Bucket List check! Orlando - Universal Studios Orlando 2016

Be happy…. think about death! 2016 Resolutions.

Be happy…. think about death!

WANT a better 2016? Try thinking more about your every day. No I don’t mean your routine or your eating habits or lack of exercise or business financials but about your work - why you do what you do.

Meditating death is a key to better living. Contemplating our own demise forces us into considering the present and future. Knowing that one day it will all come to an end (depending on your beliefs) allows the brain to acknowledge the present and living and the countless opportunities that await us. The future depends on what you do now, today. Death will surely come knocking - as a professional in the funeral industry you know this but are you ready for it? Have you fulfilled your Bucket List? If by some miracle you have then create a new one for 2016. If you have procrastinated on your Bucket List until now then make 2016 the year you complete the list. To make this easier and more achievable when planning always try to vividly visualize the activity - when is it happening, where and how?

Sometimes we can become to engulfed in our work day to day that we lose sight of why we do what we do until we lose someone ourselves and then it is often too late. So if you are planning a summer holiday this year - if this was to be the last one ever - with whom would you go and spend some time? Where would you go? What would you do when there? How long would you go for?

If this year were your last, would you spend the next hour mindlessly checking your social media, or would you call someone you haven’t spoken to in a while? Would you spend the day with your family or spend the day helping other families? Some of our choices are not easy, or fair and sometimes it takes looking death directly in the eye before we realize the real choices we want to and should make. Although his name is now forever associated with drug allegations in sport some would say that it took a serious potentially fatal cancer diagnosis to send Lance Armstrong on to make history and win seven consecutive Tour de France championships. What will your Tour de France be?

There’s still time to rethink your resolutions. Forget losing weight, giving up cigarettes (although you should try!) and saving money. Those are New Year’s resolutions for regular joe soaps but you’re a funeral director. You live, breathe and sleep death so why not apply it to your own life and this year, improve your outlook: Be fully alive now by thinking about your demise. Have a Happy  and Healthy 2016!

Steve Jobs 

“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.
Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. 
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. 
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

Facebook Legacy Settings

Social media is everywhere these days and it even stays with us in death. We can create memorial pages for loved ones, document their lives via video and photo and now as of February 12th Facebook have followed Google and announced a new policy – Legacy Pages.

Previously, if a person died without someone else knowing their password, there was no way to make any changes. The most awkward of this was the daily reminders to ‘friends’ of birthdays, friend suggestions etc even though the person would never accept the friend request or see the brithday message as they wre deceased. The only way to delete the account was to know the passowrd or show a death certificate and practivally fight with Facebook to close the account.

Now, however, while you are still alive, you name someone else you know on Facebook to be your legacy contact. That person can make changes to memorialize your account. 

This includes:

• Writing a new post/status to show at the top of the memorialized Timeline – maybe some information about a memorial or service.

• Respond to new friend requests from family and friends who were not yet connected on Facebook .

• Updating the profile picture and cover photo (sometimes this is needed where the updated photo is a bit more approriate).

So how can you use this new ‘Legacy’ Setting’?

Open your Facebook SETTINGS tab, choose SECURITY and then LEGACY CONTACT at the bottom of the page. After choosing your legacy contact, you’ll have the option to send a message to that person letting them know what you’ve done.

3 Irish Guys dance around the world

Now this is what I love to see - people going out there and grabbing their bucket list by the @@@! Fair play these lads from Lucan, Dublin, Ireland.

Kevin Cobbe, Chris McGrath and Iain McNamara

The lads went on a trip around the world - 23 countries in one year.

For more info see their blog www.thewirld.org

“the aim of creating interest in Ireland among young people who wouldn’t know a lot about the country”.

Look Up

Seamus Heaney Poem

“Human beings suffer,

They torture one another,

They get hurt and get hard.

No poem or play or song

Can fully right a wrong

Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols

Beat on their bars together.

A hunger-striker's father

Stands in the graveyard dumb.

The police widow in veils

Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don't hope

On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up,

And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change

On the far side of revenge.

Believe that further shore

Is reachable from here.

Believe in miracle

And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:

The utter, self-revealing

Double-take of feeling.

If there's fire on the mountain

Or lightning and storm

And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing

The outcry and the birth-cry

Of new life at its term.” 

― Seamus Heaney

The Time you have Left in Jelly Beans

Before I Die - Dublin's Bucket List

Say Farewell, Your Way

My new book! YIPPPEEEE!!! Delighted to announce its arrival - one more thing crossed off my bucket list.

Say Farewell Your Way

A Funeral Planning Guide for Ireland

by Jennifer Muldowney

 

                   

 

Despite the fact that human beings have a 100% mortality rate, many people in Ireland feel uncomfortable about discussing death. A new book, SAY FAREWELL YOUR WAY aims to change all that. With practical information on digital legacies, cremation, organ donation, and alternative funerals it casts a refreshing light on Ireland’s long-standing taboo.

 

The book will be launched at Madison, 6-8 Wicklow Street, Dublin 2 (beside Tower Records) on Thursday 13^th June from6.00pm to 8.00pm and YOU are invited!!

Books can be purchase on amazon.com, .co.uk and www.farewellfuneralplanners.ie

Zach Sobiech

Zach Sobiech, aged just 14, found out he had a rare form of terminal cancer (Osteosarcoma). 

Life tried to beat him down but he lived it anyway - the way and for as long as he could.

He passed away - May 20, 2013. Watch his beautiful story.

DONATE

Britain's Got Talent 2013

Britain's got talent or has Hungary?! STUNNING performance from Hungary theatre group.

Just over a 3 minutes of life...and death.

I LOVE IT.

Emily Dickinson Because I could not stop

Because I could not stop for Death He kindly stopped for me The Carriage held but just Ourselves And Immortality. Emily Dickinson

WH Auden Quote

"It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
 We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know."

 WH Auden

George Carlin Quote

"The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating...and you finish off as an orgasm."

George Carlin