A Good Life,
A Good Death
Six years ago nurse-midwife Barbara Kernan went back to school to become a Naturopathic Doctor, but life took her in another direction. In one of her courses she had to do a health self-evaluation.
One question on spirituality asked, “Are you prepared for Death?” Barbara realized she was totally unprepared and gave herself a “0”. Intrigued by the subject, Barbara changed her studies to Funeral Planning and began a deep spiritual journey. She took many life changing courses on home funerals, got licensed as a funeral director and founded Thresholds as a home funeral mortuary in order to work in the field.
In one home funeral workshop, Barbara learned about cardboard cremation caskets. These inexpensive and environmentally-friendly caskets could be decorated by the friends and family as a ritual and celebration of a life. She wanted to offer this option to her clients and found a source for them through her future business partner, Eric Putt, MBA. Eric was manufacturing cardboard caskets as a side business while running a First Call Service with his brother. When someone dies the “first call” is made to a pickup and delivery service. Wanting to see the business from the inside, Barbara asked Eric if she could join him on his trips to learn more about how conventional mortuaries were run.
What Barbara learned with Eric was astounding to her. She discovered that we have been terribly misguided by the funeral industry. For example, we aren't told that chemical embalming isn't required by law and isn't necessary for preservation. Did you know it is much more environmentally aware to keep a body in its natural state at death? According to the www.thresholds.us Web site, each year the U.S. funeral industry buries 827,000 gallons of embalming fluid in our soil and almost 1 million tons of copper, bronze, steel and concrete combined. When we think about our dwindling forests do we consider that 30 million board feet of wood are put underground in the form of caskets each year? No, we probably don't. Because death is such a taboo subject we don't explore alternatives beforehand and usually when faced with a death of a loved one we go on automatic pilot.
Did you know that most states allow us to care for our own dead and create our own ceremonies? We don't have to send them off to a funeral home where who knows what is done with them. But we just assume that when someone dies they will be taken away from us and their bodies treated to the same routine as everyone else. Barbara witnessed when mortuaries got very busy there were many naked bodies just lying around in a very non-dignified manner. What kind of way is this to end a good life?
“The funeral industry is so dishonest and expensive that people are going to the opposite extreme. Leaders in the home funeral industry are helping people learn their rights surrounding death and about the alternatives to conventional funerals.” Barbara observes.
The quality that a home funeral has is very different than a conventional funeral. Families can participate in many ways by making food, telling stories, creating sacred spaces including a memorial alter for honoring their loved one. There is a sacredness to the experience. There's community participation where friends and family each take a caring role in the event. Everyone working together can be very life affirming. When the process begins, no one knows how or what will turn out to be, it just becomes what it is meant to be where family and friends attend to their loved one, continuing to give love after as they did before death.
Thresholds specializes in home and family-directed funerals. They help the family to bring the body home, prepare the body naturally (they never embalm) or help the family to do it themselves. They provide equipment, supplies and support, if and where wanted. Both Barbara and Eric officiate ceremonies and funerals and handle all the paperwork necessary by law. They will file the death certificate and Social Security documents, even help write an obituary and send out to the media. Thresholds has a crematorium for final passage and can perform both graveside services or military services.
It is important to Thresholds that they keep the client's costs to a minimum, protect the environment and honor and empower the families and what they want to do. Barbara and Eric also teach public classes about death and dying and the releasing process. Some of the courses they do are entitled: “Crossing the Threshold: A Time For Change in Current Funeral Practices”, “Living, Loving, Dying: Coming Full Circle” and “Advanced Directives and Beyond”. Threshold's intention is to bring death out of the closet and into our lives, even when it feels scary and difficult to face...even when it hits home for them.
This March, Barbara was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a lumpectomy. Death was knocking at her door and, being that she works in the field, she thought it would be easy to handle the experience. Through the healing process she embarked on an even deeper journey into her fear of death. Now she realizes just how much death is truly an opportunity to live a fuller life. Barbara says, “My experience has not only enhanced my work, it has enhanced my awareness of life, my joy of living. I've learned that illness can and does have joy in it when taking a natural approach to treatment.”
Threshold's client Linda Marquez lost her 28 year old daughter, Juanita Kelley, to brain cancer last December. Linda didn't discuss with her daughter the type of funeral she wanted because she always wanted to have a positive and life affirming attitude. When faced with having to handle the funeral arrangements, one of Juanita's hospice workers recommended that Linda call Thresholds. Eric came to visit Linda and her family at the hospice early the next morning to tell them their options. He asked the family about Juanita's life and wanted to know what they wanted for her transition. The family was impressed with Eric's manner and since they had been by Juanita's side through the entire journey they couldn't see leaving her now. A home funeral just felt right.
Linda's other daughter, Rosaria and her husband, Joey opened their new home for the wake. Along with Juanita's boyfriend, David, who had been together with her during the entire four years of her illness, Linda, Rosaria, Joey and other family members cared for Juanita in death as they had in life. They cleansed and anointed her body and soul. They clothed her in a beautiful dress and jewelry, then laid her out on fabric surrounded with flowers. Linda said they could feel her spirit present all around as they worked and commented on the feeling of gratitude that emanated from her. They spent the next few days remembering Juanita the dancer, the younger sister, the musician, the lover of life, as they decorated her cremation casket. They adorned the box with their musings on her short life, with items gathered from nature and words gathered from memories. Before Juanita died she said she wanted three days for her soul to transition out of her body. On the third day, they held a ceremony and said prayers for the passing of their lovely Juanita who lay before them. Many in attendance could feel her leave her body, hover for a final good-bye and depart. They then took her body to Threshold's crematorium where they transitioned her body.
“It was a magical experience for us, a natural unfoldment to the entire journey of life. I couldn't even imagine it happening any other way. The experience helped me tremendously with the grieving process. If strangers came in and took her away from us it would have been traumatic. This is the way it is done in so many different cultures,” said Linda of her experience with a home funeral. “I feel so much gratitude for Barbara and Eric from Thresholds. They were such a blessing for me.”
Having a home death is similar to having a home birth. Home funeral directors are like midwives on the other end, ushering us through a different life transition. Sometimes the home funeral directors will meet clients before the end of their lives. This gives them a wonderful opportunity to work with them through the transition. They'll be invited to the home of the client and sit around the kitchen table to discuss the client's desires. Sometimes the discussion is businesslike as in deciding what they will wear, what music will be played and what kind of ceremony they want. Sometimes the process is tearful as the client has the chance to make their peace. “Being a witness to the courage of my clients through the process holds more meaning for me,” states Barbara.
She continues, “The process of death begins at birth. We need to start as young as possible to deal with the inevitable deaths of ourselves and our loved ones. There can be an awakening through accepting the idea that we are going to die. It can help us to focus on our inner journey in life. We can have a deeper gratitude for who we have loved, how we have lived and the service we've done.”
Barbara reminds us that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. She recognizes that even though we may have a fear of death, she affirms that we also have the strength to go through it and that it can be beautiful. She says, “The Baby Boomer generation--which was encouraged to question authority and institutions--are now the pioneers in the world of death friendliness. We are becoming more responsible for our lives and are celebrating a more meaningful and more environmentally aware death.”
For more information about Thresholds Home Funerals please call 619/390-1411 or visit: www.thresholds.us
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