GAMES TO START FUNERAL PLANNING CONVERSATIONS

BY GAIL RUBIN, CT

Do you wish there was an easy way to get people to talk about death and funeral planning? Playing a game can make planning ahead for end-of-life issues an enjoyable experience. Funeral homes can incorporate any number of conversation-starting games into educational outreach activities.

As a pioneering death educator, my first foray into death education gamification was Newly-Dead® The Game. It’s like the old TV game show, The Newlywed Game, but the questions focus on how well a couple knows their partners’ last wishes.

The game debuted at the 2011 Frozen Dead Guy Days Festival in Nederland, Colorado, a wild and wacky celebration of all things dead and frozen. Couples eagerly signed up to play in several sessions of the game. (And yes, there is real dead guy kept frozen by dry ice who resides there.)

There’s also a Singles edition of Newly-Dead® The Game that allows everyone in the audience to play along, testing how well prepared they are with disposition plans, a will, advance medical directives and a final resting place. The better prepared you are, the more points you get. Each question includes four answers, with the last one being “I don’t care, I’ll be dead.” That answer gets you zero points. It also becomes a crowd chant, which helps break the tension over the topic of dying.

Both versions of Newly-Dead® The Game provide an opportunity to teach about funeral planning issues and explain the importance of gathering information and legal paperwork. Initially, the game was offered as a digital download, but a physical product is coming in 2023. Learn more here: https://agoodgoodbye.com/to-die-forshopping/the-newly-dead-game/.

Now I’ve created a word Bingo game focused on death education issues: Death Ed Bingo! Just like a traditional Bingo game, players receive a game card with randomized words instead of numbers. As each death- and funeral-related word is called, there’s a brief teachable moment focused on each word. Words in the game include Pre-Need Planning, Funeral Directors, Green Burial, Wills & Trusts, POAs, Pet Loss, Obituaries, and Insurance.

Death Ed Bingo! can be played in-person with physical cards or online within a Zoom meeting. It can be used for funeral home pre-need outreach or part of a Before I Die Festival in your market.

Other end-of-life conversation starting games include Hello from CommonPractice. com, The Go Wish™ Game from CodaAlliance. org, Morbid Curiosity from MorbidCuriosityGame.com, The Death Deck from TheDeathDeck. com, and the Have the Talk of a Lifetime Conversation Cards from the NFDA’s RememberingALife. com. Many of these games work better in smaller groups.

By the way, if you’d like to get a set of Death Ed Bingo! cards and NewlyDead® The Game, check out the Before I Die Festival in a Box®: https:// beforeidiefestivals.com/product/beforei-die-festival-in-a-box/. It provides a host of upbeat ideas and tools to start end-of-life planning conversations and pre-need funeral arrangements.

My motto is: Talking about sex won’t make you pregnant and talking about funerals won’t make you dead. Let’s get those conversations started! FBS

Gail Rubin, Certified Thanatologist and The Doyenne of Death®, is an award-winning speaker, author, podcaster, YouTuber, and coordinator of the Before I Die New Mexico Festival (www. BeforeIDieFestivals.com). She is also a Certified Funeral Celebrant. Her three books on planning ahead for end-of-life issues – A Good Goodbye, Kicking the Bucket List and Hail and Farewell – are available through Amazon and her website, www.AGoodGoodbye.com.