Jan 21, 2025 | Advocacy, Community, Family, Federal Government, Grief, Research
SAMHSA Releases Its First Grief and Bereavement Fact Sheets
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or “SAMHSA,” has released its first grief and bereavement fact sheets. These fact sheets represent a substantial step forward in the U.S. government, acknowledging the scope and scale of grief and bereavement in American society. Not only are these the first fact sheets from SAMHSA, but these are also the first series of fact sheets by any federal agency and a direct result of the years of engagement you, Evermore’s base, have worked to advance among our federal partners.
The fact sheets include information and tips on supporting bereaved adults and children, including grief reactions, responses, and the varying time frames for grief processing and adaption. The fact sheets also suggest potential coping methods and ways for someone to access additional help.
If you are supporting someone experiencing bereavement and grief, these fact sheets offer tips on what to say and ways to help, as well as identifying warning signs that someone might need further support.
This is another step forward as grief and bereavement are addressed in an evidence-informed fashion in our nation. Way to go, team! 🙌
Jan 21, 2025 | Advocacy, Community, Family, Federal Government, Grief, Research
With Your Generous Support, We Are Making the World a More Livable Place for All Bereaved People
By Joyal Mulheron
Ten years ago, no one talked about bereavement‘s impact on our nation or our lives. Today, bereavement is highlighted in major media outlets, in the halls of Congress, and in our communities. Together, we are making lasting social change for all bereaved people.
Right now, there is no major philanthropist or foundation that funds bereavement policy and systems change. Evermore is only supported by ‘the people.’
It sounds cliché, I know. I, too, receive donation solicitations saying the same thing, but here, for us, for Evermore, it’s true. We are only supported by everyday Americans who believe in our work and the future we envision.
Our work and success would not be possible without your support.
We’ve been able to achieve substantial change on a shoestring budget, but it is just that…a shoestring. As large scale changes are underway, we are being pulled in more directions than ever to ensure that the foundations of bereavement care and support in America are of the highest quality and meet the needs of all people.
In 2024 alone, Evermore has facilitated America’s:
> First report to Congress on grief and bereavement,
> First federal healthcare report on grief and bereavement (it’s still in progress), and
> First federal meeting on the issue.
Evermore worked with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the nation’s chief mental health agency, to:
> Recognize National Grief Awareness Week for the first time.
> Release its first webpage on grief and bereavement,
> Host two webinars on the topic, where 2,000 people registered for one webinar!
We partnered with the Social Security Administration and The White House to advance systems that identify and engage orphaned children and their caregivers to confer up to $15 billion in Social Security benefits. Today, more than half of all orphans are not receiving the benefits their parents earned. This needs to change.
👉 If you know a child under the age of 18 who has experienced the death of a parent, they may be eligible for the Social Security benefits their parents earned. You can learn more about this little known economic benefit here, or you can share Evermore’s guidance on how to navigate the Social Security Administration for obtaining these benefits. Be forewarned, it is a process and we are working to change that.
We launched a bi-weekly scientific newsletter to complement our community newsletter (if you don’t receive our newsletters sign up here). You shared photos of your loved ones, sent us treasured family recipes. You introduced us to important community programming, where Evermore could lend support to programs such as a Hip Hop program in the South Bronx.
With Evermore’s Poet Laureate Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, we hosted poetry workshops that created community poetry and shared your moving personal stories and experiences (you can sign up for our next workshop in March 2025).
Evermore launched an initiative to secure bereavement leave for students in post-secondary educational institutions. You’ll hear some exciting updates about this work in 2025.
And, we partnered with Newsweek, spotlighting stories of bereaved parents and how they have coped in the aftermath of their child’s death (if you’re interested in submitting a story, learn more here).
We even hosted our first benefit rock concert with The Bright Light Social Hour, Parker Woodland, and others. I hope you can plan to join us next Fall in Austin, Texas!
Thought leaders and decision-makers are increasingly taking note of the significant transformations that are underway.
Over the last year, our work was featured on PBS NewsHour’s Brief But Spectacular and Harvard’s Public Health magazine, among others.
All of this has been possible because of you and your support.
Thousands of you have believed in our vision and the tomorrow we hold. It has been both humbling and inspiring.
Please consider making a donation today. So many people are relying on us to make the world a more livable place for all bereaved people. 2025 holds so much more, and I can’t wait to share what’s in the works!
Thank you for encouragement, support, and the opportunity to lead this change.
With love,
Joyal Mulheron
Founder & Executive Director, Evermore
Dec 18, 2024 | Advocacy, Community, Family, Federal Government, Grief, Research
Evermore is Making the World a More Livable Place for All Bereaved People
Fourteen years ago today, I was sitting on my couch, trying to make sense out of what just happened to our family. Our terminally ill daughter, Eleanora, had died a few weeks prior. While others sang holiday songs and gleefully exchanged gifts, it was a profoundly painful, dark, and isolating time for me.
Within a few short years, I quit my career because I saw tragedies saturating our national headlines, leaving a trail of unseen and unsupported bereaved people in their wake, and I believed our nation should prioritize the needs of all bereaved people. Today’s systems and culture kick us while we’re down, all the while telling us to bare-knuckle our way through grief. Then, when we’re feeling defeated and broken, we’re told to be resilient and get back to work. This is what I set out to change.
This year, more than any other, Evermore has made incredible strides in making the world a more livable place for all bereaved people. We grew our community portfolio to support grieving young adults in a Hip Hop program in the South Bronx, hosted poetry workshops with more than 400 people, and launched an initiative to secure bereavement leave for students in post-secondary educational institutions.
We’ve connected with our supporters more than 40,000 times through our newsletter, events, and advocacy. People shared photos of their loved ones and sent us treasured family recipes. Hundreds of us jammed at our very own rock concert with The Bright Light Social Hour and Parker Woodland in Austin, Texas (please come rock out with us next year!).
Evermore’s groundbreaking advocacy efforts resulted in our nation’s first Report to Congress, which provided an overview of grief and bereavement services in the United States. Next year, a report analyzing more than 8,000 scientific studies will be published, reviewing the highest quality interventions for bereaved people — which was championed by Evermore and endorsed by Congress.
SAMHSA, the nation’s mental health agency, recognized National Grief Awareness Week for the first time. It released its first webpage on the topic. It released its first webpage on grief and bereavement and hosted its first two webinars on the topic, where nearly 2,000 people registered for one webinar alone! We partnered with the Social Security Administration and The White House to advance systems that identify and engage parentally bereaved children and their caregivers to confer up to $15 billion in Social Security benefits that are not being conferred to orphaned children today.
Evermore, in partnership with Penn State and the University of California, has original research pending in an esteemed academic journal that identifies key bereavement trends for the first time. We launched a bi-weekly newsletter covering emerging science and trends in bereavement.
We partnered with Newsweek, spotlighting stories of bereaved parents and how they have coped in the aftermath of their child’s death. Our work was featured on PBS NewsHour’s Brief But Spectacular and Harvard’s Public Health magazine, among others.
It’s an incredible feeling to be a part of this. I am honored that you’ve joined me in believing that our nation can do better. What we set out to do is actually happening, and so many lives will be impacted.
Together, Evermore is changing the way our nation prioritizes and attends to grieving and bereaved people.
We already know 2025 will be another year of transformative change (you’ll have to tune in to see what’s around the corner; I’m excited about it).
But I want to be clear. None of this would be possible without your support. Evermore is solely supported by our people, people like you. It is because of your solidarity and support that we have achieved so much. Please consider making a donation this holiday season. Every gift brings us closer to a world where all bereaved people can live vibrant, healthy, and prosperous lives.
Thank you for your support, encouragement, and belief in our work. Together, we are making the world a more livable place for all bereaved people.
With gratitude,
Joyal Mulheron
Executive Director, Evermore
Dec 10, 2024 | Community, Family, Grief
The holidays can be a difficult time for many people, for many reasons. There are the expectations — to participate fully, to spend profligately, to performatively have a good time. But the holidays can also be a wonderful, emotionally fulfilling period of quality time spent with loved ones and opportunities to treat yourself.
Grieving, of course, complicates both the good and the bad of the holiday season. Grief does not go away at this time of year and can, in fact, be heightened; holiday traditions may trigger specific memories of your lost loved one, which can be painful, bittersweet, wonderful — or all three, or some other combination of emotions. What’s important to remember at this time of year (and always) is that grief and bereavement look different for different people at different times. People often talk about “firsts” after a death, such as the first birthday, the first back-to-school season, or the first Christmas without your loved one, because these are moments when the loss can feel especially acute. But even if you’ve already experienced a holiday season (or multiple) since your loved one died, grief is not linear, and you may be dreading this holiday season more than you expected, because you know during this period that the deceased’s absence will be painfully obvious.
According to Mary-Frances O’Connor, a psychologist and author of The Grieving Brain, our traditions are encoded in our brains, and when we come upon one that has been so drastically altered by the irrevocable absence of a loved one, “we can’t function in the world in the same way.”
“Suddenly, every plan that is in place has a hole in it where that person should be,” she told Washington Post columnist Steven Petrow last November, which means our “internal map of the world no longer matches up with the world itself.”
Regardless of where you are in your grief journey, there are ways you can make this holiday season easier on yourself. Below, we share five ways to help you make it through the holidays.
#1. First and foremost, give yourself grace.
Do not be hard on yourself. You may have expectations for how you will react throughout the season, but you might end up feeling totally differently; let yourself feel whatever you’re feeling. Acknowledge your pain.
“Grief is very tiring and — even under the best of circumstances — holidays are very taxing,” William G. Hoy, a professor of medical humanities at Baylor University, explained in a blog post published by the university last year. Listening to yourself when you need to rest and recuperate is hugely important.
Remember that grief comes in waves, and you may feel multiple different emotions throughout the course of the season, for different reasons.
Megan Devine, an author and grief advocate, reminds us that we can feel multiple, seemingly conflicting emotions at once. “Gratitude and grief don’t cancel each other out, they sit side by side,” she wrote in a blog post about handling Thanksgiving as a grieving person.
Balance out listening to and making space for your emotions.
#2. Don’t isolate yourself.
It’s important to keep track of your social battery and not put yourself in situations where you will be overwhelmed. Interacting with your support system and feeling lifted is an important and you deserve it.
“Being in community with others is very beneficial for your mental health,” Candi Cann, a Baylor religion professor who researches death and dying, said.
Keeping yourself from doing the things you love and being with the people you love may make a bad mental health situation even worse.
To make the best out of these situations and make sure your cup is filled when you do attend social gatherings.
#3. Tell others what you need.
This is important to remember year-round, but especially during what’s often a very busy and emotionally loaded time. Your loved one may be even more in your thoughts than usual; your grief may feel near; or your emotions might shift in any number of other ways. And even if you feel you are usually proactive about telling your support system what you need, the busy-ness of the season — and others’ own emotional shifts during the holidays — means you may need to vocalize your needs more often, in clearer terms, or otherwise differently.
If you don’t have the energy or emotional bandwidth to talk specifically with everyone you love about how they can support you this time of year, Megan Devine has compiled a list of 10 tips for supporting a grieving person that you can share to make sure you’re getting what you need.
#4. Make new traditions
So many of our holiday traditions are place- and event-based, and that can be too hard to stomach when you’re grieving.
Creating a new tradition can be a meaningful solution. That might mean celebrating with different people this year, or traveling to a different place, or even just attending a new holiday event you never went to before.
You need to be able to grieve on your own terms, and if you don’t feel you can do that in your typical holiday situation, give yourself permission to change the program. This can also be freeing: When you’re doing something new, you can’t compare it to previous years.
A new tradition doesn’t mean leaving the person you lost behind, either. There are so many ways you can include their memory, depending on what you choose to do. You can play their favorite song, drink their favorite drink, make the joke they always made… Doing something new doesn’t mean forgetting your loved one; it merely gives you room to breathe.
#5. Share stories about your loved one.
Even though you may be doing something entirely different this year, holding your loved one in your heart — and the hearts of those around you — keeps their memory alive and helps keep them a part of the holiday.
In her blog about how to support a grieving person during the holidays, Devine writes that people should not “be afraid to share memories about [the deceased]. Use their name in conversation” — and that goes just as well for you, the grieving person. They are still a big part of your life, and there’s no reason to feel uncomfortable talking about them.
Sometimes, it might make you emotional to tell these stories, but that’s okay! Ultimately, talking about a person you lost with other loved ones — especially if it’s a recollection the others haven’t heard before — is a meaningful way to connect, acknowledge the loss, and still hold the memories dear.
Resources
Visit our Bookshop page to purchase Mary-Frances O’Connor’s book, The Grieving Brain, and Megan Devine’s book, It’s OK That You’re Not OK.
Dec 2, 2024 | Community, Family
As the holidays approach, we often find ourselves looking for recipes that evoke warmth, nostalgia, and a little bit of comfort. Whether it’s a creamy mac and cheese, a delicious bread, or a family recipe passed down through generations, these dishes bring people together. Here are some of my favorite holiday recipes that will make your holiday table shine!
Chef Sebastian’s Mac and Cheese: The Ultimate Comfort Dish
“The holidays are hard, but mac and cheese is good.”
Nothing says comfort like a rich and creamy mac and cheese, and Chef Sebastian’s recipe is a beloved one. This dish is perfect for any family gathering, providing that perfect comfort we all crave during the holidays.
Ingredients:
- Kosher salt
- 1 pound elbow macaroni
- 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 2 cups whole milk
- 12 ounces grated sharp cheddar cheese
- 1 teaspoon Crystal hot sauce
- 1/2 teaspoon mustard powder
- 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/4 pound grated Gruyère cheese
- 1 cup panko bread crumbs
- 1/2 cup parmesan cheese
- 1/4 teaspoon Italian herbs
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 400°F. Cook macaroni in salted boiling water until al dente, about 2 minutes less than package instructions. Drain and toss with 2 tablespoons butter until melted.
- In a saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons butter, then add flour and whisk to form a paste. Add milk slowly, stirring constantly, until the sauce thickens.
- Add the cheddar cheese and continue whisking until smooth. Stir in hot sauce, mustard, garlic, and onion powder. Season with salt to taste.
- Toss pasta in the cheese sauce, then add Gruyère. Transfer to a baking dish and smooth into an even layer.
- Combine panko, parmesan, Italian herbs, and melted butter. Spread over the pasta and bake for 45 minutes or until browned and bubbling.
- Let rest for 15 minutes before serving.
Kirsten M.’s Bread: A Pandemic Discovery
“Bread is always a winner! During the pandemic, I learned how to make toilet paper and bread. It takes less work than green bean casserole.”
This bread is simple yet delicious and will make your kitchen smell amazing. The long resting time ensures it’s perfectly fluffy with a slight tang.
Ingredients:
- 4 cups all-purpose or bread flour
- Scant 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 2 tablespoons olive oil (optional)
- Cornmeal, semolina, or wheat bran for dusting
Directions:
- Mix flour, yeast, and salt in a bowl. Add 2 cups water and stir until blended. Cover and let rest for about 18 hours.
- Flour your surface and fold the dough once or twice. Let rest for 15 minutes.
- Shape the dough into a ball, then let rise for about 2 hours.
- Preheat oven to 450°F. Heat a covered pot in the oven. Once the dough is ready, turn it into the pot and bake covered for 30 minutes, then uncovered for 20–30 minutes until browned.
- Cool on a rack for at least 30 minutes before slicing.
Grannie’s Thanksgiving Dressing: A Family Heirloom
This recipe is a true family tradition and, though it may seem simple, it’s packed with flavor and love. Grannie’s instructions were always a little loose, but that’s part of the charm.
Ingredients:
- 3 onions
- 6–7 stalks of celery
- 2 packages of yellow corn bread mix
- 1 package Pepperidge Farm seasoned breadcrumbs
- 3–4 slices of bread, dried and crumbled
- Poultry seasoning, salt & pepper to taste
Directions:
- Boil onions and celery until tender.
- Prepare the corn bread according to the package instructions, then crumble it.
- Moisten the corn bread, breadcrumbs, and dried bread with boiling water and turkey juice.
- Add onions, celery, seasoning, and adjust moisture if needed.
- Bake at 350°F for 30–45 minutes until the top is golden brown.
Russ’ Mom’s Cranberry Salad: A Sweet and Savory Classic
“This is from my first love’s mom. I make it every year at Thanksgiving.”
This cranberry salad is tart, sweet, and a perfect balance of textures. It’s a festive side dish that will impress.
Ingredients:
- 1 bag fresh cranberries
- 2 stalks of celery
- Apples, chopped
- Pecans
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup orange juice
- 1 packet unflavored gelatin
Directions:
- Sprinkle sugar over cranberries and let sit.
- Chop apples, celery, and pecans into equal parts.
- Dissolve the gelatin in orange juice by heating it gently.
- Combine all ingredients and chill overnight for the best flavor.
Roasted Vegetables: A Simple Yet Impressive Side
“These roasted vegetables will make it seem like you worked really hard, but they’re simple and delicious.”
This recipe is great for any occasion and looks impressive on the table. The blend of root vegetables and cheese makes it hearty and flavorful.
Ingredients:
- Small potatoes, sweet potato, turnip, rutabaga, garlic, onion, carrots, yellow beets
- White sharp cheddar cheese
- Soy sauce, Bragg’s, or a little water
Directions:
- Cut vegetables into chunks and place in a casserole dish. Add a bit of water and soy sauce, then cover tightly.
- Roast at 450°F for 45 minutes to an hour. Stir in shredded cheese when you remove it from the oven. The cheese will melt into the vegetables, adding an amazing flavor.
Nana’s Pumpkin Bars: A Sweet Holiday Tradition
“Hope you have a blessed Thanksgiving!” – Nana
These pumpkin bars are moist and flavorful, topped with a creamy icing. They’re perfect for a sweet ending to your holiday meal.
Ingredients for Bars:
- 4 eggs
- 1 2/3 cup sugar
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 15 ounces of pumpkin
- 2 cups of flour
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 2 tsp. cinnamon
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. baking soda
Ingredients for Icing:
- 8 ounces of cream cheese
- 1/2 cup softened butter
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tsp. vanilla
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350°F and prepare a 13×10-inch pan.
- Mix eggs, sugar, oil, and pumpkin until fluffy. Add dry ingredients and mix until smooth.
- Bake for 30 minutes. Let cool before icing.
- Beat together icing ingredients and spread over cooled bars.
Sweet Potato Casserole: A Heartwarming Dish
“This casserole has been part of our holiday table for over 30 years.” – Traci M.
Rich and creamy with a sweet, nutty topping, this sweet potato casserole could easily pass as a dessert!
Ingredients for Filling:
- 3 cups of sweet potatoes
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 1/3 cup milk
- 1 tsp vanilla
Ingredients for Topping:
- 1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted
- 1 cup light brown sugar
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup pecans, chopped
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Cook sweet potatoes until tender, then mash with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, and vanilla. Pour into a baking dish.
- Mix topping ingredients and sprinkle over the sweet potatoes.
- Bake for 25 minutes until golden and bubbly.
These recipes will surely bring joy to your holiday celebrations. Whether you’re cooking for a crowd or enjoying a quiet family dinner, these dishes offer warmth, flavor, and that special touch that makes holiday meals memorable. Enjoy!
Oct 27, 2024 | Family, Grief
By Nora Biette-Timons
In November 2021, Viennia Lopes Booth went to visit her dad for the first time in a couple of months. When he opened the door, she was “shocked,” she shared during a death care conference in September. “I hadn’t seen him in two months, and he looked like a dead man walking.”
He told her that it was merely his sciatica flaring up and that it was “getting better,” but that was clearly not the case. After two days of Lopes Booth begging him to seek medical attention, he only relented when she gave him the option of calling an ambulance or family taking him to get care.
What followed is a story far too many people are familiar with. Lopes Booth’s father, Charles “Old Briar” Lopes, was Black and Wampanoag, had a “deep mistrust and fear of the medical institution,” she said. “With a lifetime of negative experiences, coupled with the long, ugly history of violence, disrespect, and utter disregard of Black and brown bodies, who could really blame him?”
Doctors confirmed her worst fears: end-stage prostate cancer. There were no remaining treatment options, and he was given two to 14 days to live. He ended up living 97 days and, thanks to Lopes Booth following through on his wishes, he spent them at home, with her as his caretaker.
“As he lay clinging to life,” she said, “he had an unusual request: He asked me to have a home wake.” Aside from his distrust of institutions, he “didn’t want to be alone in a strange building with strange people, living or non-living.” His own agency had always been important to him throughout his life, “and this was really no exception.”
Lopes Booth—who trained as an herbalist specializing in women’s health—recounted her experience at the Building Bridges in the Deathcare Landscape conference in Seattle. Appearing on a panel addressing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in death care, she and other experts discussed how the industry often ignores specific cultural practices and death rituals; and may exert pressure on loved ones to forgo traditional practices because they are considered unhygienic (or even just unusual); and can often have a predatory effect on people’s finances during one of the hardest moments of their lives.
She shared her particular story to detail the institutional hurdles she ran into while caring for her father at home in his final weeks and creating the at-home memorial he asked for, but also to make clear that though these are both deviations from the norm, they are possible—and can (even should) become more common.
After he died, Lopes Booth’s family kept her dad’s body at home for a four-day vigil, celebrating his life. Throughout, they “kept a ceremonial fire going for the four days from his passing until we carried him away for cremation, and folks helped tend to the fire as a way to show love and honor my dad.” During the vigil, the door to his southeastern Massachusetts home was open: Friends, family, and even the hospice social worker visited whenever they wanted, some multiple times.” “We sang to him; read to him; played his favorite card game, Spades, in his room with him; played music for him; spent time in silence with him; shared food in honor of him. He was never alone,” she said.
“We honored him, his body, and his life and helped his spirit fully leave his body in a gentle way surrounded by family and friends in the home he loved,” she said. “He would be happy with his sendoff.”
When it came time to bury his remains, they honored him with “ritual and love in a sunrise ceremony,” laying “his shrouded body on the land he held a deep connection with near his beloved garden.” On the way to cremate him, Lopes Booth played a song in their native language that translates to, “Creator, help us. Help us to grieve, help us to heal, strengthen us.” A few days later, they held a small family funeral where they “laid him to rest in power on tribal land next to his brother and father,” marking his grave with a stone they found on his favorite beach.
“Our elders say that ceremonies are the way we remember to remember,” Lopes Booth said, quoting Braiding Sweetgrass author Robin Wall Kimmer, who is a member of the Potawatomi Nation. “Ceremony is a vehicle for belonging to a family, to a people, and to the land. Through this initiation, this last request, I was able to experience the power of ceremonial remembering at every turn. I felt the whisperings of my ancestors guiding this process.
“Having the space and time to be with us in this very intimate way helped me to feel deeply connected to another way, my ancestral way…reconnecting in this liminal space to all that has been taken from our family and my people,” she continued. “My kin were beaten, shamed, killed [and] conventional death care feels like another form of forced assimilation.”
Demonstrating that a different way was possible had profound effects on her family. After her father’s funeral, Lopes Booth said her in-laws “completely changed their death plan,” and her “cousin, who’s a tribal medicine man, asked me how he could do this for himself.”
She recalled seeing her nephews attending her dad’s services and realized how valuable it would be to have your first experience in a death situation be so respectful and culturally specific, while also normalizing a different method of post-death care.
“To know that that option exists is really important,” she said. She later elaborated: “When the gates were open, my family and our community were able to honor my dad in a way that was true to him, and that was true to us…that was a powerful experience.”
Lopes Booth describes the experience of “caring for my dad at the end of his life and after death” as “one of my greatest life achievements. In some ways, I think this was my dad’s last gift for me, to allow me to wrap him in some much love and to have this space to understand the fullness of his being.”
But getting to this beautiful, rewarding point “felt like I had climbed Mount Everest. But the thing is, I didn’t need to feel like I climbed Mount Everest.”
She detailed the “serious gatekeeping” she encountered “along every part of this journey.” What was hardest about the process was the “resistance from the people necessary to get them on board. The knee-jerk reaction from people was like, what? No, no, no.” (The easiest part? Taking care of her dad’s body, Lopes Booth said. “We used techni ice,” and it “worked beautifully over the four days.”)
“The town clerk was the first person I had to visit to figure out how to go about doing this. And it took me several visits to her”—plus mentioning her father’s status as a Vietnam veteran—before “she finally [softened] to the idea of being willing to help me,” Lopes Booth said.
“Funeral directors…resorted to scare tactics. One said this could turn into a really bad science experiment, and another said, I can’t really sell you a cremation container because what happens if your dad’s body rolls out of it”—which added “a little flare to the scare,” she said, a bit tongue-in-cheek. She had to prove to various professionals repeatedly that she was acting on her dad’s behalf—and could plan this unconventional death way so safely and responsibly. “Overwhelmingly, the consistent message was, this is not how we do things, and what you’re trying to do is literally impossible.”
“My father and our people have suffered extraordinary levels of institutional oppression. He wanted to be free of institutions in death. He wanted agency. He wanted family. And ritual is an art of remembering, to remember, and my journey with my dad and this family-led post-death care really awakened a ceremonial reconnection to my ancestors.”
Lopes Booth called on “folks in the death care industry to consider the ways in which” contemporary institutional gatekeeping operates akin to historic oppression, and “to realize that we are forcing people into death ways that lack personalized meaning and are driven by power, consumerism, and the status quo.”
She ended her speech with a hopeful challenge to conference attendees: “How can we be more conscious of that gatekeeper mentality, and how can we stop perpetuating it, to invite access, empowerment, and agency and to really build bridges to our people, to our land, and to our cultures?”
