The Curious Autodidact

Although we live in a death denying culture one of the nicest things that you can do is to complete this paperwork called PUTTING YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER that details your wishes upon death. Produced by the People’s Memorial Association, the oldest continually running funeral cooperative in the country, this details your most personal end of life wishes and details that your survivors will appreciate knowing. Please if you find this form helpful please take time to send them a small donation to keep their organization providing this information.

Years back a close friend of ours died. I had nagged my friends all to sign up with the local nonprofit funeral cooperative and what did we find? A filled out forms telling us what he hadn’t been able to tell us himself, his final wishes. We were obviously suffering a great loss but this forethought and consideration was such a gift to receive.

Funeral Consumer’s Alliance is a national organization that is a watch dog group over the funeral industry and their website has lots of helpful end of life information too. They keep a hawk’s eye on the ways the ever more corporate funeral world takes advantage of grieving families and works to support the various funeral cooperatives around the country many of which are run by dedicated volunteers.