Transcript
Speaker: Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper podcast.
Speaker: Today we are talking to a funeral director.
Speaker: So we're going to get inside knowledge as to what it is like to be a funeral director.
Speaker: He's been a long time in the game and he's going to give us some interesting insights into what it's like to be on the inside.
Speaker: He also has an incredible blog.
Speaker: We'll leave all the links below, but for now, let's listen to the interview.
Speaker: I was licensed as a funeral director in 1980, worked at a funeral home, operated my own funeral home, sold that in 2013, almost 2014, and had been retired basically since.
Speaker: And I started doing Funeral Director Daily about four years ago and just enjoyed it.
Speaker: And Funeral Director Daily, Justin, I'm going to leave the link just for anybody who's listening, is a blog that I love.
Speaker: I tune into and get daily and I find it to be just a nice, refreshing summation of what's going on in the industry.
Speaker: And, you know, because we're all busy and that's what blogs sort of really essentially became popular for is that people could get all this condensed information in one spot and, you know,
Speaker: you know, it works out.
Speaker: So, but Funeral Director Davey, do you know much about your readers?
Speaker: I was about to say your listeners, your readers.
Speaker: I mean, are we all of industry?
Speaker: You're not all of industry.
Speaker: I try to keep it very inexpensive.
Speaker: You know, it started as a hobby just to be mentoring funeral directors.
Speaker: I had somebody who told me you could go do this.
Speaker: Some funeral directors might be interested in hearing this.
Speaker: And I did that for a while with about two dozen readers and sent out an email every day.
Speaker: But I saw every once in a while, I saw some growth from it.
Speaker: And about a little over a year into it, I had a company that Cressy Memorial, they do Earn Vaults, the Crown Earn Vault.
Speaker: They contacted me and said, we really like your stuff.
Speaker: We think it's really good for the industry just to know this and get your perspective.
Speaker: would you be willing to have a sponsor and have us associated with you?
Speaker: And I had to think about it because taking a sponsor meant that it's no longer a hobby and it was a commitment.
Speaker: But I also had things like MailChimp and security bills and GoDaddy and different bills I had to pay that I thought, you know, if I had a sponsor or two, they would help me pay those bills.
Speaker: And so that's where I went with it.
Speaker: It's growing by leaps and bounds.
Speaker: As to if I know my readers, I only know them, I get a list every day of who opens the story and the number, but it's by email names.
Speaker: So many are simple, like if it says, Joe at FCI.
Speaker: Well, you know, Joe is with Service Corp International.
Speaker: Or Fred at Joan's funeral home.
Speaker: You can Google Jones Funeral Home and find out who that is.
Speaker: But I think I have several types of readers.
Speaker: I have working funeral directors who are young learning the business.
Speaker: I have business owners.
Speaker: I have, and I know this from the emails, the addresses, I have virtually all the CEOs of the big public companies.
Speaker: I have people over across the pond
Speaker: who are CEOs of companies over there.
Speaker: I have mortuary college professors and things like that.
Speaker: And then there's a certain amount of, well, the other one I have is I have a lot of financial people and the financial, because I do write articles on the public companies once in a while.
Speaker: I do have some people that are stockbrokers and things like that.
Speaker: And then finally, I have like people from my church that just say, you know, they hear I do this.
Speaker: And they said, well, we read it just because we think it's interesting.
Speaker: And, you know, so that also I have all those constituencies.
Speaker: Also, I will say I have suppliers in the death care industry, people that supply the cemetery industry or casket companies or things like that.
Speaker: That is why I try to keep my articles really, really varied.
Speaker: I know like today's article was on the annual report for Dignity PLC in Great Britain.
Speaker: There's not a lot of young funeral directors that care about reading that.
Speaker: But there are the funeral business owners over here and the SCI people and stuff.
Speaker: So I know every day that I'm going to get a certain amount of readers depending on the topic.
Speaker: I well believe that.
Speaker: And it's interesting, especially when I knew we were going to be talking, I was paying even more attention to what subjects that were coming up and whether I clicked or whether I wanted to click into them and, you know, what I thought about them in the moment.
Speaker: And definitely there is certain parts and you've hit the nail on the head.
Speaker: It just goes to show to the type of personalities and what we do for a living that makes you click a certain thing.
Speaker: Like for me, my three things I've always gone on about...
Speaker: are pre-planning, you know, the digital space and what happens after we die and the environment.
Speaker: And so anytime you have any of those, I'm in.
Speaker: When it's those financials and those you assessing them, I'm like, no, no, because it just doesn't speak to my brain.
Speaker: I've also learned that when you get the email, I only get about 50 words to try to convey what the article is about.
Speaker: Now, you talked about digital post life.
Speaker: But today, if you get into the article,
Speaker: It's really about digital marketing and how Dignity PLC has, there's a lot of statistics of what they've done with digital marketing and how they believe 50% of their consumers, I think it is now quoted in there, is coming from digital marketing.
Speaker: Yeah, well, I'd well believe that.
Speaker: I have to say, because I'm often asked to consult with companies on their different marketing techniques and sort of what's because social media is huge now and the funeral death industry can't ignore it just like no other industry can ignore it.
Speaker: I mean, I'm not to say when somebody passes away,
Speaker: somebody jumps onto Google, finds the local funeral director, but some people actually do do that.
Speaker: You know, then in terms of funeral directors themselves, like marketing to them, where are they?
Speaker: They're on Instagram, they're on Facebook, they're on LinkedIn.
Speaker: You know, so these are the places where still to meet people
Speaker: people in that industry as much as it is anywhere else.
Speaker: You can't not have an online presence in this current day and age.
Speaker: You just can't if you're in business and want to succeed.
Speaker: But it is, it's amazing to watch how has gone from strength to strength, Tom.
Speaker: And I know I featured, so I'm a little biased in saying, you know, that it's pretty good.
Speaker: It does touch on a lot of different topics.
Speaker: And one of the things that I wanted to touch on, because you did it quite recently, is all these alternative death, these alternative dispositions.
Speaker: Sorry, death is the wrong word.
Speaker: Dispositions after we die.
Speaker: So, you know, you've got Katrina's recomposed, going from strength to strength, from what it looks like in Seattle.
Speaker: And she's actually got competitors now, which I never knew about.
Speaker: What is your thoughts on all of these alternatives?
Speaker: You know, it's interesting, and I did an article, it was probably last week, where I think the title was, Here Comes the Competition.
Speaker: And she's, you know, Katrina Spade has worked really hard to get her recomposition, recompose going.
Speaker: And all of a sudden, there's a couple competitors, one really big and one kind of small.
Speaker: You know, it's not something that I would think about today, the human composting industry.
Speaker: You know, in 1970, which is 50 years ago, Americans only cremated 5% of the people.
Speaker: You know, now we're up into the 60% bracket.
Speaker: So it just goes to show that some things will catch on.
Speaker: I think I also said in that article, though, that I really believe flame cremation will be the disposition of choice for probably the next couple of decades.
Speaker: There are things where they freeze dry a body,
Speaker: and then break it into little particles and you end up having like cremains.
Speaker: And it's interesting that I talked to somebody in that type of industry and they were questioning on how fast these type of things will catch on.
Speaker: They think to so many people, it's almost a death fantasy.
Speaker: Well, when I go, I wanna be human composted or I wanna have a green burial or I wanna be freeze dried.
Speaker: But when it really gets down to picking it, there's a very small percentage of those that say they're going to until it reaches a mainstream.
Speaker: Well, that's the issue where Recompose and some of those places have to be financed good enough to carry on with that for a while.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree with you.
Speaker: And I think that it is, it's all about the consumer feeling safe and the funeral directors having the knowledge in order to make their families feel safe.
Speaker: Because I think families are still going to continue to go to funeral homes, even though there's this idea that maybe funeral directors will get cut out of the game and stuff.
Speaker: Like I know, I think I've said it on this podcast before that I was at an NFDA, which is a huge annual funeral convention a couple of years ago.
Speaker: and there was a lady from the New York Times and I was chatting with her and I asked her I said you know what what was the general vibe on the floor when you were interviewing people and she said funeral directors are terrified that event planners are going to take over their job and that they're just going to become a means of disposition now as an event planner I don't agree with that I think that's crazy I think people will always need to rely on funeral directors but I do think funeral directors need to
Speaker: open their eyes and embrace new ideas that are coming up.
Speaker: And there is all these millennials and all of these people who are coming up with these new innovative ways of disposition and ways to celebrate life and ways to mourn death.
Speaker: We need to be paying attention to them because they're not coming up with it for nothing.
Speaker: It's like when, you know, people turned their noses up on Facebook and Amazon.
Speaker: That'll never work.
Speaker: And now look at it.
Speaker: So, you know, as you say, we have to you don't have to run with every cool new idea, but you have to open your eyes and brace and see how it could potentially work in your community.
Speaker: I was going to say to that end, I just heard like 15 years ago, people thought when it was brought up that Amazon might replace Sears as a number one retailer.
Speaker: People said that'll never happen.
Speaker: That'll never happen.
Speaker: And look at today.
Speaker: And now look, it's actually terrible.
Speaker: I could not live without Amazon.
Speaker: Shocking.
Speaker: As a single woman in New York City, it's like those packages on my door.
Speaker: Thank God.
Speaker: I don't have a car.
Speaker: I don't need a man.
Speaker: It's perfect.
Speaker: But I wanted to keep talking about that because one of the interesting points that I thought you made in that article was that flame cremation would be the go-to choice.
Speaker: And I agree with you.
Speaker: I think burial, unfortunately, is...
Speaker: We don't have space.
Speaker: You know, the world just in general is running out of space.
Speaker: It doesn't matter what country you're living in.
Speaker: Asia hit it first.
Speaker: You know, now we're kind of coming up the rear in America.
Speaker: So I think it's just going to not be feasible.
Speaker: And so you've got cremation.
Speaker: But cremation in itself, there's obviously a lot of talk about it and hence why all these new methods of disposition are coming up.
Speaker: In itself, the old cremation we all knew was dirty.
Speaker: You know, it creates a kind of an idea that there's the smoke and that we're physically going up into the ether, you know, parts of us.
Speaker: Do you think that in itself could be, could be and will be sort of
Speaker: reinvented like for example you know we've got the retorts themselves have changed they've evolved over the last couple of years you know limiting the emissions that are going out into the environment and stuff like that so potentially there's a way to evolve that particular method as opposed to just creating something new i don't know what your thoughts on that would be but well i i think all of that will help i think the limiting the emissions and everything
Speaker: But I'm a pretty firm believer, I have a friend who has a alkaline hydrolysis machine.
Speaker: If he would do it at the same price and say, do you prefer cremation with water and chemicals or flame cremation?
Speaker: He says they will all choose alkaline hydrolysis, the vast majority, but they do it as a premium.
Speaker: Like, well, we can cremate dad in flame cremation for $2,000, but if you want us to do a water cremation, it's like $2,700.
Speaker: And he talks about the environmental issues and all that.
Speaker: And about a third of his choices still go with the alkaline hydrolysis.
Speaker: So I think that, and you think about electric cars out there today, the Tesla and things like that, I'm fortunate in more ways than one, I've got 26 year old and 22 year old sons.
Speaker: And just watching how they listen to music or watch television or make their decisions, I think these forms of disposition
Speaker: especially alkaline hydrolysis, if it can be tied to an environmental positive situation, will grow rapidly.
Speaker: I think it's got more potential than the human composting simply because the human composting, it takes a month, and the alkaline hydrolysis is very much like cremation, you know, a matter of hours.
Speaker: So I think there is an element to...
Speaker: And I think funeral directors need to know that if I was operating a funeral home today, my next purchase would be an alkaline hydrolysis machine.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Very good.
Speaker: That's a very strong statement.
Speaker: So, yeah, I mean, honestly, the parts of me love it because it does, you know, your final bath.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There is sort of a nice spa-like feature to it, I'm not going to lie.
Speaker: And I know from conversations with my parents back home in Ireland, like when I started on this journey 10 years ago, one of the things I did was sit down and do a pre-plan with my mum.
Speaker: And I got to find out lots of interesting things about her and her wishes.
Speaker: And it is fascinating what people's perceptions are.
Speaker: Like, I don't want to be buried because I don't want to be cold in the ground and the maggots to get me.
Speaker: okay but you know you're going to be dead right uh i don't want to be cremated because what if i'm burnt alive so people have these you know and so the alkaline hydrolysis definitely does sound like a sweeter way to go but then part of me has these and again because we're all human and we just have these ideas that we're still present somehow when we're we're being disposed of is that these we've seen all the horror movies of you know
Speaker: bodies being put into liquid and just frying basically in the liquid and that's how the murderer gets rid of his victim into the vat of acid um not giving anybody any ideas out there by the way but it is i do like the sound of it i i i know that there's just for me there's a lot of different conflicting
Speaker: companies out there doing alkaline hydrolysis and that's where i feel their marketing sucks not gonna lie just sucks because there's there's so many different having something come out like cremation or like the composting having the first person to market and then competitors that's one thing but alkaline hydrolysis came out with so many different names like water cremation alkaline hydrolysis bio cremation
Speaker: It just came out with too many that I think it confused the general public.
Speaker: That they don't know which one is which and are they all the same, only slightly different chemicals and one is a higher heat and one is lower, one is longer, one is shorter.
Speaker: I mean, I'm not going to lie, I hold my hand up.
Speaker: Even I'm confused at this point as to who's who and what's what.
Speaker: And so I think that's a problem it's going to face marketing-wise in general to try and get it
Speaker: to the general public and for them to go, oh yeah, I want that because that's amazing.
Speaker: But I do like, look, the environment, we owe it to the world as much as any other industry does to clean up our act.
Speaker: And whether it's, you know, putting the veneers in coffins and
Speaker: It's definitely something that needs to evolve.
Speaker: And I love that all these guys are coming up with new and interesting ways of disposing of bodies.
Speaker: And the way I look at it is, well, if you can dispose of a human body with whatever technology you're using, can it be used on medical waste?
Speaker: Because that would be my next question.
Speaker: You know, like you look at COVID-19 now and I walk to the subway here in New York and all I see are plastic gloves and masks littering the place.
Speaker: And I just think to myself, we've killed one problem and creating a whole other one.
Speaker: I mean, I can't imagine, you know, with all the plastics and stuff, it's just insane.
Speaker: Medical waste now must be gone up tenfold, which is amazing.
Speaker: We're saving lives.
Speaker: But when you think of how often people are using and disposing of masks and things,
Speaker: Anyway, I'm digressing.
Speaker: Sorry, Tom.
Speaker: Passionate about the environment is definitely, you know.
Speaker: Well, I was going to say with alkaline hydrolysis and water cremation, I think we actually as funeral directors and the funeral industry, we're giving ourselves too much credit if we think the public's confused because I quite frankly don't think the public really knows about it yet.
Speaker: And I think once we get out there... No, and you're probably quite right with that because there is... I remember from my days, and I don't know if you know much about it, but I worked with a company called Eco Legacy many years ago.
Speaker: And they had developed an environmental version of cremation.
Speaker: And one of the things I remember asking a funeral director...
Speaker: you know, do your families, are they interested in something that would be an environmentally friendly option?
Speaker: And he said, no, they just want cremation or burial.
Speaker: And I counted and I said, but do you say, do you just want burial or cremation?
Speaker: Or do you say, would you like a third more, you know, environmentally friendly option?
Speaker: And he was like, well, no, I just offer them burial or cremation.
Speaker: I said, well, of course, if you offer somebody milk chocolate or white chocolate, they don't know about dark chocolate.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: they're only going to go.
Speaker: And I think as we evolve into the future, even people that are not concerned about the environment will be a little bit concerned about their environmental choices, whether it's buying electric cars or gas cars or how they heat their homes.
Speaker: I think there will be more and more of that.
Speaker: I think it'll be more and more an issue on the death care industry.
Speaker: 100% and even to your earlier point is it'll soon become the norm as well Tom like you know electric cars I foresee will will just the others will become obsolete because we just have we just keep moving forward and eventually the market just becomes so small that there's just you know you're almost a tyrant if you have a diesel car or general petrol car.
Speaker: unleaded petrol car or whatever so just while we're on topical items i'm assuming you have read uh as most funeral directors have jessica mitford's book the wonderful book and there is there was a recent one a rebuttal of it um by eric i can't remember his last name have you read that rebuttal or you have i have not and jessica mitford's book has been a long time the american way of death yeah she was not when i was in mortuary school that book was old
Speaker: And we're 40 years from that.
Speaker: What are your thoughts just in general about what she sort of wrote about the industry?
Speaker: I look at the American way of death and if there's anything about America, I mean, I tell my wife this every day.
Speaker: Once the pandemic came on,
Speaker: What country in the world has started selling designer masks and masks that go with your dresses?
Speaker: You know, America is doing it.
Speaker: You know, they've wore masks in Asia for years and it's, you know, just a medical type mask, but we've started a little industry about it now.
Speaker: But I think you go and my family is no different.
Speaker: My great grandfather arrived in Minnesota as a Swedish immigrant in 1872.
Speaker: And he was trained as a cabinet maker.
Speaker: So he started building coffins in the small community we're in when people died.
Speaker: And we have records of our first funeral, first casket sold, coffin sold, was five years before Custer's Last Stand.
Speaker: That puts it in perspective.
Speaker: Custer's Last Stand was 1876.
Speaker: We have a record of selling a coffin in 1872.
Speaker: So he started out as a cabinet maker that built coffins.
Speaker: His son then went
Speaker: to the first class of morticians at the University of Minnesota.
Speaker: And they operated a cabinet furniture store that when somebody died, they brought them there, embalmed them, actually they did that in some of the homes, and were able to show them.
Speaker: From there we evolved into, in 1923 I think it was, we built a home for funerals, which was really new in America at the time, that it moved
Speaker: out of somebody just buying a casket or coffin and bringing it to the church or their home and showing it.
Speaker: We built a home for funerals and we've evolved into a crematory, a place that we can have receptions.
Speaker: Over the years we've evolved into all of that.
Speaker: And I don't think, and it's about that family making a living for themselves
Speaker: going forward.
Speaker: So yes, they ended up not making caskets.
Speaker: They bought them from Batesville or Aurora for $500 and sold them for a thousand.
Speaker: But we did get into this purveyor of death care, which Mitford talked about that they're businessmen.
Speaker: Well,
Speaker: I don't think there's anything wrong with being a businessman.
Speaker: And the market, just like you talked about electric cars, if electric cars start selling, well, the people that make gas cars are going to go downhill and electric ones go uphill.
Speaker: So I think the funeral industry, the death care industry is a business.
Speaker: We're an evolving business.
Speaker: And if we don't evolve, we'll be dinosaurs.
Speaker: It's just like you talked about as a funeral planner.
Speaker: Maybe the
Speaker: licensed funeral directors take care of the bodies and do the work there, but there's somebody creative on staff to do, whether it's videos or say, here's how we can celebrate your loved one.
Speaker: You're hearing about some funeral homes having celebrants on staff.
Speaker: And so I'm not against, I think Jessica Mitford was probably right, but I also say, what's wrong with being a business person and running your business?
Speaker: No, I absolutely agree.
Speaker: She really gave you guys a hard time.
Speaker: I will say that.
Speaker: It's a hard book to read because she just goes at it.
Speaker: She's like a dog with a bone.
Speaker: She just goes at it and at it and at it.
Speaker: And what is it she calls you?
Speaker: The Funeral Men or the Funeral Guys or something.
Speaker: Funeral Men, I think.
Speaker: And I do.
Speaker: I think there is that sort of old school idea, Tom, that is...
Speaker: you were robbing from the blind and the poor just to put, you know, bury their families and stuff.
Speaker: And everybody in the industry is cowboys.
Speaker: And it's one of the things I know for in my last 10 years, and it's kind of part of the reason why I wanted to do this podcast was I've seen so much that as a lay person or a person on the street, I never knew about in the industry.
Speaker: Like when I say to people that I work in the funeral business, well, first of all, they think I'm absolutely mad.
Speaker: They kind of look and be like, you don't look like you belong in the funeral industry because typically it was a certain type.
Speaker: You know, I tell people I go to conventions and that I could go to a convention every week for a year.
Speaker: And there's that many funeral conventions over in the world.
Speaker: And then what?
Speaker: And then I write for a funeral magazine.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: You have magazines?
Speaker: I'm like, it is an industry, people.
Speaker: It is an industry.
Speaker: And exactly right, people need to make a living and they do make a living.
Speaker: I've always said that, you know, and you're in, you talked about you're in Queens.
Speaker: If I asked you about what do you think of the United States Congress, you would say, well, they're a bunch of idiots.
Speaker: And I'd say, what do you think of your congressman or congresswoman?
Speaker: They'd say, oh, he or she is not too bad.
Speaker: And that's, I've compared that with funeral homes because people always say,
Speaker: What do you think of funeral directors?
Speaker: Oh, they're a bunch of crooks, they charge too much money, they do this, they do that.
Speaker: And you say, well, what about the funeral director that took care of your dad or mom?
Speaker: And they say, oh, he's a great guy, he's a wonderful guy.
Speaker: And so we're a little in that wavelength, we get thought of in a group, but then we also get thought of better as individuals.
Speaker: It is true.
Speaker: And actually to that point, what are your thoughts on people like say, Caitlin Doherty, or, you know, there's a little Miss funeral and modern mortician does all these sort of, they've become sex celebrity death influencers or people who are, I guess, bringing the idea of what we do to the four and to the media.
Speaker: What are your thoughts on those?
Speaker: Well, you know, it's not my cup of tea.
Speaker: We used to have a,
Speaker: philosophy at our funeral home that we've ran a good funeral if nobody knows we're there.
Speaker: It just flows, it goes out.
Speaker: Bringing advice to a consumer is great.
Speaker: And I have nothing wrong with Caitlin Doherty or new ways of doing funerals.
Speaker: But if you do it and slam the other people who are good people and are, you know, my community in a town of 35,000 people, how I handle my community and our norms and mores,
Speaker: are much different than the norms and mores of a city like New York City.
Speaker: And so if somebody would slam me for doing this in an improper way, well, that's the way it's done in our community.
Speaker: You know, so I think they used to say politics is a local business.
Speaker: I think funeral directing is a local business.
Speaker: And none of us know how that business really is somewhere else unless we've been there.
Speaker: 100% I couldn't agree with you more Tom because as somebody coming from little old Ireland, but I lived in in Dublin, which is the city even in Ireland itself, you know, a funeral in Dublin when I wrote my first book, a funeral in Dublin costs vastly different to a funeral in Galway and is treated differently.
Speaker: You know, in rural Ireland, we're still doing wakes.
Speaker: In Dublin, the removal that's kind of the new wake has almost been removed because the financial cost of it.
Speaker: And I don't say it's just financial as in that it's the funeral homes.
Speaker: It's not.
Speaker: It's people's time.
Speaker: People don't have time anymore.
Speaker: And I think COVID, unfortunately, from what I've seen, again, now I'm in New York City and I know 100%.
Speaker: The work I do, say, for example, at Frankie Campbell's is vastly different to if I was to work with, you know, your funeral home and a funeral home in middle America.
Speaker: It's massively different.
Speaker: But I think with COVID, what we've seen is that more and more people are going to choose things like direct cremation and having a memorial at a later time, because unfortunately, funerals, this is going to sound awful, but
Speaker: sometimes they're an inconvenience sometimes people the world has gotten so fast and so time conscious that it's like I don't have time to mourn I don't have time to you know sit and worry about this or plan this um and that breaks my heart because I think it's such an important ritual the funeral service whether you do it at immediate time or do it at a late date I agree with you and I used to have a pastor and
Speaker: used to have a pastor I worked with who said, funeral should be inconvenient.
Speaker: Families should stop and recognize that this life has been lived.
Speaker: And I agree with you.
Speaker: And COVID is not going to help things because we are getting used to doing something or not doing something.
Speaker: And, you know, if it worked when grandpa died of COVID, the funeral home just picked him up and cremated him.
Speaker: And we went and got the ashes two weeks later.
Speaker: We didn't have a visitation.
Speaker: We didn't have the casket.
Speaker: Well, the,
Speaker: Consumers think, well, that worked for me.
Speaker: They may not necessarily know that they didn't get healing, you know, and it may move itself down.
Speaker: And I also worry about, I think permanent remembrance is incredible to have.
Speaker: I've written a lot of stories about, you know, my dad died when I was a teenager and he never got to meet my wife, never got to meet my kids, but his grave is probably less than two miles from where I'm sitting today.
Speaker: And I go out there on his birthday and I go out there on father's day and I brought my boys out there.
Speaker: And it's always a remembrance that that life was lived.
Speaker: That person, they did have a grandfather, you know, my children, where when we have, cause there's this stone, there it is.
Speaker: When we take away that permanent remembrance, I worry what's going to happen with, with, you know,
Speaker: who we are and where did we come from and things like that.
Speaker: I worry about that and COVID is not helping in that.
Speaker: And again, I completely agree with you, Tom, because for one, I know myself from my own experience and don't laugh at me when I say this, but I even did my TED Talk on it, like when we lost our dog and I'm very lucky insofar as both my parents, my brother, we've
Speaker: you know, we're all present and accounted for and it's grandparents and elderly and unfortunately people who've been sick who I've lost.
Speaker: I have lost young friends, but we lost our dog that we had for 16 years.
Speaker: And when I say she was my best friend in the entire world, you know, she came
Speaker: all through my teenage years i told her everything she was she's she's the it's probably a good thing she's gone because she took all the secrets with her and the way things are invented these days they'd invent you know voices for dogs but um when she passed away one of the things it actually was to me honestly tom it really identified how important a funeral is because when we had her put down on a friday
Speaker: I will never forget that weekend.
Speaker: I was like a lost soul wandering through the house.
Speaker: And I kept saying to mom, why do like we were just crying the whole family.
Speaker: We were just crying all weekend.
Speaker: And I really realized a funeral.
Speaker: It's there's a blueprint.
Speaker: It's OK.
Speaker: What do I need to do next?
Speaker: Next is a task orientation of I need to call the funeral director.
Speaker: I need to.
Speaker: be present at this point.
Speaker: I need to have people around me.
Speaker: Even my friends contacted me and said, Jen, we don't know what to do.
Speaker: Like, do we send you a card?
Speaker: Do we send you flowers?
Speaker: Like, we're so sad and we don't know what to do.
Speaker: Like, do we just call up to your house and give you a hug?
Speaker: Which would have happened in a funeral setting.
Speaker: There were just, it really identified to me the ritual of that blueprint.
Speaker: Same thing happened when I lost my aunt last year and my grandmother 15 years ago, both times I was living in America and couldn't make it home for the funeral.
Speaker: But
Speaker: I'm telling you now, those are two people, two losses in my life I've never gotten over.
Speaker: I still get emotional.
Speaker: And I go to the grave when I go home and I cry.
Speaker: And I often wonder, is it because I never got to physically move through the motions of a funeral and have my family around me and start that healing process?
Speaker: So I absolutely believe in it and even go so far as
Speaker: my cremation jewellery line.
Speaker: If there was one thing that every single one of my families come back to me and I do it for pets and I do it for humans, but every one of my clients have said that it's a little bit of them that they get to carry with them.
Speaker: It is a permanent remembrance of their person.
Speaker: And with cremation, as we both know, a lot of people scatter it.
Speaker: And so there's no permanent resting place.
Speaker: Or if you scatter in one particular place, it can be a type of permanent resting place.
Speaker: But to have that little piece of somebody that you can always go to and not talk to.
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: I talk to the dead.
Speaker: I'm not going to lie.
Speaker: That's my way of dealing with things.
Speaker: And we all have different, you know.
Speaker: Much like alkaline hydrolysis, I think, moving forward,
Speaker: I think, and there's a lot of different things out there, you know, the cremation jewelry lines or the thumbies or the parting stones that they have now, the solidified remains.
Speaker: I think those type of things are going to grow slowly but surely also because those of us who loved and lost, whether that's a grandpa or grandma, a mom or dad, a husband, a wife, a child, don't want to let go of that love.
Speaker: And I think
Speaker: You're exactly right that jewelry does take some of that and allow you to carry it with you.
Speaker: I think those are, and I'm guessing that your jewelry line is probably doing pretty well and you're selling a few trinkets here and there, huh?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And, you know, even to the point of like I live here in New York, you know, I can't carry a grave with me, but I can carry that with me.
Speaker: So it really does.
Speaker: We just have to meet people.
Speaker: One of the things I'm always saying, doesn't matter what element of of this I'm doing is meet people where they're at.
Speaker: And I guess that's one of the things for the funeral industry as a whole is to.
Speaker: pause for a second and meet people where they're at.
Speaker: What do they want nowadays?
Speaker: What has changed?
Speaker: I was going to say, getting back to Mitford's book very briefly, I think that was maybe one of her problems with funeral directors, is we didn't meet people where they were at in the 1960s.
Speaker: They came to us and said, Grandpa died, and we just said, okay, you need a coffin, you need a funeral on Thursday, we need a vault, we need to bury him at this cemetery.
Speaker: We told them what they wanted.
Speaker: And that's not necessarily true.
Speaker: We need to listen.
Speaker: Need to listen.
Speaker: So, so Mitford had some elements correct.
Speaker: Well, Tom, thank you so much.
Speaker: I know this, the delay has been slightly had us go back and forth, but thank you so much for, for joining me.
Speaker: And I'd love to have you back on because I know there were a couple of things that I'd love to come back and, and as your articles and stuff come out, so maybe we'll do another, another one in a couple of months, but thank you so much.
Speaker: It was, it was really good.
Speaker: I'm happy to do it.
Speaker: I've enjoyed it.
Speaker: I enjoy my little bit of celebrityism with funeral director daily and thank you for reading it.
Speaker: No worries, of course.
Speaker: And have you got any future plans for it or would you take it to blog for or to podcast form?
Speaker: No, you like the writing.
Speaker: Well, I've had people ask me for a blog podcast and I have, you know, probably have an insight where I can get many of the national and international leaders in funeral service on.
Speaker: But we'll see where it goes.
Speaker: We'll see where it goes.
Speaker: I'm not a real technical guy.
Speaker: It was hard for me just to learn how to type on the computer and get the words out there.
Speaker: Well, I really think you should because you have an opportunity there.
Speaker: You know, you've got you've got the market.
Speaker: We're all we all like to hear what you have to say.
Speaker: So I think it's definitely something for sure to have a think about.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Well, thank you so much.
Speaker: And yeah, I'll be in touch soon.
Speaker: Well, what do you think of Tom?
Speaker: I hope you liked him as much as I do.
Speaker: I think he's a really cool character.
Speaker: He's definitely somebody who probes the industry from the inside out.
Speaker: His blog is super interesting.
Speaker: So check it out in the links below and stay tuned to next week.
Speaker: We'll talk to you later.
Speaker: Ciao for now.
