Here are some resources that deal specifically with funerals and different burial options, including where to go for immediate assistance as well as information on planning for either yours or a loved one's arrangements after death.
| Title |
Type |
Description |
Tags |
| A Family Undertaking - 2004 PBS documentary |
 |
What is old is often new again. Most funerals today are part of a multimillion-dollar industry run by professionals. This increased reliance on mortuaries has alienated Americans from life's only inevitability — death. A Family Undertaking explores the growing home funeral movement by following several families in their most intimate moments as they reclaim the end of life, forgoing a typical mortuary funeral to care for their loved ones at home. Far from being a radical innovation, keeping funeral rites in the family or among friends is exactly how death was handled for most of pre-20th century America. Click here to visit the resource page. |
|
| Grave Matters - A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry To a Natural Way of Burial - by Mark Harris |
|
sans coffin in the final season of Six Feet Under, Americans all across the country were starting to look outside the box when death came calling.
Grave Matters follows a dozen such families who found in “green” burial a more natural, more economic and ultimately more meaningful alternative to the tired and toxic send-off on offer at the local funeral parlor.
Eschewing chemical embalming and fancy caskets, burial vaults and costly funerals, people have embraced a range of natural options, new and old, that are redefining a better American way of death. The author examines this new green burial underground, leading you into natural cemeteries and domestic graveyards, taking you aboard boats from which ashes and memorial “reef balls” are cast into the sea. He follows a family that conducts a home funeral and delivers a loved one to the crematory, another that hires a carpenter to build a pine coffin. Click here to visit the resource page. |
|
| Living Into Dying by Nancy Poer |
|
"Here is a family who celebrated their elders, nursed them at home to die, built their caskets, honored and cared for them after death and then went out into the community to help others who want to do the same." "Every aspect of caring for the dying is in this book, from building a casket to connecting with those who have died." |
|
| Natural Transitions Magazine |
|
NATURAL TRANSITIONS MAGAZINE is the ONLY magazine on CONSCIOUS, HOLISTIC APPROACHES TO END OF LIFE that’s also a forum for professional end-of-life caregivers and families with loved-ones facing end-of-life transition. We are a vehicle for the alternative death care Movement. Click here to visit the resource page. |
|
| When Someone Dies - The Practical Guide to the Logistics of Death by Scott Taylor Smith with Michael Castleman |
|
Scott Taylor Smith, a venture capitalist and lawyer, had plentiful resources, and yet after his mother died, he made a series of agonizing and costly mistakes in squaring away her affairs. He could find countless books that dealt with caring for the dying and the emotional fallout of death, but very few that dealt with the logistics.
In the aftermath of his mother’s death, Smith decided to write the book he wished he’d had. When Someone Dies provides readers with a crucial framework for making good, informed, money-saving decisions in the chaotic thirty days after a loved one dies and beyond. It provides essential, concrete guidance on:
• Making funeral and memorial service arrangements
• Writing an obituary
• Estate planning
• Contacting family and friends
• Handling your loved one’s online footprint
• Navigating probate
• Dealing with finances, including trusts and taxation
• And much, much more
Featuring concise checklists in each chapter, this guide offers answers to practical questions, enabling loved ones to save time and money and focus on healing. Click here to visit the resource page. |
|