Four-Day Fasts & Purvey Parking | 4M #63

Welcome to the sixty-third edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #63, 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!

I was today old when I learned this …

All these years I’ve (and I’m assuming that’s actually “we’ve”) believed that ancient Egyptians carefully disemboweled and elaborately wrapped their dead to preserve their bodies for the afterlife. However, English researchers are turning that theory on its head, announcing that the practices were meant to “guide the deceased toward divinity and had nothing to do with preserving the dead.” The incense applied to the bodies, the researchers say, was meant to be a gift to the gods rather than a preservative. Mind. Blown. 

5 tips for limitless living

You’ve probably heard about Chris Hemsworth’s National Geographic series Limitless. We actually shared some info about Hemsworth’s experience with a death doula here in 4M a few weeks ago. To recap, Limitless documents Hemworth’s exploration of methods to prolong one’s life, and, in the process, face the real fact that one day, he, too, will die. The show, which premiered on November 16 on Disney+, has also made headlines because Hemsworth discovered during filming that he has “10 times the average risk of developing Alzheimer’s” based on his genetics. Just in case you’re too busy to watch, we found a list of five things Hemsworth tries during the series to test his limits (four of which we can’t fully recommend):

• Surfing a Norwegian fjord,
• Wearing a suit that makes you feel 80 years old,
• Embarking on a four-day fast,
• Balancing on a construction beam 200 feet in the air, and 
• Spending three days at a retirement home speaking to residents about the idea of death.

P.S. Hemsworth told Vanity Fair that the last experiment was his favorite!

Good stuff is happening in Ghana

Professional deathcare practices as we know them are relatively new in Ghana. Before the 1960s, most families preferred home funerals and extended mourning rituals. Today, Ghanaians prefer to die in hospitals, and remaining in the refrigerated morgue for long periods of time has become a status symbol. Last week, two news items signaled a new era in Ghanaian deathcare. First, a university launched — to mixed reactions — a new certificate course in Mortuary Science and Funeral Services, focusing on the “technicalities and the art of mortuary and funeral services.” In addition, Transitions Ghana funeral home recently invested in desairology training for four members of its staff to align with their “constant obsession to maintain high-quality standards.”

Pub purvey parking penalty

A Scottish funeral home is quite perturbed after receiving a ticket for parking their limo in a bus lane while dropping off a grieving family at a pub for a purvey. A “purvey,” by the way, is akin to our funeral and wedding receptions, complete with plenty of food and drinks. In this case, the post-funeral proceedings at the pub were marred by the parking ticket, and the funeral home is fighting the charges, arguing that funeral vehicles should have the same parking privileges as taxis and buses. 

Trouble’s brewing in PA

A Pennsylvania funeral director has been charged with abusing a corpse for allegedly leaving a body unrefrigerated for eight days. The complaint says the family was told the person had been cremated as they had requested; sadly, the body was found in a refrigerator unit that had only been plugged in for one of the previous eight days. The family discovered the indignity when they tried to move the body to another funeral home that was supposed to provide services at a cheaper rate. There has to be more to this story … as in, why?! We’ll keep you in the loop as details emerge.

Cemeterians: Add this to your next job posting

The secret’s out

It’s more than likely there is no course on search engine optimization (SEO) in mortuary school. But that’s ok, because the cool kids at MemoryShare know all about it — and they know how to improve yours … while at the same time making streaming services super simple for your staff. Get ready for a little mortuary math here (also probably not a class):

SEO + superior streaming services + super simplicity + safety and security = 

The MemoryShare not-so-secret sauce for success

MemoryShare’s exclusive app makes streaming super easy; you can record your full service with the touch of a button. By sharing these streams with your community, you showcase your excellent service and create name recognition with the viewers. Aaaannnd that’s not all, folks. Because MemoryShare videos are embedded on your own website (and not on the site of a separate streaming provider) your site gets more views, which results in street cred with the search engines. 

Two things funeral homes need in 2022 are visibility and increased call volume. MemoryShare provides both of these things as well as a team of REAL people you can talk to if you ever run into trouble. So what are you waiting for? Learn more about  MemoryShare today!