Even in death, Americans want a say. With wedding planners already big across the US, the latest trend is funeral pre-planning -- helping the living organize their final event on earth.
According to funeral planner Mark Duffey, the trend is driven by the baby-boom generation born in the aftermath of World War II, many of them recently faced with the overwhelming task of arranging their parents' funerals.
Death for them is no longer a taboo subject and they are determined to do things their way, down to the last detail.
"They don't want to go slowly, quietly into the night. They want to go out loud, kicking and screaming," said Duffey, whose company Everest, billed as "the first nationwide funeral planning and concierge service," has helped organize some 65,000 made-to-measure funerals.
"They may not want a big fancy casket, but a rock band playing at a restaurant. They may not buy a huge monument in a cemetery, but they may make a very large donation for the wing of a hospital," he said.
He said that baby-boomers want to have a personalized and thematic funeral that has some meaning to the person. They want to be remembered. They don't want to be forgotten, unlike their parents, the GI generation, who were much more conservative and didn't want to be a bother.
Honey Leveen agrees. She's only 48 and in good health, but has already set down in writing every detail of her funeral, from the type of urn for her ashes to the music she wants and even the caterers.
"We want to have a nice party. It'll be so pretty. It'll be held in a public park with fountains with a tent and very good catering," said the insurance agent from Houston, Texas. And the music must have a water theme, she said, such as the Beatles hit Yellow Submarine.
Why was she going to such trouble?
"I love my family, I don't want them to have any stress," she said.
The communication coordinator for the National Funeral Directors' Association, Jessica Koth, said many people wanted to spare family and friends the trauma of having to sort out funeral arrangements when already grieving their loss.
"There has been a dramatic increase in the number of individuals choosing to preplan their own funeral," Koth said. "This trend can be credited to aging baby boomers, known for their desire to control all aspects of their life and developing their own ideas."
The increasing flexibility in funeral options is being helped by the growing trend for cremations rather than burials. In 2005, 32 percent of the 2.4 million funerals in the US were cremations, compared with 17 percent in 1990.
"It's much easier if you don't have to have the body there. You are not tied with a casket. You can do anything you want," funeral planner Duffey said.
Negotiating every detail early and discarding some of the traditional aspects of funerals can bring down the cost below the average US$10,000 to US$20,000 price tag, he said.
And somber traditional funerals are increasingly being replaced by more personal celebrations of the deceased's life.
"It's about a shift in our perception, a shift in the way we approach funeral services. It's a celebration of the life, especially a long life and well-lived," agreed Lynn Isenberg, founder of Lights Out Enterprises.
The choices would seem to be endless.
"It may be a motorcycle rally through the woods, a fishing theme on a boat. You can do a party and it could be at a favorite restaurant, a park, a stadium where you played college football," Duffey said.
Internet and video cameras are also popular. And online condolence books are now almost an obligatory part of every funeral.
"You are going to see in the next five years a virtual explosion in autobiographical video," he added.
Earlier this year, popular US newspaper columnist Art Buchwald announced his own death in a video obituary released after he passed away aged 81.
"Hi, I'm Art Buchwald and I just died," he said in the video posted on the New York Times Web site, which has also prepared several other such tributes.
Isenberg, based in California, hit on the idea of starting her own similar business after writing a book last year called -- what else -- The Funeral Planner.
"As I was writing the novel, I started to realize that this was a really good business," she said.
So using her experience as a Hollywood producer and writer she creates "original narrative tribute films for clients who are alive and well and want to plan ahead and do a video," she said.
But this lasting tribute comes at a hefty price: around US$20,000.
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
In the 2022 book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, academics Hal Brands and Michael Beckley warned, against conventional wisdom, that it was not a rising China that the US and its allies had to fear, but a declining China. This is because “peaking powers” — nations at the peak of their relative power and staring over the precipice of decline — are particularly dangerous, as they might believe they only have a narrow window of opportunity to grab what they can before decline sets in, they said. The tailwinds that propelled China’s spectacular economic rise over the past