Urn-ed Interest

And a special night of Drinks with a Doula!

Please join me and the delightful Jade Walker of The End Files as we chat about life and death and everything in between. The Zoom link is here, and it’s free, but donations are gratefully accepted through my Paypal at teejford@hotmail.com .

Meanwhile, I just finished facilitating another Death Cafe with The Evergreens Cemetery and it was one of our best!

We talked about green burial, Jewish burial traditions (which are often very green in their own right), the movies His Three Daughters (which is next on my list) and The Room Next Door (which I wrote about here a while ago - gorgeous and sad and sweet).

Speaking of movies and death: I just finished the reboot of Four Seasons, the classic Alan Alda/Carol Burnett movie from 1981. This one stars Tina Fey, Steve Carell, and Colman Domingo and it’s funny, bittersweet, and sad.

SPOILER ALERT!

It’s very different from the original but the most striking change is that Nick ends up dying in a car crash while they’re on their winter vacation.

Since like many of us, Nick hasn’t told anyone of any of his end-of-life wishes, or written them down, or possibly hadn’t ever thought about it, his funeral is a disaster.

His ex-wife wants to lead the funeral but she chokes up and can’t continue. (This is why you want to hire a funeral celebrant!) Nick’s girlfriend, who is decades younger than him and his friends, wants to talk but the ex-wife won’t let her. (Also why you want to hire a funeral celebrant!)

And he gets cremated (did he want to? what if he wanted to be buried?), but the funeral home gets the information wrong and puts his ashes in an urn shaped something like this:

Funny, but not funny, although I know a few people who’d probably love this.

Life imitates art, people.

If you don’t specify, your remains could end up in an urn that is entirely NOT who you are. I could end up with something like this:

Yes, this is REALLY an urn.

If you’d rather not have your ashes laid to rest in a shoe, or a car, or even HAVE ashes to be laid to rest, you need to A) figure out what you want and B) WRITE IT DOWN!

There are so many options for body disposition (the jargon-y way we say “what to do with my dead body”) that it’s important - and FUN - to figure out what you want.

Watch this space for my Beyond Burial workshops that I’ll be holding in the fall.

Check out the movie and let me know what you think.

And tell us if you already have your plans worked out or written down. You never know what’ll inspire others…

Til next time!

Teej