Joshua locum - Final Rights: Reclaiming the American Way of Death

Final Rights

Disclaimers

The opinions expressed in this book are those of the authors. None of the material has been approved by the boards of directors of the Funeral Consumers Alliance or the Funeral Ethics Organization. These organizations are listed only to identify the positions held by the authors.

Legal information and opinions in this book are carefully researched but cannot be guaranteed and cannot substitute for guidance from your lawyer.

Reclaiming the
American Way of Death

Joshua Slocum
and
Lisa Carlson

Upper Access, Inc., Book Publishers
87 Upper Access Road, Hinesburg, Vermont 05461
(802)482-2988 - http://www.upperaccess.com

Copyright 2011 by Joshua Slocum and Lisa Carlson
Portions derived from material published in different form from the following: Caring for your Own Dead ( 1987) and Caring for the Dead ( 1998), by Lisa Carlson

All rights reserved. For use other than brief quotations for review or promotion of this book, please contact the publisher.

Cover and Interior Design by Kitty Werner, RSBPress, Waitsfield, Vermont Woodblock Illustration by Mary Azarian, Plainfield, Vermont
Index by Carlson Indexing, Portland, Oregon
Photo on front cover iStockphoto.com/spxChrome

ISBN 978-0-942679-34-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Slocum, Joshua.

Final rights : reclaiming the American way of death / Joshua Slocum and Lisa Carlson.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-942679-34-2 (trade pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Burial laws--United States--Popular works. 2. Undertakers and undertaking--Law and legislation--United States--Popular works. 3. Funeral rites and ceremonies--Economic aspects--United States. 4. Consumer protection--United States. I. Carlson, Lisa, 1938- II. Title.
KF3781.S59 2011
344.73045--dc22

2011000565

Printed in the United States of America

11 / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Appendix

Lisa Carlson

IN A SENSE, THIS BOOK is a successor to two earlier ones, updating the research on funeral law for consumers originally published in 1987 and in 1998. Those who keep Caring for the Dead on their shelf for ready reference should replace it with this book, to accommodate all the changes in laws, regulations, services, and the like. (In the future, updates to that information will be made available for Internet download at the Funeral Consumers Alliance website, .)

That said, Final Rights is a new book, not just an update to an older one. Josh Slocum, now the nations foremost advocate for funeral consumer rights, has joined as coauthor, bringing with him his considerable experience and insights. Between us, weve taken a new look at the death-care business as it exists in 2011, exposing corruption where it exists (in far too many places) while giving credit where due.

Our goal is to help consumers navigate around the barriers erected by the funeral industry (and government agencies that are supposed to be regulating it), to reclaim the traditional rights of families to care for their own dead, to say goodbye in the best ways they can without paying extortionate fees for goods and services they neither need nor want.

My own involvement in these issues began in 1981, well after Jessica Mitfords The American Way of Death had exposed widespread deception and misdeeds in the funeral industry but with disappointingly little to show in the way of cleaning things up. In that year, Sally Cavanaugh, a fellow member of my writers group, brought us an article How to Bury Your Own Dead in Vermont, a historical look-back at how our great-grandparents handled death in ways that were still legal.

Six months later, when my husband committed suicide at the age of 31, I needed that information. John had been a first-grade teacher; our daughter was eligible for free lunch at school; I didnt even know if I could cash Johns next paycheck. In a few generations, we Americans had lost the common lore of what to do at the time of death.

Id known when I married this super-sensitive person that suicide was always an out for John when he felt the world wasnt fair. He had tried twice before. So we lived each day as a gift. Our two children, ages three and five, were asleep when I found Johns body in his red pick-up truck with the note, I cant stand the pain any more.

It had been a wonderful marriage and I needed to stay close, even in death. So I told the funeral director who was taking the body for the autopsy to call us when he got back and we would pick up Johns body and do the rest ourselves. I asked the janitor from school if he would help me drive Johns body to the crematory. Id be honored, Rip said, John was my friend.

Rip and I drove Johns body to the crematory ourselves. I buried the cre-mains near Johns flower garden and marked the spot with a hand-chiseled stone. At this difficult time, the direct involvement was therapeutic, especially for me. One mistake I made, however, was to take the body to the crematory too quickly, before the children had a chance for their own goodbyes.

I married Steve Carlson almost two years later. In 1986, his mother, Mary Jane, died of AIDS. It was a death we handled as a family, just as we had cared for her during her illness. I got the paperwork while two of the sons built a plain pine box. The four adult sons lifted her into the box and drove to family country property where they dug her grave by hand.

Mary Jane had encouraged my writing before she died, and Steve, also a writer, knew it was important to me to see a book on this subject in print. At a time when the small-press movement was exploding, it was exciting to start our own publishing company. It was, after all, the small presses that first wrote about alternative medicine, alternative education, and alternative lifestyles. Caring for Your Own Dead was published in 1987. Steve has stayed active in the independent press business ever since, publishing nonfiction from a wide variety of authors.

As I got involved with the funeral consumer movement, I was interested in the rights of all funeral consumers, not just the do-it-yourselfers. After twice as much legal research, we published Caring for the Dead: Your Final Act of Love in 1998 while I was executive director of Funeral Consumers Alliance (FCA).

Joshua Slocum took over as executive director at FCA when I retired in 2003. His passionate commitment, his great sense of humor, and his intellectual smarts have continued to raise the visibility and influence of FCA. From that vantage point, he had the best up-to-date stories to tell that make of this book such a compelling new read, while I was able to concentrate on researching and updating the legal and practical information.

After leaving FCA, I started the Funeral Ethics Organization (FEO) to work with the industry to raise the bar for ethical practices. For information about FEO, visit . The good guys and gals in the funeral business are deeply hurt by the mischief-makers. I extend a special thank you to funeral director Randy Garner for his trust and friendship. There are many others in the funeral industry Im proud to call my friends, too. I am also grateful to the FEO board for letting me off the hook for a newsletter while working on the state-chapter research. And FEO board member David Zinner has an eagle eye for editing. Despite all the industrys ills, which are necessarily the focus of this book, there are some funeral directors who dedicate themselves daily to the cause of helping people at a time of grief, with compassion and professionalism.