Funerals: Library Resources

Grave Matters follows families who found in "green" burial a more natural, more economic, and ultimately more meaningful alternative to the tired and toxic send-off on offer at the local funeral parlor. Eschewing chemical embalming and fancy caskets, elaborate and costly funerals, they have embraced a range of natural options, new and old, that are redefining a better American way of death. Environmental journalist Mark Harris examines this new green burial underground, leading you into natural cemeteries and domestic graveyards, taking you aboard boats from which ashes and memorial "reef balls" are cast into the sea.

. Losing a husband, wife, father, mother, child or another near and dear person forces you to make a multitude of decisions, some large and life-changing, some small but emotionally charged. More Than Sympathy is designed to help you through these difficult circumstances.

This book provides concrete guidance on funeral arrangements, estates, probate, taxes, handling the deceased's online footprint, and much more.

Offers a guide for those making funeral arrangements with or without a funeral director. This book gives the legal requirements of each state, how to obtain and file permits and death certificates, explanations of cremation and embalming, burial procedures, and other necessary information.

Over the last 150 years death care has become a toxic, polluting, and alienating industry in the United States. Today, people are slowly waking up to the possibility of more sustainable and less disaffecting death care, reclaiming old practices in new ways, in a new age. Greening Death traces the philosophical and historical backstory to this awakening, captures the passionate on-the-ground work of the Green Burial Movement, and explores the obstacles and other challenges getting in the way of more robust mobilization.

; To help prepare for the end of life, Rest in Peace is a pre-death planning guide; whether it be for your own demise or the death of someone whose end-of-life affairs you may need to attend to.

When is attending a funeral or memorial service "a must," and when is it optional? Can a eulogy be funny? Can I scatter my brother's ashes in the backyard? Should I place a death notice or an obituary? What's the difference? These are all questions that Florence Isaacs has been asked as a blogger for Legacy.com, a role that earned her the nickname of the "Dear Abby of Death."

Every day, funeral director Caitlin Doughty receives dozens of questions about death. The best questions come from kids. Doughty blends her mortician's knowledge of the body and the intriguing history behind common misconceptions about corpses to offer factual, hilarious, and candid answers to thirty-five distinctive questions posed by her youngest fans. In her inimitable voice, Doughty details lore and science of what happens to, and inside, our bodies after we die.

The Untold Story of American Funeral and Mourning Traditions Ceremonies for honoring the departed are crucial parts of our lives, but few people know where our traditional practices come from--and what they reveal about our history, culture, and beliefs about death. In Last Rites, author Todd Harra takes you on a fascinating exploration of American funeral practices--examining where they came from, what they mean, and how they are still evolving.

A New York Times and Los Angeles Times Bestseller The best-selling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with "dignity." Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Here to Eternity is an immersive global journey that introduces compelling, powerful rituals almost entirely unknown in America.

"Morbid and illuminating" (Entertainment Weekly)--a young mortician goes behind the scenes of her curious profession. Armed with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre, Caitlin Doughty took a job at a crematory and turned morbid curiosity into her life's work.

The documentary A Will for the Woods follows Clark Wang, a man dying of lymphoma, as he attempts to figure out the most environmentally friendly form of burial.

At Black-owned funeral homes in New Orleans, COVID-19 reshapes the grieving process.