Pork Sandwiches & Coffinmaker Gardens | 4M #223

Welcome to the two-hundred-and-twenty-third edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #223, 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!

Beautiful lady, sweet story

The deathcare profession lost a gem last month with the death of 104-year-old Margaret Dupree, a longtime funeral director and co-founder of Dupree Funeral Home in Philadelphia. Dupree became a funeral director in 1949 and met her future husband when they were both funeral home interns. During a 1990s interview with the local newspaper, Dupree said she “went into the business because morticians and barbers were so respected when she was a child. ‘They were the people who were looked up to,’ she said.” There’s so much more to Dupree’s story, and you are highly encouraged to read it all here.

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Interesting assembly

Lawmakers attending the 2026 session of the Indiana General Assembly will be plowing their way through more than 700 separate bills introduced by members of the House and Senate, covering everything from public programs and environmental concerns to a proposal to designate a state sandwich (the ridiculous and delicious breaded pork tenderloin sandwich pictured above, in case you’re curious). However, one reporter noticed a familiar theme among this year’s docket: death. The Evansville Courier & Press noted that four bills “deal with mortality” — one addresses initiating a firing squad as a death penalty option, another would allow for assisted suicide, and one bill from each side of the aisle proposes adding alkaline hydrolysis to the cremation laws.

Catch up on your reading

Contrary to popular belief, lots of people are fascinated by what you all do — so much so that a site called The Lineup just posted its “Top 10 Ten Books about Death to Read in 2026.” You’ll probably recognize a few of these, but others (maybe some of the fiction, perhaps) might be worthy of your bedside TBR pile: