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Barbara Kemmis: All Things Mental Health
27 Plays3 years ago
Losing someone and mourning that loss can take a toll on the mental health of the people who are left behind. This is especially true during the pandemic, when cremation disposal is on the rise. Relatives gathering for the celebration of life gathering was very limited.
Even now when the effects of the pandemic have waned, cremation is still on the rise, which could be understood as a result of lack of burial sites and financial constraints. On the good side, though, the pandemic has brought a positive effect on mental health because it is openly discussed in society.
Jennifer’s guest for this episode is Barbara Kemmis, the Executive Director of CANA and conversation will focus around mental health and how cremation has evolved since the pandemic. Stream the episode to learn about how you can take care of your mental health while grieving, and how you can support those who are struggling in their personal grief journey.
LITTLE NUGGETS OF GOLD:
- Does Barbara think that cremation will continue to grow after Covid?
- Jennifer's thoughts on funerals and celebration of life
- Barbara's experience participating in an online funeral for a distant relative in the Philippines
- CANA's Focus Group research validation on direct cremation and cremation with service
- Why does Jennifer think that funeral directors are losing it in terms of value servicing?
- Thoughts on cremation as a threat to profitability of funeral providers
- If there is such a thing as a positive outcome of the pandemic, it would be the increased openness on mental health
- Why is mental health important in developing some kind of coping mechanism?
- Funeral directors are complemented by event planners and celebrants in providing value to families
- CANA is now taking an interest in different forms of disposition
Resources:
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters, by Priya Parker (https://www.amazon.com/Art-Gathering-How-Meet-Matters/dp/1594634920)
Connect with Barbara Kemmis:
Funeral Professionals Peer Support - https://funeralspeersupport.com/
CANA Website - https://www.cremationassociation.org/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbarakemmis
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 and Guest Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper podcast.
00:00:03
Speaker
I'm your host Jennifer Muldowney aka the Glam Reaper.
00:00:06
Speaker
On today's episode we are talking all things mental health with Cain as Barbara Chemis.
00:00:12
Speaker
Take it away.
00:00:23
Speaker
Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper podcast.
00:00:27
Speaker
I'm your host Jennifer Muldaney and I have one of my favourite people to bump into at the conventions, Barbara Chemis.
00:00:34
Speaker
Is Chemis the right way of pronouncing it?
00:00:36
Speaker
Chemis?
00:00:37
Speaker
Okay, perfect.
00:00:38
Speaker
I was as an Irish person, I always have to make sure I get that perfectly clear.
00:00:41
Speaker
Barbara, welcome.
00:00:43
Speaker
Thank you, Jennifer.
00:00:44
Speaker
So glad to be with you.
00:00:46
Speaker
Tell us a little, well, tell the audience a little bit about who you are, where you're from.
00:00:52
Speaker
You're in the U.S. But yeah, tell us a little bit about you.
00:00:54
Speaker
Sure.
00:00:55
Speaker
I'm talking to you from Chicago, Illinois.
00:00:57
Speaker
The headquarters of the Cremation Association of North America is in suburban Chicago.
00:01:04
Speaker
And I'm the executive director of Kena Cremation Association.
00:01:09
Speaker
And we're a trade association with 3,500 members, ranging from funeral homes, cemeteries, crematories, suppliers, students, consultants, the common denominator being cremation.
00:01:22
Speaker
That's what we focus on and what we like to talk about.
Impact of COVID-19 on Cremation Rates
00:01:25
Speaker
Cool.
00:01:26
Speaker
Very good.
00:01:28
Speaker
And so cremation, obviously, in COVID times especially, has taken a massive increase.
00:01:36
Speaker
And I feel like you and I sort of will, we definitely think a lot alike about the same thing we've joked about sort of doing this podcast for a while.
00:01:44
Speaker
We, like cremation, it's on the rise.
00:01:46
Speaker
I mean, we're running out of burial space the world over.
00:01:49
Speaker
We all, well, we all know that.
00:01:51
Speaker
The general public maybe doesn't know that, but we all know that.
00:01:54
Speaker
But then with COVID and obviously certain restrictions and stuff and people not being able to have funerals, cremation seems to just increase, increase, increase.
00:02:03
Speaker
Do you think that that took a huge step and it'll now peter out or do you think it'll just keep climbing and climbing, climbing?
00:02:10
Speaker
Well, I do think cremation rates are going to continue to grow.
00:02:14
Speaker
And interestingly, in 2020 and 2021, the two primary cases
00:02:19
Speaker
well, years for COVID deaths in the US and Canada and US and Canada statistics are what came in most tracks.
00:02:26
Speaker
But I think this is true internationally.
00:02:30
Speaker
Fascinating is the percentage of cremations grew predictably.
00:02:35
Speaker
It, you know, as I talked to my members, they're like, oh my gosh, my cremation rate is three times, four times what it was.
00:02:40
Speaker
Well, what, and I believe them, they're right.
00:02:44
Speaker
Because the sheer numbers of cremations increased so dramatically.
00:02:49
Speaker
So as far as COVID driving some exponential or stair-step increase in cremations overall, we didn't see that.
00:02:59
Speaker
It was 1.5% increase year over year.
00:03:02
Speaker
But the total number of deaths was so much bigger.
00:03:06
Speaker
And so in 2020, it was just shy of 2 million cremations in the United States.
00:03:12
Speaker
The final numbers for 2021 aren't in yet.
00:03:15
Speaker
We're starting that data collection now, but the preliminary numbers were closer to 2 million cremations.
00:03:21
Speaker
I expect we'll hit 2 million in 2021.
00:03:25
Speaker
And that's incredible.
00:03:26
Speaker
That's hundreds of thousands more than 2019.
00:03:30
Speaker
So even though, you know, I'm cautious about, oh, yeah, cremation rates grow predictably and all that.
Decision Making During the Pandemic
00:03:38
Speaker
No, the experience is that hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. experienced cremation probably for the first time or the first time in a long time.
00:03:46
Speaker
And
00:03:46
Speaker
And in circumstances you described without the ability to have services, some of our members reported, especially in the East Coast in the early months of COVID, they would get a call at the cemetery.
00:04:01
Speaker
What can you do first, cremation or burial?
00:04:03
Speaker
Family didn't care.
00:04:04
Speaker
They just didn't like their loved one in a refrigerated truck or what can happen faster.
00:04:11
Speaker
They were making decisions
00:04:13
Speaker
under circumstances that I hope we never experience again.
00:04:16
Speaker
Right?
00:04:17
Speaker
Right.
00:04:18
Speaker
I know that's, that's crazy.
00:04:20
Speaker
I never, I never knew that.
00:04:22
Speaker
That's, that's a horrible position that the families were in.
00:04:27
Speaker
I mean, I know there was, there wasn't so much atrocities that kind of went on, but to, to think that somebody had, you know, lost somebody and then having to say something like that, I mean, that's brutal.
The Role of Memorial Services
00:04:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:38
Speaker
Because I know, yeah, in our, in our, in my memorial business,
00:04:43
Speaker
we yeah we found that a lot of people um got somebody cremated and then are having the service later memorials in the last year and stuff have increased for us um where the urn is present and and but they're having it sort of a year or two years after the person passed away um whereas with burial while you can still absolutely have a service and if you haven't done something i would recommend it not for my own gains but from a
00:05:09
Speaker
I, it's interesting when I started my journey and sort of this idea of a memorial service that's similar, that is a funeral, but it's not a funeral and stuff.
00:05:19
Speaker
People used to think, oh, it was just throwing a party and this life celebration quote got thrown around so much.
00:05:25
Speaker
And, you know, people would say, oh, you're just dancing on graves or you just want a party and stuff like that.
00:05:30
Speaker
And I'm like, that's not what it is at all.
00:05:32
Speaker
Like I 150 million percent believe in the funeral, the blueprint of
00:05:39
Speaker
that as being something where everyone gathers and grieving can begin if it hasn't already and just that safe space for everybody and creating that just lovely warm environment um and there's such a fine line between it being a celebration of life and mourning a loss you know and we were actually only talking about it at a memorial at the weekend it's um you know you can throw a party of course you can and if that's what but i feel like that just sort of
00:06:06
Speaker
cushions that it's like we're ignoring the grief we're ignoring the loss we're ignoring the person has passed away um and i think we have to address that so i think um whether somebody in covid got um cremated or buried i feel like having some sort of a service even if it's for 10 people in your home something just something um it's a funeral is just so so so important i think so i wholeheartedly agree and i think there's
00:06:34
Speaker
you know, language matters, obviously.
Technology and Accessibility in Funerals
00:06:36
Speaker
And whether it's funeral celebration of life or, you know, dinner, whatever, whatever it is.
00:06:45
Speaker
I think we as humans, it's our impulse to gather, to comfort each other, to celebrate together.
00:06:52
Speaker
It's not, you know, it's not typical to have solo, you know,
00:06:56
Speaker
you know, markings of, of rites of passage kind of thing.
00:07:00
Speaker
And so, you know, COVID interrupted that sometimes, sometimes it could be, I went to more kind of online funerals, including family as far flung as the Philippines during COVID.
00:07:12
Speaker
I don't think they would have live streamed it otherwise, right.
00:07:15
Speaker
Had it been COVID.
00:07:17
Speaker
And I'm so grateful because this was a distant relative and I could participate and I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have,
00:07:23
Speaker
flown to the Philippines even had I could at that point.
00:07:27
Speaker
So there's, you know, there's, there's an accessibility aspect that technology brings us to gather.
00:07:33
Speaker
And I have to say, I think the favorite part of that, of that there, I mean, that the whole service was great, but there was this time between the mass and driving to the cemetery where my cousin-in-law is,
00:07:49
Speaker
He had a driver, but he was filming downtown, the downtown of the small town where most of the relatives had grown up or visited frequently in their childhood.
00:07:59
Speaker
And the Zoom chat went nuts.
00:08:01
Speaker
It was like, oh my gosh, so-and-so's, like I see them on the street.
00:08:04
Speaker
There they are.
00:08:05
Speaker
There's so-and-so.
00:08:05
Speaker
And oh, that cafe's still open.
00:08:07
Speaker
I'm glad it survived COVID.
00:08:09
Speaker
And like all of this, all of this, like, you know, reminiscing about their town.
Research on Rituals and Gatherings
00:08:16
Speaker
And of course there were family memories shared and stuff.
00:08:19
Speaker
during the ceremony and during the burial time.
00:08:22
Speaker
But I mean, that experience was all of it.
00:08:26
Speaker
It was tears during the mass.
00:08:28
Speaker
When the casket closed, it was literally wailing on Zoom.
00:08:33
Speaker
Then this family reunion, virtual family reunion.
00:08:37
Speaker
And then at the cemetery, more sharing of memories and experiences and asking after people.
00:08:44
Speaker
And it was, you know, so it was the whole range
00:08:47
Speaker
experience.
00:08:49
Speaker
That's a very specific example, but I think whatever the impulse is, whatever we call it, you know, we do something to mark these rites of passage.
00:08:59
Speaker
And Kena research has validated that too.
00:09:02
Speaker
A few years ago, for example, we did some focus group research.
00:09:06
Speaker
And if you've ever participated in focus group research, you know, you hire somebody to populate the focus groups, but you've got to tell them who you want.
00:09:14
Speaker
So we told them income and age and gender and all these things.
00:09:18
Speaker
And then we said, we want two groups.
00:09:19
Speaker
We want a direct cremation group and a cremation with service group.
00:09:23
Speaker
Okay.
00:09:24
Speaker
And, and they said, okay, fine.
00:09:25
Speaker
What does that mean?
00:09:26
Speaker
And we screwed up.
00:09:28
Speaker
We made our first mistake in the research.
00:09:30
Speaker
And we said, direct cremation means people who chose cremation and did nothing.
00:09:34
Speaker
And cremation with service means people who chose cremation and then had a funeral celebration of life, fill in the blank.
00:09:41
Speaker
They came back to us and said, we can't populate the first group.
00:09:44
Speaker
Out of our tens of thousands of people in our database, we can't find anybody, we can find thousands of people who arrange cremations, but no one who did nothing.
00:09:54
Speaker
No one.
00:09:55
Speaker
And the mistake was, what we meant was did nothing with the funeral provider, with the cremation provider's involvement or assistance.
00:10:04
Speaker
They could have done something on their own.
00:10:06
Speaker
So once we change that, then we could populate both groups.
00:10:10
Speaker
But I'm here to tell you, I'm sitting on the other side of the glass during these focus groups, and I can't tell who's the direct cremation group versus the cremationless service group.
00:10:19
Speaker
As they talked about their cremation experience, they were the same.
00:10:23
Speaker
Not that it didn't matter if a funeral director was involved.
00:10:26
Speaker
Of course it did.
00:10:27
Speaker
However, by and large, their experiences were similar, whether they DIYed their services or not.
00:10:35
Speaker
So
00:10:35
Speaker
The importance, this is all by way of validating your statement.
00:10:39
Speaker
The importance of seeing this is critical.
00:10:42
Speaker
Yeah, it really is.
00:10:43
Speaker
That's really fascinating to hear because I often, in my dealings with funeral homes, it's kind of one of the things I'm saying, I'm like,