End of Life Podcast Episode 247: Karen Wyatt interviews Lucinda Herring

Dr. Karen Wyatt of End of Life University interviewed Lucinda Herring, home funeral guide, green burial consultant and licensed funeral director in the state of Washington for her latest podcast, “Reimagining Death During the CovId-19 Pandemic.”  

EOLU PODCAST Reimagining Death During the CovId-19 Pandemic

In honor of the release of Lucinda Herring’s audiobook of Reimagining Death: Stories and Practical Wisdom for Home Funerals and Green Burials,  Lucinda and Karen felt it would be useful for listeners to hear how home vigils and green burials might offer ways to re-imagine situations families are finding themselves in during this pandemic time. How can we change our way of looking at having to keep a loved one’s body at home longer because of funeral home overwhelm -  and see it as a gift, rather than an added stress? Could choosing a green burial offer ways to remain more involved with burying a loved one during this lockdown time?

Join Dr. Wyatt and Lucinda for a rich conversation about the gifts of weaving death into life, especially now when we are all faced with so much death and loss together. 

A Brooklyn Neighborhood Comes Together to Bury a Stranger

NEW YORK (AP) — The request, posted on an online neighborhood forum by a Brooklyn funeral director, was simple but heartfelt. A 91-year-old woman had died from the coronavirus. Her family was scattered in other states. Would anyone like to contribute items for her funeral, like flowers?

So came the call from Amy Cunningham for help in this time of crisis to give a meaningful service for someone who had died in a Manhattan assisted living facility. The request, as the AP story describes, quickly brought offers from Amy’s neighbors of flowers (not available from shuttered florists but growing in backyards) and sewn tributes to decorate an eco-friendly casket to be buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

Amy Cunningham owns Fitting Tribute Funeral Services, a progressive funeral home dedicated to helping New Yorkers of all creeds and faiths plan affordable end-of-life experiences and green burials both upstate and within the New York City area. Like her colleagues, Amy has been thrust to the frontlines by the coronavirus and continues to work under conditions which have made an oft-maligned profession even harder and more dangerous for those who continue to help us all.

Click the link below to open up the article by Julie Walker and photo essay by John Minchillo.

Brooklyn Neighborhood Comes Together to Bury a Stranger

AP Photo/John Minchillo

See more about Amy Cunningham’s work at Fitting Tribute Funeral Services

For information on the eco-friendly casket used for burial visit Natural Legacy

Green burial may be even more important during the pandemic

The Green Burial Council has added a page to its website about green burial during the COVID-19 pandemic. Though one of the main tenets of green burial, that family and friends have the opportunity to be intimately involved, has sadly been curtailed by the need to social distance, the process of green burial can still go on.

Just like maintaining social distance in the grocery store or pharmacy helps protect the frontline store workers, stipulating a green burial which doesn’t require morticians to handle bodies for embalming can help protect funeral workers, who are also on the frontlines.

According to the council’s website:

"The CDC states that decedents with COVID-19 may be buried or cremated according to the family's preference."                                                                             National Funeral Directors Association
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"There is currently no known risk associated with being in the same room at a funeral or visitation service with the body of someone who died of COVID-19."                 Centers for Disease Control  

As always, if you are in need of services check with your chosen green burial cemetery about its policies.

Be safe and we will come out of this together.

See the Green Burial Council website for more information:

https://www.greenburialcouncil.org/green_burial_and_covid-19.html