Ep 09: Transcrript
09. It costs *how* much to bury someone? And other musing with Liz Eddy of Lantern
Brooke James: Hi everyone. Welcome to The Grief Coach. My name is Brooke. You can find us on social at @The_GriefCoach. Today I'm really excited, we have Liz Eddy from Lantern and I'm going to let her introduce herself and tell you guys a little bit about what she's doing.
Liz Eddy: Hi, I'm Liz, and I am the CEO and co-founder of Lantern, and we developed a free end of life and death checklist to help you navigate all the ins and outs of planning for yourself or for someone else.
Brooke: Amazing. I love your website. I found you guys on Instagram, and it's very modern and beautiful and nice, which we have talked about previously that it seems so much more approachable for someone who's in our demographic to have it look like that. And now with more and more people starting to think about end of life, whether it's because of their parents or they're more involved, because they're adults, in their grandparents' death or whatever it is. So it just makes the information very easy to digest, easy to find.
Liz: I always found it really interesting too, that a lot of the companies that are in the space, a lot of the sites are really cold and they sometimes feel kind of like a software company, and in these kind of situations, just being able to look at something that's soothing and empathetic, we always say we're like your knowledgeable best friend. It's like someone who knows a lot about this, but also like you can have some real talk with.
Brooke: Yeah, exactly. Well, you guys are doing a great job. I'm really excited you're here today. What we are going to focus our discussion around today is the financial cost of dying. It's something that a lot of people don't ever think about, because they don't have to, and they don't realize until they're dealing with a death, the amount of money that it costs. So, Liz has done a lot of research and work on this. So, we'll get into that. But first, do you want to tell people what drew you to the industry?
Liz: Yeah, it's a journey. It's always so funny whenever I answer this question, I'm like “Do you want me to start when I was like six years old or like 15?”
Brooke: Whatever you want.
Liz: I think, you know, initially my dad passed away when I was nine, and I think that kind of experience, no matter what age you are, once you experience the loss of someone close to you, it transforms you in ways that you would never expect or know and in both positive and negative ways. I think, for me, it really made me very keenly aware of time, and then wanting to make sure that I spent my life in a way that was meaningful and impactful and that I was feeling joy in what I was doing. And I sort of determined that pretty young, and actually started my first nonprofit when I was 15, doing dating abuse and domestic violence work within my high school, and then it just sort of snowballed. The organization started popping up in universities and high schools all over the U.S., and then there was one in Turkey and there was one in London, and I suddenly became like an entrepreneur before I knew what that was. And I think, you know, just going through that experience and realizing how much I loved the many hats that you wear and being an entrepreneur, and feeling like there's endless possibilities, is very exciting. So then I went to Crisis Text Line, I was on the founding team there, and we developed the first national crisis support line through SMS, so you could connect with a crisis counselor for free 24/7. I was there for seven years and fell in love with the work, working with sort of traumatic and challenging topics and making it more accessible to more people and really focusing on a brand that exhibited empathy in a way that I had never seen before. And then my grandmother passed away while I was working there, and because my dad had died before that, I was responsible for everything with her end of life. And my mom was living in Colorado and had been a huge help and support through this process, but the day she passed away, I got the phone call. I drove to her nursing home in Connecticut and walked in the front door, and there were two nurses, a police officer and her body, and they looked at me and said, “What do you want to do?” And I was 27 at the time, and I now realize that age doesn't really matter cause everyone is like, “What the heck do you do?” But at the time I was like, “Wow, I have been through loss.” I, you know, I watched my dad die from cancer but I had never been the person to be the decision maker. And suddenly I realized this laundry list of things I didn't know the answers to. I literally pulled out my phone and Googled, “What do you do when someone dies?,” and was really surprised to find how little information was available. You know, there's a lot of “Five things you should remember” and “Ten you shouldn't forget,” and an outdated thing from 2017 that says, “You should use this resource” that doesn't exist anymore. It's just such a mess, and becomes sort of a scavenger hunt. So from that point, I came home and I went to my previous co-founder, then best friend, now best friend and co-founder, just to say “We need to do something about this,” and we realized we were the right people, this is the right time, and Lantern began from there.
Brooke: Wow. I want to go back to what you said about how age doesn't matter, because I think I had the same- I was 30 when my dad died and people, several of my parents' friends were saying like, “Wow, you're doing this and you're at such a young age.” And so I think part of it, it doesn't matter, everyone's like, “What do I do?” But you can't ask your friends.
Liz: Yeah.
Brooke: And so I think part of what's so great about what you’re doing is to your point, you guys are like the best friend who you can ask. And that's like what I'm hoping to do, is be someone that people can approach, and how do you present this in an approachable way that also respects the gravity of the situation.
Liz: Yeah, and I'm sure you've experienced this, but I think once you lose someone, you suddenly become like the knower of all information for everyone in your life. It's been my entire life because my dad died when I was young, but I would always get phone calls, text messages, emails of like, “My co-worker’s mom passed away, what should I do?” or “My best friend's mom is sick, what should I write in the card?” You know, it's like all of a sudden I'm all of a sudden the person that knows how to talk about death to everybody and it's not really the life that you expect to lead, but when wielded correctly can really help a lot of people.
Brooke: Yeah, absolutely. So if we can get into today, I'd love if you can talk about some specifics around cost, and how much the average funeral costs in the United States, some of the basic services, and some stuff like that.
Liz: Yeah. I mean, at first I want to start by saying that I, when I did this myself, I did it wrong. And I say that to say for anyone listening out there that most people probably did do it wrong also the first time they did it because there is, or was, so little information about how to navigate this process. And you know, when you're in the heat of the moment, it's so easy to just sort of say yes to things and not really think about how much it's adding up, and you haven't done the research in advance typically, so you're just sort of like, “I guess this is how it is, so I'll just take it.” And with my grandmother, my direction was to call all of the funeral homes that showed up on the Google search, listen to what they had to offer, ask them what the price was, and then I realized that they were giving me the same thing over and over again. So then I just picked the person that had the most friendly voice on the phone, which is a ridiculous way to make a decision, but I was just like, “I don't know how else to choose this.” And then very quickly found as I was going through the process, that if you call up, you get sort of this high-level, basic package of “here's the things that you're required to have,” right? Like, you have to have them, do the death certificate, and the basic pickup of the body, and handling of the body, but then once you actually, they have a body in their hands, there's all these other choices you have to make, and it's kind of too late to make any other moving. You're not going to then say, “Actually, I want to use this funeral home instead.” You're going to just stick with where you are, and then the number just goes up and up and up, and you know, funeral home tactics range very broadly. I think there's kind of a negative connotation to how funeral homes work with families, and the stories are endless and we can get into them if we want of what I've heard. But, there are certainly some that are really great and really there to just support you in your decision making, and then there are some that are going to try to upsell you at every corner. I experienced the upsell.
Brooke: You told me some stories about upselling that made my stomach just crazy.
Liz: Yeah. The one that really always deeply gets to me is, choosing- basically when you're in a funeral home, a casket is the biggest upsell- so, they're usually marked up at about 289% from the wholesale cost, and it's where they make most of their money. And so in some circumstances, again, there are some amazing funeral directors who don't do this, but, in some, and many, as I've heard, circumstances, they'll try to upsell you on whatever you choose. If you say like, “Okay, I want the most basic thing,” like a friend of mine did, the funeral director turned to her and said, “Well, don't you want your dad to be comfortable?” And when you're in an emotional state, you're not always thinking straight. And for her, she was like, “No, my dad wanted the basic. I know that.” But you can imagine if you were at a different thought process where you didn't know the answer, you might feel really guilty about making that choice, and sometimes people play to that, which is really awful. But to answer your question around costs, I mean, it's different based on state, and different based on where you live. I mean, it's very sort of closely related to cost of living. On average, people spend about $7,000 on a funeral, which is typically an unexpected cost that leads people to bankruptcy and debt, especially if the person who died was the primary breadwinner. But in New York for example, it can be $10,000 plus easily. And that's not including all of the extra stuff, like if you want to have dinner at a restaurant, or plane tickets, rental cars, none of that is included in that initial cost. This is just the primary, “you've chosen a burial or cremation, you're working with a funeral home, you might have a wake or a small memorial service.”
Brooke: And also the plot, whether or not the person- we had, my dad had a plot in our family, there's a couple, one more spot in it- but if you don't have that, I don't even know how much those costs because they bought it in like the 70s.
Liz: Yep. I also learned recently that there's an opening and closing fee. So, even if you have a plot to actually lower the casket or put the cremains into the plot and then fill it back with dirt, they charge you for that on top of it.
Brooke: It was different, it was more expensive to do on the weekend, it was more expensive whether it was before or after a certain time in the morning, and it was crazy. My stepdad's mom recently passed away, and I think she's in a shared plot. And to take the cement off where the other person I guess had covered where she was also supposed to go, that was an extra cost. And it's like, “Well, why did you put cement there?” It just seems crazy, the amount, every single thing. And obviously everyone needs to make a living, and it’s a business, but it just seems like within the circumstances.
Liz: Yeah. And there are certain laws and regulations around pricing. So for example, a funeral home can't change their pricing based on who’s calling or who they're talking to. It has to be consistent. They also do have to make available a price list to you. Sometimes funeral homes will actually just have it on their website. I found in my particular circumstance, none of them did, but lots of people are starting to actually put those price lists online for a little bit more price transparency. That's often just for sort of the high level, again like basic package, and some of the most common things, like hiring a hearse or an embalming, or they'll have the actual price points of some of that, but they do have to provide a list. And if it isn't online, you can ask for it, for them to email it to you or deliver it to you, or whatever you need, so that's helpful. I'll say, I mean, there's a lot of ways that you can defray some of the costs, which I wasn't aware of at the time when I was serving my grandmother, but now have found. For example, I think the biggest one again is the caskets and urns, that a lot of people just don't realize that you don't have to use what's in the funeral home.
Brooke: No, we bought my dad's online.
Liz: Yep. Yep. So you can use Amazon, you can use Costco, Walmart sells them. I always actually found it really interesting that Walmart, Costco, and Amazon are three of the biggest businesses in the funeral industry, but you would never know. It's not like something they push forward as their biggest sales points, but yeah, you can do all those things online and a funeral home can not charge you for that. They can't say, “Oh, there's a handling fee.” But you do need to be careful, because you also are working with a wide range of potential retailers that you don't know as much about. There's a lot of smaller retailers across the U.S., and so you want to make sure, you know, check on them on Better Business Bureau, look at their site, and make sure they have customer service, either 24/7 or at least at like a normal business hour, even just making sure they have an office address and phone number available in general is really important. You know, those are some of the sort of signals to make sure that it's a business that you want to work with, because you of course don't want to get in a situation where you don't have what you need when you need it. It can't be late.
Brooke: And a lot of people do, whether it's for religious or emotional or whatever reasons, have it in a very compressed timeframe.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Which does make you sometimes end up using a funeral home because you just are trying to move through it as quickly as possible.
Brooke: One thing that I learned that I had obviously no reason to ever think about, was getting death certificates. To get them from the funeral home you can ask for like 10, 20, however complicated someone's financial situation is, you would likely need more. But, otherwise you’d have to go to your town clerk and do all of this stuff. And so it's just, for anyone who is faced with this situation in the future, ask the funeral home for extras. I think they're like $20 normally.
Liz: Yeah. Also on our site, shameless plug for Lantern-
Brooke: Plug the whole time, lots of good information.
Liz: We have a few tasks within the checklist. One is the list of all the information that you need to fill out a death certificate. So, it was very embarrassing for me when I was in the funeral home. They literally fill it out by hand while they're talking to you, and I didn't know my grandmother's mother's maiden name, which is something they ask for on a death certificate. And also a place of birth, these are things that, you know, just had never come up with my grandmother and my mom didn't know, and my dad wasn't around, so we were like, “Oh my gosh, we have no idea where she was born.” And so we had to start reaching out to distant family members trying to figure this out. So we have a list on there of all the information that you need, so you can actually just go in with it all written out. And then we also have a list of all the things you might need a death certificate for. So it's not just, you know, for insurance purposes, but you might actually need it for, like, closing a Facebook account, or canceling a phone bill. It depends on the company, it depends on what you use, but a lot of places will require original death certificates, some are fine with copies, it totally depends.
Brooke: Airlines were fine with copies when we were closing out all of his rewards accounts.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah, it really just depends. Like my co-founder always talks about how her grandfather's phone bill is still open because it requires them to go to Buffalo with an original death certificate, and they just haven't been able to do it, so his account is just still there. So yeah, it really depends on the company. But we do have a list and you can kind of go through and say like, “Okay, I probably need 10.” I would always get two extra just so you don't have to deal with it later. Good to have on hand.
Brooke: We got way more than we needed, but it's better to have them. And then there since has been a few instances where I've needed them, that I was glad to not have to go an hour out to Connecticut and have to deal with it. So, absolutely. Can you talk about some of the services you've referenced several times, the basic package. So what even would be an example of some of those next level?
Liz: Yeah. I mean, next level things, that could be like, makeup and dressing if you're going to do an open casket if you're doing a viewing, but they also do it by hours. So like, another way that you can defray some costs is they'll typically say a four hour viewing, you can ask for a two hour viewing to cut down on some of the time. Again, I mean the extra costs are endless because you know, you can have a hearse, you could have a horse drawn carriage, there are so many different things. Flowers can get really expensive, and I highly recommend to anyone, you don't need to get flowers, people are going to give you flowers whether you ask for them or not. There will be no shortage of flowers, and spending extra money on them isn't necessary. And then also you're looking at if there's any kind of catering, or if you want alcohol, or if you want to have it at some kind of other events space.We always try to encourage people if they have a family member or a friend who's willing to offer their home, that's a way to cut down on some of the costs as well.
Brooke: And then- we talked about this- it's almost similar to like a wedding, that the costs just are higher than what they would be for like a family reunion. It just is like-
Liz: It's like a hyperspeed wedding.
Brooke: Right. Everyone has them, not everyone gets married.
Liz: Yeah, exactly. I know we actually get compared to companies in the wedding industry often, like “Oh, you're like The Knot for death,” or “Zola for death.” And in some ways, yeah, there's a lot of similarities. Like the way you can approach planning is very similar, but you're at warp speed, it's not optional, there's a lot of legal and financial aspects that are involved. And I think, you know, for us, and what we're so excited about with what we're building is we're able to take out some of the anxiety and stress from that planning process, because you know you can see everything right in front of you, you know exactly what you need to do. I know, I felt extremely overwhelmed, not just because I had a lot to do, but because I didn't know if I was doing it right or if I had covered everything, and so it was this constant iteration of lists and then being like, “Oh my gosh, I didn't close my grandmother's Verizon account,” and then I was being chased down by a debt collector. And you know, those are things that if I had had on my list, like make sure to check on all the phone accounts, it was just something I hadn't thought about.
Brooke: Even like my dad had all this stuff on auto pay, so once we notified the credit card companies that he had passed away, and I think it was T-Mobile or whatever it was, and then I was like, “Oh, we should, I guess, shut down his Netflix account,” they were like, “There is no payment method,” and I still had his computer up and running so I could see notifications coming in. It's like, “Wow, can you go?” But just like the amount of stuff to close is crazy.
Liz: Yeah. Oh my gosh, yeah. Especially in the digital age that we live in. I think, especially the next generation. With my grandmother, she had a Netflix account, but there wasn't a ton of accounts. But like, when I think about myself and my digital legacy on its own-
Brooke: That’s a good idea for a company.
Liz: How do you manage that stuff?
Brooke: Or even like track it, because how many things have you signed up with your email address for?
Liz: Absolutely. And it's not easy to shut these accounts down. It's not like you can just reach out to Facebook and say, “Hey, take this account down.” Because you can imagine there's lots of people that are also trying to do it too to be not so nice to somebody.
Brooke: I was listed as like my dad's account manager or you know-
Liz: Like a beneficiary kind of thing?
Brooke: Yeah, for Facebook, so I went in and you have to provide a link to their obituary and when they died and what's your relation to them, and that's how you on Facebook and Instagram could request to close it down. LinkedIn was pretty easy, and they take the profile down, but for Facebook and Instagram there's an option to leave it up as like a memorial, memoriam which is kind of nice because then I've gone back and looked through his pictures and the captions, and it's just like a nice thing.
Liz: It's really nice when it gets transferred like that. I think the opposite effect is when things don't get shut down. And I had a very strange experience that- god, I guess almost a year and a half ago now- a friend of mine from high school passed away and it was very sudden, very unexpected. And for awhile, I was getting Facebook notifications of memories with this person, or like LinkedIn “congratulate them on one year at this job.” And it just was like this pang every time it would happen, because until those accounts are shut down or put in memoriam, they treat it as if the person’s alive.
Brooke: Not true, because I memorialized my dad's Instagram and it came up, in September or October, of memories like “on this day last year,” and it was a picture of the two of us.
Liz: They still send you?
Brooke: Even though I had more memorialized the account and so on the second episode, which is “Grief on social media,” I put out a plea of like, “if anyone knows anyone at Facebook or Instagram, what is the thought process behind the algorithm still pushing that?” So if you know anyone, or if anyone listening with your bigger audience now knows anyone, I would love to know, please email me or DM me because, yeah.
Liz: And isn't it a really interesting and unexpected consequence, or maybe gift, from Facebook. Because yeah, you do get to have sort of this digital memorial for this person in a place where you already are. Because there's a lot of digital memorial sites out there, but you have to go somewhere you wouldn't normally go in order to access it. So it's definitely interesting, and I really enjoy and appreciate the behavior of people writing notes to the person. Sometimes I'll look at my friend's Facebook account and scroll through and be like, “Oh, this person, just remembering, you know, three years ago when they went on this trip and they posted photos of it and I'm like, that's really nice to see.”
Brooke: That is really nice. And, to your point, it's where you are, and so it's very easy and accessible versus like, I don't even know where you would go. I'm sure they exist and I'm sure you would know from your research that they do, but having it be something that can be built by a community, is really- like the grief experience I always talk about can be so isolating- and to have that community aspect behind it.
Liz: Yeah. There's actually a site called life LifeWeb that is really interesting. They are trying to solve for the issue of how people have all of this content and memories and photos, and it kind of gets jumbled on Facebook, and so they're creating like a visualization web that shows different parts of their life with the photos and memories from that time period, so that whether you're a young person or an older person, you can see the different stages, and different people from those different parts of their life can contribute to it, which is pretty amazing.
Brooke: That’s really beautiful. All right, so I think if we can switch gears a little bit, we at the beginning spoke about what you're doing, what you're hoping to accomplish, but you're in this sector now, which has been coined “Death Tech,” and what is that? It's something that is getting more and more, I don't want to use the word popularity, but coverage, and people are paying more attention to it and thinking about it. So if you could talk about what it is as an industry, how you guys fit in there, where it's going, all of that.
Liz: Yeah, I find this topic so fascinating. I mean obviously a) because I'm in it, but b) because death is like, it's the only real guarantee, right? It's the thing that we all know is going to happen at some point. It's gonna happen to us, it's gonna happen to everyone. Yet, it is weirdly trendy right now, which is kind of baffling for something that is 100% going to happen and always has and always will be, that it is trendy. And it was like named a wellness trend of 2020, is talking about death and all the things related to it and, you know, having a good death, and it's fascinating to see the upswing of media, the upswing of like death doulas is a really interesting signifier of the fact that we're thinking about death in a more holistic way now. So it's not just, “keep person alive at all costs, and then if they die, funeral home.” Like that was kind of the process, and there really wasn't much else around it, and now there's a lot of focus on wellness and on allowing people the space to grieve, which is really the heart and driving force of what we're doing at Lantern, is how can we lift the burden of the logistics so that you can have space to grieve, because we're not going to stop the grief, that's just what it is, it's human nature. If you love someone, grief is in equal or more parts than the love you felt for the person, and that's always going to remain true, but we can lift some of that burden so that you can focus on that grief and accept the support that's coming to you. But yeah, it's a fascinating time, and my hope, and I think what the industry as a whole’s hope is that it becomes less of a trend and more of a norm. And if we can keep talking about it and keep enforcing the importance of having conversations with your friends and family members about what they want, what you want, making sure that your affairs are in order, like for us on our site, preplanning is a huge part of what we're trying to push forward, and saying this is not optional, this is being an adult. It is something you need to do, it is not something that you wait until the last minute to do because you're probably not going to know what your last minute is. And honestly, it's less scary to do when you don't have to. Like I found doing my will, I'm not kidding you, I sat with my co-founder and our technical lead and we put on pop music and opened a bottle of wine, and we all wrote our wills together, and you can have more fun with it when it doesn't feel like it's happening right now. So it's actually, I think, an interesting time to do it because it doesn't feel so heavy. Like, yes, it's scary to think about your death anytime, but when it doesn't feel imminent, you can kind of relax and be like, “Okay, let me think in a logical and thoughtful way, like what are the things I want? What do I want friends and family to know? What music do I want to have played? Do I have all my documents in order?” It can be like somewhat of a therapeutic experience, versus a frantic or scary one.
Brooke: And I think the way I framed it, because after- I think I told you this story- after my dad died, my friends were like, “What can I do to help? What can I do to help?” I was like, “Talk to your parents about where their wills are, and find out what's in their living will.” Or make one. I have friends who have children and they don't have wills yet, and if you frame it in the way that it makes it easier for the people you love that are left, and it makes it so they're not frantic, they're not trying to figure out where is the will, what's in it, what would they want at the funeral? You know, and families have arguments about it, the stress and the sadness is so high that you can fight about, “Well, no, they would want it at a church, they would want it at wherever.”
Liz: Trying to guess, I think, is one of the biggest stressors in a family.
Brooke: Yeah. And then you're like, “Did I do it right?”
Liz: Yeah. And you always wonder, yeah. That’s a huge point of why we push for preplanning and, this phrase sounds obvious, but it's like “you die how you lived,” right? So, if you don't handle these things while you're living, it's not going to improve after. And I think a lot of people, they sort of think like, “Oh, it'll get sorted out,” or, my favorite, a lot of people are like, “Oh, well, like the government has stuff set up to make sure things go to the right place.” And I'm like, I don't know what government you're talking about.
Brooke: Isn’t it also true, if you don't have a will, more of your assets go to the government than if you do have one. Do you know about that?
Liz: It depends on how you have it set up. Like, if you have your funds in a trust and like how that trust is set up and what state you live in, and what kind of taxes-
Brooke: But that’s a lot of a risk. I'd rather have the money go to, I don't have children, so like my nieces or nephews, or my brother or like whoever than the government for sure.
Liz: Yeah, and there are certain states that are better than others for estate tax and all that kind of stuff. And so, I mean you can certainly get into the nitty gritty of how to be strategic about these things, but at bare minimum, we don't need to overwhelm ourselves here, at least just write a will. You can do it online, you can do your preplanning through Lantern, you can write a free will with- literally FreeWill is the name of the company- and just like have the bare minimum, get a feel for it, and then if you're like, “Okay, I think I need to do more extensive work, or I have a more complicated estate,” then you can start looking into it.
Brooke: Or like if you're single and don't have children, it doesn't need to be as complicated as if-
Liz: Yeah, if you're like an heiress with 12 kids, then like-
Brooke: Yeah, it’s much more complicated and I don’t have that problem. I just think it's so interesting and people don't think about it. And I think also for people who are in our age and our generation, you think like, “okay, you don't have a ton in like checkings and savings,” but if you've been contributing to your 401k since you started working, that could potentially be a lot of money that goes into limbo, and then the other thing people don't realize is that it can take a really long time to get paid out from probate.
Liz: Oh yeah. It was well over a year with my grandmother.
Brooke: People think it happens in a few months, and it's at least six, but normally closer to 12.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. It is not a fast process.
Brooke: So the more organized you are, the faster people you love get access to whatever you left.
Liz: Exactly. And I also think too, there's a misconception a little bit that having just a will is enough. It is fantastic if you have a will, and if you have some advance directive set up. That's sort of the bare minimum, like, yeah, “good job, high five, you've done it,” but there's so much more that people forget about. And on our site, we kind of walk you through all of the different things that you should consider when doing a preplan. So yes, it is that documentation, but it's also things like- Do you have your password stored somewhere? We have a partnership with 1password. Do you have your passwords very similar? Does somebody know how to access them? So they actually have an emergency access option, where you can identify someone who can get access to your passwords if you die. And you know, it's like, do people know what kind of subscriptions and accounts you have? Do people know the specifics of what you want for your funeral? Like in your will, you can say I want to be buried or cremated, but rarely do you go into where, and, you know, what kind of a memorial do you want? And do you want someone particular to speak? You could write your own obituary. There are so many things that you can do yourself, that a) take the burden off your family members, and b) make sure that like you're remembered the way you want to be remembered.
Brooke: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like we just have covered so much. I think that as this becomes more of a conversation and as death is having a moment, hopefully continues to and people get more comfortable, but I think as more and more people are talking about it, to your point that you said at the beginning of our conversation, like I find people who I don't know who I haven't talked to in 10 years are like, “Wow, what you're doing is great.” And like, “I lost this person.” And so I think there's like cracks opening in the “death is not something you talk about.” And so I think from both from an emotional perspective, and from the preplanning and logistics are important, and I think that we as a generation are, or at least like my friends, and I think a lot of your friends, are plan-y people, realizing like, “Oh, these are things that we can take care of.”
Liz: Yeah. And also, I mean it's interesting the conversation of this is a thing we don't talk about. Most cultures are way more advanced than we are, which I think it's really interesting how as a society we're very timid about discussing it. I think a lot of times it's either out of sort of superstition, like if you talk about it, it'll happen, which I can very confidently say writing a will does not equal you will die then. It might happen by chance, but it's not A equals B, and talking about it with someone also doesn't make them die. But I think there's this fear, like with my grandmother, we didn't ask her a lot of questions because we didn't want her to think we were giving up on her, which now in hindsight, I realize-
Brooke: Or like we're waiting for her to die-
Liz: Exactly. Or like wanted things from her. We were always so worried about the perception of it, and I think that's a lot to do with the culture and society we've grown up in. Because you see, I mean I always think about Mexico like Day of the Dead, every year to celebrate, to talk about death, to talk about the people that you've lost, or remember their legacy and it normalizes death, and you introduce kids at a young age to what their ancestry was. It's such a beautiful tradition, and it makes it just a part of your culture. But also, there's been so much research about if you normalize talking about death, that makes you a happier person and makes you love better, and it also makes you better prepared. Even there's a town, I think in Wisconsin, that they just normalized preplanning across the board. They have like 98% of people had a will in this town, because it was just a standard, like you turn 18, you make a will, that's what we do here. You know, their death rate isn't higher.
Brooke: Is there anywhere else you see this going, this new openness around it? Like anything that you foresee coming?
Liz: I think that we are in a really interesting time where I get asked all the time, right, like, “Oh, who are your competitors? There's all these companies popping up, does that stress you out?” The thing that I think is really beautiful about this industry right now is we need all of this energy and conversation and new business in order to elevate the industry as a whole. So I don't see anybody as a competitor, but as a partner. Everybody that's in this space, I reach out the second I see them. I want to be friends, I want to figure out how we can elevate what they're doing and vice versa, because major shifts don't happen by single people in a silo. It's just like, we need to do this together, and so I find this energy and this build so exciting, and I think it actually signifies that we will see large brands, global brands in this space that become household names and, you know I can go to Lantern to be able to do this. I think that's where this is going. I think the, “you die, you go to a funeral home,” pathway is not going to be that.
Brooke: Well, and even some of the stuff that we talked about when we first met that now there's direct to consumer cremation, and like things like that, they make it like if you don't want to go to a funeral home, or what for either financial reasons or like, I don't know what else, it's easier. And if you know that you're scattering ashes versus burying a body, there's things like that that people don't even know exists yet.
Liz: And there's also a lot of environmental options that are becoming more widely available.
Brooke: Could you talk a little about that?
Liz: Yeah, I'm like a super fan girl of Recompose. Katrina is the founder, and they're all about body composting, so going back to the earth, it's like very humorous to me that it is illegal in most states. They're actually lobbying and working to change the laws, they changed it in Washington state and now they're working in Colorado. But like up until the last, I guess, around a hundred years or so, that was what happened. You go back to the earth, that's what happens to animals when they die in the forest, you know? But it became illegal and all of a sudden we were putting people into chemicals and we were trying to put them into metal containers and put them into the earth, which is, it's not natural, it's terrible for the environment, but our laws sort of shifted to adapt to this new system. And so she's actually working to sort of unravel that again, and be more environmentally friendly, do what was naturally supposed to happen. You know, you can also become a tree.
Brooke: You can become a diamond.
Liz: You can become a diamond, yeah. Yeah, there are a lot of different options, and most funeral homes, not all, won't really expose you to that gamut. You know, a lot of what Lantern is doing as well is just trying to expose people to the options that they have. And if you're preplanning, you can actually make those calls in advance and not be in a frantic state where it's like, I can't read about all these things right now.
Brooke: Yeah, absolutely. Is there anything else, you think? I feel like we covered a lot.
Liz: We did, we covered a whole lot. Yeah, I think we covered it. This has been really fun.
Brooke: Yeah, this was really fun. Thank you so much for doing this. Do you want to plug anything? Your social, your website?
Liz: Yeah. So, it's www.lantern.co not com, co, because all the domains are taken in this world. And we’re @FollowLantern on social media.
Brooke: Perfect. Thank you guys for listening. I hope that you found it informative and interesting. If you have questions, you can reach out to me, you can reach out to Liz. Again, you can find us on social at @The_GriefCoach. You can reach out at hello@thegriefcoach.co. If you enjoyed this, please rate, review, subscribe, follow, it helps with other people being able to find the podcast who may need it, if there's more ratings and reviews on iTunes. So, thank you guys and I'll talk to you next week. Bye.