A new retort introduced to the industry at the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) convention and expo may have the answer in the quest to reduce CO2 emissions generated by cremation. The Facultatieve Technologies FT II cremation retort uses the body as fuel, to minimize the burning of natural gas in the process of cremation. Ernie Kassoff, […] via Tumblr What Makes This Cremation Retort So Energy Efficient?
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The life of a funeral director can be a tough one. Some days are better than others. Finding the words to say to and consoling a grieving family can be daunting and take its toll. Here are a few quotes that reiterate why you are in the funeral procession, and remind us that what you do is appreciated greatly.
What is your favorite quote that motivates you? 15 Quotes That Remind Us Why We Were Called to Serve in the Funeral Profession published first on YouTube via Tumblr 15 Quotes That Remind Us Why We Were Called to Serve in the Funeral Profession The Bonsai Urn promises “Growing Life from Loving Memories.” How? You can give the cremated remains of your loved ones a beautiful, portable resting place combined with an elegant potted plant. The ingenious patent pending design of the Bonsai Urn features an insert for a four-inch pot containing any kind of bonsai plant. Soil and […] via Tumblr Introducing The Bonsai Urn: Growing Life from Loving Memories Petra Orloff, a professional writer for more than 25 years, turned her professional skills toward obituary and eulogy writing after her father died in 2004. This year, she founded Beloved, providing the services of professional writers to create custom obituaries and eulogies that become keepsakes treasured by the family over time. Beloved was a first-time […] via Tumblr Beloved: Custom Personalized Obituaries and Eulogies The inaugural Before I Die ABQ Festival drew 600 participants to 22 events all around Albuquerque over the course of six days. Not everyone could make every event, so we video recorded the panel discussions, the demonstration of the Jewish tahara ritual of washing and dressing the dead, and a talk on autopsies. All the videos […] via Tumblr Miss These Festival Events? Watch The Videos! This Bizarro cartoon is perfect for Thanksgiving. A group of turkeys see a Grim Reaper turkey in the yard. One turkey says, “I thought it was a Halloween costume at first, but now I’m thinking this is about Thanksgiving.” Yep, Halloween was three weeks ago. Hope you had a wonderful, grateful holiday today! via Tumblr Death Cartoon: The Grim Reaper for Turkeys The Bonsai Urn promises “Growing Life from Loving Memories.” How? You can give the cremated remains of your loved ones a beautiful, portable resting place combined with an elegant potted plant. The ingenious patent pending design of the Bonsai Urn features an insert for a four-inch pot containing any kind of bonsai plant. Soil and […] via Tumblr Introducing The Bonsai Urn: Growing Life from Loving Memories This Funeral Trend Claims it Will Change How People Are Notified After the Loss of a Loved One11/29/2017 This is a question that has to be answered. We get approached weekly with ‘new memorial notification’ systems that are going to completely change the way consumers are notified of a death. But is there really any technology that can ‘change’ the way we get notified about the death of a friend, colleague or loved one? The ‘change’ seems to be more about the technology and less about the notification. Is the below solution really revolutionary or is it basically an extension of what the memorial pages already attached to the funeral home currently offer? Please read the below article about Memcare and leave your thoughts in the comments: In many countries, it is still common to publish obituaries in the newspaper. In communities where the funeral takes place as quickly as possible, traditional obituaries are not fast enough and relatives will normally call only the closest family members and let “word of mouth” take care of the rest. Sharing the news on social media such as Facebook is also an option, but many unfortunately feel that they lose control of the information there. Online memorial pages are starting to be more common, but you still have to inform people in a timely manner. Memcare provides a unique notification service making it easy to immediately notify family, friends, and colleagues about the death of a loved one, and automatically keep track of who has been informed and keep control of who has access to the information. “The challenge with today’s solutions is that family and friends are not notified quickly enough to attend the funeral and it is hard to know who has been notified and who has not. Memcare solves this in a more accurate, efficient and smart way. Memcare helps relatives save money, stress and spend more time on what is important to them during the grieving process. Memcare wants to assist the relatives with tasks that can be solved a lot more simply and efficiently than what is being done today,” says Martinsen. The solution also includes a funeral planner where the relatives receive confirmation from the people attending the funeral and memorial. Dependants can list tasks they need assistance with, so friends and family can easily volunteer. Memcare assists in removal of the deceased’s social media accounts, e-mail accounts and more in order to manage the online presence left behind. “After an extensive “research expedition” around the world, we saw that the current methods of communicating and distributing death messages were old-fashioned and outdated. We wanted to modernize the whole process, and the solution called Memcare was born. We simplify the tasks put on the bereaved when a relative passes away,” says Martinsen. Good-bye to newspaper obituaries “Obituaries in newspapers are just not effective anymore. Family and friends are spread around different cities, countries, and parts of the world – that is why we have developed a unique notification service. The system is considerably more effective and the relatives control the data and who has access to what information,” says CTO, Håkon Årøen. Next Generation Funeral Solution Memcare is available through funeral home and launching globally in 2018. The door is open for funeral homes all around the world that wants to offer modern solutions to their clients. The company currently has offices in Oslo and Warsaw and experiencing high demand for the company’s solutions from funeral homes in Scandinavia, Europe, and the USA. This Funeral Trend Claims it Will Change How People Are Notified After the Loss of a Loved One published first on YouTube via Tumblr This Funeral Trend Claims it Will Change How People Are Notified After the Loss of a Loved One Originally Published on The Gazette When a funeral director is viscerally disturbed by the odor of embalming fluid, you know something is off. That’s what happened to Jon Hallford when he bent over a casket earlier this year to kiss the forehead of a dead relative. “It was unpleasant and chemical,” said the fourth-generation Oklahoman funeral director. “I got to thinking that, ‘Wow, I wonder how many times have I facilitated this exact same experience for other families throughout the years?‘” Those thoughts led to action, and months later, during the first week of September, Hallford, wife Carie Hallford and Jack Dhooghe opened Return to Nature Funeral Home, the city’s first green burial funeral home. Customers can receive all the services of a traditional funeral home except embalming. No bodies will be filled with toxic fluids in their Victorian-style home south of downtown. Not if the Hallfords have anything to say about it. “I knew through mortuary school about the cancer-causing (chemicals) but never really thought about it,” Hallford said. “My mind started shifting from, ‘I hope I haven’t given such an unpleasant experience to families,’ to “I have really been ingesting this stuff for so many years.'” And it’s not just Hallford and thousands of other mortuary workers who have soaked up the deadly chemicals; it’s also Mother Earth. About 5.3 million gallons of embalming fluid is used each year in the U.S. – a fluid that is 5 percent to 35 percent formaldehyde and 9 percent to 56 percent ethanol, Funerals360.com reported last year. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services deemed formaldehyde a known human carcinogen. Compounding the problem in the multi-billion dollar funeral industry is a lack of stringent regulations. Some states require annual inspections, some don’t. Leftover embalming fluids usually wind up swirling down the drain, and the disintegration of an embalmed body in the cemetery means noxious fluids can seep out into the surrounding soil and water, reports Funerals360.com. If the body is embalmed and then cremated, the formaldehyde can enter the atmosphere and remain there for up to 250 days. Colorado is one of the top 10 cremation states. Almost 80 percent of bodies here are sent to the crematorium, Hallford said. Instead of the standard black box that most funeral homes provide, Return to Nature families are given an attractive biodegradable urn with a biodegradable bag inside. Bodies that aren’t cremated are most often taken to either of the city-owned Evergreen or Fairview cemeteries. Both allow green burials, which means bodies are not embalmed and can be buried in a shroud or container made from natural materials. Burial vaults aren’t used. “Every cemetery in America has signs that say non-potable water because of the stuff we’re putting into the ground,” Hallford said. “And it’s not just the chemicals, but the concrete, the rebar, that we’re also putting in. We genuinely want to do a better job for our environment. We as an industry, which I’m 100 percent a part of and guilty, have done a horrible job with regards to, if I get done with embalming and have this much left, it just goes right down the drain.” Here’s what people might not know: No state or federal law requires bodies to be embalmed. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, embalming provides no public health benefit and may contribute significantly to the spread of infectious disease and increased risks of cancer among funeral care practitioners. Only one law must be obeyed – 24 hours after death, the body must be either embalmed, refrigerated or laid out on dry ice. Families can elect to keep the body at home for viewing and the service, and though most tend to keep it for about three days, there is no legal time frame by which they must dispose of it. “People don’t understand there’s this middle ground where they can have a viewing and a visitation and a traditional funeral,” said Beth Mosley, Return to Nature’s death doula. She helps escort the dying person out of the body, much as a midwife helps bring a baby into the world. Death doulas also help family members with the funeral and the grieving process. “They think you either have to be embalmed, or you have to go directly to the crematorium. The traditional funeral industrial complex really wants you to believe that. ‘We have this thing you need, and you should not think about this at all, and we’ll get this away from you as soon as possible, and we’re going to charge you a lot of money.’ They make you fear the dead body and connection and closure, which is about this deeply primitive thing – to connect with our dead loved ones and understand that they’re gone.” In early November, Aisha Sawyer’s 6-year-old daughter, My’isha Dawn Amira, died from neuroblastoma. Sawyer had never heard of a home funeral until a Facebook friend shared the story of another family’s experience. She found Return to Nature and had a home service for her daughter before having her cremated. Hallford customized a child-size casket for Amira out of a cardboard box and burlap. “They came every day to check on us and care for my daughter’s body,” Sawyer wrote in an email. “They were very supportive and helpful through the process. When they gave the OK, my mom and sisters bathed my daughter’s body in a bath bomb and clay and then rubbed her body down with oils and dressed her like she was going to school, her favorite place to go. Return to Nature made it a healing experience exactly as we had wished.” How did we get here? Siphoning organs and fluids out of our loved ones and refilling their bodies with chemicals harkens back to the Civil War. Embalming war casualties was the only way dead bodies would survive the three- to four-week train trip home to their families. Furniture stores began building coffins and learned there was more money to be made in a weekend than crafting a dining room set. Death slowly shifted from the home to an event handled by the funeral home. “They told people, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll put him in this box in this room; you can come down and look at him. You don’t have to take him to your house or worry about the smell. We’ll just charge you a fee.’ That’s how they discovered there’s money here,” Hallford said. “It exploded from there.” Funerals don’t come cheap. A traditional one, with embalming, the casket and makeup, runs about $7,000 to $9,000, he said. Green burials are much more forgiving on the wallet; a Return to Nature burial is about $1,000 to $2,000. Public response to the new funeral home has been overwhelmingly positive. It’s fulfilling for the Hallfords and Mosley to help people better understand their options and to honor the last wishes of the deceased and their loved ones. “If you want to get shot out of a cannon, wonderful,” said Hallford. “We’re here to walk you through the process and facilitate whatever it is your family wants to do with mourning the passing of your loved ones, within reason. Our very first service we had in a park and had a biodegradable balloon release. We want to be the exact opposite of cookie cutter.” First Green Burial Funeral Home in Colorado Springs Open for Business published first on YouTube via Tumblr First Green Burial Funeral Home in Colorado Springs Open for Business Petra Orloff, a professional writer for more than 25 years, turned her professional skills toward obituary and eulogy writing after her father died in 2004. This year, she founded Beloved, providing the services of professional writers to create custom obituaries and eulogies that become keepsakes treasured by the family over time. Beloved was a first-time […] via Tumblr Beloved: Custom Personalized Obituaries and Eulogies |
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