My father passed in '21 we just got his headstone put in. $3700 and that was because we buried him in a private cemetery that belongs to my church and they don’t have any INSANE requirements. We had to wait 8 months for the granite stone to come in from MFing Italy.
My boss’s father passed and they buried him in a more… Conglomerate let’s call it, cemetery and they had to buy the headstone specifically from their own people. Cost them 10k about!
I’m wondering when we’re going to ask the big question, of whether or not burying people in a plot of land and putting up headstones is such a good thing.
Not only does it lay claim to massive amounts of land, but plenty of burial grounds have already been defiled - mostly because they were native American burial grounds…
But you know, Christian burials and the industry that exploits it.
Burry me at sea please. Let my body nourish the fishes.
I’m tired of feel-good stories about the community pitching in to help someone overcome the bleakness of capitalism during a time of need. This shouldn’t be necessary.
Not you. They have so much money that they do not have to concern themselves on a personal level. As long as things keep working out for them on the macro level, they will keep doing fine.
Well she is white. They only do that to the black ones. Still pissed at the Karen who did that and for the cops for actually answering the fucking call.
So much of the community was there – police officers, a motorcycle group, judges, EMS workers, nurses – to show their support. Numerous businesses – the list is long, and it keeps growing – brought checks or pledged money to help. Others have donated clothes for Emouree and brought food.
@Fredselfish is right about race being the reason.
Who needs a funeral home or tombstone. I’ve told my family to burn me and not have a traditional funeral. I want them to spend the least money possible. Put me in a necklace, plant a tree, spread my ashes somewhere, whatever. Things that don’t need to be done in a funeral home. It will be hard enough for them to go through losing their father/husband, last thing I want is to cause financial hardship.
(I’m by no means taking away from this story, it’s terrible.)
FYI, cremation can still be expensive. If you are serious about spending the least amount of money possible, consider telling your family you'd like to be donated to science. But, do be aware, there can be some controversial things under the umbrella of "donated for science", and they'd have no control over what.
Doesnt matter to me. Science can do whatever it wants with my meat when I’m through. Dissect it, preserve it, shoot it out of a cannon, stuff it and use it as a sex doll, it doesn’t matter. It’s not me at that point, it’s just meat and bone. Although I’m probably an outlier, I never got the whole reverence for the dead thing. They’re dead, literally nothing after that fact matters.
I told my wife I’d be OK with anything up to and including the body farm but it’s her call. She seems to be OK with donation to science but body farm is a step too far. I’m cool with that.
This is my take however I would be ok with my body being used for organ donation and medical research. Apart from that I don’t plan on hording any reelestate in my death.
"On Thursday, around 100-150 folks came out, according to Debbie, to purchase a drink. Even more brought donations from friends who couldn’t make it out. Some people drove up and handed the family their donations in exchange for a cup; others got out and mingled and talked with the family. Some brought more lemonade, sugar, lemons and cups in case Emouree ran out. (In fact, the local Piggly Wiggly ran out of lemons Thursday.)
So much of the community was there – police officers, a motorcycle group, judges, EMS workers, nurses – to show their support. Numerous businesses – the list is long, and it keeps growing – brought checks or pledged money to help. Others have donated clothes for Emouree and brought food.
But that’s not it. Multiple local monument companies reached out to donate a tombstone to the family, and enough money has been raised to pay for her mom’s funeral costs."
As community should, this is not a dystopian story. People die, mothers die, this is a story of community coming together to help a little girl heal.
You are right though, this is a wonderful story of community coming together. I think much of the support isn’t really monetary but an outpouring of love trying to help a little girl cope with her loss. But I do agree that no one should have to experience monetary stress in times of crisis. We can all do better all of the time, not just some of the time.
poor people exist, poor mothers die, this is not dystopian, it's the human condition, it maybe unfair, and point to an unfair system, but it's not dystopian, this isn't new, and it isn't imagines, it's the way things always have been. words have meaning. and this doesn't mean that.
You’re the type of person this sub targets, buddy.
I’m sure you think the teacher who had to have their colleagues donate sick time so they could be with their child with cancer, or the kid who sold candles to pay for his friend’s wheelchair is heartwarming too.
The whole point is that people having to do stuff like that in the first place is bad, and is the result of a very sick society.
my point is that poor does not automatically imply dystopian and therefor your a suggestion to the contrary (choose between “poor” and “not dystopian”) is not true, as can be seen in this handy matrix
poverty is attribute that can be present in dystopia, but it is not a necessity.
in most major dystopias in popular culture (1984, Fahrenheit 451, blade runner, logan’s run) the poverty is not the defining factor.
and on the opposite side, people can be poor, struggling through hardships, but still be looking for a bright future instead of feeling oppressed or dystopian.
as can be seen in scifi colonization stories or in real life communities in poor countries. despite lacking the wealth of the top 10% of western population, without our mortgages or antidepressants (or maybe just because of that), they can be much happier.
Maybe. Maybe she felt powerless and wanted to do something, anything, to feel like she was contributing during the process. Without more context its hard to say. People act in weird ways when loved ones die, maybe she’s channeling her pain into something productive.
Apparently you just as I did not read the article. After actually reading it, it seems that the girl is just a generous person and likes helping others. Nowhere does it specifically say they did jot have the funds for the tombstone and it might just be her way of coping. The title does still make it sound hella dystopian though.
I was a funeral director for 9 years but recently left the industry. I didn’t feel like I was helping anymore. All of the 5 funeral homes in my town are now owned by 2 corporations. Courts have ruled a corporation cannot buy out all the funeral homes in one town, so these corporations work together to divide up towns.
The main concern of corporations are things like low accounts receivables, high insurance sales, high sales of packages, and corporate stock price. Our offices had TVs that displayed these stats on a loop and ranked corpoate owned funeral homes as well as their individual staff based on these numbers. Staff with subpar numbers would be given “coachings” and “retraining”. I got a lot of those. I was coached not to “fall for sad stories” and how to judge what a person can afford by looking at the car they drove, what they were wearing, and slyly asking what they do for work.
Some of the coaching were beyond shady and straight up illegal. Local regulations required that we show our least expensive option to all clients. My bosses would instruct me to hide those options unless it was obvious the client couldn’t afford anything else. Local regulations prevented me from making untrue statements. I was told to present our premium package that 15% of people purchased as “our most popular package”. It was not. The cheap package was our most popular package, but also, most clients did not purchase a package as it was less expensive to just buy the things they wanted individually.
When I brought up that clients were unhappy, bosses would regularly tell me “So what? Are they going to go to X Funeral Home? Cause we own that one too.” The entire focus was making the KPI numbers go up. I get that this is how corporations operate, but we were selling funerals not cars. It just didn’t feel right.
My advice is to determine how important funeral services are to you. The modern day funeral is an idea crafted by funeral homes to make money. If you really like the idea, be prepared to pay for it, but don’t feel like you have to. There’s nothing wrong with organizing a small service on your own with you and close family. There’s nothing wrong with not having a tombstone. Determine how important it is to you and don’t let others pressure you into spending money on something you don’t value.
I’ve asked my loved ones to throw me onto some rich guy’s yacht and give me a Viking funeral. But seriously it sounds like you worked for a bunch of vultures. Thanks for providing people with some information to help them avoid being preyed on at an extremely vulnerable time.
The way we treat our dead, and the people coping with the grief of losing their loved ones is like number 2 on the sentience scale.
So practices like this, predation on recently bereaved family members is pretty much pulling the entire human civilisation backwards. It’s barbaric, entirely unnecessary and completely incompatible with social living.
In a civilised society, such things would be abhorrent and the people involved would be ostracised, exiled from culture; engaging with them would have been taboo.
Good on you for leaving such a system behind. When we all subscribe to such value systems we will be far better off.
Why have you not yet named these corporations? Why have you not named your boss? You continue to serve these same interests with your silence. Shame on you for it.
I don’t need to name the corporations because it’s the entire industry that sucks. All funeral homes are private for profit corporations. None are better than another. To name one would be to excuse the rest. The funeral home you need to be wary of is the one you’re using.
I liked the Speaker for the Dead from the Ender’s Game series. Instead of some guy reading off fluff about how kind they were, how they would be missed etc, they had a position called Speaker for the Dead who would speak there.
Before the funeral event, the Speaker would be like a journalist, studying to learn and understand the person who had just passed. Then the eulogy would be more of a story of the person’s life, what goals they pursued through life, etc. Explain why and who the person was. Felt kind of like the difference between just seeing the grumpy man in Up, and seeing the intro to the movie to see who he was through life and why he was grumpy now.
I wish our funerals were more like that. Let me see and understand the entire life that just ended. Let them have their story one more time.
To be clear, there’s no indication in this article that the family couldn’t afford this. It sounds like they’ve got great family support. It also sounds like this was an activity this 7 year old took up completely independently, not because someone was like “oh no, we can’t afford a tombstone.” The article reads like this 7 year old is using this activity as a really positive way to cope with the loss of her mother, and then their supportive community picked up on it and ran with it.
To be clear, there’s no indication in this article that the family couldn’t afford this.
The article seems to indicate:
But that’s not it. Multiple local monument companies reached out to donate a tombstone to the family, and enough money has been raised to pay for her mom’s funeral costs.
That may be the only thing you can do. People with more agency probably wouldn’t feel limited to what is directly spoon fed to them on a social media site.
The amount of time you spent posting vapid responses is much more than it would have taken for you to simply confirm the information on your own. But, you do you.
Lmao you took the time to research this puff piece to prove to me this is somehow dystopian and refuse to even share your source. No, I’m not going to “do my own research” on this story. You could easily have linked your source in the amount of time you’ve spent posting vapid responses.
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