Prior to Christmas this past month I listened to my pastor preach on “Loneliness”, and loneliness specifically as it relates to the Holiday Season.  You see, she pointed out, that while many of us are excited to see family and friends during the Holiday Season, there are a whole lot of people who become isolated and get a terrible sense of loneliness because of the holidays.

She pointed out, even though we believe that technology ever-increasingly “connects” us, there is a thought process that all of the technology that we have around us “dis-connects” us instead.  She pointed out that many in our society don’t have someone we trust to visit with about our specific situations and instead we just put our news out there on Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook for our connections.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

In essence, over time, we have moved from an intimate discussion society with friends and family to an “Instagram society”. . . . It was pointed out that the percentage of people who feel lonely at some point during the year has grown from 47% to 58% during the time period of 2017 to 2024 and at the holidays it rises to 61%. . . . . . That’s a lot of loneliness for the most technological society in the history of the world.

And, I would argue that loneliness not only hurts our mental health situation leading to a country that spends almost 20%, and rising, of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health care, but also puts a direct hit on the revenue brought to the Death Care profession.

You see, in my opinion, it is the intimate discussions that we have as a family that leads to how we tell those we love how we want to be remembered.  And, in many ways, being remembered leads to the services and memorialization that we are willing to spend on at that time of death.  Absent those intimate discussions about legacy and remembrance I’m of the opinion that many families will not give extra thought to the ideas others may have had and opt for simple and easy solutions. . . . like direct cremation with no services.

Here’s a couple of graphs that I think show a stunning example of how we spend our time:

Time Spent with Friends is Decreasing

Who we spend time with as we age

So, for a long time we have written off the lessening of services purchased by our client families for many reasons. . . such as the decreasing of church memberships. . . . . But, maybe, there are many more reasons, with loneliness being one of them.

If nothing else, this data certainly reflects to the Death Care profession how important it is to get potential clients to open up to someone about their legacy and memorialization wishes.  The National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) has been in front of this movement with their “Have the talk of a Lifetime” promotion. . . .which you can access here.

Related Article— “America has a loneliness epidemic.  Here are 6 steps to address it.”  Short audio version and print article.  MPR News (Minnesota Public Radio)

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