber gloves so as to keep any Hepatitis from spreading and getting any fluids or goo on you.
Hey why even have the ambulance come. Dead is dead. You can wrap them in a natural cotton sheet and oh,no..no...just leave them natural and let nature take care of your loved-ones body. Fooey on all this glitz and glam of those silly caskets as a final farewell and so what they look ten times bigger than when they were alive and smell...that's natural.
Well, what killed them? HEy who cares...death is natural. Right?

I would reserve the casket for "Newsweek."

I "planted" many papier-mache coffins in pine rough boxes while in high school in the 60's. Isn't that green enough? My Dad was caretaker of the cemetery.

Hear Hear put me in a box Frigerator size is fine and bury me in a good old manure pile thank you very much. The cheaper the better i say my wife will need the money for other things.