Tragic story inspired Engage With Grace
Like all movements, Engage With Grace started with a story – in this case, a very tragic story. In 2004, at age 32, Rosario Vandenberg fell ill and was subsequently diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Following the diagnosis, Vandenberg, a career pharmacist and the mother of a two-year-old daughter, lived only seven short months. Her family watched helplessly as the cancer took its toll, and after two months in the hospital, doctors said that Za, as Rosario’s family knew her, didn’t have long to live.

Vandenberg’s sister-in-law, Alexandra Drane, recalls: “When the end was near, the doctors pulled us aside and advised us of the options available. They strongly suggested we keep her in the hospital to make sure she would be well cared for – worrying that her case was so complex, there was no way we could care for her at home,” said Drane. The family, however, did not agree.

Antonio Drane, Alexandra’s husband and Za’s brother, told the doctors in no uncertain terms that the family would take their beloved Za home to die in their midst. Although the family had never discussed with Za what they should do in this situation, Antonio believed she would have wanted to be at home.

The night the family brought Za home, in what seemed like an affirmation of their decision, Alessia, Za’s daughter, snuggled next to her mother in bed. In the unfamiliar and foreboding hospital environment, Alessia had been afraid to lie on the bed or even touch her mother. Now, not only was the child happy to be close to her mother, but even more astonishing, Za – who’d been in a coma for a week – opened her eyes and looked lovingly at the child next to her.

The very next night, Za died peacefully.

Turning sorrow into action
As a result of that experience and a series of synchronistic events that followed, Alexandra Drane, president of health-care communications company Eliza Corp., teamed with medical blogger Matthew Holt to form the nonprofit organization Engage With Grace.

Drane and Holt launched a website, called “Engage with Grace: The One-Slide Project,” aimed at making one of life’s most difficult discussions easier by boiling it down to five talking points on a single, easily e-mailed and linked slide that can be shared in all kinds of circumstances, including family dinners. That was in the summer of 2008. Last fall, Engage With Grace launched a coordinated “blog rally” aimed at getting families to talk about death during the Thanksgiving holiday.

Although some families or individual family members may be reluctant to venture into such an emotional discussion at a holiday gathering, Thanksgiving is rooted in strong family traditions, and it may be one of the rare times during the year when families actually sit down for a meal together. Ronald Kessler, a sociologist at Harvard Medical School, puts it this way: “Although it can be uncomfortable to discuss this topic over the dinner table when posed as a hypothetical, this discomfort pales in comparison to the anguish families go through when they have to grapple with the realities of end-of-life decision-making. As a result, the discomfort is likely to be a price well paid.”

End-of-life wishes don’t match reality
The signature offering of the Engage With Grace is the downloadable One-Slide Presentation. On the slide are five questions designed to start the conversation and clarify the wishes of family members regarding their own end-of-life care. Engage With Grace also offers many other resources, including several statistics that help to explain why end-of-life care should not be left to chance, such as:

73% of Americans would prefer to die at home, but anywhere between 20-50% of Americans die in hospital settings.

While more than 80% of Californians say their loved ones “know exactly” or have a “good idea” of what their wishes would be if they were in a persistent coma, only 50% say they’ve actually talked to their families about their preferences.

80% say it is “very” or “somewhat” important to write down end-of-life wishes, but only 36% have actually written out their instructions.

As more families have “the conversation” and more people make their wishes known, the discrepancies in these statistics will narrow. And Engage With Grace will fulfill its purpose: for everyone, as far as possible, to be able to meet death on his or her own terms.

The templates are created using Microsoft Word 2003 (or higher) and are very easy to update.  Simply add a picture and replace the text with your own information including order of service, funeral poems, songs, scriptures, family photo collages and much more.  Templates come in  two different layouts (bifold and trifold) and a variety of colors, designs and themes including Floral, Religious, and Landscape. Also offered are matching thank you card templates that allow you to print custom thank you cards right from your home printer.

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Thousands of horrified family members converged upon the cemetery, looking for answers. To some, the disruption of a loved one’s remains ripped open the wounds of grief, and survivors felt as if they were experiencing the death and loss for the first time. More than 200 families planned to file a class-action lawsuit against the cemetery’s owners. According to lead attorney Paul Shuldiner, “There’s a lot of grief, bewilderment and anger” among the families. Understandably so.

What happened at Burr Oak Cemetery?
Burr Oak is ­– or was – the final resting place of approximately 100,000 people. It is a historic cemetery, where many prominent African Americans are buried, including Emmett Till, the 14-year-old whose lynching and torture in 1955 in Mississippi helped ignite the civil rights movement, as well as blues singers Dinah Washington and Willie Dixon, boxer Ezzard Charles, and several Negro League baseball players.

Four current and former cemetery employees, including the manager, have been charged with dismemberment of human bodies, a felony that carries a sentence of 6 to 30 years in prison upon conviction. At a news conference, Dart said he suspected that “irregularities” had occurred at the cemetery for at least four years and possibly much longer. He also warned that the desecration could involve many more bodies than the original estimate of 300.

Why did they do it? Greed, according to officials, who say the accused employees resold burial plots and split the money they made, approximately $300,000. To make room for the new burials, the cemetery workers allegedly excavated some caskets and dumped human remains and headstones in an unused part of the cemetery. In other cases the workers crushed caskets into the ground and buried new ones on top of them.

Families who want to know what happened to their loved one’s remains may be in for a long and frustrating wait. Members of FBI evidence-recovery teams, some of whom worked on the 1995 Oklahoma City federal building bombing and the 9/11 crash of United Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, are sifting through evidence. According to FBI spokesman Ross Rice, it’s impossible to estimate how long the probe will take.

If there’s a hero in this story, it’s the cemetery worker, referred to as “Employee A” in court documents, who accidentally came upon evidence of the disturbed graves. Ignoring warnings from the exposed workers to keep his discovery to himself or risk losing his job, he told another coworker about what he’d seen, and that coworker reported the crime to the cemetery’s owners.

Hawaii’s cremation rate highest in nation
Almost 70% of Hawaiians are cremated at death, making Hawaii’s cremation rate the highest in the nation, according to The Cremation Association of North America. One reason so many islanders choose cremation is to serve the greater good – Hawaii’s land shortage is a perennial concern, and cremation is seen as a responsible way to preserve open lands for future generations.

Those who choose to donate their bodies prior to cremation not only leave a gift of life through the advancement of medical research, but also have the relief of knowing that their loved ones will not be saddled with the expense of a traditional funeral, which can run as high as $10,000 or more.

Gifts for Life less restrictive than other donor programs
While the desire to leave a meaningful legacy runs high, good intentions often aren’t enough. Medical schools that accept whole body donations are often governed by strict exclusionary regulations. Many schools, for instance, will not accept donations from people who have undergone amputations or donated health organs to save another’s life. Some programs also charge a hefty fee to the family or estate of the deceased for transportation of the body to the medical school.

Gifts for Life, in contrast, accepts virtually all donations except in cases of communicable diseases like AIDS, Hepatitis B or Hepatitis C; extensive trauma at death; or advanced decomposition, which would make the body unsuitable for anatomical study. There is no upper age limit for whole body donation, nor does amputation automatically preclude acceptance.

“Being able to receive donations for learning is imperative to ground-breaking medical research,” says Dr. Greg Gerber of Gifts for Life, noting that there is no computer model or other acceptable substitute for a human cadaver in anatomical research.

How it works
State of Hawaii laws (HRS 327) permit an individual 18 years or older to donate his or her body to an appropriate organization, such as Gifts For Life. If an individual dies without signing a donation form, the next-of-kin or personal agent may authorize the donation of the remains, but if the donor is still living, he or she must personally complete the donation process. Gifts for Life will mail donation forms upon request, or the forms may be downloaded from the organization’s website (http://www.giftsforlifehawaii.com). The forms must be filled out and returned to GFL (the services of a lawyer or notary are not required to complete the process). Upon examination of the documents, GFL staff will issue a letter of acceptance and a donor identification card.

The only cost to the family or estate “may be the cost of transporting the deceased to a facility with refrigerated holding facilities (mortuary) if the person dies at home or in a facility that does not have refrigerated holding facilities,” according to GFL’s website.

Following study of the body, typically within 3 months after the donation, Gifts for Life will cremate the remains and either return them to the family or perform a memorial ceremony on the peaceful waters surrounding the islands.

End-of-life discussions benefit patients and caregivers
A study of 332 terminally ill cancer patients at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute revealed that patients who said they did not discuss end-of-life issues received more aggressive medical care in their final week of life.

Such aggressive treatment was linked to lower quality of life for the patients and their caregivers, who also experienced feelings of regret and an increased risk of depression. Those who reported engaging in end-of-life discussions, on the other hand, were more likely to receive hospice services, and their loved ones reported a better quality of life during bereavement.

Doctor-patient discussions result in less aggressive treatment, lower costs
Meanwhile, the March 9 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine included a report on a study of 603 terminally ill cancer patients, which was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Cancer Institute as part of the ongoing Coping With Cancer study.

According to the report, when doctors and patients talked about whether treatment should focus on prolonging life or controlling symptoms, patients were more likely to die at home and spend less time pursuing aggressive treatments. Researchers say these patients had a better quality of life and survived as long as those who did not discuss end-of-life options with their physicians.

The benefits of open communication between doctors and their dying patients include not only physical and emotional comfort, but also cost savings. The cost of providing health care in the last week of life was 36 percent lower for patients who reported having end-of-life discussions with their doctors, and researchers estimate that more than $76 million could be saved annually if just half of the people who die from cancer each year had those discussions with their physicians.

The number of people opting for cremation over traditional burial may be on the rise across the United States, but nowhere is the trend more evident than in Florida.

Since 1958, the cremation rate in North America has risen from approximately 5 percent to nearly 35 percent. According to projections by the Cremation Association of North America (CANA), cremations will lead across the country by 2025. But in Lee County, Florida alone, cremations accounted for 64 percent of final arrangements made in 2008, almost twice the number of burials and entombments combined.

Economy, ecology, and geography fuel cremation trend
In addition to the reasons commonly cited for choosing cremation – such as lower costs, environmental concerns, and religious customs, for example – Florida’s geography may also contribute to the Sunshine State’s increasing cremation rate. Funeral directors say that people who relocate to sunny coastal areas often leave behind their social networks; without friends and family nearby, traditional burial in a traditional cemetery doesn’t have the significance it might have in one’s hometown.

Florida also offers some unique alternatives for the final disposition of cremains, rather than placing a stationary cremation urn in a columbarium niche or on a library shelf. For the adventurous, Celestis, Inc., a Houston-based company, will handle cremation arrangements and send the cremated remains into space via private-industry satellites launched from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. Water lovers and those who are looking for an environmentally friendly alternative to burial, on the other hand, can have their ashes buried in artificial coral reefs in the ocean floor.

Florida is also the original home of the Neptune Society, an organization that assists people in planning their cremations in advance. Founded in Fort Lauderdale in 1973, the Neptune Society now has offices in 45 locations throughout the country.

Baby boomers, many of whom are now retiring to Florida, also contribute to the growing support for cremation in Florida and elsewhere. According to Silvia Marchini, a sales manager for the Neptune Society in Fort Myers, boomers are “not as traditional” as their parents were.

How a child views the death of a parent
When a parent dies, a child’s sense of security and survival is threatened. The child is suddenly forced to deal with issues of illness, mortality and life after death – issues even adults find hard to face – long before they’ve had a chance to acquire the coping methods they’ll learn throughout life. As adults, we want to support and nurture the grieving child, but where do we begin?

A child’s grief is different
Dr. Cynthia L. Long (formerly Cynthia Long Lasher) – a Lutheran minister and grief specialist – reminds us that children grieve differently than adults. “Children grieve in spurts,” observes Dr. Long. “It’s a blessing, because to endure a terrible loss with no relief would just be too much for a child.” For instance, she’s found that playing helps children deal with their pain in a way that’s familiar to them, “sort of rationing out their pain by focusing on something else for a while.”

In her book, Death is No Stranger: Helping Children Grieve, Dr. Long offers practical strategies for guiding children through their grief. Among them:

• Avoid euphemisms. Talk to the child gently, in clear, direct language.
• Avoid use of the word “should.” Don’t say, “You should be happy,” or “You shouldn’t cry.” Such admonitions aren’t helpful for grieving children or adults.
• Allow children to be sad. “They desperately need someone to talk to about what they’re feeling, rather than making them feel they’re ‘wrong’ somehow,” says Dr. Long.

Resources to help children cope with grief
For more resources to help children cope with grief, contact your local hospice or pediatrician’s office, and visit the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center website, where you’ll find a recommended reading list of children’s books about grief.

Source: NewsVirginian.com

Military Cremation Urns and Flag Case

In the U.S., we honor the veterans of our Armed Forces for their service and their sacrifice. The cost of serving one’s country is great, after all; military personnel typically face financial hardship, prolonged separation from their loved ones, and tremendous risk of physical, mental or emotional illness and injury. Some pay the ultimate price, dying in service to their country.

But many veterans die in poverty, and while the U.S. government provides funeral benefits for qualifying veterans, gaining access to those benefits can be a challenge. In many cases, families may not know or understand the benefits their loved one is entitled to, or they may not know how to claim them.

Kindness and Gratitude, Multiplied
A couple of years ago, Andy Scheid, of Andrew T. Scheid Funeral Home in Millersville, Pennsylvania, learned of a World War II veteran who had died penniless. Scheid was moved by the veteran’s unfortunate circumstance to provide, at no charge, a burial with full military honors, even ensuring that the deceased, a Purple Heart recipient, had a proper suit to wear.

As a result of that experience and his determination to help other veterans and their families, Scheid became a provider of Veterans Funeral Care (VFC) services.

Veterans Funeral Care
Founded in Clearwater, Florida as “the first full-service funeral home in America built to serve the veteran and military community,” VFC has grown into a network of more than 100 providers, all dedicated to assisting loved ones with every detail of cremation and funeral arrangements for veterans and their families. Beyond coordinating funeral logistics, VFC also assists families in applying for all applicable veterans’ benefits, Social Security benefits, and life insurance and arranging military honors.

Veterans Funeral Care purports to save families up to 40% on the cost of a traditional funeral or cremation. A good part of that savings comes from taking advantage of available veterans’ benefits, such as burial in a national cemetery. All honorably discharged veterans and their spouses and dependent children are entitled to a free burial plot, cemetery marker and burial vault at any national cemetery, which can add up to a savings of $6,000, according to the VFC website. With the cost of a traditional funeral often exceeding $10,000 in the U.S., the average cost of just under $3,800 for a VFC funeral is a godsend for many veterans and their families.

“Private or general, you’re all the same”
Scheid, whose interest in veterans’ causes stems from his father’s service during the Korean War era, says his primary goal is to make sure veterans’ families are aware of all the benefits they’re entitled to. “(T)he majority of veterans are not wealthy people. Whether you’re a private or a general, you’re all the same,” says Scheid.

The timeless (but seemingly opposing) observations of both men continue to ring true in 21st century culture. Music arouses passion and awakens long-forgotten memories; leads soldiers into battle and celebrates their victories; whispers children to sleep at night and enlivens their play during the day. Nothing can rival music in its ability to capture the joys of new love – or the anguish of love lost.

Music and Grief
Music’s power to convey the full spectrum of emotions is a comfort to many people coping with bereavement following the death of a loved one. Perhaps a song will call to mind the person who died, or perhaps it will help the bereaved to express painful feelings when words simply fail. Some people may use music for meditation or relaxation as they try to cope with or take a break from the intense emotions of grief.

Joy Berger is a music therapist and the director of education and volunteers for Hosparus Inc., the community hospice of Louisville, Kentucky, southern Indiana and central Kentucky. In a recent lecture on Death, Dying and Bereavement, Berger spoke about the importance of music in bereavement.

In her address, Berger told her audience that music’s role in bereavement comes from the fact that music is “a universal language,” and that the music we listen to is “always autobiographical.” The unique memories evoked by certain songs help transform the “past into the present,” according Berger.

Quoted in Scientific American, renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks of Columbia University puts it another way: “(Music) really seems to be as important a part of human life and communication as language and gesture. . . It is a way of connecting one consciousness to another.”

And that communication and connectedness are the things that sustain bereaved listeners as they navigate through their grief.

The kindness of strangers
Paul Betts, a former highway designer, heard a radio report last year about the increasing number of unclaimed bodies resulting from the recession. Perhaps the deceased were estranged from loved ones, or perhaps families lacked the funds to provide a proper funeral. Betts understood that Wayne County had a contract with a local funeral home to bury the dead, but the fact that no one was present to mourn their passing troubled him deeply.

A call to the county coroner put Betts in touch with Bill Kiesgen, the funeral director at Perry Funeral Home. The state and county pay the funeral home $700 per cremation or burial, and the funeral home splits the fee with the cemetery. Together, Betts and Kiesgen devised a plan to hold a monthly  prayer service for the deceased who have no one else to pray for them. As Betts saw it, “We’ve got a lot of abandoned buildings we can’t do anything about. Abandoned people, we can at least pray for.”

Although the Unclaimed Friends services, held on the third Wednesday of every month, are open to everyone, most of those who attend are members of the Episcopal parish where Betts is a member. Kiesgen supplies a white rose for each of the deceased – in March, there were 24 white roses – and Betts gives a metal angel to each of the guests. One by one, the names of the deceased are read aloud, and mourners respond, “May he (or she) rest in peace.”

Everyone deserves a farewell
“Everyone deserves some sort of a farewell,” according to Kiesgen, who doesn’t judge the families of the deceased, reasoning that they may have faced a choice of whether to feed their living members or bury the one who died.

Following the service, Betts encourages the guests to pass their angels and roses on to others with a request that they, too, pray for the stranger whose name is on the rose. He thanks everyone for coming and expresses his hope that by participating in the service, they have made Detroit a little kinder place.