History and Introspection: Cemeteries and the Funeral Director
From time to time I either come across unique stories about the death care business or the readers of Funeral Director Daily send them to me. I find a lot of these stories fascinating and very much worth spending time learning about, especially if I want to be the “Death Care” expert in my community.
Here’s a couple of Public Broadcasting System televised broadcast stories concerning our profession. One is about cemeteries and the other about funeral directors. They are both in You Tube formats that you can watch on demand. Click on the title of either to watch.
About Remembering a Place: A Cemetery Story
What Twin Cities Public Television says: “Cemeteries are hallowed places right in our midst. But they also reflect the community, and have evolved dramatically over time, constantly adapting to meet our ever-changing views and values. A cemetery is a mirror of the city: its remarkable origins, its rich history, its complex people, and its unwritten future. A TPT co-production with Lakewood Cemetery.”
Editor’s Note: From my perspective there is a lot of good funeral home and memorialization history in this “Cemetery” story also.
What Frontline says: Enter the world of an undertaker whose family for three generations has cared for both the living and the dead in a small Michigan town, as families navigate loss, grief and mortality. Thomas Lynch is a writer and a poet. He’s also a funeral director in a small town in central Michigan where he and his family have cared for the dead — and the living — for three generations. Moving and powerful, the 2007 documentary “The Undertaking” chronicles the intimate stories of families confronting loss, and the role of funeral rituals in helping them come to terms with their loved ones’ deaths. “Funerals are the way we close the gap between the death that happens and the death that matters,” Lynch says in the documentary. “A good funeral gets the dead where they need to go and the living where they need to be.”
Editor’s Note: Thomas Lynch is the small-town funeral director many of us know and admire. His passion for the profession and concern for the families and community he serves is obvious in this broadcast.
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