Transcript
Speaker: Hi, my name is Jennifer Muldowney, aka The Glam Reaper, and this is The Glam Reaper Podcast.
Speaker: We're on YouTube and we're in your ears.
Speaker: This show will focus on stories about love, life and loss, and we'll also have a massive input from the funeral world, since that's the world that I live in.
Speaker: It is my absolute pleasure to welcome this episode's guest because he is one of my favoritest people in the entire funeral industry.
Speaker: And he's just a darling.
Speaker: Please welcome the incredible Larry.
Speaker: I don't want to sound like this is an almost paid for podcast by Larry because I agree with you again.
Speaker: I agree that a certain amount of regulation is absolutely imperative for the safety of the public.
Speaker: But I also agree that there are such.
Speaker: too many barriers to entry.
Speaker: Like one of the things I've discussed with a funeral home recently is, for example, I would absolutely love to go and get myself certified as a funeral director that I could help sign off things or especially during COVID that I could have helped to provide assistance.
Speaker: However,
Speaker: I have no interest in embalming a body.
Speaker: I don't want to have anything to do with the anatomy part of the course.
Speaker: And so that's a whole section.
Speaker: But you can't do one without doing it all.
Speaker: And I think that's crazy because I feel like, for example, as an event planner coming into the industry 10 years ago,
Speaker: with no experience at the time and just wanting to get in here and, you know, roll up my sleeves and let's go.
Speaker: I couldn't do a whole lot of anything.
Speaker: I could in Ireland, but here I can't.
Speaker: There's so many strict regulations that I can't touch anything.
Speaker: I can't hold certain things.
Speaker: You can't sign anything.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And, you know, it's sad because there are some states that allow the dual license.
Speaker: In fact, California, you just need to
Speaker: take a test.
Speaker: I don't think you even need to have a degree or, or anything.
Speaker: What the, I mean, it's not easy.
Speaker: I mean, they do make things, I mean, the crematory manager test to, um, open your own crematory in California is, I have one client, I think he failed it four times before he passed.
Speaker: He's a smart guy, but God, I hope he's not listening.
Speaker: Name and shame, name and shame.
Speaker: But, um, you're still at camp Frankie Campbell's doing, um,
Speaker: When you told me you did that, how many ever years ago, I thought this was, this is perfect for you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it does tie your hands with a lot of stuff because the families, you're bonding with those families, but yet you got to bring someone in to, I don't know.
Speaker: politics it's all politics absolutely it's all politics yeah and it's it is there's i mean we could again do a whole other podcast on just the politics that are in the funeral community and even for me as somebody who who's over in the united states the states are not united that is one thing i know for sure they are the most ununited states of america a new name
Speaker: And it's been that way since 1776.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Beat your ass.
Speaker: Yeah, that was one thing that I just couldn't, I found unfathomable, was that each state, funeral-wise, was so different, different requirements, that even during COVID, didn't they have to release some sort of a, like the state had to allow funeral directors from other states, they'd come to New York, wasn't that a thing?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, they had to, I mean, there was no reciprocity for licensure.
Speaker: I even have a friend in Canada that was going to come as part of one of the disaster services, Kenyon, and the hoops he would have had to have jumped through, and then he just said, you know what, they've got enough people, I'm not even going to do it.
Speaker: And he's been to Haiti, he's been to he worked the UPS flight that went down in Bagram.
Speaker: He's done plane crashes in
Speaker: like the Arctic circle.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: I can give you this info for sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you had an ER person as well, actually.
Speaker: An ER person.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: His wife is an ER nurse.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: So, uh, maybe.
Speaker: Did I already tell you about him?
Speaker: He told me about her, I think.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, you know, he would be good too.
Speaker: And, um, he, he has a really good perspective.
Speaker: And he is a funeral director.
Speaker: So a lot of times we'll not clash because we're like brothers.
Speaker: So you know how that goes.
Speaker: He will have to stop and think.
Speaker: And then he's like, and I just think that's kind of cool that, you know, we have to be able to listen no matter what all of this stuff that we're talking about.
Speaker: It's just this.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker: You might not agree with somebody.
Speaker: I mean, one of my, I'm such an argumentative person, but one of the things I've learned in the last 10 years is just, you know, if you feel like it's getting too frictional, I agree.
Speaker: Let's just agree to disagree because I feel like we're not going to, and that's okay.
Speaker: That's okay.
Speaker: Just move along.
Speaker: Nothing wrong with it at all.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you know, I always say, as long as you listen to what I have to say and consider it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you don't have to agree after that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I've got weird ideas that people think I'm crazy and you know what?
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: You don't have to agree with me.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: Larry, you, so you consult with crematoriums and funeral directors on how to increase their cremation business or how to.
Speaker: Well, it's, it's everything, everything from, I want to start a crematory.
Speaker: I have a funeral home, I want to start a crematory.
Speaker: I have a cemetery, I want to start a crematory.
Speaker: I don't want a crematory, but my cremation rate is 70%.
Speaker: I need you to help me with chain of custody so that my liability is reduced.
Speaker: I do this thing with the Cremation Association of North America.
Speaker: I'm a member benefit.
Speaker: You get a half an hour free with me, which, you know, it ends up being more than that.
Speaker: But to develop an iron... No, I definitely don't believe that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But to develop an ironclad standard operating procedure, including ID protocols and chain of custody, because the minute someone accuses you of cremating the wrong person, and this is whether or not you have your own unit, you cannot prove whose ashes, whose cremated remains are in that container.
Speaker: There's no DNA left.
Speaker: There's no way to do it.
Speaker: So the only way is your policies, your procedures, the fact that you implemented them, the fact that you enforce them and the fact that you save the documentation and adapt when you need to adapt.
Speaker: That's probative in court, but that is so unheard of in our space from the
Speaker: Sixth generation funeral home.
Speaker: I mean, I had a client who said, oh, Larry, we don't need the ID.
Speaker: We know everybody who's in our care.
Speaker: We're a small town.
Speaker: And I just went, are you kidding me right now?
Speaker: Well, we put a sticky note on all the cremation bodies.
Speaker: I'm not making that up.
Speaker: I believe it.
Speaker: I just don't think our listeners will.
Speaker: With all due respect, this firm hired me to fix all that.
Speaker: And they are a smooth running ship right now.
Speaker: Well, and here's the thing, in their defense,
Speaker: This was how it was done.
Speaker: We have to remember, it's a bit like we were saying earlier, it's a bit like the internet.
Speaker: When the internet first started, I mean, it was www.
Speaker: I mean, it was called the World Wide Web.
Speaker: It evolved so much.
Speaker: Now we've got to protect this legislation.
Speaker: I mean, I don't know how many terms and conditions I click sign yet.
Speaker: We don't read any of it.
Speaker: Don't read any of them.
Speaker: So absolutely, like every other industry, it's evolved.
Speaker: A sticky note and knowing you had Joe and John and Mary and Jim Bob and whatever in the back of your truck.
Speaker: It's from County Cork.
Speaker: But, you know, listen, I get it.
Speaker: Coming from a small island, I get it.
Speaker: I mean, I know I'm a dub from the city, but I know in rural Ireland, absolutely, they 100% knew because their turnover was probably maybe one body a week or, you know.
Speaker: So that's one of the biggest things and I really enjoy doing that because I get to problem solve and I get to
Speaker: enlightened.
Speaker: And a lot of times I've changed my opinion of what I think should happen based on the culture of the funeral home or the cemetery.
Speaker: I do a lot of air quality permitting, testifying, if you will, zoning.
Speaker: One of the hardest things is to convince community that crematory is not going to cause mercury poisoning and the emissions are not
Speaker: human remains and all this other stuff.
Speaker: So I do stuff like that.
Speaker: How do you feel about all of these new forms of disposal, body disposal?
Speaker: So, you know, how, like, obviously we've got Katrina in Seattle with her composting and we have the alkaline hydrolysis, which has about a hundred different names.
Speaker: I can never keep track.
Speaker: Biochremation, water cremation, all of the different ones.
Speaker: Obviously, you know, my background was with Eco Legacy, but what is your...
Speaker: opinion on cremation versus them or cremation evolving into them?
Speaker: Is it something you're open to?
Speaker: Do you just, or I'll let you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, and, you know, it's funny you mentioned Katrina.
Speaker: She wasn't the first to get licensed for the composting.
Speaker: I forget the guy's name, but I was on a, basically a panel discussion with him, with some folks at Worsham, Lily and Brian, and I can't remember who else.
Speaker: And we kind of gave him
Speaker: some advice and he actually got his license to operate and I don't know that Katrina is licensed yet.
Speaker: I hope she is.
Speaker: I have no problem with new technology of any form.
Speaker: As long as it's transparent, saying that alkaline hydrolysis is a gentle, it's water.
Speaker: Come on guys, there's chemicals involved.
Speaker: You've got to disclose that because
Speaker: A, it's ethically the right thing to do.
Speaker: And B, if you say it's just a gentle heated water bath and they find out that you've put lye and shook them up, you're going to get sued and you're going to lose.
Speaker: But I have no problem with the technologies.
Speaker: Echo Legacy, I thought, was brilliant.
Speaker: The issue bringing that here wasn't necessarily the method of disposition, but
Speaker: the fact that you had multiple bodies in one unit.
Speaker: So that would have been a hurdle, even though they're separate and there's no way you can mix them.
Speaker: The politics, right?
Speaker: It says in our bylaws that, you know, so I absolutely embrace anything new.
Speaker: And if it's a success, especially if the consumer isn't, if it's a top down innovation, it's much harder to get the consumers to understand it.
Speaker: As you know, it took alkaline hydrolysis so long.
Speaker: And there's still only 22 states, I think, 22 that allow it.
Speaker: Again, back to politics.
Speaker: There's nothing, I mean, if it's a safe technology and if it's transparent and it doesn't hurt the earth and it does what it needs to do, I'm all for it.
Speaker: I actually am starting a cremation program
Speaker: equipment company that I don't want to really talk about this too much, but it's not going to be powered by fossil fuels.
Speaker: So there'll be no hydrocarbons cremating the body and there will be flame.
Speaker: It's a combustion situation, but not burning hydrocarbons and can be sustainable sources of power that would create a negative carbon footprint.
Speaker: So that within the next six months to a year may be a reality in the U S and you know, I'm all for better ways to do things.
Speaker: So that was a really long answer to your question.
Speaker: And I apologize, but I really did want to explain where I'm coming from because, you know, at first I thought you can't call that cremation, but yeah, you can.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: And when you said, is that what it's going to evolve into?
Speaker: I absolutely know that the technology, as it increases in efficiency, 20 years from now, God only knows how we're going to be disposing of bodies.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And it does, you know, a bit like burial.
Speaker: We're running out of burial space.
Speaker: The population, you know, we've got to go somewhere.
Speaker: And so the more environmentally friendly way we can do that, I guess, the better.
Speaker: And just for Joe Public, when a body is cremated, because one of the things that I found fascinating was that, like, so New York doesn't have a crematorium within Manhattan.
Speaker: It's illegal.
Speaker: Yeah, for pollution reasons.
Speaker: And yet London, who I would always consider New York and London quite similar in terms of city style, has a crematorium.
Speaker: The City of London crematory.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: And so the idea that Joe Public out there could be breathing in the dead.
Speaker: But that's not true.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: OK, so talk a bit about that, because that can be a fear mongering thing.
Speaker: Yeah, and it definitely is and I won't get too technical because chemistry is involved and I hate chemistry and a lot of people hate chemistry But when the body is on fire if you will process called combustion is happening where it's being broken down the body the cells in the body are being destroyed basically and when you burn something you create gases and
Speaker: smoke and flame and lots and lots of gas because everything gets vaporized.
Speaker: In cremation, those gases we call the products of combustion, and we actually re-combust those gases again in a second chamber within that unit at a hotter temperature even.
Speaker: And what happens in that chamber is everything is diluted down to the atomic level.
Speaker: molecules say a hydrocarbon say methane natural gas is CH4.
Speaker: Well, those molecules split and you have carbon and four hydrogens.
Speaker: What we bring into the game is air, oxygen.
Speaker: You need oxygen for combustion and you also need it for perfect combustion.
Speaker: And what perfect combustion is basically the carbon hooks up with two oxygens in this second chamber and the hydrogen
Speaker: Two hydrogens hook up with an oxygen, carbon dioxide, water vapor.
Speaker: Nitrogen is just nitrogen.
Speaker: It goes out of the stack.
Speaker: We breathe it in every day.
Speaker: It's not harmful.
Speaker: Our air is mostly nitrogen.
Speaker: So when stuff comes out of the stack and you can see it and it's black, smoke, all that is is carbon.
Speaker: It's not the dead.
Speaker: It used to be.
Speaker: but it's been transformed into nothing but an element off of the periodic chart of elements.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, you know, I get really not offended, but I get upset when I see articles like there was one out of Southern California.
Speaker: I won't say what city Cortez where the fire chief actually told the media that
Speaker: yes, I can confirm that billowing black smoke is human remains.
Speaker: And the community went absolutely apeshit.
Speaker: And I'm like, you don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker: I love this phrase from a colleague of mine here in Tulsa.
Speaker: He says, that's your ass talking because your mouth knows better.
Speaker: I hope that answers your question without getting too technical, but this is a clean technology thing.
Speaker: We're not even regulated by the federal government.
Speaker: And the only reason that states regulate it is because of the myths about it.
Speaker: Incinerators cause pollution, but this type of incinerator is not, it's only designed for human and animal remains.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And organic stuff turns into other stuff during combustion.
Speaker: So carbon dioxide and water, the inorganic stuff,
Speaker: is dust at the end, and that actually will settle into that secondary chamber so it does not go out of the stack.
Speaker: A fireplace puts out more particles than, I mean, a fireplace could put out about half a pound an hour of dust.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah, a wood-burning fireplace.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And a crematory, nothing, hardly.
Speaker: Like.02, I think, is a good emissions factor for that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then the remains that are left after the body has been disintegrated completely, you're left with what looks like sort of dust, bone fragment.
Speaker: And some people I've noticed are quite shocked sometimes when they have the larger bone particles.
Speaker: And then I know from our own cremation jewellery line,
Speaker: And I know even from we did a podcast with Parting Stone with Justin and we were talking about sort of the different colours that when you reintroduce heat to remains, whether a solidified remain is in his rocks or my glass jewellery, that it adds its own colours, which I find beautiful and fascinating.
Speaker: Yeah, me too.
Speaker: Yeah, but maybe could you talk a bit more about the remains and the myth or not that you can bury them and they can turn into a tree.
Speaker: Okay, that's wonderful.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: I didn't know where you were going until you said tree.
Speaker: I will touch on the cremated remains coloring and parting stone, brilliant.
Speaker: I'm on his board.
Speaker: I love Justin.
Speaker: I have a call with him tomorrow.
Speaker: Ah, tell him if I like.
Speaker: I will.
Speaker: It's just such a lovely idea because you can have permanent memorialization and not be in an urn.
Speaker: You could put them in the garden or give them away.
Speaker: It's just, I love it.
Speaker: I'm not here to advertise for him, but it's a worthy thing.
Speaker: Anyway, the biggest common color is green.
Speaker: You see a hint of green on the cremated remains.
Speaker: That's clearly the one to
Speaker: 75% Irish that everybody is.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: I tell that joke every time I present a training class.
Speaker: You know what that means?
Speaker: They're Irish.
Speaker: Well, because I swear to God, and this is totally unrelated, but you know how I feel about this, but every single American I ever meet tells me there's some part of Irish lineage, right?
Speaker: So I just turned around and I'm like, seriously, for the tiny island of Ireland, did we just go at it like rabbits and procreate the entire world?
Speaker: I mean, it feels like it.
Speaker: Everyone wants to be Irish.
Speaker: That's it right there.
Speaker: It's showing up.
Speaker: It's all about the lucky charms.
Speaker: Cremated remains are not skeleton.
Speaker: They're not bone fragments.
Speaker: Scientifically, they're calcium, they're phosphates, sulfates, and hard metals.
Speaker: Beryllium, manganese, all that stuff, all those elements on the periodic table that we can't pronounce that are part of our bodies that will not vaporize any further because they're elemental.
Speaker: You know, you can't take a carbon atom and turn it into something else unless you split that atom and you know what happens then getting into nuclear fission.
Speaker: So we're going to have 40 podcasts by the time it's done.
Speaker: Emotionally, that set of remains is still the person.
Speaker: So there's a dichotomy scientifically.
Speaker: It's nothing but calcium, but emotionally to the family,
Speaker: That's my mother.
Speaker: That's dad.
Speaker: That's cousin Jim Bob.
Speaker: So we have to take that into consideration as we're transporting, as we're returning, as that's a person to the family, even though we know it's not.
Speaker: Some cultures, for Joe Public, we don't take them out and put them in an urn in the United States.
Speaker: Every state has a law.
Speaker: that says they have to be reduced to an ash type consistency.
Speaker: I don't know why that is.
Speaker: Obviously you're not going to want to scatter something that looks like a femur in your favorite jogging trail because CSI 9-1-1.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: But many cultures, especially, um, some Asian cultures do not want them to be pulverized.
Speaker: They want them back.
Speaker: They want to search through them.
Speaker: I went to Japan with NFDA, the National Funeral Service Delegation.
Speaker: And the last thing that we saw was the crematorium.
Speaker: And for those that don't know me, I'm six foot nine.
Speaker: I weigh 300 and some pounds.
Speaker: I'm a big boy.
Speaker: And a Japanese tour bus is not my friend.
Speaker: So by the time we got to the crematorium, I was mad.
Speaker: It's been five days of Japanese tour bus in and out, in and out.
Speaker: I needed a drink.
Speaker: I needed food.
Speaker: We walked into this crematorium and there's probably, I don't know, 20 units and they're all gilded, beautiful.
Speaker: And I see this stainless steel bar cart with chopsticks on it.
Speaker: And I thought, hot diggity dog.
Speaker: We're getting heavy apps, martinis, hopefully.
Speaker: Oh no.
Speaker: They put the cremated remains on these carts and use the chopsticks to sort through to find the hyoid bone, which is good luck.
Speaker: Mortifying, right?
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So even worse, in Vietnam, they want as much of the skeleton as possible.
Speaker: So they remove some places, mostly in the north is what I've been told,
Speaker: Some places will remove the bones as they finish.
Speaker: And they're put in a rectangular ceramic urn in order.
Speaker: So the head's at the top.
Speaker: There's rib bones.
Speaker: The arms, you can tell.
Speaker: And it's all contorted so it fits into a box like this big.
Speaker: I can send you a picture.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: For the YouTube, this would be incredible.
Speaker: Yeah, just remind me.
Speaker: I'll send it for sure.
Speaker: Mortifying.
Speaker: They take out the bones that are done and wait for the rest.
Speaker: And it's typical.
Speaker: Those of the public that think, you know, we're archaic and, you know,
Speaker: We should compost and do nothing else.
Speaker: There's nothing wrong with that technology.
Speaker: We do it pretty good.
Speaker: Or well, I should say.
Speaker: To be honest, that just goes to show, case in point, that there are just so many different options out there.
Speaker: And, you know, you could get a Japanese family come to a funeral home in the United States of America tomorrow and request that.
Speaker: And, you know, who are we as a community to say, no, that's wrong.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So it's fascinating.
Speaker: I love hearing about different... God, I thought I knew a lot, but there's still so much more.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Me too.
Speaker: Me too.
Speaker: And I'm twice your age.
Speaker: Well, not twice.
Speaker: I'm a little older than you.
Speaker: Did they at least give you a martini to digest?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: We had to wait until we got back to the hotel, which kind of stopped.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: It was a phenomenal trip.
Speaker: They went to a flower factory, a funeral flower arranger, and some of the families will spend $20,000, $30,000 on a floral arrangement.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: On just one?
Speaker: One.
Speaker: Massive.
Speaker: These things are massive.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: I may have a picture, too, of that.
Speaker: That's incredible.
Speaker: I can send it.
Speaker: Yeah, it's just, it blows me away and you know, it goes, you know, we can talk about that value proposition, you know, the implied value, you know, a lot of it is well, Blanche down the street had it.
Speaker: So, you know, my mom's going to have it, you know, keeping up with the Joneses.
Speaker: Oh, and I'm where I'm at right now is absolutely all of that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I want what he had.
Speaker: I want what she has.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's incredible.
Speaker: But I also, the one thing that does fascinate me about living in New York City now and working in the funeral community is the variety.
Speaker: It's such a melting pot.
Speaker: It's such a melting pot.
Speaker: I mean, I'm a celebrant as well.
Speaker: And I've been, I have officiated services for Japanese, for Chinese, where I've had to learn their customs.
Speaker: What would they like me to do?
Speaker: I'll never forget.
Speaker: There was one service and they handed me a bell and some Chinese money.
Speaker: and a pot and I was like I don't know what exactly I'm supposed to do with this.
Speaker: They didn't tell me what to do so you know I could have gotten on Google and looked it up and you know but to me the way I operate is have a conversation with the family so I you know I went up to them and I said what exactly would you like me to do and here was the shocking and beautiful thing about it was they weren't sure themselves they just knew it was a part of what they needed to have
Speaker: that it represented funerals in there and they didn't know.
Speaker: So I said, okay, well then let's figure this out together.
Speaker: How would you like, what would your ideal scenario be?
Speaker: And I put forward suggestions and they put forward suggestions and, you know, then I dung the bell out, you know, and it was very interesting.
Speaker: You know, awesome.
Speaker: I love the celebrant movement.
Speaker: I too am a certified celebrant and the whole premise of just like you said, that family meeting is what Glenda said.
Speaker: one of the founders of the celebrate movement says all you're doing is listening and asking questions and molding your service to incorporate what they want, which I would even say what they need.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I love that story.
Speaker: Yeah, it's just, and it really is, it's just about being there for them.
Speaker: And what, to me, that's what funeral directors should be doing as well.
Speaker: You know, is, is that's what everybody in that industry should be doing is just there to serve as the family and find out, dig a little bit deeper, find out what they want and go from there, you know?
Speaker: Just before, because I know we're wrapping it up and I want to keep you on forever, poor Larry.
Speaker: Not at all.
Speaker: I read an article this morning about a place in California, actually, Boyle Heights Cemetery.
Speaker: I'm just looking at my notes to see what the name is.
Speaker: It was a classic case, and I just want to know what your thoughts are on it, where they had 1,500 people who died in, I think, the year 2017.
Speaker: They had all their remains and they weren't being picked up by family and they had a three-year death.
Speaker: deadline that you know they weren't picked up that they were going to put them into a mass grave at the cremated remains and have a service for them what is I know my thoughts on it as a memorial planner but what are your thoughts on a having a deadline like three years you know from a funeral and a business perspective and be maybe what are your thoughts on families and them leaving remains there and the ethical question of that and maybe
Speaker: what your thought would be, Tim?
Speaker: Well, this is a great question because it's something especially for Joe Public because they would never think about this being an issue.
Speaker: I do not have a funeral home, so I do not have abandoned cremated remains.
Speaker: I never and still don't fully understand the bitch about storing them.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: It's a cabinet.
Speaker: It's a fireproof cabinet.
Speaker: If you're going to get two cabinets, get two cabinets.
Speaker: If the law says you can scatter them after a year, as long as you've sent out three registered letters, you know what?
Speaker: That's not what we do.
Speaker: We do what we do for the families.
Speaker: And if they're not ready to get them, even if they'll never be ready to get them, you can't scatter them because they will never have that option again.
Speaker: Burying them, fine.
Speaker: I don't understand why they can't sit, you know, sitting in a vault versus sitting in a fireplace
Speaker: proof cabinet in your funeral home, it's our obligation to look after those remains.
Speaker: So do I have a bit of a different perspective about it?
Speaker: Probably.
Speaker: When I train or instruct or teach, I always recommend, even if the law says you can scatter, never scatter because that's when the family's going to come back and say, we're ready now.
Speaker: Or I was in prison for 20 years.
Speaker: I need to get my mother.
Speaker: And
Speaker: you're going to get sued.
Speaker: Even if the law stands on your side, the juries are going to, I don't want to say convict, but they're going to find for the grieving person over the, especially if you're a corporate place, I've done expert witness stuff for a CI.
Speaker: I mean, it's like a new cash cap funeral service because that emotional part of it turns into an ethical thing and ethics aren't the law.
Speaker: but they're becoming more effective of the law.
Speaker: So again, another long, long answer to a question.
Speaker: Um, I just think if it were me, I would keep them.
Speaker: And Paula masters calls it the, the cabinet of misfit cremated remains, you know, like the Island of misfit toys.
Speaker: It sounds like something from Harry Potter.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's actually from, uh,
Speaker: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the movie.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: I'll have to watch that.
Speaker: With the heatizer and the, oh, tangential guy I am.
Speaker: Does it really hurt that you have a cabinet of cremated remains there waiting in case?
Speaker: I know everyone says, oh, it's the liability, the liability.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: It is interesting.
Speaker: I think there's less if you have more control over it.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: I do think it is interesting.
Speaker: And just on that, I actually, as we've already made clear, I'm not a registered funeral director.
Speaker: And so there's certain things, limitations that I can and can't do.
Speaker: And I, as a memorial planner, have traveled to different states with remains.
Speaker: of that I'm holding a celebration of life.
Speaker: So I've been asked and it's a very rewarding experience, but a very daunting one because you are holding onto somebody's lifeline.
Speaker: You know, their absolute loved one is.
Speaker: So I treat it as if it was my own.
Speaker: Equally, I was fascinated with the chain of events that
Speaker: you know, the family had to bestow upon me that I am legally allowed to take these remains from a funeral home and transport them.
Speaker: And so that, you know, again, I guess we're down to politics and, you know, and it does definitely make sense because you could
Speaker: have anybody coming in to pick up remains then and what happens there.
Speaker: So it is interesting about I guess we're nearly back to people being afraid to speak up or to do something different because they might get their hands slapped by the law by the else or whatever.
Speaker: But in this particular cemetery, I thought 1500 was quite a lot of remains.
Speaker: So when you think about that, I mean, and if that's just for one year, that is an awful lot of remains to keep housing year on year.
Speaker: It's shocking to me and sad to me that the families, you know, that's nearly the, I guess, the human side of this as well, that they don't.
Speaker: They didn't pick up their loved one.
Speaker: And that could be for multiple reasons, as you just said.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Just incapacitated in that moment that it's, you know, who knows?
Speaker: We really don't know.
Speaker: You know, and this is back to the conversation we had earlier where it's until you know both sides.
Speaker: There's always three sides to a story, you know, one, two and the actual truth.
Speaker: But it is, yeah, I probably would agree with you on that, that I would, as a funeral home, try and hold on to them for as long as I could.
Speaker: And yeah, burying them, but I mean, just scattering them in a mass grave.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'd definitely say no scattering.
Speaker: If you can recover them and you don't want to keep them in the building, to me, that's a happy medium, if you will.
Speaker: As long as you can recover them,
Speaker: for, you know, and you may have 1500 and only two of them will end up getting returned in your lifetime, but that's two happy families that paid you, you know what they did.
Speaker: So, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, uh, we'll end on that note.
Speaker: Uh, thank you so much, Larry, for it was nothing but fun.
Speaker: I hope, I hope I did okay for your, uh,
Speaker: No, that was an hour and a half, which is amazing.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening to the Glam Reaper podcast.
Speaker: It has been something I've been working on and muddling with for over two years now.
Speaker: So I appreciate your time to listen in.
Speaker: Every episode will have a new guest we hope you will find interesting as they tell their own story.
Speaker: So stay tuned for the next episode or have a look through the Glam Reaper episode collection.
Speaker: Find your nugget of gold as we talk all things life, love and loss with a dash from the funeral world.
Speaker: Until next time.
