Why Webcasting/Live Streaming Funerals

Millions attended Whitney Houston's funeral and listened to "I will always love you" as her body left the church. After Getty Images photographer Chris Hondros was killed covering a Libyan uprising, thousands attended his memorial service. The Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin exited stage left in front of millions all around the world in a four-day funeral extravaganza. The thing each of these funerals shares? The majority of the audience at each attended them VIRTUALLY.  In Aretha's case, the church had set up a huge screen to Livestream the service at a local gas station parking lot for her local community.

Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have also made us much more comfortable with sharing intimate details about ourselves online. Many deaths and funerals are reported, commented on, tweeted, recorded and posted online already.

The advantages of streaming are also a form of family memorial that can be preserved as a recording as part of a family's oral history. It's an archive for future unborn generations. For sudden deaths or pandemics, as we are currently experiencing, streaming can also foster a communal mourning experience, in digital form. This also holds true for serious immigration issues, something we are also experiencing a lot of today. Being Irish, I know of many many illegal Irish immigrants all over the world who cannot fly home so easily for weddings and funerals. Webcasting or streaming allows them to be there in spirit but also virtually

A celebrity memorial service can be one of the most-watched events in online streaming history. 2.5 billion tuned in to the 1997 funeral for Princess Diana. Nielsen Media Research said that Michael Jackson’s two-hour memorial in Los Angeles was carried live by 18 U.S. television networks and cable channels, drawing a US audience of 31.1 million.

She has gone away, so smile....

You can shed tears that she is gone
or you can smile because she has lived.

You can close your eyes and pray that she’ll come back
or you can open your eyes and see all she’s left.

Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her
or you can be full of the love you shared.

You can turn your back on tomorrow and live in yesterday
or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday.

You can remember her and only that she’s gone
or you can cherish her memory and let it live on.

You can cry and close your mind,
be empty and turn your back
or you can do what she’d want:
smile, open your eyes, love and go on.

Bucket List check! Orlando - Universal Studios Orlando 2016

Don't ever let anything stop you

I just listened to Tony Robbins and his 2006 TedTalks piece. I watched through to the end and was glad I did when he told a beautiful touching story about his experience of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. He was right when he claimed that it is when people are faced with extreme adversity and death that they become emotionally and physically driven to change the course of their lives and to LIVE their life.

This is what he said:
"When 9/11 happened -- I'll finish with this -- I was in Hawaii. I was with 2,000 people from 45 countries. We were translating four languages simultaneously for a program that I was conducting for a week. The night before (9/11) was called "Emotional Mastering.".......And all of a sudden I said, "When do people really start to live? When they face death."

And then I went through this whole thing about, if you weren't going to get off this island, if nine days from now you were going to die, who would you call, what would you say, what would you do?

One woman -- well, that night is when 9/11 happened -- one woman had come to the seminar and when she came there, her previous boyfriend had been kidnapped and murdered. Her friend, her new boyfriend, wanted to marry her, and she said no. He said, "If you leave and go to that Hawaii thing, it's over with us." She said, "It's over."

When I finished that night, she called him and left a message at the top of the World Trade Center where he worked, saying, "Honey, I love you, I just want you to know I want to marry you. It was stupid of me."

She was asleep, because it was 3 a.m. for us, when he called her back from the top and said, "Honey, I can't tell you what this means." He said, "I don't know how to tell you this, but you gave me the greatest gift because I'm going to die." And she played the recording for us in the room.

She was on Larry King later, and he said, "You're probably wondering how on Earth this could happen to you twice." And he said, "All I can say to you is, this must be God's message to you, honey. From now on, every day give your all, love your all. Don't let anything ever stop you."

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”.

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