Therapy Ponies & Instructional Tattoos | 4M #36
Welcome to the thirty-sixth edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #36, 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!
Collateral damage
Some deathcare organizations with the venerable words “Legacy” or “Heritage” in their names have found themselves collateral victims of the federal government’s lawsuit against Funeral & Cremation Group of North American — which does business as Legacy Cremation Services and Heritage Cremation Provider. As news of the (much appreciated) suit spread through the mainstream media last month, some members of the general public have inadvertently associated some reputable companies like California’s Legacy Funeral and Cremation Care with the entity being sued. According to The San Diego Union-Tribune, Legacy’s La Mesa location has experienced a 70% to 80% drop in calls, and employees are finding themselves guilty “by association” for working there. The legit Legacy has launched a PR campaign to formally disassociate themselves from the less reputable entity, and we wish them the very best in this unfortunate situation.
Your local cemeterian might need a hug
If anyone thought managing a cemetery was a cake walk, the plethora of recent cemetery-related news might make you think twice. Last week’s 4M #35 shared two stories of injuries and lawsuits from falling tombstones; one of these victims was killed. In previous editions we’ve talked about disastrous driving lessons damaging graves, unidentified bodies being abandoned on the grounds, overzealous landscaping, and all sorts of terrible crimes. This week, the hits just keep on coming:
- We’ve seen more reports of the wild hogs who’ve been running rampant in a Dallas cemetery for over a year.
- Last Monday a woman died when her car crashed through a Fort Wayne, Indiana cemetery fence and burst into flames.
- On May 20, a YouTube video slammed a Napa, California cemetery for removing personal items from gravesites.
- Multiple people were injured and sent to the hospital after a fight broke out in a Los Angeles cemetery on Saturday.
- A man in his 70s was robbed and beaten while cleaning a South Carolina cemetery.
- A Pennsylvania man found that someone else had been buried in his cemetery plot.
Believe it or not, those are just a smattering of the stories about cemeteries that popped up in our newsfeeds last week. We’re just saying, your local cemeterian might need a pony to pet.
On a lighter note …
Most deathcare providers thrive on referrals and word-of-mouth advertising, so it makes sense that you could also learn tips and tricks from your fellow funeral homes, crematoria, and cemeteries. Here are a few good ideas we’ve seen recently that might be adaptable for your space:
- A columbarium in the Dominican Republic invited journalists to enjoy afternoon tea during a bespoke tour and a talk about the establishment’s 90-year history.
- A Scotland funeral home offered their upscale family vehicle and drivers to chauffeur a visiting celebrity glamor expert and her entourage around the area.
- In an effort to curb a growing number of incidents of gun violence, employees of a Kentucky funeral home spoke to a local media outlet about the emotional and mental toll gun deaths have on them as deathcare providers.
- A Pennsylvania cemetery has started planning its 200th anniversary celebration five years early by involving local Cub Scouts to plant multiple flower bulbs on each of its 2,000 graves. The bulbs were donated by a local conservatory and botanical garden, and the cemetery board is inviting the public to submit ideas for bicentennial events.
- A UK funeral home launched drone services to capture video of ceremonies from a new perspective.
- The stewards of a San Francisco columbarium hold an annual event where people who have pre-purchased a niche can meet their “future neighbors” — those who’ve bought adjoining or nearby niches. The event also affords her the opportunity to tell stories she’s amassed about the current residents of the columbarium.
What’s next … tats of DNRs?
What would we do without Reddit? Without this wacky public forum and its popular “interestingasf**k” subreddit, we’d never learn about those really important news items, like this one: A tattoo that spells out explicit instructions for delivering the anonymous poster’s body to cryonics organization upon his death.
The post has received more than 53,000 upvotes and nearly 3,300 comments.
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