As a funeral director with over a decade of experience around the United States and a passion for educating the next generation of professionals, I’ve had the privilege to witness an evolution in the death care field. Today, I want to explore how we can use our unique position to foster acceptance of diversity and unconventional ideas, particularly in children, while pushing the boundaries of traditional death care.
Funeral services unite people from all walks of life, serving as impromptu classrooms for children. I recall a service we held for a beloved community leader who had immigrated from Ghana. The funeral blended traditional Ghanaian customs with local practices. Children at the service were captivated by the colorful kente cloth draping the casket, the rhythmic beats of traditional drums, and the unfamiliar yet deeply moving rituals. This experience highlighted our unique opportunity to expose children to diversity in a context of love, respect, and community support. It’s a powerful antidote to fear or mistrust of the unfamiliar. This was not a funeral home with a large group of Ghanaian families they served; it wasn’t in a traditional African American funeral home either. This was a firm that was in the Midwest of the United States, where the population was mostly Caucasian.
From diverse perspectives, well-crafted stories about loss and grief can plant seeds of understanding in young minds, much like pollen spreading to fertilize flowers. In my classes, I emphasize the importance of recommending books that help children process grief and expose them to various cultural backgrounds. For instance, “The Remembering Stone” by Barbara Timberlake Russell tells the story of a young girl honoring her late father’s Mexican heritage. “Cry, Heart, But Never Break” by Glenn Ringtved offers a Northern European perspective on death that might be new to many American children.
As death care professionals, we are responsible for respecting diverse traditions and being open to new, sometimes radical ideas about handling death and remembrance. One area where we’re seeing growing interest is out-of-the-box ideas in services. I recently had an experience where I read on social media that a funeral director was wondering about a custom of another culture. This individual was not wondering in a way to be educated, but to be judgmental. They went so far as to state not kind things about the practice and then brought up their religious beliefs. This goes against what funeral service should be for all. It is not about us, the death care professionals; it is about the families we serve and what heals them.
If a family is healed by a ceremony with cards, fire, cats, popcorn, clowns, giraffes, or crowns, and the ceremony is legal, we should not be passing judgment. We should be supporting these families in their time of loss. Introducing children (and adults) to these unconventional approaches serves multiple purposes: It demonstrates that there’s no single “right way” to handle death and remembrance, it encourages creative thinking about deeply human experiences, and it can make conversations about death less frightening and more approachable.
To foster acceptance of diverse and unconventional ideas, I use several strategies. I create spaces for open dialogue, allowing children to ask questions about different practices without judgment. When appropriate, I encourage hands-on experiences, letting children participate in rituals or memorial creation. This could be as simple as helping to decorate a biodegradable urn or contributing to a digital memorial. Storytelling is another powerful tool; sharing stories about unique funerals or memorials worldwide can be a gentle way to introduce unconventional ideas. I also encourage children to express their feelings and ideas about death through art and journaling, which can reveal surprising insights and openness to new concepts.
By exposing children to diversity and unconventional ideas in death care, we’re not just helping them process grief more effectively. We’re cultivating open-mindedness, creativity, and a deeper understanding of the human experience in all its variety. As funeral directors, we’re uniquely positioned to be caregivers in times of loss, innovators, and educators. By embracing diverse traditions and unconventional ideas, we honor those who have passed in the truest sense – by helping to create a more understanding, creative, and inclusive world for those they’ve left behind.
In our rapidly changing world, this aspect of our work is more important than ever. Every unconventional idea we introduce, every diverse tradition we honor, is like a seed planted in fertile soil. As these ideas grow and spread, they have the potential to transform how society as a whole approaches death, remembrance, and the celebration of life.
Death care’s future lies in respecting the past and being boldly imaginative about how we can better serve our communities’ diverse, ever-evolving needs. By doing so, we can help shape a world where death is approached with less fear and more creativity, diversity is celebrated, and even the youngest among us feel empowered to think outside the box about life’s most profound transitions.
Don’t be so rigid, directors; you might get to pet a giraffe at a funeral.
