Casket Attire: Shorts And A T-Shirt?

What clothes should you wear in your casket?  Something further to think about.

Per P.J. O'Rourke in "Men in Shorts:  There's no fool like an old fool dressed like a young fool":  More and more middle-aged men are no longer wearing suits to work.  Many are wearing shorts and a t-shirt, and not well.  Instead of casual Friday, every work day is casual day now.  "And (we're not getting younger) you can't go to the grave wearing shorts and a t-shirt.  The one place where a dress code reliably obtains is among morticians.  You WILL be wearing a suit when you're dead.  If your family and friends have never seen you in a suit before, there's a chance that you'll be mistaken for the funeral director.  You really don't want people leaning over your casket, asking, "How much is this costing us?"

"While Alive, He Lived" (An Epitaph)

"While Alive, He Lived"

Malcolm Forbes was keen that his tombstone read the above phrase, and indeed it does.

Theresa Caputo, Medium

Have you watched Theresa Caputo's reality show, Medium?  She can channel our departed loved ones.  Whether you believe in Mediums or not, or whether you like her Long Island accent and demeanor, she makes people think and talk about death, and life.  Most of us do not or do not want to.  Often the departed she talks about have died unexpectedly.  My point is always, always, always to prepare and plan ahead and pay for your own future death for your survivor's sakes!

Perpetual Care for Cemeteries an Eternal Task

It's not uncommon to find old, grossly uncared for cemeteries in many places across the US.  They often are rich in history but unable to afford the upkeep.  It's a sad shame.  You'll even find that many of these cemeteries have big shots buried there:  mayors, politicians, Medal of Honor winners, soldiers, nurses, heros and heroines, actors, entertainers, magicians, sports team owners and players, etc.  Many of these cemeteries are older ones, and beautiful.  Or once were beautiful and now are often abandoned and overgrown, wild kingdoms, often sites of dumping, prostitution and other crimes.  100 years ago and more people would visit cemeteries for the day to picnic and enjoy the beautiful park-like atmosphere.  Now that's mostly a thing of the past.  Back in the 1700s and 1800s people lived and died in their communities and tended their ancestors' graves.  Now we have such a mobile society and we are all busy busy busy, and there's no connection to our ancestors.  Cemeteries were once hallowed ground, but mostly that's no longer true. The operators of deeply neglected cemeteries cannot pay for the upkeep of older graves and don't have enough money from new burials to take care of their sprawling necropolises.  Many people also are choosing to have remains cremated.  It's cheaper.

Some 19th century cemeteries opened before perpetual care was established.  Today all states require that a portion of the sale price of burial space-10 to 15 percent- be placed in an irrevocable trust for the care of the grounds, forever.  What other business has to do this?  In many cases at older cemeteries and funeral homes people paid for perpetual care and were defrauded.

(Thanks in large part to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, March 25, 2012, written by Edward Colimore.)

Artificial Joints After Death, The Ultimate Recycle

What do we do with things in our bodies that outlast us after death?  Clothes are donated, eyeglasses go to Lions Clubs and hearing aids go to clinics.  Pacemakers have to "explanted" before cremation or they will explode.  They can be reused in underserved countries.  Because of liability issues, prosthetic devices are not reused in this country, but they are used overseas by the world's most underserved populations. Some European crematoria have been retrofitted with power-generating turbines.  High cremation temperatures of 1,600 to 1,800 degrees means there's a lot of heat left over.  The steam generated from cooling the cremation vault can be used to make electricity.  Some of these crematoria have redirected the heat to buildings, offices, and recently a municipal swimming pool.

In 1985 the U.S. cremation rate was 15%.  By 2010 that figure had risen to 40%.  In 2009 about 1 million people received hip or knee replacements.  Artificial joints are made of titanium mostly.  It's as strong as steel but about 45% lighter.  The joints survive 1,600-1,800 degree cremation just fine.  In the past these joints were placed in landfills or perhaps buried in a grave.  Nowadays these joints can fetch $12/pound; not a huge amount but still something.  They are now melted down at specialty recycling facilities and formed into ingots.   Most of the ingots go into airplanes, cars and wind turbines.  Some ingots do go back into medical implants, and that comforts some survivors.  About a third of crematoria refuse payment from the recyclers, a third designate a charity, and a third take the money but donate it themselves.

Memorialization Dream For a Loved One Comes True; A Good Story

When a loved one dies one of many decisions to be made is how to memorialize that person.  Do we keep it simple or make it elaborate or do nothing at all?  How much do you have or want to spend to supply a witness/testament to the deceased's life?  Who will pay for this memorialization?  It typically starts at about $2000.00 and goes up from there, potentially way up.

Mary McFadden is a petite, soft-spoken and gentle lady who dared to have a big dream and to make it a reality.  Mary loved her younger brother Skip very much and has missed him since his untimely passing in 1995.  Her dream was to locate her brother's burial site and to raise money to purchase a marker for him.  Mary and her companions, Lynn Taylor and katie Glinski, located Mary's brother and mother's burial sites after a two-year search.  To purchase the marker, Mary started her fund-raising project by recycling cans for cash.  Her community also pitched in; the First Bite Restaurant put a donation jar on the counter; the Ken-Crest Lifesharing program gave Mary a Christmas donation; the Montgomery County Supports Coordination Organization surprised Mary at the Spring Awards Ceremony with a donation; and other guests also contributed.  Finally, her dream came true and Mary had a marker designed by (at?) Riverside Cemetery.  Skip knew how dearly his big sister, Mary, loved him and she showed the true measure of her love at his Marker Ceremony held on July 7, 2011 at the Riverside Cemetery.  Norma Hicks has been Mary's Lifeshare Family for more than 20 years and quoted Maya Angelou at the ceremony.  This quote highlights Mary's daring and courage, "I believe the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity, is daring to dare."
Mary says "God Bless and Thank You for your donations and making my dream come true."

Death Surrounds Us; Let Your Final Wishes Be Known

Death is all around us, every day.  My 79-year-old mother called today with the news that a neighborhood mother from my youth died of Alzheimer's, after suffering from it for years.  I see in one newspaper that a 63-year-old man and separately an 84-year-old woman died at home from aneurysms.  In another newspaper a 57-year-old woman died of colon cancer.  Death knocking at the door.  You never know when.

It seems most families don't talk about the end of life.  Life does come to an end someday.  Do you have a will?  A living will?  A durable power of attorney for healthcare?  Durable powers of attorney for whoever you want to manage your money if you cannot?  What are your final wishes?  Have you left notes for your spouse, children, close friends?  Where do you want to be buried?  Do you want to be cremated or not?  And where is the money to pay for these things?  Do you want a service for family and friends?

Spanx Founder Sara Blakely's Mortality Motivation

Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx with only a $5000 investment, has made Forbes Billionaire's List this year.  She experienced a tragedy at 16.  While riding a bike around her cul-de-sac in Clearwater, FL, she saw a car run over and kill her best friend, right in front of her.  "I think that when you witness death at age 16, there's a sense of urgency about life," she says.  "The thought of my mortality-I think about it a lot.  I find it motivating.  It can be anytime that your number's up."  (Both of her prom dates died in horrible circumstances.)


The writer Dave Eggers grew up in Lake Forest, Illinois, and wanted to be a cartoonist.  When he was in college at the University of Illinois, both his parents died of cancer within six months on one another, and he was completely on his own at the age of 21.  He was made the guardian of his eight-year-old brother, Christopher, so he had to drop out of college to support the family.  He later said:  "On the one hand you are so completely bewildered that something so surreal and incomprehensible could happen.  At the same time, suddenly the limitations or hesitations that you might have imposed on yourself fall away.  There's a weird, optimistic recklessness that could easily be construed as nihilism but is really the opposite.  You see that there is a beginning and an end and that you have only a certaing amount of time to act.  And you want to get started."

Stolen Money Buried In Grandma's Grave

On February 29, 2012 an armored car driver killed his partner and then stole $2.3 million from his armored car in the Strip District in Pittsburgh, PA.  He still is at large.  He left $275,000 at his parents house.  And he buried $24,000 in his grandmother's grave, which was found and seized by police.  No one knows where the balance of the money is now.

Life Passes By In The Blink Of An Eye; A Poem

River

by Pat Schneider


A delicate fuzz of fog
like mold, or moss,
all across the river
in this early light.
Another day, I might
have been sleeping.

What a pity. How the stars
and seas and rivers
in their fragile lace of fog
go on without us
morning after morning,
year after year.
And we disappear.

Deathcare Corporate Greed & Malfeasance. Does Capitalism Work?

The two biggest providers in the deathcare industry are Service Corp. International (SCI) and Stewart Enterprises.  SCI has about $2 billion in annual revenue and is the largest cemetery and funeral company in the world.  Most of its operations are domestic.  The turnover in the lower tiers of the companies is enormous, especially with their salespeople ("family service counselors").  They are paid a pitiful sum and much is demanded of them.  Often their working conditions are pitiful.   The kitchens on the premises are old and dirty and sometimes infested with vermin.  They are expected to work 7 days a week and nights.  Stewarts salespeople are actually independent contractors and are not paid a salary.   They are paid 100% straight commission (draw against commission).  SCI's salespeople are employees and are paid $8.00/hour, barely above the minimum wage.  The corporate benefits are good but expensive and many lower tier employees, salespeople and administrative staff, cannot afford the benefits.  If salespeople do not meet some pretty high sales minimums they are fired.  Managers are not though!

When a death occurs you probably have no idea that the people you meet with at the cemetery are paid via commission.  You are grieving and they are trying to figure out how to maximize sales/commissions for themselves and their companies.  The markups on the range of products they sell are enormous, 300-400% and up.  SCI and Stewart demand that their employees do "after-care visits" in the survivors homes within 3 days of burial.  These are actually and simply sales calls.  Corporate semantics disagree with this, but if you look at special file folders counselors put together for each family they deal with, under "after-care visits" the only line items in these folders are dollar amounts and sales achieved.  The companies want to strike while the iron is hot, and they want counselors to get referrals, referrals, referrals.  If a cemetery or funeral home person told me they were going to visit me in my home after my father was buried I probably would have hit them.  These visits are supposed to be arranged when the family comes to the cemetery to make arrangements right after death occurs!  Rather callous and not very sensitive at all to the family's grief.

Deathcare management is a different matter.  They can be extremely well compensated.  There are too many layers of well-paid and lazy management, mostly sales managers.  A simple sales manager at an SCI location makes about $45,000/year minimum.  If he/she hits certain sales targets they can make in total much much more,  up to about $120,000/year.  And often they do not work weekends and evenings.   While family service counselors are very lucky to earn $45,000 if they are very good at what they do.  The corporate mantra is that the more salespeople the merrier.  While these cumulative sales can boost a managers commissions, they can water down what the average salesperson/counselor makes.  The million dollar question is does a cemetery have a certain natural sales level due to annual burials or can salespeople really drive new buyers and higher sales and higher burial rates to any given cemetery?

And then management is paid very well.  At Stewart higher level sales managers all seemed to like to drive Mercedes and nice, big BMWs.  Many management types receive very generous stock options.  Lower lever employees do not.  At SCI many many managers received low cost stock options (exercise prices of $2-$4) 7 to eight years ago roughly.  The problem with options is that they typically expire at some point in time, usually about after 5 years.  For these lucky SCI managers the SCI stock price got up into the low teens around expiration.  So what did these corporate types do?  They took the money and ran.  Rather than exercise the options and buy and hold the underlying stok, they exercised the options and sold the stock simultaneously, thereby receiving tens of thousand, hundreds of thousands, and millions of dollars in windfall cash proceeds.  And then when SCI stock went down to low single digits in the bad economy of these last few years, the neanderthal board of directors at SCI granted all of these same and already well compensated managers a new round of options with low exercise prices!  How is that not criminal.  The stock has come back due to the general market doing better recently and not because of any smart management by SCI's management.  Watch and see.  If they're not doing so already probably they will start taking the money and running again!  Why is this corporate self-enrichment legal?  When the stock went down in these last few years did management give back their option gains from the last go around.  NO.  Why and how are these people not ashamed and embarrassed?  Why are they not in jail?

Body Parts of Dead Soldiers, and 9/11 Victims, Thrown in Trash

From 2003 - 2008 body parts of some of the nation's war dead and some victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks were cremated, then incinerated, and then thrown into a landfill in Virginia, just like common trash.  Apparently most, perhaps all, of the body parts were not identifiable.  But rather than honor those body parts in some respectable way, they were coldly tossed away.  Why?  Did those in charge at Dover Air Force base lose their ability to use commonsense?  And why didn't higher ups know about this or ask what happened to body parts?  How many body parts were dumped?  100s, 1000s, more?  Now body parts are cremated and buried at sea.