Peg Lorenz
Workshop Leader

An interesting article recently in The Recorder of Greenfield, Massachusetts, gave notice of a workshop dealing with the process of home funerals.

The workshop will be led by home funeral advocate Peg Lorenz.  According to the article she has spent the last seven years helping families in planning for and conducting home funerals.  The article also gives Lorenz credit with helping the Franklin County community of Heath to approve a Green Burial policy in the Heath Cemetery.

Lorenz is quoted as saying, ” . . .home funerals aren’t for everybody”.  . ..”they get so much benefit”. . . .”it should be a part of life”.  She also mentions that this type of service is not “rocket science” and that “cavemen did it”.

Funeral Service Daily take:  I get the sense, that while not immensely  popular at this time, home funerals, green burials, and low cost funeral care are growing in steam – not only in the United States but internationally.  We just posted a couple of articles in the last ten days about the Salvation Army entering the industry in Australia and of a green “niche” funeral home opening in a small town in Colorado.  I believe that it goes to show that traditional funeral homes are going to get competition from places that they never dreamed of before.  Ms. Lorenz was a hospice worker and that is one of the places I have looked at as non-traditional competitors.  Maybe it is time for independent operators to visit with the hospice care providers in your community and discuss how you can mutually work together to  benefit from this trend.[wpforms id=”436″ title=”true” description=”true”]