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Tom Anderson: A Day in the Life of a Funeral Director
23 Plays4 years ago
Ever wondered what it’s like to be a funeral director? In this brand-new episode of The Glam Reaper podcast, host Jennifer walks us through a day in the life of a funeral director along with her special guest, Tom Anderson.
Tom has been in the industry as a funeral director since the year 1980. Since then, he has worked at and owned a funeral home before selling it in 2013. He also started the blog, Funeral Director Daily, focusing on death care, funeral service, cremation, and related subjects and serving as a free source of news and information on the funeral care business.
Tune in as Jennifer and Tom talk about important matters in the funeral industry, what it means to be a funeral director and how the recent innovations in the funeral industry are helping save the environment.
Hit the play button for more scientific but interesting facts that revolve around life and death! Enjoy!
LITTLE NUGGETS OF GOLD:
- Tom’s background and how he became a funeral director
- An overview of Tom’s blog, Funeral Director Daily and the different topics it covers
- Tom’s thoughts about cremation and how it can help the environment
- An overview of the responsibilities of a funeral director
Connect with Tom Anderson:
Website: https://funeraldirectordaily.com
Connect with Jennifer/The Glam Reaper:
Facebook Page - Muldowney Memorials: https://www.facebook.com/MuldowneyMemorials/
Facebook Page - Rainbow Bridge Memorials: https://www.facebook.com/rainbowbridgememorialsdotcom
Instagram - @muldowneymemorials & @jennifermuldowney
Twitter - @TheGlamReaper
Email us here: glamreaperpodcast@gmail.com
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Transcript
Introduction to the Glam Reaper Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper podcast.
00:00:06
Speaker
Today we are talking to a funeral director.
00:00:10
Speaker
So we're going to get inside knowledge as to what it is like to be a funeral director.
00:00:14
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.
00:00:21
Speaker
He also has an incredible blog.
00:00:22
Speaker
We'll leave all the links below, but for now, let's listen to the interview.
Guest's Experience in the Funeral Industry
00:00:34
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.
00:00:47
Speaker
And I started doing Funeral Director Daily about four years ago and just enjoyed it.
00:00:53
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.
00:01:01
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.
00:01:08
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,
00:01:18
Speaker
you know, it works out.
00:01:19
Speaker
So, but Funeral Director Davey, do you know much about your readers?
00:01:22
Speaker
I was about to say your listeners, your readers.
00:01:24
Speaker
I mean, are we all of industry?
00:01:26
Speaker
You're not all of industry.
00:01:28
Speaker
I try to keep it very inexpensive.
00:01:31
Speaker
You know, it started as a hobby just to be mentoring funeral directors.
00:01:34
Speaker
I had somebody who told me you could go do this.
00:01:38
Speaker
Some funeral directors might be interested in hearing this.
00:01:41
Speaker
And I did that for a while with about two dozen readers and sent out an email every day.
00:01:48
Speaker
But I saw every once in a while, I saw some growth from it.
00:01:52
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.
Transition from Blog to Business
00:02:00
Speaker
They contacted me and said, we really like your stuff.
00:02:04
Speaker
We think it's really good for the industry just to know this and get your perspective.
00:02:09
Speaker
would you be willing to have a sponsor and have us associated with you?
00:02:13
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.
00:02:22
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.
00:02:34
Speaker
And so that's where I went with it.
00:02:36
Speaker
It's growing by leaps and bounds.
00:02:39
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.
00:02:52
Speaker
So many are simple, like if it says, Joe at FCI.
00:02:57
Speaker
Well, you know, Joe is with Service Corp International.
00:03:01
Speaker
Or Fred at Joan's funeral home.
00:03:04
Speaker
You can Google Jones Funeral Home and find out who that is.
00:03:08
Speaker
But I think I have several types of readers.
00:03:11
Speaker
I have working funeral directors who are young learning the business.
00:03:16
Speaker
I have business owners.
00:03:19
Speaker
I have, and I know this from the emails, the addresses, I have virtually all the CEOs of the big public companies.
00:03:28
Speaker
I have people over across the pond
00:03:32
Speaker
who are CEOs of companies over there.
Diverse Readership of the Blog
00:03:34
Speaker
I have mortuary college professors and things like that.
00:03:39
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.
00:03:49
Speaker
I do have some people that are stockbrokers and things like that.
00:03:53
Speaker
And then finally, I have like people from my church that just say, you know, they hear I do this.
00:04:00
Speaker
And they said, well, we read it just because we think it's interesting.
00:04:04
Speaker
And, you know, so that also I have all those constituencies.
00:04:09
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.
00:04:17
Speaker
That is why I try to keep my articles really, really varied.
00:04:22
Speaker
I know like today's article was on the annual report for Dignity PLC in Great Britain.
00:04:30
Speaker
There's not a lot of young funeral directors that care about reading that.
00:04:34
Speaker
But there are the funeral business owners over here and the SCI people and stuff.
00:04:39
Speaker
So I know every day that I'm going to get a certain amount of readers depending on the topic.
00:04:44
Speaker
I well believe that.
00:04:45
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.
00:04:58
Speaker
And definitely there is certain parts and you've hit the nail on the head.
00:05:02
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.
Host's Interests Align with the Blog
00:05:10
Speaker
Like for me, my three things I've always gone on about...
00:05:13
Speaker
are pre-planning, you know, the digital space and what happens after we die and the environment.
00:05:19
Speaker
And so anytime you have any of those, I'm in.
00:05:21
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.
00:05:29
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.
00:05:37
Speaker
Now, you talked about digital post life.
00:05:40
Speaker
But today, if you get into the article,
00:05:43
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.
00:05:58
Speaker
Yeah, well, I'd well believe that.
00:06:00
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.
00:06:15
Speaker
I mean, I'm not to say when somebody passes away,
00:06:18
Speaker
somebody jumps onto Google, finds the local funeral director, but some people actually do do that.
00:06:24
Speaker
You know, then in terms of funeral directors themselves, like marketing to them, where are they?
00:06:29
Speaker
They're on Instagram, they're on Facebook, they're on LinkedIn.
00:06:32
Speaker
You know, so these are the places where still to meet people
00:06:35
Speaker
people in that industry as much as it is anywhere else.
00:06:38
Speaker
You can't not have an online presence in this current day and age.
00:06:41
Speaker
You just can't if you're in business and want to succeed.
00:06:44
Speaker
But it is, it's amazing to watch how has gone from strength to strength, Tom.
00:06:49
Speaker
And I know I featured, so I'm a little biased in saying, you know, that it's pretty good.
00:06:55
Speaker
It does touch on a lot of different topics.
00:06:57
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.
00:07:06
Speaker
Sorry, death is the wrong word.
00:07:07
Speaker
Dispositions after we die.
00:07:09
Speaker
So, you know, you've got Katrina's recomposed, going from strength to strength, from what it looks like in Seattle.
00:07:15
Speaker
And she's actually got competitors now, which I never knew about.
00:07:19
Speaker
What is your thoughts on all of these alternatives?
Emerging Trends in Funeral Practices
00:07:23
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.
00:07:30
Speaker
And she's, you know, Katrina Spade has worked really hard to get her recomposition, recompose going.
00:07:36
Speaker
And all of a sudden, there's a couple competitors, one really big and one kind of small.
00:07:42
Speaker
You know, it's not something that I would think about today, the human composting industry.
00:07:46
Speaker
You know, in 1970, which is 50 years ago, Americans only cremated 5% of the people.
00:07:53
Speaker
You know, now we're up into the 60% bracket.
00:07:57
Speaker
So it just goes to show that some things will catch on.
00:08:02
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.
00:08:11
Speaker
There are things where they freeze dry a body,
00:08:15
Speaker
and then break it into little particles and you end up having like cremains.
00:08:20
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.
00:08:32
Speaker
They think to so many people, it's almost a death fantasy.
00:08:37
Speaker
Well, when I go, I wanna be human composted or I wanna have a green burial or I wanna be freeze dried.
00:08:46
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.
00:08:54
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.
00:09:03
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with you.
00:09:04
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.
00:09:13
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.
00:09:22
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.
00:09:30
Speaker
and there was a lady from the New York
Event Planners vs. Funeral Directors
00:09:31
Speaker
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
00:09:55
Speaker
open their eyes and embrace new ideas that are coming up.
00:09:59
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.
00:10:08
Speaker
We need to be paying attention to them because they're not coming up with it for nothing.
00:10:12
Speaker
It's like when, you know, people turned their noses up on Facebook and Amazon.
00:10:16
Speaker
That'll never work.
00:10:17
Speaker
And now look at it.
00:10:18
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.
00:10:29
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.
00:10:38
Speaker
People said that'll never happen.
00:10:40
Speaker
That'll never happen.
00:10:41
Speaker
And look at today.
00:10:43
Speaker
And now look, it's actually terrible.
00:10:45
Speaker
I could not live without Amazon.
00:10:49
Speaker
Shocking.
00:10:49
Speaker
As a single woman in New York City, it's like those packages on my door.
00:10:53
Speaker
Thank God.
00:10:54
Speaker
I don't have a car.
00:10:55
Speaker
I don't need a man.
00:10:56
Speaker
It's perfect.
00:10:58
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.
00:11:06
Speaker
And I agree with you.
00:11:08
Speaker
I think burial, unfortunately, is...
00:11:10
Speaker
We don't have space.
00:11:11
Speaker
You know, the world just in general is running out of space.
00:11:14
Speaker
It doesn't matter what country you're living in.
00:11:16
Speaker
Asia hit it first.
00:11:17
Speaker
You know, now we're kind of coming up the rear in America.
Environmental Impact of Cremation Methods
00:11:20
Speaker
So I think it's just going to not be feasible.
00:11:23
Speaker
And so you've got cremation.
00:11:25
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.
00:11:32
Speaker
In itself, the old cremation we all knew was dirty.
00:11:36
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.
00:11:45
Speaker
Do you think that in itself could be, could be and will be sort of
00:11:50
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
00:12:15
Speaker
But I'm a pretty firm believer, I have a friend who has a alkaline hydrolysis machine.
00:12:21
Speaker
If he would do it at the same price and say, do you prefer cremation with water and chemicals or flame cremation?
00:12:29
Speaker
He says they will all choose alkaline hydrolysis, the vast majority, but they do it as a premium.
00:12:38
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.
00:12:46
Speaker
And he talks about the environmental issues and all that.
00:12:51
Speaker
And about a third of his choices still go with the alkaline hydrolysis.
00:12:56
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.
00:13:09
Speaker
And just watching how they listen to music or watch television or make their decisions, I think these forms of disposition
00:13:22
Speaker
especially alkaline hydrolysis, if it can be tied to an environmental positive situation, will grow rapidly.
00:13:33
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.
00:13:46
Speaker
So I think there is an element to...
00:13:51
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
Public Perceptions of Burial and Cremation
00:13:59
Speaker
machine.
00:13:59
Speaker
Really?
00:14:00
Speaker
Wow.
00:14:02
Speaker
Very good.
00:14:02
Speaker
That's a very strong statement.
00:14:03
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, honestly, the parts of me love it because it does, you know, your final bath.
00:14:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:11
Speaker
There is sort of a nice spa-like feature to it, I'm not going to lie.
00:14:15
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.
00:14:24
Speaker
And I got to find out lots of interesting things about her and her wishes.
00:14:27
Speaker
And it is fascinating what people's perceptions are.
00:14:31
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.
00:14:35
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
00:15:01
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
00:15:24
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
00:15:48
Speaker
It just came out with too many that I think it confused the general public.
00:15:52
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.
00:16:02
Speaker
I mean, I'm not going to lie, I hold my hand up.
00:16:04
Speaker
Even I'm confused at this point as to who's who and what's what.
00:16:07
Speaker
And so I think that's a problem it's going to face marketing-wise in general to try and get it
00:16:13
Speaker
to the general public and for them to go, oh yeah, I want that because that's amazing.
00:16:17
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.
00:16:26
Speaker
And whether it's, you know, putting the veneers in coffins and
00:16:30
Speaker
It's definitely something that needs to evolve.
00:16:32
Speaker
And I love that all these guys are coming up with new and interesting ways of disposing of bodies.
00:16:40
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?
00:16:46
Speaker
Because that would be my next question.
00:16:48
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.
00:16:57
Speaker
And I just think to myself, we've killed one problem and creating a whole other one.
00:17:02
Speaker
I mean, I can't imagine, you know, with all the plastics and stuff, it's just insane.
00:17:05
Speaker
Medical waste now must be gone up tenfold, which
Marketing Challenges for Alkaline Hydrolysis
00:17:09
Speaker
is amazing.
00:17:09
Speaker
We're saving lives.
00:17:10
Speaker
But when you think of how often people are using and disposing of masks and things,
00:17:15
Speaker
Anyway, I'm digressing.
00:17:16
Speaker
Sorry, Tom.
00:17:18
Speaker
Passionate about the environment is definitely, you know.
00:17:21
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.
00:17:38
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.
00:17:51
Speaker
And they had developed an environmental version of cremation.
00:17:55
Speaker
And one of the things I remember asking a funeral director...
00:17:59
Speaker
you know, do your families, are they interested in something that would be an environmentally friendly option?
00:18:04
Speaker
And he said, no, they just want cremation or burial.
00:18:08
Speaker
And I counted and I said, but do you say, do you just want burial or cremation?
00:18:13
Speaker
Or do you say, would you like a third more, you know, environmentally friendly option?
00:18:17
Speaker
And he was like, well, no, I just offer them burial or cremation.
00:18:19
Speaker
I said, well, of course, if you offer somebody milk chocolate or white chocolate, they don't know about dark chocolate.
00:18:25
Speaker
So,
00:18:26
Speaker
they're only going to go.
00:18:27
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.
00:18:44
Speaker
I think there will be more and more of that.
00:18:46
Speaker
I think it'll be more and more an issue on the death care industry.
00:18:51
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.
00:19:13
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
Evolution of Funeral Services
00:19:35
Speaker
the american way of death yeah she was not when i was in mortuary school that book was old
00:19:42
Speaker
And we're 40 years from that.
00:19:44
Speaker
What are your thoughts just in general about what she sort of wrote about the industry?
00:19:49
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.
00:20:00
Speaker
Once the pandemic came on,
00:20:03
Speaker
What country in the world has started selling designer masks and masks that go with your dresses?
00:20:08
Speaker
You know, America is doing it.
00:20:10
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.
00:20:18
Speaker
But I think you go and my family is no different.
00:20:23
Speaker
My great grandfather arrived in Minnesota as a Swedish immigrant in 1872.
00:20:30
Speaker
And he was trained as a cabinet maker.
00:20:33
Speaker
So he started building coffins in the small community we're in when people died.
00:20:39
Speaker
And we have records of our first funeral, first casket sold, coffin sold, was five years before Custer's Last Stand.
00:20:49
Speaker
That puts it in perspective.
00:20:50
Speaker
Custer's Last Stand was 1876.
00:20:53
Speaker
We have a record of selling a coffin in 1872.
00:20:55
Speaker
So he started out as a cabinet maker that built coffins.
00:21:01
Speaker
His son then went
00:21:02
Speaker
to the first class of morticians at the University of Minnesota.
00:21:07
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.
00:21:19
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
00:21:29
Speaker
out of somebody just buying a casket or coffin and bringing it to the church or their home and showing it.
00:21:34
Speaker
We built a home for funerals and we've evolved into a crematory, a place that we can have receptions.
00:21:42
Speaker
Over the years we've evolved into all of that.
00:21:45
Speaker
And I don't think, and it's about that family making a living for themselves
00:21:53
Speaker
going forward.
00:21:54
Speaker
So yes, they ended up not making caskets.
00:21:57
Speaker
They bought them from Batesville or Aurora for $500 and sold them for a thousand.
00:22:02
Speaker
But we did get into this purveyor of death care, which Mitford talked about that they're businessmen.
00:22:11
Speaker
Well,
00:22:12
Speaker
I don't think there's anything wrong with being a businessman.
00:22:15
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.
00:22:26
Speaker
So I think the funeral industry, the death care industry is a business.
00:22:33
Speaker
We're an evolving business.
00:22:35
Speaker
And if we don't evolve, we'll be dinosaurs.
00:22:37
Speaker
It's just like you talked about as a funeral planner.
00:22:41
Speaker
Maybe the
00:22:42
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.
00:22:52
Speaker
You're hearing about some funeral homes having celebrants on staff.
00:22:56
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?
00:23:08
Speaker
No, I absolutely agree.
Misconceptions About the Funeral Industry
00:23:10
Speaker
She really gave you guys a hard time.
00:23:13
Speaker
I will say that.
00:23:14
Speaker
It's a hard book to read because she just goes at it.
00:23:18
Speaker
She's like a dog with a bone.
00:23:19
Speaker
She just goes at it and at it and at it.
00:23:21
Speaker
And what is it she calls you?
00:23:22
Speaker
The Funeral Men or the Funeral Guys or something.
00:23:24
Speaker
Funeral Men, I think.
00:23:26
Speaker
And I do.
00:23:26
Speaker
I think there is that sort of old school idea, Tom, that is...
00:23:32
Speaker
you were robbing from the blind and the poor just to put, you know, bury their families and stuff.
00:23:37
Speaker
And everybody in the industry is cowboys.
00:23:39
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.
00:23:53
Speaker
Like when I say to people that I work in the funeral business, well, first of all, they think I'm absolutely mad.
00:23:59
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.
00:24:05
Speaker
You know, I tell people I go to conventions and that I could go to a convention every week for a year.
00:24:10
Speaker
And there's that many funeral conventions over in the world.
00:24:13
Speaker
And then what?
00:24:14
Speaker
And then I write for a funeral magazine.
00:24:15
Speaker
What?
00:24:15
Speaker
You have magazines?
00:24:16
Speaker
I'm like, it is an industry, people.
00:24:18
Speaker
It is an industry.
00:24:20
Speaker
And exactly right, people need to make a living and they do make a living.
00:24:24
Speaker
I've always said that, you know, and you're in, you talked about you're in Queens.
00:24:28
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.
00:24:35
Speaker
And I'd say, what do you think of your congressman or congresswoman?
00:24:38
Speaker
They'd say, oh, he or she is not too bad.
00:24:41
Speaker
And that's, I've compared that with funeral homes because people always say,
00:24:46
Speaker
What do you think of funeral directors?
00:24:47
Speaker
Oh, they're a bunch of crooks, they charge too much money, they do this, they do that.
00:24:51
Speaker
And you say, well, what about the funeral director that took care of your dad or mom?
00:24:55
Speaker
And they say, oh, he's a great guy, he's a wonderful guy.
00:24:58
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.
00:25:07
Speaker
It is true.
00:25:08
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.
00:25:30
Speaker
What are your thoughts on those?
00:25:32
Speaker
Well, you know, it's not my cup of tea.
00:25:34
Speaker
We used to have a,
00:25:37
Speaker
philosophy at our funeral home that we've ran a good funeral if nobody knows we're there.
00:25:44
Speaker
It just flows, it goes out.
00:25:46
Speaker
Bringing advice to a consumer is great.
00:25:50
Speaker
And I have nothing wrong with Caitlin Doherty or new ways of doing funerals.
00:25:55
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,
00:26:09
Speaker
are much different than the norms and mores of a city like New York City.
00:26:13
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.
00:26:21
Speaker
You know, so I think they used to say politics is a local business.
00:26:24
Speaker
I think funeral directing is a local business.
00:26:27
Speaker
And none of us know how that business really is somewhere else unless we've been there.
00:26:35
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.
Global Differences in Funeral Practices
00:26:52
Speaker
You know, in rural Ireland, we're still doing wakes.
00:26:55
Speaker
In Dublin, the removal that's kind of the new wake has almost been removed because the financial cost of it.
00:27:01
Speaker
And I don't say it's just financial as in that it's the funeral homes.
00:27:05
Speaker
It's not.
00:27:05
Speaker
It's people's time.
00:27:06
Speaker
People don't have time anymore.
00:27:08
Speaker
And I think COVID, unfortunately, from what I've seen, again, now I'm in New York City and I know 100%.
00:27:14
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.
00:27:24
Speaker
It's massively different.
00:27:26
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
00:27:40
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
00:28:06
Speaker
used to have a pastor I worked with who said, funeral should be inconvenient.
00:28:10
Speaker
Families should stop and recognize that this life has been lived.
00:28:13
Speaker
And I agree with you.
00:28:15
Speaker
And COVID is not going to help things because we are getting used to doing something or not doing something.
00:28:23
Speaker
And, you know, if it worked when grandpa died of COVID, the funeral home just picked him
Significance of Memorials in Grieving
00:28:28
Speaker
up and cremated him.
00:28:28
Speaker
And we went and got the ashes two weeks later.
00:28:31
Speaker
We didn't have a visitation.
00:28:32
Speaker
We didn't have the casket.
00:28:34
Speaker
Well, the,
00:28:35
Speaker
Consumers think, well, that worked for me.
00:28:39
Speaker
They may not necessarily know that they didn't get healing, you know, and it may move itself down.
00:28:45
Speaker
And I also worry about, I think permanent remembrance is incredible to have.
00:28:50
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.
00:29:05
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.
00:29:10
Speaker
And it's always a remembrance that that life was lived.
00:29:15
Speaker
That person, they did have a grandfather, you know, my children, where when we have, cause there's this stone, there it is.
00:29:22
Speaker
When we take away that permanent remembrance, I worry what's going to happen with, with, you know,
00:29:29
Speaker
who we are and where did we come from and things like that.
00:29:33
Speaker
I worry about that and COVID is not helping in that.
00:29:39
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
00:29:57
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.
Role of Funerals in Healing
00:30:05
Speaker
I have lost young friends, but we lost our dog that we had for 16 years.
00:30:10
Speaker
And when I say she was my best friend in the entire world, you know, she came
00:30:15
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
00:30:39
Speaker
I will never forget that weekend.
00:30:41
Speaker
I was like a lost soul wandering through the house.
00:30:44
Speaker
And I kept saying to mom, why do like we were just crying the whole family.
00:30:47
Speaker
We were just crying all weekend.
00:30:49
Speaker
And I really realized a funeral.
00:30:52
Speaker
It's there's a blueprint.
00:30:53
Speaker
It's OK.
00:30:54
Speaker
What do I need to do next?
00:30:55
Speaker
Next is a task orientation of I need to call the funeral director.
00:30:59
Speaker
I need to.
00:31:00
Speaker
be present at this point.
00:31:01
Speaker
I need to have people around me.
00:31:03
Speaker
Even my friends contacted me and said, Jen, we don't know what to do.
00:31:07
Speaker
Like, do we send you a card?
00:31:08
Speaker
Do we send you flowers?
00:31:09
Speaker
Like, we're so sad and we don't know what to do.
00:31:12
Speaker
Like, do we just call up to your house and give you a hug?
00:31:14
Speaker
Which would have happened in a funeral setting.
00:31:16
Speaker
There were just, it really identified to me the ritual of that blueprint.
00:31:21
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.
00:31:28
Speaker
But
00:31:29
Speaker
I'm telling you now, those are two people, two losses in my life I've never gotten over.
00:31:34
Speaker
I still get emotional.
00:31:36
Speaker
And I go to the grave when I go home and I cry.
00:31:39
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?
00:31:49
Speaker
So I absolutely believe in it and even go so far as
00:31:52
Speaker
my cremation jewellery line.
00:31:54
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.
00:32:06
Speaker
It is a permanent remembrance of their person.
00:32:08
Speaker
And with cremation, as we both know, a lot of people scatter it.
00:32:12
Speaker
And so there's no permanent resting place.
00:32:14
Speaker
Or if you scatter in one particular place, it can be a type of permanent resting place.
00:32:20
Speaker
But to have that little piece of somebody that you can always go to and not talk to.
00:32:25
Speaker
I do.
00:32:26
Speaker
I talk to the dead.
00:32:27
Speaker
I'm not going to lie.
00:32:28
Speaker
That's my way of dealing with things.
00:32:30
Speaker
And we all have different, you know.
00:32:32
Speaker
Much like alkaline hydrolysis, I think, moving forward,
00:32:35
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.
00:32:46
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.
Cremation Jewelry as Remembrance
00:33:03
Speaker
And I think
00:33:04
Speaker
You're exactly right that jewelry does take some of that and allow you to carry it with you.
00:33:10
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?
00:33:18
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:33:19
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.
00:33:27
Speaker
So it really does.
00:33:29
Speaker
We just have to meet people.
00:33:31
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.
00:33:37
Speaker
And I guess that's one of the things for the funeral industry as a whole is to.
00:33:41
Speaker
pause for a second and meet people where they're at.
00:33:43
Speaker
What do they want nowadays?
00:33:44
Speaker
What has changed?
00:33:46
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.
Conclusion and Future Discussions
00:33:57
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.
00:34:05
Speaker
We told them what they wanted.
00:34:08
Speaker
And that's not necessarily true.
00:34:09
Speaker
We need to listen.
00:34:10
Speaker
Need to listen.
00:34:11
Speaker
So, so Mitford had some elements correct.
00:34:15
Speaker
Well, Tom, thank you so much.
00:34:16
Speaker
I know this, the delay has been slightly had us go back and forth, but thank you so much for, for joining me.
00:34:23
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.
00:34:33
Speaker
It was, it was really good.
00:34:35
Speaker
I'm happy to do it.
00:34:36
Speaker
I've enjoyed it.
00:34:38
Speaker
I enjoy my little bit of celebrityism with funeral director daily and thank you for reading it.
00:34:44
Speaker
No worries, of course.
00:34:45
Speaker
And have you got any future plans for it or would you take it to blog for or to podcast form?
00:34:52
Speaker
No, you like the writing.
00:34:53
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.
00:35:06
Speaker
But we'll see where it goes.
00:35:07
Speaker
We'll see where it goes.
00:35:08
Speaker
I'm not a real technical guy.
00:35:10
Speaker
It was hard for me just to learn how to type on the computer and get the words out there.
00:35:15
Speaker
Well, I really think you should because you have an opportunity there.
00:35:19
Speaker
You know, you've got you've got the market.
00:35:22
Speaker
We're all we all like to hear what you have to say.
00:35:25
Speaker
So I think it's definitely something for sure to have a think about.
00:35:28
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
00:35:29
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:35:30
Speaker
Well, thank you so much.
00:35:31
Speaker
And yeah, I'll be in touch soon.
00:35:36
Speaker
Well, what do you think of Tom?
00:35:38
Speaker
I hope you liked him as much as I do.
00:35:41
Speaker
I think he's a really cool character.
00:35:43
Speaker
He's definitely somebody who probes the industry from the inside out.
00:35:48
Speaker
His blog is super interesting.
00:35:49
Speaker
So check it out in the links below and stay tuned to next week.
00:35:53
Speaker
We'll talk to you later.
00:35:54
Speaker
Ciao for now.