Burying a loved one is much harder than buying a corned beef sandwich. More expensive, too.
Trust me, I've done both.
When my mother died last year, my brother and I were immediately faced with a series of difficult decisions. She had bought burial plots in Colorado. Bury her there? I pictured the two of us standing in some windy nowhere in Boulder County, at a funeral attended by nobody else. No. We'd bury her here and put mountains on her grave marker — you can get those, for an additional charge.
Speaking of money. I floated an idea: donate the body to science? It would save, oh, $20,000 of our father's dwindling savings. That would pay for his care for, gee, almost three months.
"A funeral is part of doing the right thing," my brother said, invoking our mantra for handling our parents' affairs. So we had a funeral.
With a corned beef sandwich, there are also choices: Fatty or lean? Rye or a kaiser roll? Hot or cold? Don't forget condiments. But those are easier: fatty, rye, hot, yellow mustard. Far less expensive, too. At Kaufman's Bagel and Delicatessen in Skokie, it'll set you back $14.75.
Given the two experiences — the heart-rending, hugely expensive funeral, and the pleasant, not-that-costly sandwich — why is it the state of Illinois so thoroughly inspects delis while so being so lax about monitoring funeral homes?
"I have so many inspections I can't see straight," said Bette Dworkin, owner of Kaufman's. "The Skokie Health Department, three times a year, a thorough inspection, inside and out. Weights and measures comes in. A whole list of backflow devices need to be tested."
Meanwhile, Illinois funeral directors are licensed but not the funeral homes that they operate, which are inspected when they open or change hands, and never inspected again, unless there is a complaint, and sometimes not even then. Which leads to periodic stomach-churning horrors, such as the 56 decomposing bodies found at a funeral home in South Deering, documented in the Sun-Times this past week.
Across the border is a much different situation.
"In the state of Wisconsin, there is licensing of the actual physical plant of the funeral home," said Michael D. Sharkey, a funeral director in Wisconsin for 30 years. "They do not do that in Illinois. When something goes wrong, nobody notices. That comes as a surprise to some people."
Sharkey is uniquely situated to compare the two states, being the legal representative of both the Wisconsin Funeral Directors Association and the Illinois Funeral Directors Association, as well as the associations in South Dakota and Minnesota, where he lives.
"The other big difference is that in Wisconsin, all regulatory actions are taken by the DSPS — the Department of Safety and Professional Services, all under one roof," he said. "In Illinois, the comptroller regulates crematories and the [Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation] regulates funeral directors, two separate agencies."
Which leads to buck-passing.
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Notice where the bad funeral homes are located. They feel the people in the area don't have many rights or $. That wouldn't happen in nicer suburbs or better parts of the city.
ReplyDeleteYes, IL needs to get it's act together.
ReplyDeleteSad about Mom. Is it true that in the Jewish faith, you can't be embalmed?
ReplyDeleteIn the age of Google and Chat GPT, the answer to a question like this is a handful of key strokes away.
DeleteI don't know if I'd say "can't." You're not supposed to be.
DeleteDennis, in the age of Google and ChatGPT, the answers are often wrong. Why not ask a human source who would know for sure? (Years ago, I helped my friend Jeff edit a book. He had misspelled part of the name of a movie. I asked him if he used the first result that popped up in a Google search? Yup.)
DeletePerhaps more interesting is the reader's assumption that I'm a repository of knowledge regarding all things Jewish. Spoiler alert: I'm not.
DeleteThank you for suggesting donating your mom's body to science, Neil. I appreciate that it's not appropriate in all situations, as with religious customs, but it's a noble thing to do. My maternal grandfather did it, which inspired my mom to arrange to do it, and when my father was waffling about what he wanted, my mom suggested he do it, too. Which he did. When he died, the representative from the medical school was lovely. We had what we called a "gathering" (basically a wake but with an open bar, appetizers, and dessert, which my father would have liked), and later that year, the medical school hosted a service for families to attend in which a handful of the students who had worked on the donated bodies read the names of all the donees. It was really moving. Families were invited to go to the cemetery where the cremains would be interred. We opted to visit the cemetery later. Donating is a generous and important gift. And, indeed, there is zero direct cost to the families. Mom paid for death certificates, my father's death notices (we ran two, as the gathering was several weeks after his death for reasons), and the gathering.
DeleteNeil's response illustrates why Google and ChatGPT searches are not reliable. The beliefs of people who consider themselves religious Jews spans a broad spectrum, as is true with most religions. Add the Jewish pleasure in debating everything, and you can imagine there would be a range of opinions and nuance that you might not find in a search. Example: Neil's consideration of donating her body to science, which would involve both embalming and delaying burial. This would be anathema to an Orthodox Jew. A Reform Jew might consider it meritorious, "Tikkun Olam."
DeleteCoincidental experience: This morning I asked Google whether Lake Michigan is longer north to south than the State of Israel. It said "No, the State of Israel is 290 miles while Lake Michigan is 307 miles," and the next sentence was, "Wait, 307 is longer than 290, so I have to correct myself." I do not know what happened in that femtosecond, but it was very strange.
google and AI aren't reliable for quick fact checking.
DeleteThanks and true , anon at 8 a.m and NS.
ReplyDeleteSo there, Mr. Fisher.
From what I've seen over the last couple of decades, every single undertaker that got into trouble was black. My guess is they are under capitalized, have very few funerals to pay for their entire operation & when they get into financial trouble, they refuse to seek help. There are a few black undertakers that are very well known, do a lot of business & have never gotten into this kind of trouble.
ReplyDeleteThis is a business that is actually dying, as fewer & fewer people are being buried, there are many more cremations now.
I've told my family to just donate my now useless body to science, where it might finally do some good, thus saving them the insane costs of a funeral, as I'll be dead & there's nothing after you're dead!
The fear of med students mocking my genitals and playing soccer with my head makes me hesitant to donate my body to science
ReplyDeleteThey're much better about that nowadays. https://www.everygoddamnday.com/2018/01/the-humanity-of-our-cadavers-med.html
DeleteOn the other hand, you might end up plumping someone's wrinkles. Check out AlloClae. While organ donation is tightly regulated, whole-body donation and donation to non-transplant tissue banks, which includes cadaver fat used for cosmetic purposes, is not regulated at the Federal level. Which means it's like the wild west.
DeleteWhile donating your body to science will help many people over the long stretch by training med students who will theoretically go on to save many lives over the course of their career, one person's organ donations (and skin, bone marrow, tissue, etc.) can help up to 100 people in the very near term.
DeleteCan't imagine why science would want my body.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, that picture of that sandwich, OMG.
He has TWO mouth-watering sandwich photos. One from Manny's and I guess the other is from Kaufman's. But neither sandwich looks "fatty" to me, which is allegedly how Mr S orders them.
DeleteOn another note, it was nice to see Mr S's photo on the lower R corner of today's newspaper again.
I don't understand the photo thing.
DeleteThe photos at the top of the posts sometimes change and I'm unable to access any photo that was up previously and people talk about them and I wonder how do I get to see them what's it all about can somebody clue me in on how to see more than just the photo that pops up when you come to the page
It sounds like you understand just fine. I change the photo atop of the blog every day – I just put in tomorrow's now. Sometimes they are the same as on the blog post, sometimes, as with tomorrow's, vaguely related. You can't go back and see the ones in the past; they're ephemeral.
DeleteI assume FME reads the EGD. He can copy and save the image if he happens to like a photo. We go to one Cub game every summer. We stop at Kaufmans and get corned beef sandwiches and take them to the game. And we buy some for home.
Deleteephemeral, I had to look that up
DeleteMy mother-in-law's last years were not very good ones. Couldn't hear, could barely see, and couldn't walk across a room without terrible wheezing. She had smoked 3-4 packs of cigarettes a day for years, and had every lung ailment (emphysema, COPD, the whole megillah) except cancer, which would have been far more merciful. Her quality of life was miserable, but she somehow survived until the age of 89.
ReplyDeleteBefore her funeral, I put a cigarette between her fingers, and a pack of cigarettes inside the casket. Don't even believe in an afterlife, but did it anyway. Don't ask why...it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. So I did it..Wrote and delivered the eulogy. People cried, so I guess I did my job.
There were large double doors at the back of the funeral home that led to a wide flight of steps and a circular driveway. That was where the caskets were carried out of the building and into the hearse, for the final ride to the cemetery.
We both had the same thought: "How will Ma ever get down those steps?" Then we realized that she would not be walking, or be in her wheelchair. And that's when we finally realized she was dead.
Your wife didn't mind you putting cigaretts in her Mom's fingers in the coffin, Grizz?
DeleteHell, no...she laughed her ass off. It made her feel better about what the Irish Catholic funeral home pulled...a Catholic priest conducted the funeral service, because my wife and her older brother did not specify any religious preference.
DeleteWhatta joke. Nobody had the guts to put a stop to it. Cindy's mother had renounced Catholicism and God decades earlier, when her husband died at 45. And my wife also became a non-believer. She was ten. Finally stopped going to church in her teens. She did five years in Catholic school. Told me a lot of horror stories. And after becoming a widow,, her mother couldn't afford the tuition anyway.
Cindy always joked that during the funeral, she was waiting for her mother to sit up and yell: "Gimme a light...and stop praying for me!" That usually made people laugh. Especially the ones who knew her mom. She was a tough old bird.
How was that "pulling "something? Why would anyone not expect an Irish Catholic funeral home to conduct a Catholic service?
DeleteIsn't there a protocol that requires the funeral director to ASK the next-of-kin for their preference as to what Christian denomination the service will be? Or perhaps NO religion at all?
DeleteThat funeral home, just down the road from us, is one of the biggest and best-known in our neighborhood, which is heavily Irish and Catholic. It's run by a large and powerful Irish Catholic family.
But my wife and her mother and her brother were not irish, no longer Catholics, not religious, and even non-believers, if you will. Those Irishmen received no preferences because they never INQUIRED. They just went ahead and brought in a Catholic priest. Never assume.
My wife was a bit miffed and peeved, but she shrugged it off. My brother-in-law was 65, and too grief-stricken over the loss of his mother to make any objection. He accepted it without much protest...
As a family member by marriage, and as a Jew, I had no dog in this fight. Wasn't my place to say anything to anybody. I did know that a Catholic priest was the last thing my mother-in-law would have wished for. She would have had a hissy-fit. But she was beyond caring.
Grizz , I thought your wife is Korean? or maybe that's the 2nd one
DeleteWow. At least you got the last two letters right. Of German descent. Family has been in Ohio since the 80s. As in the 1880s. 34 years, in December.
DeleteMy first wife, in Chicago, was Norwegian. Father-in-law was from Duluth. College girlfriend was Swedish. But German girls are best. Yes.
In high school, I chased the Italian girls.
The hair, the cleavage, the little gold crosses. No dice.
Had a Black friend who joined the Army and came home with a Korean bride. She spoke no English. Love speaks a universal language.
I'm not gonna swear to this, but I believe that Tate, another somewhat frequent commenter here (who used to appear more frequently, alas), is married to a Korean woman. Perhaps that's the source of confusion for whichever Anonymous that was.
DeleteCoulda sworn I just saw his name here recently.
DeleteBut I do have a habit of going back and looking up EGDs from previous years.
So maybe not...
Oh, he still comments from time to time, but not as much as he used to. He's been an EGD aficionado since the beginning, I'm pretty sure.
DeleteHaving worked in public accounting for several years & having dealt with 6 funeral homes as clients (new policy: no more funeral home clients) my experience has been the business tends to lend itself to dishonesty. I did not know this when I talked my younger brother into going to mortuary science school to become a licensed embalmer. He worked at one of the biggest, most expense funeral homes in his area for 10+ years before deciding on a total career change. But he can tell you some of the slimy tricks they use to pump up the bill. Here is my experience with my mother-in-law's cremation. They charged $3000. My husband & his brother had no idea what the going rate was, so they paid it without question. When I found out I explained to them that the going rate for a cremation in our area was $400. Yes, they had been overcharged $2600! When confronted the owner fessed up & refunded the ENTIRE $3000 on the condition that we not tell anyone in the area that he did what he did. This is absolutely the truth if I fall over dead this very minute! P.S. He did give us her ashes back!
ReplyDeleteYou're anonymous. How will we know if you fall over dead?
DeleteAlways good to see Mr. Eisenberg here.
ReplyDeleteUsed to be great Jewish deli in Naperville but they closed.
ReplyDeleteBetter than corned beef. Italian beef!
ReplyDeleteFME ,surprised you never heard of Dreft. Check it out next time you go to a store.
ReplyDelete