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Home Funeral Guides and funeral celebrants, Donna Belk and Kateyanne Unullisi, have midwifed the dying, the dead, and the grieving many times. They know how important and healing it is to intentionally mark a transitional time with ceremony and ritual. This simple yet powerful guidebook will help you with ceremonies to make the journey through a death - from being with the dying person, to preparing the body, vigil, leave-taking, disposition, and beyond. Weaving the practical with poetry and insight, these ceremonies guide with intention and clarity, to bring ritual into the room where death dwells. As Dorry Bless writes in the forward, "As you companion your loved one, let this book be your companion." During a home funeral, we are challenged to blend three elements: physical (where will the body lay in honor, are there enough chairs in the house, when is the memorial service, etc.); emotional (grieving, regrets about things left undone or unsaid); and spiritual (bringing the mystery of life or the sacred into the space). The ceremonies in this book are tools for weaving together the physical, emotional and spiritual elements into a process that honors and serves everyone who is involved. Caitlin Doughty, mortician, author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, writes, "Having benefited from Donna Belk's clear-headed wisdom in my own work, I am thrilled that she and Kateyanne have created ceremonies that will be available to a wider audience. The important work of re-invigorating ritual around death and dying must be shared and passed on." Dr. Karen Wyatt, physician, and author of What Really Matters: 7 Lessons for Living from the Stories of the Dying writes, "To accompany a loved one through life's final passage at home is the greatest gift of love you can bestow. Home Funeral Ceremonies provides the guidance needed to create sacred space, honor the life of the beloved, and usher them through their transition with compassion, beauty, and grace. Home Funeral Ceremonies is a book that can be adapted for any faith, in any situation. You can use the ceremonies as they are written, or customize them with your values and beliefs. It's a book you will want to own, and to give as a gift to someone facing a last goodbye.
Designed to complement the clergy and funeral director’s role in the funeral planning process, this book walks families through the many decisions they will make at the time of a death and helps them create a ceremony that will be both healing and meaningful. Options are clearly explained and alternatives are also given, and charts and tables are included to help families assess cost options.
Contemporary forms of living and dying in Swaziland cannot be understood apart from the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, according to anthropologist Casey Golomski. In Africa's last absolute monarchy, the story of 15 years of global collaboration in treatment and intervention is also one of ordinary people facing the work of caring for the sick and dying and burying the dead. Golomski's ethnography shows how AIDS posed challenging questions about the value of life, culture, and materiality to drive new forms and practices for funerals. Many of these forms and practicesnewly catered funeral feasts, an expanded market for life insurance, and the kingdom's first crematoriumare now conspicuous across the landscape and culturally disruptive in a highly traditionalist setting. This powerful and original account details how these new matters of death, dying, and funerals have become entrenched in peoples' everyday lives and become part of a quest to create dignity in the wake of a devastating epidemic.
Remembering Well offers family members, clergy, funeral professionals, and hospice workers ways to plan services and rituals that honor the spirit of the deceased and are faithful to that person's values and beliefs, while also respecting the needs and wishes of those who will attAnd the services. It is an essential resource for anyone who yearns to put death in a spiritual context but is unsure how to do so-including both those who have broken with tradition and those who wish to give new meaning to the time-honored rituals of their faith. The real-life stories, examples, and practical guidelines in this book address a wide array of important issues, including the difficult decisions that survivors must make quickly when a death occurs-and the sensitive topic of family alienation, where possibilities for healing, forgiveness, and hope are explored. The invaluable insights offered here will help those who grieve to prepare mind and spirit for life's final rites of passage.
In most of the US, a family may care for its own dead until burial or cremation without involving licensed funeral professionals. It requires a willingness to be something of a pioneer in today's hands-off society, but those who have chosen to reclaim this historical tradition confirm that the process is enormously healing and meaningful. While a motivated family can acquire the legal knowledge and practical skills to arrange a home or family-directed funeral, the process is eased considerablly when a group assists. Undertaken With Love was created to help families and community care groups learn ways to continue caring for their loved ones all the way to the cemetery or crematory. This manual will teach you -how to research state laws and identify your legal rights and responsibilities, -how to handle, bathe and transport the body, and -how to create and sustain an effective community care group.
In the “hush harbors” of the slave quarters, African Americans first used funerals to bury their dead and to plan a path to freedom. Similarly, throughout the long struggle for racial equality in the 20th century, funeral directors aided the cause by honoring the dead while supporting the living. Here is their story.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A special 25th anniversary edition of the beloved book that has changed millions of lives with the story of an unforgettable friendship, the timeless wisdom of older generations, and healing lessons on loss and grief—featuring a new afterword by the author “A wonderful book, a story of the heart told by a writer with soul.”—Los Angeles Times “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.” Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was his college professor Morrie Schwartz. Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Wouldn’t you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you, receive wisdom for your busy life today the way you once did when you were younger? Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man’s life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final “class”: lessons in how to live. “The truth is, Mitch,” he said, “once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.” Tuesdays with Morrie is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie’s lasting gift with the world.
True stories that put the, er, "fun" back into funerals! The hereafter may still be part of the great unknown, but with Funerals to Die For you can unearth the rich--and often, dark--history of funeral rites. From getting a portrait painted with a loved one's ashes to purchasing a safety coffin complete with bells and breathing tubes, this book takes you on a whirlwind tour of funeral customs and trivia from all over the globe. Inside, you'll find more than 100 unbelievable traditions, practices, and facts, such as: The remains of a loved one can be launched into deep space for only $1,000. In Taiwan, strippers are hired to entertain funeral guests throughout the ceremony. Undertakers for the Tongan royal family weren't allowed to use their hands for 100 days after preparing a king's body. In the late 1800s, New Englanders would gulp down a cocktail of water and their family member's ashes in order to keep them from returning as vampires. Whether you fear being buried alive or just have a morbid curiosity of the other side, Funerals to Die For examines what may happen when another person dies.
Contributions by Allan Amanik, Kelly B. Arehart, Sue Fawn Chung, Kami Fletcher, Rosina Hassoun, James S. Pula, Jeffrey E. Smith, and Martina Will de Chaparro Till Death Do Us Part: American Ethnic Cemeteries as Borders Uncrossed explores the tendency among most Americans to separate their dead along communal lines rooted in race, faith, ethnicity, or social standing and asks what a deeper exploration of that phenomenon can tell us about American history more broadly. Comparative in scope, and regionally diverse, chapters look to immigrants, communities of color, the colonized, the enslaved, rich and poor, and religious minorities as they buried kith and kin in locales spanning the Northeast to the Spanish American Southwest. Whether African Americans, Muslim or Christian Arabs, Indians, mestizos, Chinese, Jews, Poles, Catholics, Protestants, or various whites of European descent, one thing that united these Americans was a drive to keep their dead apart. At times, they did so for internal preference. At others, it was a function of external prejudice. Invisible and institutional borders built around and into ethnic cemeteries also tell a powerful story of the ways in which Americans have negotiated race, culture, class, national origin, and religious difference in the United States during its formative centuries.
“Wise, vulnerable, and surprisingly relatable . . . funny in all the right places and enormously helpful throughout. It will change how you think about death.” —Rachel Held Evans, New York Times–bestselling author of Searching for Sunday We are a people who deeply fear death. While humans are biologically wired to evade death for as long as possible, we have become too adept at hiding from it, vilifying it, and—when it can be avoided no longer—letting the professionals take over. Sixth-generation funeral director Caleb Wilde understands this reticence and fear. He had planned to get as far away from the family business as possible. He wanted to make a difference in the world, and how could he do that if all the people he worked with were . . . dead? Slowly, he discovered that caring for the deceased and their loved ones was making a difference—in other people’s lives to be sure, but it also seemed to be saving his own. A spirituality of death began to emerge as he observed the family who lovingly dressed their deceased father for his burial; the nursing home that honored a woman’s life by standing in procession as her body was taken away; the funeral that united a conflicted community. Through stories like these, told with equal parts humor and poignancy, Wilde’s candid memoir offers an intimate look into the business of death and a new perspective on living and dying. “Open[s] up conversations about life’s ultimate concerns.” —The Washington Post “As a look behind the closed doors of the death industry, as well as a candid exploration of Wilde’s own faith journey, this book is fascinating and compelling.” —National Catholic Reporter “[A] stunner of a debut.” —Rachel Held Evans, author of Inspired