Inremember

Here's the honest question every family eventually asks, even if they never say it out loud: how do you justify the cost of death, after a death?

There's no right answer. Some families are working through nursing home bills, estate costs, a house that needs to sell — the costs and the costs and the costs that come with losing someone. And now, on top of all of it, a memorial.

Add siblings into the mix — two, three, four people who loved the same person differently and grieve differently — and you get four different answers to "how much should we spend." That's not dysfunction. That's just what grief and money do to a family at the exact same time.

I've come to believe the right answer is about capacity — what a family can actually carry right now, financially and emotionally, on top of everything else.

My job isn't to convince a family to spend more than that. My job is to listen closely enough to understand what they're actually carrying, and to help them build something honest within it — whether that's a full production or the basics done right.

Not every family is my client. And that's okay. But if you're standing in this moment — trying to figure out how to tell someone's story, while everything else about death is expensive and complicated — I'd be honored to listen. Trust me, I'm right there. ~ Eric

That's the job. That's why I do it.

A photo of a photo of a photo.
We're hardwired to share photos after a death. Here's a young man looking at a photo-show we built for his family — his grandfather's memorial. His grandfather was a noted jazz musician, and the young man is wearing one of the tribute t-shirts made for all the grandchildren.

So an ecologist in the UK is asking a cemetery to phase out plastic flowers, windmills, ornaments, and other plastic grave decorations. Her concern is that these items break down, get shredded by mowers, blow into nearby waterways, and eventually become microplastics.

It raises a good question to me if cemeteries in the U.S. could consider this too? Personally, I have long been a hater of plastic flowers, and while I recognize they are affordable, last longer, and help families who can’t visit often, cemeteries are also green spaces, and too much plastic can and has turned some of them into littered, polluted places. We've all seen it.

So that leads me to this... Maybe the answer isn’t a hard ban, but better options like natural flowers, biodegradable decorations, seasonal clean-up days, or special conservation cemetery sections?

What do you think: should cemeteries limit plastic decorations?

One of the functions of being the ancient Scottish Highland Wire Strung Clan Harper, was to compose and play a Lament after a death. The Harper would pour his heart into this important part of Celtic culture. Grief invites an opportunity to tell a story of a life (or in this duel death) through music. Reverent. The complete grief moment in a forgotten form.

A Lament for Her Husband and Child Provided to YouTube by CDBabyA Lament for Her Husband and Child ·...