Discipline
Ritual, Culture and Faith
Every culture has built rites for death, and those rites do real work for the living. This discipline treats funerals, memorials, and the traditions of many faiths as knowledge, not decoration, so that a family can honour their own way or make new choices with confidence rather than pressure.
You will be able to plan a funeral or memorial around the decisions that are genuinely yours, honour a tradition faithfully, and decline what the industry merely upsells.
The topics
Primary sources
Every statute, form, and agency cited here. When in doubt, trust these over anyone, including us.
Government
- Federal Trade Commission: The FTC Funeral RuleThe consumer facing statement of every right the rule creates, including the price lists, the telephone disclosure and the rule on outside caskets.opens in a new tab
- Federal Trade Commission: Funeral Rule topic pageThe agency's own enforcement page, including its requirements on providers and its current work on online price disclosure.opens in a new tab
- Federal Trade Commission: Shopping for funeral servicesPractical guidance on comparing providers and on the categories of charge you will see on a price list.opens in a new tab
- Federal Trade Commission: Complying with the Funeral RuleThe compliance guide written for funeral providers. Reading what the industry is told it must do is the fastest way to know what to ask for.opens in a new tab
- Massachusetts Department of Public Health: Information for local boards of health on home burials and green burialsAn example of how one state defines and permits home and green burial. Use it as a model for what to ask your own state, not as authority outside Massachusetts.opens in a new tab
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Where to write for vital recordsThe route to each state's vital records office, which is generally the same department that can point you to burial and disposition permitting.opens in a new tab
- National Institute on Aging: What to do after someone diesWhere a service sits among the other tasks of the first weeks, which helps in deciding what genuinely has to happen now.opens in a new tab
Nonprofit
- Palliative Care Network of Wisconsin: The role of chaplaincy in caring for the seriously illWhat chaplains do and the interfaith basis of board certification, useful if you want someone to lead a gathering without assuming a tradition.opens in a new tab
- CaringInfo, a program of the National Alliance for Care at HomeFamily facing guidance on serious illness, end of life care and the period after a death, including how to find providers and support.opens in a new tab
- Association of Professional ChaplainsThe professional body for board certified chaplains, including sample institutional policies on religious and cultural accommodation at the end of life.opens in a new tab