oh who knows. me, you, otherwise, etc.

I have come to the conclusion that we are what we have become. That's all. You can look back and regret. You can look back and rejoice. I don't think any of the past matters unless you are willing to examine and realize what it has made of you now. The "future" is only what we may hope and strive for if we are willing to hope and strive for it. Perserverence is a possibility I suppose, but many aspects can interfere with the most dutiful hopes.

hmmm, what the hell was that all about anyway?

I have been in a slump of sorts. Not a slump that is preventing me per se, but one that has allowed me to sit back and relax little bit and just be. I don't want as much these days. These wants used to be tied to the desire to need more out of what I already have. What I already have has , on one hand become a bit stagnant, and is definetly only tied to "work". Home life takes on a completely different self and in that self, I could not be happier. The stagnation comes from just doing the same damn things that I have been doing for a few years now and as much as I have raised the bar for myself in this regard, I am feeling much less inclined to raise the bar much further, and this embodies the "other hand". On this said other hand, I am actually feeling some peace from not having to have greater hopes and dreams for the future of my work. I am actually quite comfortable being what I am and doing what I do. I just don't have the same desires to set the world on fire as much anymore. At least in the regard that I have in the past. In the regard that I had decided was the wayI thought I needed to. All of this kind of scares me because it leads me to believe that I don't have too many years left in me to do what I do now. I just don't think that I will want to. I just don't buy into all of this with the same fervor that I once did. All of this ramping down leads me to the question of what I will do next.

I come to these "conclusions" because I don't necassarily see a great future in the funeral industry or at least not a future I really want to be a part of I guess. The fact that it is such an "industry" might be a big part of this doomed vision. I just don't see the industry going in the direction that will help anyone any better than it has since we started all this stuff. I need to see it getting better, not just ambling on down the current path of TRADITION for the sake of ritual. Specific personalized ritual should be the focus and the goal and if tradition helps to create this mode then we should keep it, if it doesn't, we should throw it the fuck out. What I see every day is a group of people that march blindly towards what we have done in the past without understanding why in an effort to make sense of a future that can not be counted upon. I am unfortunately a large part of this march and this toubles me to a certain extent. I do not believe that the current model hurts american society on the whole, as long as it is accomplished ethically and compassionately. I do think, however, that the current model needs to sway back to a more "personally responsible" mode if we are going to grow as a culture of aware and illuminated beings. In many ways I want american humans to become better beings and accept more of a burden for being human. My window on this need comes from working with people at their most vulnerable and I think probably most times, when they are most human. When people allow themselves or at least continue to be simply "american beings" (for the lack of a better term) and not "human beings" we, (oh yes I include myself) allow ourselves to be a part of a larger culture to fail and blame and not to succeed and accept.

I need to finish this later, it's time for me to go to work.

examining your hard drive

Well after about a week of up and downs in computer land. All things seem to have been resolved. It all started when my X-technology system that I bought on half.com a few years ago decided to give up its hard drive soul (and let’s not try and say that this has had anything to do with not posting for eons, I just don’t have the motivation to keep up like a good little blogger). Two things came to mind. 1. Sadness, the thought of getting this bad boy running again included lots of money and lots of time and lots of cables and my wife freaking out cause she needs to check her e-bay business. 2. ELATION, this is it! It’s time for a new system! JOY! RAPTURE! GLEE! I was going to be forced to spend lots and lots of money that I don’t have. YEAH! So suffering is life right? And suffering is caused by desire, right? Well I was suffering for the desire for a new badass system that could finally take my video production to the next level. The SONY VAIO RC110G has answered my suffering and I will never want again. It wasn’t all that easy really but for the sake of your readership I will just say a few things. I started with a RB44G, I liked it, and I liked it a lot. I could not for the life of me get it to recognize my scanner though, and for this I refer back to the aforementioned week of “up and downs in computer land” I did everything folks, everything, (well, actually not the one thing, and that wasn’t until I had purchased and new scanner, recovered my hard drive to it’s original state, and purchased the computer I really desired) that I thought of plus some really good help from Sony support, (looking back on that support I wonder how good it really was, but the dude was really nice and I learned a lot about XP that I didn’t know). Let’s just say that if scanner software tells you when it’s loading up to disable virus software during the install that it’s not always the right advice. Let’s just say that Norton Antivirus is REALLY protective. So protective that without it I could have been up and running my malicious scanner the second I bought the first computer and NONE of this would have happened. Oh well. My wife likes it.

I bought this new system so I could do to things. 1. Make videos for funerals, (not video the funeral silly, image-montage videos of the deceased in life on the big screen) and 2. to bring all of my analog video footage to DVD/digital format. Well, the system works beautifully for the latter, I have not had the chance yet to make a video for a family with the new system but boy am I ready.

What transferring my analog tapes to digital format has caused me to do in the last few days is to review the hours of my life captured on the camera for the last 7 years. And this has caused me to reflect. Imagine that.

Note: at this point I’ve switched on itunes again; I won’t bother you with what comes on cause that is annoying to ye and me. I have it playing in the eclectic section/Sylvia and Spinoza Internet Radio. It is wonderful and my advice is to turn it on and read this part of the post to it.

I started my analog adventure with a tape of my wife and I going to the Como Zoo in Minneapolis. We are traveling to a kite festival, on a frozen lake in January or February. That last sentence does it all for me in the context of that time. My wife had bought me the camera for Christmas with money we didn’t have. (THANKS Best Buy!) We didn’t have kids, we didn’t have money, we didn’t have anything but each other and we were living in the midwestern wasteland trying to get through school. I was embalming bodies for the medical school. It was so simple then. What I come to when I view these times is such a feeling that I really have been living my life all this time. I know that’s kind of given but to be able to stop, pause and rewind to a time that was in relation to what is really does an amazing job of bringing to light the fact that time has moved forward. I take day to day as day to day and really get hooked up with what needs to be accomplished so that the future is not so “unknown”. Psychologically I really do understand that I don’t have ANY control of what might come down the turnpike of life but that rarely stops me from attempting to smooth the transition of now to then. To look back on then becomes a window on whom I have become, but reflecting on it helps me only slightly on what will become of me in the then of the future.

My four-year-old has been drawing a lot lately. I drew voraciously when I was his age and beyond and watching and helping him is absolutely blowing my mind. I see myself in his actions; I see the quest to put forth on paper what is in the mind. In that I see him beginning to “see” better. I have watched his drawing hand go from a fist grappling the marker like a club to delicately holding the pencil with his fingers and using his wrist and fingers make subtle lines of detail. I watched an early tape of him last night and saw this baby that I can hardly believe is the guy that I discuss the various ways you can kill vampires (not just water, holy-water). At the same time, I watch this baby that can’t even control his movements enough to keep from sticking a spoon in his eye. I know who he is, he’s the guy that I loved so much that it hurt me physically inside. He’s that little guy that taught me about love and absolutely continues to each day. They are two different guys and yet they are the same.

My goal is to get all of this tape downloaded to hard drive so that I can cut out all the boring parts and leave just the good stuff. Now, the trip to the zoo is pretty easy in this case. What the hell was I thinking? Ten minutes of ONE type of monkey? OH MY GOD THIS IS BORING! WHERE IS MY WIFE? WHERE AM I? WHY DID I TAPE THIS? Cutting down the “baby tapes” is harder. While it is still unimaginably boring most of the time; baby eating (whole meals, not kidding), baby bathing (yep, whole bath) baby crawling, crawling, crawling, baby eating again, baby trying to talk, walk, etc. is all so…great. It gives me the same strange understanding of who I was and where I am now. I have felt really blessed with the way my life is right now, (I have also felt very discouraged about how others lives must feel like right now. Guilt anyone?) The rewinding seems to put in great focus as to why I am feeling so blessed. And I guess that does put into perspective that the future could be a certain way as long as things are kept in perspective now.

making sense:part one (but more that likely the beginning of a long chapter on sadness and suffering)

This post has been comin' on for a month. I only hope I can convey what I am thinking. It's funny, a real writer would actually write something and work on it for a few weeks until it was right, but no, not me, just klick on the itunes radio and start the hunt and peck. post what may. ok?

I have a post [each time you see these brackets I will tell you what I am listening to, The Meices just ended, now we have the Butthole Surfers, oh crap, short song, now its the Germs, We Must Bleed, mmmmm good.] sitting on the hard drive at work. I am not at work. I sit at home on my first night off after being on call all weekend. I have had too many beers to be comfortable tomorrow, not drunk, but feeling creative, and will have another. I started that post with a [Einstyrzende Neubauten - Morning Dew] a bit of a diatribe about two rich ladies doin their Mom's makeup and hair. They did not like how she looked when they started, felt that her neck looked weird. Well, it probably did, she was dead. The unfortun [Soundgarden -– My Wave apparently this is for you Mr. H.] ate part of her condition was only that the poor ladies could not see the forest for the trees. They were/are people that are very used to getting what they want. Well, you can't always get what you want. I don't want to write about them any way. We buried their mom today and it's over. Lets just say [Servotron -– S.R.A] I ended up not liking them more and more as time wore on. They were rich and learned nothing. It makes me sad and I don't want [Tuxedomoon -– Next To Nothing, this whole itunes thing is getting in the way but I can't stop now, I dare you to find all these songs and read this while you listen] to dwell on them anymore. YET! I must. I must dwell on the rich and powerful in order to write this stupid post. I must [Wendy Carlos - Moonscapes: Iapetus] dwell on it cause I need to figure a few things out.

1. Jeez. I could talk about Katrina and how it made my heart so sick that I could not sleep but I really can't convey that sentiment right now in words. I think it is basically my fault for listening to the news and picking up on a few stories that [Spirit -– I Got A Line On You, oh man i love this song, and for the record I am listening to Dr. Yo at 96kbps] just simply freaked my shit. I could not handle a universe that allowed such pure evil to float around unchecked. And then, I realized that this was probably the tip of the human [The Jerrymanders, Vocal by William H. Arpaia - Listen Mr Hat, Written By William H. Arpaia] suffering crucible. I couldn't stand that, I could not handle it. And don't get me wrong [Camper Van Beethoven -– She Divines Water, mmmmmmmmmmm] I am not talking about stealing plasma TV's (as if you didn't figure that out by now, you KNOW the stories I am speaking of and if you don't good.) I don't care one hair about looting. I just seemed to get in touch with human suffering and I have not been that close to it for awhile and I don't want to get close again but at the same time I never want to forget it because I think that is the only way that I can truly be reasonable and [The Dead Milkmen -– Swordfish] responsible towards what is really happening on this earth right now. [Renaldo and the Loaf - The Elbow Is Taboo] On one hand I have the great responsibility to my family. And on another hand I have a great responsibility to my family, the ones I share this boat with. I am pissed cause I hate the ones that hate yet know I can't hate cause hate can't fix. [Captain Beefheart -– Plastic Factory] I just decided that this post is part one of two. I will leave you with what came to me as I drove home from the cemetery today after burying the rich sisters mom. God is the face of Love. God is the face of Love. God is the face of Love.

So, I have been thinking a lot about how I really don't tell you very much about what I do, for this, I suppose I am sorry, but not that sorry. See, there are two things in play here. Firstly of all, I have like, two, maybe three loyal readers, and with as much as I post, those numbers are probably more like none, so this stupid blog is really just some sort of psychological masturbatory diary isn't it? No one has ever asked me to explain the embalming process, so I won't, ( I know how it works, and if I am the only one reading this thing, why should I care?). Secondly, I still have a really hard time breaking down the anonymity of the people I serve. I wish I could, and I could, quite easily if I didn't use names and if I embellished a bit and/or de-embellished slightly, but as I outlined before, I am the only one reading/writing this thing, so why would I. In some ways I do "out"” people but it is in a very vague way that only serves to get my opinion across most of the time. Which brings me to a point I have been trying to make to myself. I have unfortunately written the same entry about twelve times now, (have I even written twelve entries?) and I am not going to do that anymore. So that's it one two and here you go. Just because I don't show you cool shit, doesn't mean other people with bigger balls than me shouldn't, right? Right. http://www.flickr.com/photos/underbunny/sets/3722/

don't know her, never talked to her, If you google underbunny she's ALL over it. I think she's fucking brilliant and wish that I could do what she is doing (actually I DO do everything that she is doing, but I don't take pictures). She's good folks. I don't think I disagree with any of her comments. She's got balls too. If that 102 year old's family wasn't into that shot, and saw it, they could OWN that funeral home.

NEXT WEEK: my recent inability to give a shit because the world is fucked.

How to increase your close rate to 70%+ (7 out of 10 buyers)

So I am kinda the defacto IT guy around the firm I work for. Pretty much means I am the one that is supposed to keep the "network" up and runnin. This entitlement also allows me to be the guy that sees most of the e-mail before anyone else and the one that sets the filters to keep the gawdamn spam at bay. Whilst being sick to death of the indidious spam one day, I hit a wall. I got one that just made me mad. So, instead of simply blocking and and filtering, I replied. The subsequent transmissions are posted below. I know, I know, you've read it all here before, but let's file this under "be careful who you might be offending, they could have something to teach you" file.

Hello-

I would like to personally invite you and your entire sales team to my latest seminar, Advanced Funeral Selling Skills: Understanding Buyer Behavior being held Tuesday, September 20, 2005, at Flanner & Buchanan’s world-famous Community Life Center in Indianapolis, Indiana.

The Advanced Funeral Selling Skills seminar is a culmination of my many years as a professional sales trainer and organization development consultant working with various types of sales and customer service organizations….large and small. It has helped thousands of salespeople around the world increase their income and reach their greatest potential! Now, I have custom-tailored the seminar to funeral service based on my recent years working with funeral service professionals from around the globe as leader of the FCS Worldwide organization. In many years of selling, this system has had an incredibly dramatic effect on my own sales performance…that’s why I now want to teach it to you and your sales team!

By attending Advanced Funeral Selling Skills, you will learn:

• How to truly understand what makes buyers actually make decisions to buy
• How to determine who within a family will be the decision-maker
• How to tailor your presentation to the buying style of the buyer
• The secrets to dealing with difficult family members
• How to increase your close rate to 70%+ (7 out of 10 buyers)
• How to boost your average revenue per sale
• How to deliver top-notch service for the families you serve leading to referrals and future sales

Plus, you’ll get to tour Flanner & Buchanan’s showcase funeral home/cemetery combo property, The Community Life Center, and also get an opportunity to network and share knowledge with funeral sales professionals from around the U.S. - and the world.

Advanced Funeral Selling Skills will be the best investment you have ever made in yourself and your sales team’s performance…I guarantee it! In fact, I’ll put my money where my mouth is and offer you a 100% money-back guarantee. If you don’t agree after attending, I’ll give you 100% of your money back…no questions asked!

REGISTER TODAY- and get a special early-bird discount price that’s $100 USD off the regular admission price. Call 1-800-260-1545 inside the U.S., 301-287-2684 outside the U.S., or visit www.fcsworldwide.com/events.html to download a registration form.

I sincerely look forward to seeing you in Indianapolis for this fun, educational event!

Jeffrey L. Kraft

maybe someday you will realize that funerals are not about selling. at that point, you might begin to understand something. stop sending us e-mail you troll.

I appreciate your feedback. I certainly don't intend to be offensive. I am well aware that funeral service is not about sales in general...especially in the at-need setting...but when you get right down to it every funeral home must sell to survive in today's marketplace...especially on the pre-need side. The latter is purely the intent of this program. I hope you understand the distinction. Maybe you have a better suggestion on how I might present this program? Should I change the name to something more pre-need-oriented? I would welcome your thoughts and additional feedback. P.S. I'm 6'2" thus have never been called a "troll" before. LOL

Jeffrey

All that we have to "sell", at any time - preneed or at-need, is our service and our compassion, the rest is incidental and a matter of convenience. The "things" we sell are the last thing anyone would want to buy and the last thing I would ever want to sell. You talk about "close rates" and how to "boost your average revenue per sale" - these things are, in my mind, CRIMINAL! we are talking about people in their most vulnerable state of mind. They will purchase from us what they need at the time, based on professional,compassionate guidance. You sound like you are trying to sell them a car. And maybe you are, your program might be ALL about sellling pre-need insurance to people, that's fine if you think that will help. In this state, you must be a licensed mortician to sell funeral insurance, ( no that that stops non-mortician insurance agents from selling these pre-need plans illegally).

I wonder, are you a mortician? Have you been in someone's home at 3:30 in the morning when their loved one has just died in the night? Have you placed the body of two-year old into a casket while the parents hold on to each other and know deeply that their lives will never be "ok" again? Neither of these scenarios will be made any better with brilliant sales techniques before the death occurs or when the death occurs, or after the death occurs.

I apologize for calling you a troll, but understand, what I think you are doing is detrimental to the true necessity of today's funeral director. We need people that understand what we are doing on a level WAY past how to sell. We need people to understand that it is much bigger and much more important than that. We need people that know love and compassion for our fellow human being, not how to sell caskets, (or insurance, or burial plots, or limosines, etc.).

you might check out this site www.morticianswax.blogspot.com

-A. Mortician

I agree with much of what you have said on your points and have taken a couple of immediate actions based on your feedback. 1) I changed the name of the seminar to Advanced Preneed Selling Skills and 2) I took out the language about boosting average revenue per sale. You're right, we're not selling cars and again, in the at-need setting, we're truly NOT selling. You're right...that would border on criminal and most certainly is distasteful if nothing else. But, on the other hand, pre-need sales will determine the survival of many firms in the years to come...regardless of whether we all like it or not. Who knows...maybe this particular seminar is ahead of it's time and some funeral home owners aren't able to get their heads around that idea yet, but I'd rather be ahead of the curve as a businessman than behind it...wouldn't you? I find that interest in the concept truly depends on the market one is in and how much competition they face on a daily basis on the preneed side. On the at-need side, I find the vast majority of firms advertise price. If that's not trying to SELL, I don't know what is! Don't car sales organizations advertise PRICE??? No, I am not a mortician though I have many well-respected expert mortician's that advise me on the strategy for our educational programs. They all agree that funeral home owners MUST begin changing their headset on many of the traditional ways we look at the business, including sales of preneed for business survival. I must tell you that I reviewed your web site in detail and feel the need to compliment you on the way you present your firm...very professional. Again, I also sincerely appreciate your opinions, thoughts and feedback. Your blog is interesting too. I would love for you to write some of your thoughts about funeral service and the funeral service profession for American Funeral Director magazine...would you consider contributing an article? Meanwhile, you are only one of two funeral home owners that emailed me with comments about this particular seminar out of 16,000 that the message went to so I've taken your feedback into consideration and made the changes I mentioned so it's more clear what the content contains and now we'll see how it goes. Thanks again for your feedback and for being an upstanding profession citizen. Please keep sharing your thoughts and ideas with me. P.S. Apology accepted on the "troll" innuendo :-)

All the best,

Jeffrey

Needles to say, I was intrigued. Who was this guy to ask me to write for American Funeral Director? I subsequently went to the magazine rack here at work and picked up the latest issue. Jeffrey "the troll" Kraft is the publisher. Oops. I told him I would love to write and atricle for him. He has not gotten back to me yet.

possibilities and truths

Oh dear readers, thank you for being so patient with me. I do wish that I could update this silly manuscript with more punctuality, I really do, I promise, but that, alas, seems to be proving quite impossible.

I sit here, dear readers, awaiting my colleague, so that we can ascertain the possibilities of a viewing of a man that went through his windshield. My colleague, who spoke with the man’s family yesterday, decided not to bring up some glaring details about these said, “possibilities”. Now, If it would have been me, after retaining said “family” upon the telephone I would have compassionately outlined in pure blunt truth about why it would be “difficult” to see their said loved one in his current condition. However, with some restorative measures and the simple yet magical act of the embalming ritual, viewing could not only have been possible, it would have been encouraged. My colleague, however, failed to outline some of these details and simply left it to calling the family back at some point today with the news that without (see above what I would have done yesterday) it will be difficult. I don’t know if he was being lazy or stupid, but now I suppose it does not matter, the opportunity is lost. Instead of just communicating the truths involved with windshields and bodies and preservation techniques and sutures, we now must start at “square one” and hope that he looks ok enough to view him in his current, more “natural” condition. Now don’t get me wrong, we can still rebuild him, we have the technology, but we should have done it yesterday so that that today when we called them back, we could have compassionately told the family that they could come down to the mortuary and view their dear brother’s body and mourned his passing without any question as to its ramifications. We would have done everything we could and felt good about that. Oh well.

Also,

I had a time last weekend to reflect upon the ones that I love. Some old friends came into town from lands afar and it was goddamn good to see them. I drank too much with them and probably made an ass of myself but dammit, that’s what ethyl alcohol is for isn’t it? I came to realize that as a group we hold great power. People are procreating, others have passed on, some simply hold the line and continue to continue. I love that. For all that changes, so much stays the same, the story just becomes more and more interesting. My life has become so different in the last few years that I have begun to wonder if I have veered off into a land that makes me alien to some of the ones that I hold so dear. I hope this isn’t true and know that mostly my self is so wrapped up in “other” things that I tend to feel a bit awkward when I encounter people that have so much going on around them that I have not been a part of for a while. I think I am becoming a bit of an isolationist and while that makes me a bit sad, I know that I must in order to continue. I looked upon a crowd of drunken friends last Saturday night and knew that I would not be able to tell everyone how much they all have individually shaped me and made me a better person because of their existence. I should have made a speech right then and there declaring this fact. I drunkenly looked upon this crowd and knew deeply that some of them could die. I realize that this is a pretty morbid fucking truth but all the same, I think about it all the time. And let me say, I don’t think anyone will die (at least in the crowd I watched last Saturday) because of their habits, I generally think my “peergroup” is pretty healthy about lifestyle choices anymore, the ones that bought that ticket are already gone. And lets also get it straight that I know that we all die. It’s when we leave in a window that doesn’t seem right that leaves such a devastating hole. I’m just not ready to deal with that right now. I deal with it enough. The pain of grief is something none of us want to experience. If you have, or are, you know. It is also inevitable. So when I drunkenly looked over that beautiful, creative, opinionated, loving, compassionate, forgiving, understanding crowd, and I think about how little I get to see you, I missed you, and I am glad we got a chance to see each other one more time.

owing druids love

As if you have not figured out by this point, I am not a writer. I do not have a solid voice, nor do I retain the ability to keep up with a, whats that word I hear all the time that writers have, it’s not a habit, it’s a oh whatever, I don’t have it. A regimen? Maybe it is a habit.

I have recently perused my prior rants thus far and have come to the conclusion that I have said plenty about certain topics. There will be no reason to further enlighten you upon my theories on the proper moral etiquette of the contemporary funeral director, (but I would imagine that based upon the very premise of this said, "blog" I will from time to time always come back to this general motive). I feel that it must branch out a bit though, there is no use in beating horses that are already dead. In fact, there are no reasons to beat horses at all!

People ask me a lot about death. I know nothing of it. I only catch glimpses of the repercussions of it’s presence. I have never done it.

Roy:I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.

It comes down to truth doesn’t it. I don’t believe god is truth. I don’t believe in god. I would also not consider myself an atheist either. That to seems fanatical and based on information we simply do not have.

I come into contact with people every single day that know the truth and a good many of them seem to think that it is there job, nay, duty to inform me of it. I smile, nod, say “Amen” sometimes, not for any reason of agreement but simply to patronize and pacify. Shit, it’s just easier to let them think that they are right and by golly-don’t-worry-I-am-one-of you. That REALLY sucks, but as long as I am bound to working for someone else (interesting that this is coming up on May 1) I will be forced to submit to someone else’s rules of engagement. I will smile, nod, and silently think, “you are fucking nuts…” and then I will take care of the family to the best of my ability.

I have been thinking about droids a lot lately. With the 3^rd and final coming soon to a theater near you, I really hope that Mr. Lucas is going where I think he might go with all of this nonsense.

I had never understood in episode 1 why our little heroes surfaced again, or rather, surfaced before? What possible motive could he have for allowing their continuity, especially after Old Ben says, “I don’t recall ever owning any droids” (I originally type-oed “I don’t recall ever owing any druids” tee-hee that’s funny shit) I suppose the operable word for the sake of honesty and plotholes would be “owning” wouldn’t it, digression! digression! I think droids represent our ego and our ability to unconsciously act based on our very framework. Blue R-2 represents the bodhisattva heart that we all might strive for, (or not strive) and that, is why the little bastard is so important. He acts only for “good” unconsciously because he has been “programmed?” to. Even if that means pushing his golden friend off of a precipice to his certain doom. These droids, however are also immune to the ways of the force in ways that neither Jedi or Sith seem to be aware of. R-2 consistently foils plans. That is his way. I believe, that in this next film we will see that just as one bot can do “good” with his programming, another bot will do “bad”, but not for anything as complicated as the thing that we are slaves to. LOVE. We too are droids, we just have a more complicated rule set. Right?

I think a lot about what I would do if I had to go through what I see others have to endure every day. Now, I am not talking about the 95-year-old great-grandfather dieing in his sleep, obviously. I am referring to the 40 year old father of three with pancreatic cancer, the 2-year-old accidentally run over by her father’s best friend, and the 16-year old shot by the police in front of his father’s very eyes. How do you “recover” from that? I will tell you dear reader, ya don’t. Ever. You simply continue on, forever changed, with the new dumbfounding knowledge that you wish you had never gained. I see it, and I don’t want it, ever. Nope. Not me. I also know, with every facet of my comprehensive abilities, that I am one-millisecond away from it every millisecond of every day that I grace (or disgrace) these green hills of earth. Does that mean I am paralyzed by fear to the point that I am unable to continue “on”? No, but I certainly do attempt to be aware of what I “have” and what others have been stripped of, (or in many cases, might never have had).

I think that I may know one truth. That truth is love. My son has taken lately to saying, son: “daddy?”

Me: “yes son?”

Son: “I love you.”

That’s it. He gives me a hug and I know that he understands something right now so fundamentally pure and real that I can barely grasp how important it might be. He has now entered into a contract, (unconsciously) with me, and really the rest of the world, that will simultaneously allow him to grow and prosper as well as be utterly and completely destroyed when the contract is broken.

Once love is, love is.

And that is the fucked up thing, (sorry for the language, I usually refrain.) because even after death, love goes on. That part of our core doesn’t stop aching for the ones we have lost. It does not just shut off. With no smiles/smells/embrace/laugh/anger/tears/eyes/hairs/smiles/smells/embrace to lay love upon, it just boils over into pain.

So is the answer to escaping the pain not to love? Not if you know love. There is no substitute, and OH how we try and try to substitute.

Anakin will not go Vader out of hate or fear. He will go out of love. Love for his Padme. And how can we blame him? He never had a chance.

It’s that thing that once you know something, you can’t ever really take it away or get rid of it. You might be able to rethink something and gain a greater understanding of it. Or even possibly be given a new set of circumstances that refutes your last understanding, but you never lose that grasp of what you once had. I remember as a young Presbyterian what it felt like to “believe” in god. (Strangely I don’t recall ever believing in Santa Clause.) I remember trying very hard to tell myself I believed it (god, not Santa Clause). Now that I understand (or think that I understand) that it’s a little bit more (or less) complicated than that, I can never go back, I don’t want to, the mystery is more beautiful and anyway.

Such is love. I have it, have had it, will have it. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

it's a convenience thing

I have just decided that the keyboard/screen/chair configuration here at work is the most ergonomically debilitating system that has ever been conceived. I patiently await back-pain.

So what’s new? I am into the fifth day of my seventeen-day run here. I am covering for a colleague that has chosen to better himself by attending a conference on pre-need sales. This conference should not hurt him in any way. It is the stuff of my personal nightmares but, as they say, to each his own. I have come to the conclusion that (and this does not really have anything to do with my colleagues sales predilections) I do not feel comfortable “earning” commissions on anything that I could “sell” as an undertaker. If I don’t actually do it, then it isn’t my money. I would imagine that I lose a lot of revenue for the company by sending the families directly to the monument company but darn it, if I am not cutting the stone and etching the dates and names into it, why should I get a sniff of that money? I am here to serve and the best way for me to accomplish this task is to make sure that these steps are easiest and most beneficial to the family. The monument company has a showroom, has the artists on site that will create the marker, has the lower cost to the family. Why should I get in the way for a few extra dollars?

I feel the same way about urns. I consistently tell families, (while we are looking at said urns) that they could EASILY go and find something out in the “real world” that would fulfill their cremated remain storage needs. I tell them that while I do have a very broad selection of urnerary (I just made that word up) merchandise, our selection could be considered “a bit pricey” or rather “a tad marked up”. The reason we have ANY of our merchandise is (in my humble opinion) is out of convenience, and where else are you going to go to buy a casket? Convenience is how we stay alive in this business. It is much more convenient for me to go the nursing home/morgue/mile marker 10 to scoop up your loved ones remains than it is for you to go and undertake such as task. It is much more convenient, (and legal) for me to preserve your loved ones remains by way of ancient embalming techniques passed down from great Egyptian priests than it is for you to pack them in an ice-bed and hope that nothing decides to “bloom” from within. It’s certainly more convenient for me to use my crematory to reduce your loved ones body to ashes than it would be for you to smear them with clarified butter, pile a cord of pine upon them and hit them with a Zippo. My existence comes down to being a more convenient option.

ALTHOUGH, I will have to say, with great zeal, that my existence goes beyond the idea that I make it “easier” for people. No one else has logged the time in experience or the time in philosophical wrangling that I have when it comes to the ritualization of events. I know what works and I know what works better. I typically understand, from a relatively short “interview”, what a family should benefit from and how to execute the process. Yes, much of my job is phone work, i.e. ministers, cemeteries, vocalists, churches, caterers, etc. And much of my job is “arranging” things, i.e. flowers, bodies, obituaries, seating, parking, etc. But mostly, (I believe, and again with great zeal) my job is to help people feel a smidge better about the fact that they are going to be sad for a while. I exist as a middleman between the time their loved one was alive and the time that they no longer are. I can be trusted as an individual that can “undertake” a small part of your burden. I can direct you towards a path that will hopefully help you to begin understanding what it means to live in a world physically without the one you loved. At least I can try to anyway.

I’ll digress a bit. I talk about convenience and I think I need to make something a bit clearer here. I DO believe, (apparently with zeal) that if people could did the things that I conveniently do for them in a “time of need”, that we would be better off as a society. I have noticed that whenever a family invests themselves deeper into the funeralization ritual, they always come out of it feeling like it was much more meaningful. Simple acts like making a picture board for the service acts as an outlet for a family member to vent the feelings they may have had about their loved one. Certainly any time someone gets up and eulogizes during the ceremony, they will always feel as if they helped “send off” the deceased in their mind, even if it was the hardest and most painful thing they had ever undertaken. When a family allows themselves to simply “show up” at their loved one’s service, I consistently question how much good this really does for them. It pays my bills but I am not so sure it will pay them in the long run. As long as morticians allow families to take this “easy way out” morticians will slowly but surely sap any benefit the families could accrue from the experience. By letting that happen, people will find less and less value in the service itself and eventually, quit doing it at all. Now that doesn’t mean I won’t be needed, I will always be more convenient to use for such miserable tasks I outlined in great detail, (and hopefully with zeal) above. But what we run the risk of, is becoming desensitized, (and by desensitized I mean becoming less sensitive to) to our needs as thinking, loving, irrational, half-beasts. If we can simply start throwing people away without properly figuring out how and why we loved them and expressing such things in a meaningful manner, what will we become? I don’t think I know that answer. I absolutely believe that if families took care of their own dead, in much the same ways that I do it for them now, we WOULD be better off in ways of understanding each other. We would know how much we loved people and take them much less for granted if we all undertook what I choose to undertake for you. I would love the trade off too. A more healthy society and I get a good nights sleep. I would happily go on unemployment if we could learn to love each other better. Maybe I would have more time to write.

So, I finally got DSL at my house now.

Now that I have this amazing power at home. I should really be able to post more, not that anyone reads this anyway. Let's talk about dysfunction shall we?

Actually I don't want to talk about dysfunction. I would rather write about how sad I am about Dr. Hunter S. Thompson committing suicide this last weekend. He was my Hemingway and he went out just like him. I will miss the musings of this man. I really wonder what he had in the hopper about the current state of affairs. It' s probably what made him kill himself.

"Sometimes A Great Notion" - Kesey, "Down The River" - Abbey, "Stranger In Strange Land"- Heinlein, all of these works have shaped me in ways that I can only vaguely understand. Thompson, I understand, he wrote from a place of balls-out blurred line reality that only the initiated can taste. When I went to see the film version of "fear and loathing", it made the hairs standup on the back of my neck, I knew that I could never go down that road again. I will miss this man's prose. I will miss his theory. His world made sense to me. His passion for truth, his abandonment of it, somewhere lies the truth in that.

The dysfunction thing form above comes from dealing with fucked up families. Not just your general grief stricken families, (or even the really messed up ones due to traumatic death interaction) I mean the general, average folks who lose a loved one and have rooms full of baggage that I have to wade though in order to proceed with a meaningful ritual. This week just clinched it for me I suppose. This week I came to grips with the fact that only about 10%, (and that is being liberal) of the people I meet with have it together. Is this an indication of the constituency of the funeral home I work for? I don't know. I simply see very little attempt, in the general populace, to look introspectively, and make moves towards understanding who they/we are for the better. On the whole it seems we are ready to swallow what we are told by the media, that the government is right, and that it is okay quit and go to sleep. It certainly is easier that way and I suppose that is the clincher isn't it, it's easier. We are told that what is easier is better and most people buy that. Why wouldn't they? By all logical guidelines that steer us towards happiness, that must be the best approach towards life. UNFORTUNATELY, I have a different opinion. I have been cursed with the inability to believe that Jesus died for my sins. I feel sorry for people that die in other countries at the hand of our supreme military. I don't believe in circumcision, commissioned sales, flu-shots, the democratic party (although there is hope with Dean), sealed vaults, new cars, fanaticism, pop-country, extreme makeovers, Christian radio, James Dobson, homeland security or anything attributed to mahogany. I simply will not stand for mahogany.

so long ago

I find that because no one reads this thing that I have a hard time updating it. it has been so long.

Lately, I have been pondering what I really do. Lately, I have decided that I am a middle man between you and what you are supposed to do when someone dies. You don't always know what to do and I don't always know what you need. Really, all I am is the guy that is willing to be bothered in the middle of the night, (besides the ones who are taking care of the loved one before they die) and the family with ( or not with ) the person that dies. I am the guy willing to undertake the responsibility of being bothered. Besides that fact, I am the only one legally allowed (at least in my state) to sell you a casket, cremate a body, sell you a pre-arranged/prefunded funeral. I also tend to keep up on the literature, read the books, and study the way people grieve.

I am getting better at figuring out what you need.

A few things that you need to understand:

You could do this yourself if you wanted to and you would probably be better off if you did, however, you probably don't want to and you probably want help.

What you get from me is my experience and my service, not the crap I can sell you if you want it.

Most Americans don't know what they want and don't understand what is possible. They are trapped in a model handed down from the civil war. - Most funeral homes don't know how to step away from this model and help you figure out what you need!!!

I am but a keeper of ritual. I am the one that knows more than you about what to do with dead bodies. You are the one that will have to suffer the consequences of not doing this right. When you suffer, I suffer. I want to help you do this right.