Stuff I really think

I have noticed that the businesses that live in the twilight of the business world are making quiet fortunes. 
Take the funeral business...everybody dies, eventually...someone has to dispose of the body.  There are no cheap ways of doing that short of letting the county cremate you and say they put your remains in potters field where that may be, or not.  A lot of southern religions consider cremation a preamble to the fate you get after God gets ahold on you and sorts out your up or down fate.  I personally, do not consider that as one of God's options and only a notion of some misery based religions that have the hardest and most impenetrable shell of reason about a persons purpose on this beautiful earth.

Having said that, the Funeral Home Business is one that will not (snort) die.  It is one of those that will live on for generations of families that adopt that profession.  It is needed and can ease the grief of the family of the deceased...that takes training. 

Add to that.  Not many people want to choose it as a life's work.

I do think it would take a pre-course in theologies.  That would be necessary to understand the living....relatives.

Love,
Betty

Betty.,

You are so funny!

Keep it coming.

Betty, I agree that dying is big business.  If one observes the funeral homes/parlors they exhibit wealth.  The business of selling coffins and services are an easy sell to those grieving. 
I often wondered why Home Depot never came up with a "build your own coffin" kit.  That would take a big bite out of funeral costs.

7/21/2013
                    I remember as a kid my father telling me there's two business you must go into
                    supermarkets and funeral homes, people have to eat and people die. Me I'm going
                    to be cremated....No funeral, No Bull, My motto: "I lived, I tried and I died."

                                                                Cheers..Joe..

Joe,
I like your plan.

My brother-in-law has an earth-moving business that, among other things, digs the graves for their small Pennsylvania town and farm region. When his father, my father-in-law, died, neither of his sons, who worked for him, wanted to help dig the grave. So I helped. He operated the back-hoe, and I worked a shovel and tossed out rocks with my hands. We had a good time that day, talking and laughing about the old man and crying some, too.

When we got back to the farm from the job, I was, of course covered head-to-toe with dirt. My granddaughter, about twelve at the time and a city girl, asked what I'd been doing to get so dirty.

"Uncle Jimmy and I had to dig Pop-pop's grave," I said.
She got a confused look on her face and asked, "Don't we have people who do that?"

In Shakespeare's time, grave digging was pretty close to the bottom of any profession, attracting people who could do nothing better (sort of like politics sans the pretense). Today, Madison Avenue has given us a whole new industry devoted to the disposal of bodies at the highest possible cost and marketed to people at the lowest point in their lives when comparison shopping and informed decisions are at best impractical. Preplanning helps. But I'm with Joe. I want to be cremated and, ideally, have my ashes stored where my ancestors lie, and my wife. Else, scattering them to the wind is fine too.

Two great businesses today, not unrelated: healthcare (especially geriatric care) and funerary services. What better symbols can one have for America's decline?

7/21/2013

                             Victor..

                                      We should start a funeral chain. " For $1.00 you can take a friend "
                            Here in Santa Fe they want $4,000.00 just for creamation !!! Or you could
                            use the " Neptune Society,"

                                                                  Cheers...Joe..

$4,000 for cremation?! Two words: Soylent Green. Let's address world hunger and the costly disposal of bodies in one fell swoop. As an added bonus, it would give a whole new meaning to the phrase "Bite me." And it would prevent my existence from being a complete, unmitigated waste in the end.

I love Al's' story.  We have the Neptune Society.

Victor, you hit on it there.  We spend our life working to pay the health care to stay alive and when it's all over, what remains goes into dying.  Something wrong with this picture.

Maybe the people deep in the jungles with no medicine have it right.  They live to live.  Then they die.

I have a shallow mind.  I do not care any more about Z trials that I can or ever could do a whit about.  Sorry, E Don.  I have the greatest respect for you and your brain, but no opinion I have about this stuff will ever matter in 200 years.  I see your lovely pictures of the people whom you love.  That matters. You, yourself are quite awesome for whatever age you want to admit.
Love, the old Betty