Digital Dying Weekly News: 4/17/2015

This week we acknowledge the anniversary of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. We also take time to remember the tragic loss of life that took place during the dark days of the Holocaust. The weekly news round-up also includes a peek at online streaming of funerals, what happens when a star dies during the filming of a movie, and an effort to turn remains into compost.

New on the Digital Dying blog this week:

Digital Dying Weekly News: 4/17/2015

Oklahoma City Bombing Timeline

April 17, 2015–News9.com: The bombing of Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building changed our city and nation forever. Experience the events of April 19, 1995, and the years since that fateful day… Read the full story

On Holocaust Day in Israel, Strangers Answer the Call to a Funeral

Apr 16, 2015–The New York Times: Most of the mourners had never met Nate Remer, who survived the Holocaust hiding in a Ukrainian forest, built a successful wholesale hardware business in Southern California and had severe dementia for 15 years before dying Tuesday at 82. They did not know his son, Gary, a professor at Tulane University, or his grandson, Moshe Alexander, who moved to Israel five years ago and works in high tech… Read the full story

Related:

• Why Holocaust Remembrance Day Is Today

More and more funeral homes are offering live-streaming of services, so mourners who can’t attend can still say goodbye  

Apr 14, 2015–New York Daily News: Every day, we reveal much of our lives online. Now, we’re revealing more of our deaths. It may sound tacky or ghoulish, but more and more people are live-streaming a relative’s funeral ceremony, giving an alternative for mourners who are too sick, too far-away, or too financially strapped to attend the event… Read the full story

The morbid movie magic of post-mortem performance

Apr 14, 2015–Hopes and Fears: The 27 Club and its members are well mythologized these days: D. Boon, Janis Joplin, and Kurt Cobain are among many of the brilliant young folks who didn’t make it to 28. But what will we call the club of people whose ultimate contract—the one with the grim reaper—couldn’t get them out of the ones they signed with Hollywood? There is a history of films and television shows whose production had to continue even when principle cast members involved passed on… Read the full story

Funeral director gives students tour of heroin’s last stop

Apr 14, 2015–GoErie.com:  Jack Martin took a seat at the podium, reached behind him, pulled over the long empty table and casually rested his cup on the polished wood surface. On another day, the rolling platform, called a bier, would provide the base for a coffin and the departed on display at Dusckas-Martin Funeral Home, 4216 Sterrettania Road. On this day, it was just another piece of furniture as Martin, in a lesson he has offered for more than a decade, sought to make familiar and less frightening a fact of life all the McDowell High School health students in the room would one day face — death… Read the full story

A Project to Turn Corpses Into Compost

Apr 13, 2015–The New York Times: The body of the tiny 78-year-old woman, gray hair falling over stiffened shoulders, was brought to a hillside at Western Carolina University still clad in a blue hospital gown and chartreuse socks. She was laid on a bed of wood chips, and then more were heaped atop her. If all goes as hoped, the body will turn into compost… Read the full story

I’m a Fourth Generation Funeral Director

Apr 3, 2015–Hopes and Fears: I’M A FOURTH GENERATION FUNERAL DIRECTOR. In total, we have 17 funeral homes — my dad and three of his cousins are the four owners, and they each operate a separate division. So although we’re one company, we operate day-to-day as four separate little companies. I work with my father, my brother, my cousin, and four other funeral directors, and together the eight of us run four funeral homes… Read the full story