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Richard Helppie
Hello, welcome to The Common Bridge, I'm your host Rich Helppie. Today we've got a great topic that absolutely affects everyone and that's at the end of our life - there might be a service. From the funeral industry today, we have a renowned expert all the way from the state of Colorado, Martha Thayer. Martha, welcome to The Common Bridge.
Martha Thayer
Thank you so much.
Richard Helppie
We're privileged to have you today because you have been a bit of a pioneer, one of the first pre-eminent women to be in your type of position within the funeral industry. You've been an educator in higher education, you've been a lecturer, you've testified, you're familiar with all of the regulations as it pertains to this very important, delicate and personal topic. You learned the business from the roots, the ground up, I've been really careful about how I framed that. [Laughter.] I'm sure you've heard all those, that was completely unintended.
Martha Thayer
I've heard all the jokes, and I love most of them.
Richard Helppie
Great. So our audience likes to know a little bit about our guests. Where did you grow up and where did you go to school? What has your career arc been like?
Martha Thayer
Sure, I am originally from Michigan, but have lived in Colorado since 1982. I started working at a funeral home as a senior in high school, and thought it would be a great place to study and get some good grades so that I could get a scholarship and go on to college. I did that; I did get the scholarship and I went on to college and I wanted to be a CPA, [that] was my goal. And it didn't take very long after working at the funeral home that I decided that I loved that work and I wanted to be in that work pretty much for the rest of my life. I literally had a calling at age 17 that in some way, shape or form, I was going to help hurting and grieving people for the rest of my life. And so off I went to mortuary school, I graduated from mortuary school in 1991. Came back to Colorado in 1994, helped start the first mortuary science program in the state of Colorado. And in 1999, developed and offered the first online fully mortuary science program in the United States and got my bachelor's degree and my master's degree and just kept going to school. I'm a lifelong learner, I love education. And I love talking about things that people don't like to talk about; like that. So I'm really glad that you want to talk about this today. And I also want to say I loved your little humor there before you know about, you know, how do you say this without being corny or whatever. If this is a topic we're gonna talk about today, I really don't want your listeners to feel this is a heavy topic, I want them to feel this is a topic that is something that that we're going to talk about and not be overly serious or heavy, even though a couple roads may take us down that but I've been able to be in this business as long as I have because I do have a sense of humor. And because I can pick up on what someone says and go that's a funny one, that's a good one. Like, I'm going to use that to keep my chin up today and not be too sad.
Richard Helppie
Oh, that's good to know. But I had a paper route as a 12 year old one of my customers was the funeral home. And you know, frankly, I got in and out of there as quick as I could and never felt called to spend any more time in there than I really needed to and always made sure to use the front door not where the hearses would be coming in.
Martha Thayer
Not the back door, right.
Richard Helppie
So you've been at this for a long time. And when you think about the funeral industry or being the funeral director, what are the set of services? where do you begin your work and and then what is the the terminus point of that work?
Martha Thayer
Sure. So when we receive a call that that someone has died, the first thing that we do is get initial information to start the process of securing a death certificate and getting a death certificate signed. And then we either have someone from the funeral home or someone that we contract with, to go to the place where the death has occurred, and receive a loved one into our care. Once that loved one is in our care, we would typically contact the family and say, we have received your loved one, when would you like to come in and make funeral arrangements. And so when a family comes in to make funeral arrangements, or has happened during COVID, we did things via Zoom, or DocuSign, or over the telephone - we had to be creative about how we did this - families will come in, and then we will have a conversation with them about what is the final disposition. Cremation is the number one method of disposition in the United States now. When I started in the business in 1988, it was burial. So the cremation rate has grown exponentially during the course of my career. But that doesn't mean that we're not gonna have services. That doesn't mean that we're not going to have a funeral first or have the visitation first. Cremation is just the final disposition, as compared to burial. So once we make those determinations with the family, if they're going to have burial or cremation, then we start asking questions about services. And when someone would like services - if they want services - that's another big change in the industry. A lot of families today they have what the Federal Trade Commission refers to as a direct cremation, which really refers to a non-ceremonial cremation; we're going to cremate the loved one after we receive a permit to do so. The family will have selected what type of urn or container they want to receive their loved one back in. And then we will contact them Once that process is complete, and they can come back in and then what they do with that urn is up to them. But there's a big misconception that if you pick burial, it's more expensive than if you pick cremation. And what we know, statistically, is that it's only about $1,000, less for cremation than it is for burial. So when someone says to me, we want burial. I know exactly what I'm going to do. I know the steps that I need to take because it's pretty cut and dry is probably going to be a traditional family that's going to have a church service or a service in the chapel. And then we're all going to precess from the place of the service to the cemetery. But when someone says they want cremation, I go, aha, wonderful. What are we going to do? Because I have a lot of questions for those cremation families. And I actually prefer to make arrangements with the cremation family because our choices are unlimited. We don't need to have a service within a couple of days. We have a lot of choices and options that we can share with families. What about like embalming? That was a standard practice; that the deceased was embalmed, there was a public viewing, there was a service and again, to your point, more people were at church in the past, and then they were buried. As things changed in terms of embalming and in terms of open casket and how much work the funeral director does so that the person looks more life-like post death... Right. Embalming is really a construct of the Civil War. We did not embalm in this country until the Civil War. Up until that point, even in battlefields, you were buried where you fell. There was no returning bodies, there was no sending people back home to where their loved ones were. And families took care of their own dead. There were multi-generations in the house. If someone died, you would typically just dig the grave on your family plot, right? I mean you owned some land and you would have a family cemetery on your land and you were the ones that that dug the grave to put your loved one in. So what changed during the Civil War with embalming is, we had two things that made it possible, we had trains, we had a railway system in which we could return bodies back to their loved ones, and we had ice. So it was easier to even develop the idea of what can we do to get someone back home. It was also during the Victorian era that that all occurred, where death was very romanticized. It was something that people thought was beautiful, that was the era of the big floral arrangements, and the elaborate caskets and lots of ostentation and tons of food and things of that nature. But the embalming was something that was really started out of the Civil War and people wanting their sons back. So if you think about the timeline of history, and you could go back and say, well, the Egyptians and embalmed and certainly they did, but that was a very different type of embalming than what we would do today. But if you think about the history of embalming, it's really been a short window, I mean, maybe not even the blink of an eye in terms of time that we've actually been preparing the dead for that. So a lot of families still want that. That is one of the things that I do as a part time funeral director and embalmer for the funeral home that I work for. And I enjoy preparing someone for their family to say their final goodbye, it is not something that everyone needs. But for those who need it, I want to take that experience and make it the least traumatic, most healing experience that I can make it. And so by bathing the body, cleaning the body, disinfecting the body, maybe putting some cosmetic on, I'm able to provide - and I heard you say the term life-like, before and while that is a term that is often used I also like to say recognizable, because I always told my students in the classroom, if I dead and I've been embalmed, and you come up and you say, it looks just like her, I'm going to be mad, because I hope I'm not walking around looking like I'm dead, right? So we should look different. There is a change, there is a physical change in a person. And it's also very obvious that something that made that person who they are is no longer there. So the body continues to be so so so important.
Richard Helppie
So the embalming process...is formaldehyde or some other kinds of chemical? And does that require that you have a sealed casket in the cement and the like so that doesn't get into the groundwater?
Martha Thayer
No, as soon as formaldehyde is is introduced into the body, it becomes neutralized. There is a misconception that cemeteries are full of formaldehyde, they're actually not full of formaldehyde. Those chemicals have all been neutralized. It's also no different than...a lot of times people say what happens with the blood? Does it just go drop down the drain at the funeral home? And it's like, yep, and it goes through the same system as any other bodily function that happens to people, it goes down the drain, and all gets taken care of on the other end.
Richard Helppie
So the water purification plant doing its job.
Martha Thayer
They are doing their job.
Richard Helppie
We do indeed hope. I've actually been to some funerals and I've heard the term "green funeral," what's that all about?
Martha Thayer
A green funeral is - I always kind of joke that the green funeral movement really isn't a movement because if you really want to go back, I always joke that Moses started the first green burial movement, right? So but from a modern day perspective, green burial are families that they don't want any of the chemicals. Maybe they're there when the death occurs and they don't need to see the body again, or there's no one coming in from out of state that didn't get a chance to say goodbye so they do not have the concerns with having the preservation of the body that perhaps other families do. They want a simple burial. Perhaps not even the person is dressed in their regular clothing, maybe the body is shrouded as opposed to dressed. Maybe the the grave is dug without any type of a burial vault. Burial vaults are required in some cemeteries, they are not required and others. Jewish cemeteries, older cemeteries you will see before the vault requirements, you can tell a really old cemetery or Jewish cemetery because what the vault does is it keeps the ground from collapsing in on the casket. So if you are driving through a cemetery and you see kind of dips, that means that that grave did not have a vault and the earth collapsed in on the casket. So if you are in a green cemetery, you don't need to have a burial vault, they probably wouldn't even allow it if you requested one. Everything is just a more natural way of doing it. We also have a lot of families today who choose body donation, whole body donation. So when you think about burial, or cremation, those are some of the options but people can also donate their bodies to science and a lot of people do that these days.
Richard Helppie
I was thinking on the green funeral just for a point of reference that I was actually pallbearer in a funeral where the deceased was in like a biodegradable casket. The theory was that it goes in and it fertilizes this tree and the deceased had no chemicals and was also going to help nourish that tree of life. (Martha Thayer: Sure.) but that doesn't sound like it's a big trend at the moment.
Martha Thayer
It is a trend and I think that it is trending upwards. But I don't see it ever becoming...certainly not to the rate of cremation, which is over...57% is the cremation rate in the country right now so it would have a long time to catch up to that. But it is becoming more of an option for families who want that choice. It's an important option. There are different laws in different states. Some states don't allow certain things, like right now, human composting - I don't know if you've heard about that yet, (Rich Helppie: No.) that's another part of the green movement is human composting - is legal, I think, in three or four states now. It sounds exactly what I just said, it's putting someone into a container and rotating it for over about a six month time period, with organic materials to break down the body. So families have a lot of choices but it depends on the state that they live in. Even water cremation; water cremation is something that is trending upwards. Now I live in Colorado and we are the only state in the country that does not require licensing of individuals. We have registration for the funeral homes and we have lots of mortuary science code but because we don't have licensing of individuals, we're a little bit of the wild west out here. So in the state that I live in, you can be buried, cremated, you can be turned into human compost, you can have water cremation as well as fire cremation.
Richard Helppie
What is a water cremation?
Martha Thayer
Water cremation is a process of - what it sounds like - water and chemicals that break down the body and in - some would argue - a cleaner manner. Because it doesn't have all of the emissions that a crematory would have, so that's where the clean portion of it comes in. Then when you get back the cremated remains, you get back slightly more; you receive slightly more cremated remains than if a person was fire cremated. A lot of people just like that from an environmental standpoint, that it's just overall it's a cleaner process.
Richard Helppie
That's really interesting when I listen to you talk, you're kind of caught between these regulations. And I want to talk about that and how they vary from state to state. And then you're also dealing with something intensely personal that you're dealing with people at times have indefinable anguish and an unexpected passing of some type. And also, of course, you know, the expected events but still sad, you know, the passing of a beloved elderly person. And when you think about that duty - I feel what you're saying about your compassion for the people that are bringing their loved ones, and you're dealing with the regulations - what kinds of synchronization or tension between that duty to the family and the regulations do you help navigate? ,
Martha Thayer
Well, most people don't know that their funeral director has most likely gone to mortuary school. So they're not even aware of potential educational requirements in their state of the person that's sitting across from them making those arrangements, let alone what their state laws are of what they can and they can't do. So I like to tell families, there are no wrong answers. It's just what you want to do.
Richard Helppie
Well, there's got to be some wrong answers. Have you ever had a request come in and someone said they wanted to do A, B, and C? And you said, no, no, either we're by regulation, we can't do that or you say, no, I'm not doing that. Have you ever had any really unusual requests?
Martha Thayer
I really can't think of anything. Open air cremation is even legal in Colorado in certain places. So even if someone said, we want open air cremation, I can say, I can make that happen, I know exactly where we can go to make that happen.
Richard Helppie
That means like you're just kind of left out there for the birds and the coyotes? ,
Martha Thayer
Well now, okay, so now when you say that if someone said that, no, we can't do that. So yes, you've just found where I would have to say no. But I'll give you an example. One of my graduates is a funeral director in Connecticut and a person died in Connecticut recently and the family wanted water cremation. They don't have water cremation in Connecticut. It's not legal yet. But it's legal in Colorado. So what my graduate did for that family is they flew the body out to Colorado, and had the body go through the water cremation process in Colorado, and then the cremated remains were returned back to the family. That was something that they wanted. So even if it's not legal in your state, if there's a state that you can figure out how to make that family's final wishes fulfilled, then that's what we're going to do.
Richard Helppie
I was thinking about the funeral portion of your work, has someone ever come in to you and said, look, we want to do this, that and the other thing for the funeral, and you looked at them and go, not a good idea, or I can't because of a regulation, or hey, I just don't want to do that,
Martha Thayer
The only thing that we have a hard time with - and some funeral homes actually have a liquor license - but I've had families say, you know, everybody as they come in, they get a memorial folder and they get a shot of whiskey, or we don't want them staying. [Laughter.] well, can't do that but let me find a venue for you that we can. So again, that's my job, if that's what they want and I can't do that at my venue, then I'm going to find the venue for them where they can do that.
Richard Helppie
Do people tend to arrive with a request or a plan? Or do they tend to arrive to you and say, we don't know what to do.
Martha Thayer
It tends to be one or the other. They either have everything down to - and then in the 18th minute of the service we're going to play this song, which is two minutes and 33 seconds. Or they come in and they say - and this is always the one that I just have to shake my head internally because I just go really - it's the 106 year old grandma that died that they never talked about death, they didn't think she was ever going to die - we don't know if she wants to be buried or cremated. And because they never had the conversation and they don't know what to do, then we have to take things in a different direction to try to ask them some questions to help them decide what it is that they're going to do. My biggest message in talking about death and what I would hope that your listeners would, in part, get out of this is that just talk about it. Your family needs to know what it is that you want done. They need to know what your wishes are to be able to carry them out. And when you take someone who has had a loss, and then it's compounded with they're afraid that they are not going to carry out a person's final wishes - I've said to families before, I know that you're trying so hard to carry out his final wishes but he never shared them with you and you are not on the hook for that. You now are in a position where you're going to make the decisions, I'm going to support you in those decisions. Then you have to leave that there. Don't carry this with you that you have done the wrong thing or should he have been cremated instead of buried or buried instead of cremated? If someone doesn't have this discussion, you leave that with your family to carry. So not only are they grieving the loss of you, but they're grieving whether or not they have done the right thing.
Richard Helppie
So you would have something of a checklist: do you want a viewing, do you want a visitation, do you want a service, do you want interment, cremation by any method, and help people go through that? (Martha Thayer: Yes.) Great advice for people about their own personal pre-planning, and also when you're handling the death of a loved one. And, as Yogi Berra was said to have stated at one time, you should go to other people's funerals so they'll come to yours. I'm sure that something is very familiar to you. What are some of the best and worst things you've seen regarding funerals? Because I've seen some emotion come out. Certain family members locked out of the funeral of a child, and fights and sometimes it's a unifying thing. What are some of the things that you've experienced that you'd say, this was my best day and this was my worst day?
Martha Thayer
I have a phrase that weddings and funerals bring out the worst in people. And I truly believe that. And it's because it's a transition in a person's life. And it's the perception of the loss of control. The reason that people don't like to talk about death is because they can't control it. It can come at any time for any one of us and we won't know, we'll just be gone. So people don't like to talk about things that they can't control. When I think about situations like that, again, my role as a funeral director is to help the family design a service that meets everyone's needs, knowing that the answer to that might be two services, it might be, we're going to have a service here, and we're going to have a service on Tuesday, and we're going to have a service on Thursday. Now, legally, a funeral home is a public place; you cannot lock a person out of a funeral home, it is a public place. However, there are scenarios - and I have a funeral director friend who is dealing with this right now, where the son of the deceased, there is a restraining order against him to be around the family members who he has threatened to kill at the funeral - the restraining order extends to the funeral home. There are times when that happens, so how are we managing that? we are managing that by letting the local police know and they are going to have someone there at the funeral. We are hiring private security, plainclothes private security, there at the funeral. So those scenarios do happen. But they really are rare. The other scenario that I can think of that is extremely difficult is - I live about a mile and a half from Columbine High School and when the Columbine Massacre occurred in 1999 - Sue Klebold, the mother of one of the gunmen, she was on my mortuary science advisory committee at the community college that I taught at. Sue reached out to me and asked me to help her with Dylan's body because she didn't...they didn't know what to do. They didn't know where to turn. They didn't know what to do. They were in hiding. So I have a whole two hour continuing education presentation on what that was like going through that whole process. But we figured out a way for them to say goodbye to their son, to their brother, we figured out a way to do that. Sue mentions me in two of the chapters of her book that she wrote about - I think it's called "A Mother's Love," I can't remember what the title of her book is. But she has a whole chapter about the funeral and about me picking them up and taking them to say their final goodbye and what that was like for her. Those families need that too and that is a hill that I will die on.
Richard Helppie
The anguish; that so many families in our nation felt anguish. Nobody thought they were sending their teenager to school that day that was going to do despicable acts and then perish in the process.
Martha Thayer
And it happens over and over and over again in this country. So when we see these mass shootings, and I hear that the gunman is dead, has been killed either by cop - or typically, it's by suicide - I always think about the funeral director that's taking care of the perpetrator's family, because it's easy to take care of, and have compassion and empathy and sympathy for someone who is a victim. It is a much different scenario having compassion and care and sympathy for the family of a perpetrator.
Richard Helppie
Those victims that are innocent, the anguish in those families and the injustice of it, we need to get better solutions and better policy solution. We talked about that often on the show, about keeping the firearms away from people that would do these types of acts. And that hole in the heart of the parents and the siblings and the aunts and uncles and grandparents and friends of those innocents that are lost and these mass shootings is incalculable. It's a it's a lifelong scar, and something that we need to address as a society; our political process, not letting us do that very well. Again, everything ends up in your offices, where you need to deal with that incredible amount of grief. I'm glad that you're there for those victims of these horrible crimes. It's difficult for me to get my head around that but I know that's one of the long reasons that when I was delivered the newspaper into the funeral home, I didn't feel attracted to the industry, because it's probably days like this, I just flat out couldn't do it.
Martha Thayer
And isn't it sad that I have a presentation that I give across the United States to funeral director associations on how to take care of a perpetrator family?
Richard Helppie
It is. The fact that that's a thing that requires education is a great point. Nobody wants to see anybody come to their end in a senseless shooting like that.
Martha Thayer
And the frequency of it. I mean, if Columbine had been a one off, then people wouldn't be calling me over 20 years later and saying, will you please come talk to us about your experience at Columbine. But I still get that request, because it's still happening. I get it typically right after there's been a mass fatality incident in a state and they wish that they would have known more or been able to plan more. That's what the presentation is about. But it is so sad that that is where we're at in the state of the country. You're absolutely right.
Richard Helppie
It is and we hope to have some senior law enforcement people on talking about some things that they're doing to try to stem the tide. I'm forever optimistic, hopefully that we will get an answer to this. Martha so it's very much you're on the frontlines, and you're advocating that people do pre-planning for themselves, they do pre-planning for loved ones. Don't be afraid to have the conversation, I heard that loud and clear, that it certainly makes things easier when people know this was the wish of the deceased. Let's touch a little bit on regulations amongst states. Are there any state regulations or federal regulations that are troublesome or any unusual things out there that maybe our listenership, our readership, and our viewership just doesn't know about?
Martha Thayer
I think that "troublesome" would be in the eye of the beholder, or the reader or whoever it is, whatever is on the receiving end of it. There are 50 states and there are different sets of laws in each of those states and every single state in the country, people are still allowed to take care of their own dead. I don't think that people realize that. It doesn't mean that you can't bring in a funeral director to help you with that. But part of that green movement is a movement of people wanting to be more involved and not have someone come and take their loved one into their care and then they see them in a few days. And then a few days after that, then they get them back in an urn. So providing that that opportunity is there in all 50 states.
Richard Helppie
I want to make sure I understand that right, that if I'm a person in, say Poughkeepsie, New York - just to pick a random town - and a loved one dies and I have a valid death certificate that there's no special circumstances around the death, there's no crime or anything, that person could die at home and I could take them in my backyard and cremate them or bury them in my backyard.
No, no. So let me clarify. So what I mean by that is - and I'll give you a scenario of here in Colorado that I went through - a man died, daughter wanted to take care of everything and just have us cremate him. That's it, just cremate him. So she secured the death certificate and got the cremation permit. She took her dad's truck and went to the Boulder Community Hospital - I have to say Boulder, because where else would you have that happen other than Boulder, Colorado. [Laughter.]
Richard Helppie
I live in Ann Arbor, I understand, trust me, I understand.
Martha Thayer
Exactly. And she drove him around in the back of the flatbed truck one more time, all around Boulder County for a final ride. And she delivered him to me in the cardboard cremation container with the cremation permit. And I returned to him a few hours later in the urn. She was even there with me when we put him into the crematory. She helped me put him into the crematory, we put the door down, and then she waited. And then I got him all processed and put in the urn and gave him to her in the urn. So that is the scenario that I was referring to is, people can...
Richard Helppie
People have the right to do that. But they can't just willy nilly, bury someone wherever they feel like it or cremate somebody on their own.
Martha Thayer
No. And, and I will say this, if someone were to - and this happens every once in a while, where you will hear someone will come in and say we're here to make arrangements for my husband. Okay, where's your husband now? He's out in the parking lot. He's in the car. He had a heart attack when we were coming home for lunch, and she just drives straight to the funeral home. That would be a coroner's call, the coroner would have to be notified of that. But if a death occurs at home, and hospice is involved, and you call the coroner, and the coroner releases the body, we don't have to be the one who comes in and takes the loved one, whatever that looks like to family. And so you know, you talked earlier about you know, what kind of questions you ask and the questions that you do ask, the very first question that I ask and then I just stop and listen, is what does it look like for you to say goodbye to your mother?
Richard Helppie
There's a very difficult question.
Martha Thayer
It is a difficult question. But by listening to what people's responses are, I can then ask better questions. So that when they leave, they feel like, we have designed a service and a final disposition that is appropriate for that person who died, not for every person who died.
Richard Helppie
I think that's profound, Vice Martha, I think that is something that really helps people focus in. Maybe on that note, as we start to move toward our close, what didn't we talk about today that perhaps we should have talked about? Or do you have any closing thoughts for our listeners, readers and viewers of The Common Bridge?
Martha Thayer
Well, I would, I would continue to say, keep having the conversation. I always jokingly say, talking about sex doesn't make you pregnant, and talking about death doesn't make you dead. It's like we could talk about things and not have things happen, right? So just keep talking about it, have an open mind. And what I really, really, really wish that people understood is that what people want for themselves and what they want for someone else are typically two different things. So if I were to say to you, what do you want? A typical response that I get is I don't care, I'll be dead. And so I say okay, so based upon that answer, let me ask you another question. I want you to think of the person that you love the most in this world. That means more to you than anyone else on this planet. What do you want to happen to them when they die? Not one person has ever said to me, I don't care, they'll be dead. (Rich Helppie: That's right.) Everyone has an opinion about what should happen with that person that they love so deeply and so dearly. And yet when it comes to ourselves people are so, I don't care, just do whatever, I don't care. That's not an answer. That's a discussion that you need to be having with your family so that your wishes can be carried out, and so that your family can honor those wishes. I see a lot of disenfranchised grief these days, because people come in, and they desperately need and want a service but whoever it is that died, said that they didn't want one and so the family feels like they therefore cannot have one. So the decisions that I make about my body and my death, when I die, are going to have an effect on other people. And that's why we have to talk about it so that when the time comes, I'm dead, my wishes are being carried out, my survivors are getting what they need to be able to start the new normal for what their the rest of their life looks like.
Richard Helppie
Well, that's a very profound ending point for this very special edition of The Common Bridge. We've been talking about death, we've been talking about funerals, we've been talking about all the nuances and particularly the pre-planning. So think ahead. With our guest from the state of Colorado, Martha Thayer, a pioneer as a woman in the funeral industry, who began as a 17 year old high school student to become one of the renowned speakers in her field, we greatly appreciate your time today, Martha, thank you. This is your host Rich Helpppie, signing off on The Common Bridge.
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