In the past month part of my thoughts have been at the intersection of “Education and Grief”.  And, it has brought me to a way of thinking that maybe the two thoughts need to go together.

You see, during my time as a Board Member of the University of Minnesota I worked to try to get a student-led initiative about having a class on “Financial Literacy” become part of the base, required core of curriculum courses that every student needed to graduate.  It came from a foundation in which students told me, and I’m paraphrasing here, “The University does a great job preparing us to go out in the world and make a great living, but nobody tells us how to manage the income that we earn”.

I came to the conclusion that if we taught students about taxes, interest, mortgages, automobile payments, savings plans, and more we would have a society not only where citizens were more apt to make wise financial decisions but people would be much more aware of how the votes they cast in elections affect their purchasing power and financial future.

I recently made a call to the Provost (the position in charge of the academic side of the college) who was in her last week on the job.  I had helped hire her and got to know her when I was the Chair of the (Academic) Mission Committee for two years.  I had asked her how Financial Literacy had fared in the new curriculum proposals and she let me know that the entire proposal had been voted down by faculty. . . . So, my Financial Literacy ideas for students were back to square zero.

On to grief. . . . As many of you might know, in roughly the last month the past Speaker of the House in Minnesota, Rep. Melissa Hortman, was assasinated.  I can’t say I was a friend of the Speaker or that I even knew her well.  However, University of Minnesota Board Members are selected by the legislature and getting known by them helps one’s chances for success.

I remember encountering Rep. Hortman in a stairwell at the State Office Building.  I wanted to get an appointment with her to push my candidacy and she said something like the following to me, “No need, I’ve read your bio and heard from others. . . I’ll be voting for you”. . . and, she ended up doing so.

So, while we probably didn’t have the same political ideals I can say she was honest, forthright, and ethical in her short discussion with me.  When I heard of the assasination news that moment in the stairwell immediately came back to me and shook me to the soul.

Recently a letter to the editor on the grief of the Hortman assasination was printed in the Minnesota Star and Tribune.  The writer said, “I am grieving a country that has become numb to cruelty.  A nation where the capacity to care is treated as a partisan liability.  Where empathy is mocked, where decency is dismissed as weakness and where powerful. . .are met not with respect but with violence.”

So, here I am — at the intersection of education and grief.  It’s not a position unique to me and former President of the National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD) in Great Britain, John Adams, finds himself at the same spot.  I had the opportunity to sit down with Mr. Adams at the United States NFDA convention in Baltimore in 2022 and learn more about his goals.

One of those goals is to unite education and grief by making a course on Death, Dying, and Bereavement a required course in the British National Curriculum.  To that end he has already had an audience with King Charles and last December addressed the Members of Parliament on the subject where he received very positive responses.  Here’s the latest update on what is happening with his initiative.

Back to Financial Literacy — I won’t give up on my quest to get more people to understand the value of knowing finances and the ramifications in one’s life on how they manage their finances.  Matter of fact, I think in the world we live in there should be a lot more room to learn the “soft sciences” like bereavement and/or financial literacy.

Maybe if we can help with that eduaction our communities can understand the value of empathy and grieve with compassion when we lose our friends and neighbors. . . . And, maybe like John Adams in Great Britain funeral directors, who exhibit that “capacity to care” can lead the way.

Related –– “Death-A Changing Industry” podcast hosted by John Adams.  This episode is titled “What my children taught me about Grieving”

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“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”

I don’t know if this ever happens to you, but every so often I seem to get hit from all sides with a certain subject matter.  It’s usually something that I have not thought of for awhile but then, all of a sudden, seem to have the subject come up over and over in a short period of time.

In the last couple of weeks it’s been that way for me on the subject of bereavement, and more specifically, how we as funeral directors help those with loss move through bereavement.

It started for me with All Saint’s Day on November 1.  That’s a day in the Chrisitian church where we celebrate those who have died before us.  At my church sanctuary we have candles and members are encouraged to light the candles in honor and in remembrance of those loved ones we have lost through death.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Then on Wednesday of that week my Men’s Bible study, that follows the topics of Sunday services, studied the Biblical book of Ruth and its lessons of loss, determination, and hope following loss.  It’s a short story of loss, bereavement, hope, and redemption that’s good for the soul.

Finally, I learned from a mass email from my friend, John Adams, former President of the National Association of Funeral Directors in Great Britain, that his “Parliamentary petition for all school age children to be taught about death, dying and bereavement in schools” in Great Britain will be further debated by Parliament on Monday, December 2.

I met John Adams and another funeral director from the U.K., Adam Ginder, at the NFDA Convention in Baltimore two years ago.  John told me at that time of his story and his desire to have children learn more about death, dying, and bereavement.  As John is quoted in this opinion article from Child Bereavement UK promoting Bereavement Education in schools,  “For a child, their immediate family is their life; I feel passionately that we need to involve children in funerals and the grieving process. We may want to protect children from sadness and loss but we cannot avoid it – it’s part of living.”

I once again had the opportunity to see Adam Ginder at the NFDA Convention in New Orleans less than a month ago.  I asked about John and Adam let me know that John was continuing his quest to have bereavement education to be taught in the equivilent of our elementary schools. . . . I was then later excited to see that Parliament is moving forward with the possibility of that happening.

I’ve also became aware of the Good Grief Trust from the United Kingdom.  It is an organization that “is run by the bereaved for the bereaved”.  John Adams serves as one of their ambassadors.

Related Article — John Adams meets King Charles and tells him of his campaign for bereavement awareness.

Funeral Director Daily take:  It’s interesting that a country will take a day of their lawmakers’ time to debate the issue of teaching the essence of bereavement and loss to its young people.  I’m guessing that there are a lot of other issues that many citizens would prefer to be discussed and it’s a testament to John Adams and his advocacy for this important debate getting to this point.

As I mentioned in my opening paragraph, sometimes you just get broadsided by one issue.  However, when that happens it does make one wonder about the subject  — in this case, bereavement and how funeral directors help clientele move forward from grief.

It has also made me think that, yes, owning or operating a funeral home is business.  However, it should not be taken lightly that how we help clientele in their journey to acceptance and moving forward from loss might make a big difference on how we are seen as “the funeral home of choice” to consumers.

Sometimes it just takes being hit from all sides with an issue to help one remember why that issue is so important and give us pause to ask ourselves how we are helping our clientele with that area of our business.

It is certainly important to make sure that we have positive cash-flow from our business activities but it may be even more important to make sure that our services are helping our survivor clientele move forward into a future with hope.

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“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”