Editor's note: Click here for an interview with John Llewellyn. Click here to enter the ICFA Online Store and buy a copy of the book.
"Saying Goodbye Your Way," by John Llewellyn, CCE, is about choices. It's not about saying goodbye John Llewellyn's way, or Forest Lawn's way. It's about the options available to today's consumer who is preplanning for himself or herself.
Though Llewellyn, president of Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks and Mortuaries in Southern California and an ICFA past president, is bound to have opinions on what constitutes a proper goodbye, he does a good job of presenting the pros and cons of various options with an even hand.
Llewellyn comes across primarily as someone who believes people should not make rash decisions about funeral ceremonies and memorialization. And the best way to avoid making rash-and therefore likely-to-be-regretted-decisions is to research and talk about the issues involved ahead of time.
The fact is, despite funeral service critics who advise consumers to bypass funeral directors and cemeterians entirely, most people value and use their services. Furthermore, most funeral directors and cemeterians believe in the value of what they do for families-and have the thank-you hugs and notes to prove that what they do is appreciated. What most people want and need is some guidance, and Llewellyn's book provides it.
The downside of today's explosion in personalization is that people can easily be overwhelmed with choices. This book explains the goods and services available so that people can better prepare themselves to make decisions that are right for them and their families. Mortuaries and cemeteries offering few options would not be happy to see someone walk in the door holding a copy of Llewellyn's book!
The appendices listing funeral and cemetery goods and services provide consumers with a clear checklist. Simply breaking down cemetery services into cemetery property, burial ("interment fee" or "opening and closing") and memorial installation can prevent misunderstandings such as customers who purchase a cemetery plot and then express surprise that burial and memorial costs are not covered.
The book's subtitle is "Planning or Buying a Funeral or Cremation for Yourself or Someone You Love." That seems to place funerals and cremation in the either-or position so many funeral directors are trying to fight. But the "I just want to be cremated" person who reads the book will learn that cremation means more options, not fewer. A ceremony, by whatever name, is still "entirely possible and appropriate" and the "cremated remains can be buried, placed in an above-ground crypt or columbarium niche, scattered or taken home."
When Llewellyn writes about scattering cremated remains, he presents the caveats-it's irreversible, and despite what movies lead you to believe, you can't scatter anywhere you please without asking permission-and simply advises people to "do some soul searching" before scattering. "The important thing is to be cautious about actions that are irreversible, because you could change your mind."
The Value of the Funeral
Llewellyn's explanation of the value of the funeral is particularly sensitive and well done. He discusses how the change in focus from "burying Dad" to holding a service "about Dad" has made ceremonies more personal and complex, incorporating a range of emotions in addition to grief.
In advising people how to select a cemetery, one of the things Llewellyn discusses is endowment funds, a topic he addressed at length in his previous book, "A Cemetery Should Be Forever: The Challenge to Managers and Directors." Here, speaking to consumers rather than cemetery operators, Llewellyn provides a simple, clear explanation of these funds and some guidelines for judging whether a particular cemetery's fund seems adequate, depending on the individual consumer's expectations for the future appearance of their cemetery property.
The book is more than 200 pages long, and includes an index, a glossary of terms, a bibliography, a list of resources and appendices. It is written in an easy to digest style and form, with very legible type that's not too small and lots of helpful subheads in addition to a detailed table of contents and index.
Someone facing an at-need situation could read it in one sitting and feel better prepared to make the many decisions he or she is called on to make. But Llewellyn makes it clear that he believes in preplanning. He advocates discussing your plans with family members and doing comparison shopping.
When shopping around, he says, ask detailed questions to make sure you aren't comparing apples to oranges and to test the consumer friendliness and flexibility of the funeral homes and cemeteries you may be interested in doing business with. Llewellyn's approach is hard to argue with if you are truly pro-consumer, as opposed to simply anti-funeral service.
Though he repeatedly advises people to shop around and says he would be "concerned about doing business with" a mortuary or cemetery unwilling to provide full pricing information via telephone, Llewellyn points out that most people don't base buying decisions on price alone.
Whether buying a funeral, a cemetery plot, a memorial, a car, a piece of furniture or anything else, he says, "consumers buy what fits into their budgets and appeals to their sense of value and aesthetics." In other words, they do it their way.
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