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Taphophilia (dot) Com...
A repository of morbid curiosities:
Thanatology and Taphophile Issues, Cemetery,
Funeral Industry and Death Related News.
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Graveyards of Chicago:
The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries
By Matt Hucke And Ursula Bielski. Discover a Chicago That Exists Just Beneath the Surface - About Six Feet Under! Take a tour of Chicago's permanent residents! Please visit the Lake Claremont Press website to purchase your copy of Graveyards of Chicago today!
Green-Wood Cemetery Arcadia Publishing announces the release of Alexandra Mosca's historic account of one of New York's most famous cemeteries. Aracdia Publishing's Images of America series has an extensive catalog of many cemetery publications! Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Green-Wood Cemetery and to browse other available titles!
Men of Mortuaries Calendar
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Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers
For information regarding subscriptions, single issues, submission guidelines, deadlines, classifieds or advertising for future issues, please visit The Cemetery Club.
Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints, Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture
with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman is now
available. Please visit
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West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
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Putting the fun in funerals |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Monday, 19 July 2004 |
In Las Vegas, death becomes part of the party
By Norma Meyer
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
July 19, 2004
Carino Casas photos
At the Palm Mortuary in Las Vegas, there's no need to have a boring funeral. If cowboys or country music were your thing, why not have a Western theme for your last roundup? A life-size plastic pony is also included.
LAS VEGAS – In Palm Mortuary's somber sales room – near the hardwood cremation caskets and bronze burial vaults – is a cheery, prop-filled mock kitchen with decorative vinegar bottles, china plates and apple-design towels draped over the oven door. A bulletin board holds recipes and a note: "Buddy's birthday Saturday – send a card."
If you rent this "Home Sweet Home" set for Mom's funeral, you can adorn the shelves with her own knickknacks and have her cremated remains put in her favorite cookie jar and placed on the kitchen table. Or, if you opt for the snazzier "Fabulous Las Vegas" funeral backdrop – with chair-sized dice and towering playing cards – Mom's photo can be substituted for the cherries, bars and bells in the ceiling-high slot machine.
"They actually twirl just like a regular slot machine," says Ned Phillips, Palm's gracious and affable vice prez.
Palm's nine themed funerals with huge, custom-made Hollywood-style sets seem right on the money in Glitter Gulch. After all, just look at the themed weddings here – at one chapel, bare-chested hunks at a faux beach party carry the bride down the aisle on a surfboard. Egyptian nuptials include two male slaves. The Godfather officiates for Mafia marriages, which sounds sunnier than Count Dracula, who hitches Gothic groupies before they head to the honeymoon suite with coffin-shaped bathtub.
"Walt Disney has made us an experience people," Phillips says. "We want an experience in everything we do. It's played out in weddings, it's played out in bar mitzvahs, it's played out in all the events of one's life. Why not play it out in the final celebration?"
So, if the dearly departed wants a rodeo for his last ride, Palm's spacious chapel can become a "Western Sunset," with a colossal cowboy boot, hay bales, wagon wheel, cactus and life-size plastic pony. (The deceased's real horse is also welcome – Phillips recalls how one movingly neighed during fitting parts of a service.)
Palm may be the only action for an elaborate gamer's goodbye, but competitor Bunkers Mortuary is doing what it can to get high rollers to that big casino in the sky. Bunkers sells coffins festooned on the outside with replicas of the landmark "Fabulous Las Vegas" sign. Memory drawers hold poker chips and when the casket is opened, the inside top reveals embroidered lucky 7's or a royal flush.
This being the world's gambling capital, Bunkers funeral director Vince Herrera has buried casino dealers in their green felt apron and low-slung visor. Bingo buffs get their own hereafter – "we put their daubers in their hand with a bingo card," he says.
"I've had Elvis here singing songs for a viewing," Herrera adds. He means that one of the town's zillion impersonators crooned at a wake for an embalmed fan of The King.
There's no Elvis themed funeral at Palm, but if somebody wanted one, the mortuary would do its best. "If a family were to request an Elvis impersonator, we have lots of them available," says Phillips, motioning toward The Strip.
In fact, Palm, which was founded in 1926 at the site of what is now the Golden Nugget casino, will try to accommodate most requests, as long as they're legal and dignified. (The guy who wanted to be naked at his viewing didn't get his final wish.)
Phillips flips through a photo album of the 15-by-20 foot "life celebration" themed sets, which rent from about $1,000 to $3,000. The full-scale displays are so big they're warehoused; each of Palm's seven locations features an 8-by-8-foot sample set.
"This is a roulette wheel done in flowers," says Phillips, pointing to a photo of the Sin City send-off with the "Fabulous Las Vegas" sign in bright lights. He stands across from "The 19th Hole" which has scenery of a golf course, clubs that could be swung by a giant, and golf bags filled with floral bouquets made with golf balls.
When Lyssa Zwart and her brother came to Palm to make arrangements for their late 67-year-old mother, Shelby Myers, they kept saying how much she loved golf. A funeral director showed them the photo book with the duffer's delight. "I said, 'Oh my God, this is exactly what she would want because this is what she did all her life,' " recalls Zwart, 39, who works for a local construction company.
Zwart had her mother, a club champion who lived on a nearby course, dressed in a golf outfit and tucked her 3-wood in the casket. It was surrounded at the service by Myers' trophies and large photos of her on the fairway.
Palm execs launched the theme idea last fall after noticing that baby boomers didn't want the traditional grim reaper rites and often asked to bring in a loved one's personal items. Phillips says the mortuary – which also offers a Harley-Davidson biker "Road House," a patriotic veterans "Heroes Salute," and garden and Asian-inspired sets – do a couple of themed memorials a month.
There's a growing trend to chuck the gloomy tribute and showcase the departed's hobbies and passions, says Katie Monfre, a spokeswoman for the National Funeral Directors Association. (For example, her group suggests transporting a cowboy's casket in a covered wagon instead of a hearse.) Monfre, however, doesn't know of another mortuary throwing such lavish staged events as Palm.
Far from the numbing neon of Vegas, the Wade Funeral Home in St. Louis, Mo. offers themed visitation rooms that pay homage to its African-American clientele. The grief-stricken can sit with an open casket in "Big Mama's Kitchen," which has a 1950s stove complete with a Crisco can for drippings, a loaf of Wonder Bread atop the fridge, and a dinette table with a heaping platter of real fried chicken – "you've got to have that aroma," says director of operations Debora Kellom.
"People lived before they died," says Kellom, noting that the kitchen was often the gathering spot and a woman's pride.
A sports junkie viewing room has a goldfish-stocked pond with a lawn chair on the bank, fishing rod and Gummi Worms bait. There's also a La-Z-Boy recliner chair, remote control and TV, where footage of the deceased's favorite basketball or football team can be played.
Sure it's not for every soul. But back in Nevada, Zwart says her mother's golf funeral gave her a lasting sense of comfort. "It was the perfect one to have."
A service where a relative hits the jackpot while they RIP is another thing. Although her mom liked to play the slots, Zwart says she considered the gambling theme "too tacky."
But then, sometimes Vegas is just that.
"I can tell you that we had one incident years ago where a person came to Las Vegas with cremated remains and scattered them on a 21 table," Phillips recalls. "Obviously, you can't do that. The casino contacted us and we made arrangements to have them put in an urn that had a poker hand on it."
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20040719-9999-1c19rip.html |
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Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Quote Repository
“If we don't know life, how can we know death?” Confucius
Shirtless and Sculpted
The Men of Mortuaries 2008 Calendar is now available! All sale proceeds benefit KAMMCARES, a breast cancer foundation.
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