Duct Tape & Vampire Stakes | 4M #117
Welcome to the hundred-and-seventeenth edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #117, 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!
This newsletter is powered by MemoryShare, a funeral livestreaming platform that you can set up in 30 seconds or less.
Heaven is in L.A.?
Los Angeles artist Janelle Ketcher maintains what she calls “Postal Service for the Dead,” a post office box where people can send letters to their late loved ones. Ketcher shares most of these letters in her art exhibitions, which take place (by appointment only) at a death doula’s downtown LA space. Anyone who sends a letter to Ketcher’s P.O. box can indicate their preferences regarding sharing on the back of their envelope. Leaving them blank means “do not open,” a heart means the letter can be read but not shared, and a star indicates that it’s ok to include the letter in the exhibit. Letters to the deceased can be sent to Sleepy Sue Studio, P.O. Box 31412, Los Angeles, CA, 90031, USA.
Hopefully this is only an Irish thing
As if they don’t have enough to worry about, deathcare professionals in Ireland are having to battle a new kind of fraud targeting the families they serve. Hackers have been copying the Facebook profiles of funeral homes only to hijack funeral livestreams — which they then interrupt and demand credit card payment from the viewer to continue watching.
Oh, no you di-uhnt
An Oklahoma writer recently used her op-ed column to share her disgust at receiving a certain piece of mail in mid-December: A card from a funeral home inviting her to discuss preneed, complete with a $10 gift card should she take part. “Talk about a downer! Here I was, humming Christmas carols, shouting ‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’ and decking my halls with boughs of holly — and a funeral home wants me to come in and pre-plan my funeral. Well, that stopped the humming and the Ho! Ho! Ho’s! as if someone had just slapped duct tape across my mouth. I wondered if everyone in my zip code got a similar greeting or if I were singled out? I don’t know which was more depressing — getting an invitation to discuss my funeral eight days before Christmas or, as happened many years ago, getting two similar invitations from two funeral homes on the same day.” Ouch.
Post-mortem byline
It’s common practice for news outlets to pre-write obituaries for celebrities and prominent public figures so they’re ready to roll when those people pass. Sometimes, though, those obits sit in digital limbo for years — even decades — before they can be published. This was the case with the obituary of Henry Kissinger, who died in late November at the age of 100. Kissenger’s obituary was penned so long ago that one of the contributing writers — whose name appears in the byline — died 13 years ago. Writer Michael T. Kaufman was also posthumously credited in obits published in 2011 and 2021.
Better wear thicker scarves this winter
People in a Bolivian town are “engulfed in fear” after discovering that an alleged vampire’s grave is no longer being guarded by eight wooden stakes blessed with holy water. Last week, residents found that two of the eight stakes are missing. Now they “fear the potential removal of the remaining six could lead to the vampire’s resurrection and bloodthirsty return.” Cemetery staff are now “vigilantly” guarding the site to ensure that doesn’t happen.
Not letting traditions die
A group of women recently gathered in New Jersey to learn about Muslim deathcare traditions, washing bodies in a specific manner, braiding the hair, perfuming the body, and wrapping it in cotton. Class leaders believe that “most funeral homes don’t know how to bury Muslims,” so they’re working to ensure the next generations are educated on the “related traditions, rituals and spiritual elements through the Islamic faith.”
Livestreaming so easy, your “I’m not techie” staff can do it.
A bad livestream can BRUTAL. That’s why MemoryShare makes it simple to have successful streams EVERY SINGLE TIME. All you have to do is download the MemoryShare Camera iOS app to record and stream anywhere with the touch of a button.
One more thing…
Wanna learn why a funeral home chose MemoryShare even when presented with options from Facebook and Zoom? You can read about that HERE.
