CREMATION: YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW

Course overview

This course looks at the things we have done to memorialize our dead with the hope that you can see the direction our society is going. How you can understand the choices the families you serve make and the decisions they have come to, to make those choices. Final disposition is very personal to each and every family you serve. They make their decisions based upon what they feel is right and proper. But we are a very social animal. We like to share and learn. We also as a group don't want to step out and be different and if we do we tend to do it quietly hoping no one is looking for fear someone might think we are strange or abnormal. Now you might be saying That's not true. Look at the way those people dress or the form of entertainment they like. But it is true they are acting the way they do within their own social group where it is right and proper for them. These same social groups however also cross borders. And you as a funeral director unconsciously adapt every time a family walks in your door. At the present time cremation and a simpler form of final disposition seems to be in vogue and while you have little choice but to adapt you also need to understand how society reached this point. Will business decisions you make impede these changes or are you being forced to accept history's cycle of events.