Welcome to the two-hundred-and-forty-third edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #243, where we’ll serve up bite-sized, easily-digestible nuggets of the deathcare news you need to crush conversations in the week ahead. Bon appetit!
Practice makes perfect
You know how aircraft pilots and race car drivers use simulators to practice and perfect their skills? Now cemeterians can do the same! Cemetery Simulator, which will be available on PC in 2027 and on gaming consoles after that, lets you “manage the cemetery, care for the necropolis, organize funerals, and develop their cemetery business.” Here are some of the other fun-filled things you and up to three of your cemetery-savvy friends can enjoy:
- “Step into the role of a gravedigger and dig graves alone or with friends!”
- “Your tasks include cleaning tombstones, mowing grass, making repairs, and expanding the cemetery!”
- “You also organize funerals, from digging graves to engraving tombstones!”
- “Face unexpected problems!”
- “Care for the cemetery and reputation!”
If you can’t wait to flex your cemeterian strengths, check out the demo version of Cemetery Simulator, which launched on Steam on May 29.
A Pre-Need Program You Don’t Have to Manage Alone
Building a successful pre-need program takes more than intention.
It takes people, systems, and consistent execution.
Treasured Memories provides a complete, managed approach:
- Counselor recruitment, hiring, and training
- Educational programs like PreNeed University
- Community outreach and Lunch & Learns
- Aftercare support and ongoing family engagement
- Direct mail marketing and contact management tools
All designed to help you:
- Expand your reach in the community
- Increase market share
- Build a reliable pipeline of future business
This isn’t just a service offering.
It’s a structured, supported path to long-term growth.
Third time’s the charm?
Oklahoma’s governor may not want to offer the option of disposition by natural organic reduction (NOR) to his constituents, but legislators in plenty of other states seem eager to be the 15th state to legalize the process. The latest is Rhode Island, where the House of Representatives just passed a bill to allow both NOR and alkaline hydrolysis beginning in January 2028. The bill now makes its way to the Senate, where it has (unfortunately) stalled in two prior iterations.
Abuzz with visitors
There’s seemingly no end to the odd challenges facing cemeterians these days — crimes being committed on the grounds, wild animals roaming free, and homeless folks taking up residence are just a few. But this one is new to us. Imagine learning that your cemetery is home to a huge population of underground-dwelling bees! That’s what scientists from Cornell University recently discovered at East Lawn Cemetery in Ithaca, New York. And this isn’t just your run-of-the-mill annoying bee problem; researchers say that the estimated 5.5 million individual bees living in a 1.5-acre area on the grounds constitutes one of the largest and oldest known aggregations of ground-nesting bees ever documented. Here’s the best part: the co-authors of the study on this population want to preserve the bees’ nesting sites because they are “important pollinators.”
Not bees, but maybe ants?
A video that was supposed to capture the solemn transfer of a casketed body from a hearse to graveside in Guyana has become viral for a horrific reason. At first, everything seems fine, as the pallbearers grasp the handles of a baby blue casket and begin their final march. Suddenly, though, the unimaginable happens — the floor of the casket gives way, and the body falls to the ground, landing between the feet of the six stunned men, who scrambled to somehow put the body back into the now-five-sided box. Predictably, trolls offered their opinions on what led to this tragedy, with theories ranging from dry rot to ant infestations to cardboard construction.
