End of Life Matters 2020

SPECIAL SECTION

END of LIFE March 2020

M A T T E R S The Culture of Death in Santa Barbara

By Marilyn Gillard, with Brian Osgood

S P O N S O R E D

B Y

END OF LIFE MATTERS MARCH 12, 2020

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I CHOOSE TO LIVE WELL IN HEART, MIND & BODY

VNA Health, formerly known as Visiting Nurse & Hospice Care, is California’s third oldest VNA and continues to be Santa Barbara County’s leading nonprofit provider of comprehensive in-home healthcare, helping patients and their families...live well at home...wherever they reside and call home.

With a multi-disciplinary team of physicians, nurses, therapists, caregivers, and trained volunteers, we offer a unique continuum of care including Palliative Care, Hospice Care, Bereavement Care, and life enrichment programs.

Our mission is caring for our community with compassion and integrity, and our vision is that every person lives with health and dignity.

Caring for our Communities since 1908

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Let’s Talk About Death

by Marilyn Gillard, with Brian Osgood

W

e’re all going to die.

The Onion, a satirical magazine, once put it most succinctly in a headline: “World Death Rate Holding Steady at 100 Percent.”

And yet, despite this certainty, our own death is a subject most of us aren’t ready to discuss.

We don’t even like to use the “d” word — euphemistically saying things like he “passed,” she “transitioned,” we “lost him today,” she “kicked the bucket.”

Honestly, it’s not even easy to bring up the subject — my 94-year-old mother thinks I’m writing a travel piece right now because I’m reluctant to start the conversation.

I’ve been ruminating on death, however, since I was a child, when the neighbor boy drowned in a boating accident. My parents — both Holocaust survivors, hence no strangers to death on a soulscorching scale — were ill-equipped to explain to a 9-year-old why we are all so relentlessly mortal. And thus, we never talked about it.

In fact, for the past 150 years or so, Western civi-

lization has slowly marginalized death, relegating it to hospitals and funeral parlors. The columnist Ellen Goodman calls death “the most important conversation we aren’t having.”

But things are changing. The baby boomers are once again trying to redefine how we approach the profound moments of human life. Just as they turned the birth experience away from a sterilized medical model into a family-centric event, they have now turned their collective eye on their own impending deaths. Not satisfied with the old, polite models, they are looking for new — and sometimes ancient — ways of approaching the end of their lives.

It’s definitely in the zeitgeist today. A web search for “end of life” yields more than 5.5 billion links.

Countless studies, books, seminars, TED Talks, and “Death over Dinner” events are out there. There’s even an app called WeCroak that reminds you of your pending doom five times a day. In 2018, New York City hosted a Reimagine End of Life festival,

with more than 300 events, while, closer to home, Bakersfield held its own Before I Die fair last year.

We all know that Santa Barbara is a great place to live, but it’s a great place to die as well. We’re home to a preponderance of palliative care physicians, hospice workers, morticians, clergymen, and bereavement counselors. These professionals mostly agree that if there is honest communication among family and friends, then the person who’s dying stands the best chance of having a “good” death.

That’s where we hope this special issue, which we’re calling End of Life Matters, can help. On the following pages, we’ve brought together the people and organizations in Santa Barbara who are working in end-of-life care.

Everyone we’ve encountered has been uniformly dedicated, compassionate, and kind, a remarkable community of human beings who want to help us complete this life as gently as possible. It seems like we’re in good hands, especially at our inevitable end.

n

Dealing with the

Diagnosis N

ot every death is preceded by a devastating medical diagnosis, but the scenario is common enough that it’s worth considering. If possible, bring someone with you to the doctor’s office when learning about diagnosis and treatment details, especially if it seems to be getting serious.

If not, you might wind up like my friend Ellen.

She wound up sitting in a small, dark What to Do When alone room, listening to You Get the News the oncologist matter-of-factly report that she had breast You Never Want cancer. “The doctor immediately started discussing options, and I kept thinking, ‘This can’t be happening,’ ” she recalled. “Part of me just went numb.”

Historically, doctors were not trained in how to deliver bad news. For years, they relied on “it’s time to get your affairs in order” as a euphemism for “your time is up.” Thankfully, medical schools have begun to teach more compassionate methods.

Dr. Michael Galitzer, medical director of the Ameri-

can Health Institute in Los Angeles, believes that people never forget what doctors say in these experiences. “The words echo in their heads and hearts,” said Galitzer, who encourages doctors to be forthright and honest, but to always leave room for hope.

Other physicians disagree, because sometimes a patient doesn’t want full disclosure. Stacy Wilson’s 53-year-old husband, Jaime, died of kidney cancer eight months after his initial diagnosis. Jaime never believed he was going to die. So, toward the end, when he asked his oncologist if he’d ever drive his beloved Camaro again, the doctor replied, “Sure, we’re going to get you there.”

It’s what Jaime wanted to hear, explained Wilson, and she was grateful that the doctor complied.

Personally, I’d prefer to know the whole truth. After an initial meltdown, I’d hopefully follow the suggestions on how to deal with the bad news: go slow, learn everything you can about the disease, get a second opinion, choose a good support group, and find a doctor you trust. It’s also important to decide who you plan to tell and what not to read, which includes a lot of terrifying things and bad information you can find on the internet. Starting that n meditation practice wouldn’t hurt either.

END OF LIFE MATTERS MARCH 12, 2020

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An evening with Dr. Sunita Puri

Life & Medicine in the Eleventh Hour How to navigate the relationship between families, illness, and medicine Dr. Sunita Puri is the Medical Director of the Palliative Medicine Service at Keck Hospital and Norris Cancer Center of the University of Southern California.

Tuesday, May 5, 2020 From 7:00 - 9:00 PM Marjorie Luke Theatre Free and open to the public.

Reservations are required.

Attendees must register at hospiceofsb.org.

For more information please contact Cheryll at 805.563.8820.

Dr. Puri has been featured in...

New York Times Los Angeles Times BBC World Service PBS Amanpour & Co People Magazine

A Hospice of Santa Barbara Community Education and Engagement Series Presentation

Thank you to our early sponsors: Special thanks to the members of the Wellness and End of Life Network

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KELLY SWEDA

Dream Foundation Gives Terminally Ill Respite from Stress

I

n 2016, Jim Mills was informed by doctors that his 53-year-old wife Leeanne Mills’s ocular melanoma was no longer treatable — she had, at best, around a year to live. The news was devastating for the couple, who’d been married for 29 years and had five children.

“As anyone who has ever lost a loved one knows, it changes your life,” said Mills. “We had a very special marriage. We were as in love at 30 years of marriage as we were during the first year.”

Fulfilling End-of-Life Aspirations for Patients and Families They quickly were dealing with more than just a medical condition. “Illness, it strips people of their identity,” said Mills. “You’re taken out of your home, out of your clothes, and stuck in a hospital where you’re poked and prodded.

Terminal illness is even worse because you realize you’re never getting that life back.”

While in the hospital in Philadelphia, a social worker told Jim and Leeanne about Dream Foundation, an organization that puts together trips and helps fulfill wishes for terminal adult patients with less than 12 months to

live. Jim had worked in the U.S. Navy on submarines for 21 years and moved the family 19 times to 11 different states. That included Hawai‘i, which they’d always planned to visit later.

“But because of Leeanne’s health, we couldn’t make the trip all the way to Hawai‘i,” said Mills.

Jim and Leeanne Mills “We wanted to go somewhere with both mountains and ocean, and Dream Foundation gave us the next best thing, which was a four-day getaway to Santa Barbara in 2016.”

During their time here, Jim and Leeanne enjoyed the beach, explored downtown, and stayed in a beachside villa at The Ritz-Carlton Bacara. “When you’re in a hospital, you’re doing all these tests and diagnoses, getting poked with needles all the time,” said Mills. “To open your window in the morning and look out at the ocean — it was so peaceful.”

It was a critical experience. “Dream Foundation gave us something very special, which is that instead of being a family dealing with a terminal illness, we got to just be Jim and Leeanne again, like we’d been for all those years,” said Mills. “For a few days, our lives weren’t defined by cancer.”

Leeanne died in August 2016. Since her passing, Jim has

worked to find a constructive way to honor her life, which led him to work with the Dream Foundation, helping others and telling his story to those considering supporting the foundation.

“At this really dark time, Dream Foundation injected some light into our life,” he explained. “Anyone who knew Leeanne knew she was a giving person. I wanted to do something with my life to help people who had been in our position, and I thought that was a good way to create something positive out of this really tragic experience.”

Their Dream Foundation experience reverberates to this day. Said Mills, “I feel her whenever I’m working with someone going through what we went through.”

To learn more and contribute, see dreamfoundation.org.

—Brian Osgood

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END OF LIFE MATTERS MARCH 12, 2020

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DANIEL DREIFUSS PHOTOS

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MUSICAL HEALING: Music therapist Stefana Dadas plays music for Ed and Mary Holtzclaw at their home in Goleta.

Music Therapy

Helps the Dying Find Peace

F

or many, the end of life is a final chance to say their goodbyes, to ask for forgiveness, to make their peace with those who shared their lives.

But what if the person dying can no longer communicate in the traditional sense of the word?

Stefana Dadas, a certified music therapist at VNA Health, believes music can play a role. She’s also seen it become a catalyst for the expression of emotions that are hard to bring out with conversa-

Using Music to Ease Transition from Life to Death

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tion, and, in the process, for removing the emotional blockage that can get in the way of a peaceful transition from life to death.

Music therapy, according to Dadas, is the “clinical use of musical interventions to meet personal goals.” Those goals can be physical, psychological, and even spiritual, but all play a part in ensuring that someone passes away feeling at peace.

Music therapy can take place in a group or individual setting and can take many different forms.

Dadas puts together playlists based around certain themes, coordinates live performances at hospice centers, and speaks with family members to create compilations that might trigger sentimental memories for loved ones who can no longer communicate orally. When patients hear songs that they associate with certain memories, “you can see a change in body language,” explained Dadas. “You can see they’re responding, even if they can’t say so.”

Dadas has put together playlists from a diverse range of cultures

— “Persian, to Greek, to Arabic, to Hindi” — but the most prominent breakdown is by generation. “People who grew up in the 1930s and that time period obviously tend to enjoy a lot of the oldies, while those who were born more recently tend to be more interested in rock and roll and things like that,” said Dadas, who smiled when recalling that one patient even requested “a playlist of heavy metal.”

In her 11 years with VNA, Dadas has witnessed many touching scenes.

There was the New York couple who’d spent many years attending Broadway shows. “We put together a playlist of Broadway tunes, and all of a sudden you could see the husband become much more lucid,” said Dadas.

His wife told Dadas that “the music is something that transports us back.”

But this therapy is not just for those with families and friends. “The reality is that some people don’t have anyone with them when they pass,” said Sena Woodall, director of hospice at VNA Health. “We try to make sure that even if your family or friends aren’t here for one reason or another, everyone can die with support.

Nobody dies alone with us.”

Woodall remembered a patient who was dying without friends or family. “You could see he had a lot of anxiety,” said Woodall. “But because of the music, he was able to settle into a more peaceful state.” n See vna.health.

DANIEL DREIFUSS

What Is

Palliative Care?

P

eople often panic when they hear the words “palliative care,” mistaking it as a death sentence.

That’s because the relatively recent medi-

Why This Newer Field of Medicine May Extend Your Life cal specialty is commonly confused with hospice, which is indeed a service intended for people who are not receiving further medical care and have less than six months more of life expected.

But patients may actually receive palliative care at any stage of their illness, and it can be offered alongside curative treatment.

Dr. Michael Kearney is a Santa Barbara physician at Cottage Hospital’s Pal-

liative Care Consultation Service who has more than 35 years of experience in this field as well as in hospice. Palliative medicine, he explained, is “a treatment and care that is focused on improving the quality of life for individuals who are living with serious illness, and their families.

It’s a form of whole-person care.”

The process usually includes an interdisciplinary team consisting of a physician, a nurse practitioner, a social worker, a clinical psychologist, and a spiritual counselor who is conversant in many traditions and faiths. Studies show that patients who receive palliative care early in the course of their medical treatment spend less time in hospitals, have fewer health crises, and, interestingly, often live longer than others who don’t opt for this care.

Palliative care must be referred by the attending physicians. The service is offered in most nursing homes, clinics, and hospitals and can also be administered in patients’ homes in certain cases.

Dr. Michael Kearney

Palliative Care Resources Palliative Care Consultants of Santa Barbara: (805) 699-6066; palliativecareconsultants.com Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital: (805) 569-8393; cottagehealth.org/services/palliative-care/ VNA Health: (805) 690-6212; vna.health/services/palliative-care/ Ridley Tree Cancer Center: (805) 879-0670; ridleytreecc.org

END OF LIFE MATTERS MARCH 12, 2020

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When Is

H

Hospice Needed?

ospice is specialized, compassionate care for people with a terminal illness and includes services and support for their families and caregivers.

Here are the important points to understand about the practice: • The patient’s medical prognosis must be six months or less; however, if a patient lives longer, hospice care can be extended.

• Hospice services are provided wherever the patient is: home, hospital, clinic, or special hospice facilities.

• Medical hospice care addresses pain as well as the emotional, social, and spiritual needs so that patients and their families can focus on comfort and quality of life.

• Hospice offers family members and caregivers counseling, respite care, and help with practical matters such as cooking, cleaning, and transportation.

Hospice Resources in Santa Barbara Hospice of Santa Barbara: 2050 Alameda Padre Serra, Ste. 100; (805) 563-8820; hospiceofsantabarbara.org Doctors’ orders and prognosis are not required • All services are free of charge • Individual, family, and group counseling for children, teens, and adults• Support groups include loss of late-term pregnancy, widows/widowers, and pet loss • In-home evaluation and support • All services are available in Spanish • Specially trained and supervised volunteers • Respite care, household help, transportation • Companionship and support • Community outreach and education programs VNA Health/Serenity House: 512 E. Gutierrez St.; (805) 965-5555; vna.health Operates Serenity House, an 18-bed inpatient hospice house • Doctors’ orders are required: six months or less prognosis • Insurance is billed • Medical care, pain and symptom relief • Bereavement support • Dietary counseling • Integrative therapies: reflexology, guided imagery, music, aromatherapy, reiki • All services are available in Spanish • Specially trained and supervised volunteers Assisted Home Care: 302 N. Milpas St.; (805) 569-2000; assistedcares.com Doctors’ orders are required: six months or less prognosis • Insurance is billed • Bereavement support • Veteran services • All services are available in Spanish • Specially trained and supervised volunteers Sarah House: 2612 Modoc Rd.; (805) 563-9990; sarahhousesb.org Prognosis of less than three months • Residential end-of-life care for people with low income • Eight private bedrooms in a shared living environment • Medical care can be integrated through local hospice providers • Caregiver respite and support

Honor a loved one.

Set a legacy in stone.

G I V E A L A S TI N G G I F T in honor of anyone you choose and for any reason. Whether making new memories or commemorating an important past, the Dream Plaza will be a place to revisit for generations to come.

Death Doulas and Midwives The movement to return death to a human event, not a medical one, has spawned the emergence of this new health professional: the death doula.

According to the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance, the role of the doula is to “provide nonmedical holistic support and comfort,” helping families and patients recognize death as part of the natural cycle of life.

See nedalliance.org.

In a similar vein, Los Angeles–based Mitch Metzner is a midwife who devotes his life to supporting people along their final journey. “A good death is not always possible, but a better death almost certainly is,” explained Metzner, who assists the dying and their families to face death meaningfully and consciously.

See mitchmetzner.com.

DEDICATE A STONE AT OUR DREAM PLAZA AT HOTEL CALIFORNIAN AND GIVE LIFE TO FINAL DREAMS. Please contact Dream Foundation by phone at 805-539-2208 or email plaza@dreamfoundation.org.

The Dream Plaza is a beautiful oasis in front of downtown Santa Barbara’s historic Hotel Californian. Every contribution to this beautiful plaza will support Dream Foundation programs and bring thousands of Dreams to life.

Choose from four sizes of stone to be elegantly engraved in this one-of-a-kind gift opportunity.

Every stone purchased is eligible for a tax-deductible contribution.

Dream Foundation is the only national dream-granting organization for terminally-ill adults.

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D R E A M F O U N D AT I O N . O R G / P L A Z A

Caring for the

Caregivers A

nyone who’s lost a loved one knows how difficult that process is to navigate. Amid such emotional oscillation, it’s easy to forget the needs of the professional caregivers who are guiding a dying person through the last months of their life. But these hospice workers need care, too, and Santa Barbara’s nonprofit VNA Health is there to serve this labor force.

Giving Hospice Workers a Helping Hand “Caregivers are part of some extremely intimate moments, whether it’s between you and the patient or the patient and their family,” said Dairine Pearson, VNA Health’s bereavement coordinator and counselor. “You’re there as a worker, but we’re also human beings. We have empathy for people, and you inevitably forge some very emotional connections, so their passing can be difficult for caregivers too.”

This is especially true because the hospice care provided

by VNA Health’s team is so thorough, as they ensure that the patient’s “whole self ” is taken care of. “We have to tend to medical needs, of course, but there’s more to dying than

just medical care,” said Sena Woodall, director of hospice at VNA. “We also have to attend to patient’s emotional and psychological needs, even their spiritual needs. What we try to do here is make sure that everyone comes to the end of life in a setting that provides dignity and support.”

VNA offers services meant to help patients and family members get the most out of the remainder of their time on earth. These include creative activities such as writing and collage classes, mindfulness groups, and one-on-one therapy sessions that help both families and patients work through the emotional tumult of coming to the end of life.

“At the core of our philosophy is taking care of the needs not just of the patient but of the family, too. We offer a year of follow-up services for family members because everyone grieves differently. Sometimes we have people come to us six months after their loved one passed away and say, ‘I thought I was fine, but I’m not.’ ” To help caregivers cope with their own emotions, VNA provides additional training and access to therapy, and begins every staff meeting with a discussion about patients

who have passed away to let employees get their feelings out in the open.

Despite the emotional toll of the work, many hospice workers find their jobs very fulfilling. Many were drawn to the field after their own experience of a loved one going through the system.

“It’s definitely a calling,” said Corinne Rink, VNA Health’s volunteer services manager. “A lot of our staff found this job because of experiences — both positive and negative — they had when a loved one was dying.”

There is also a shared sense of mission for these caregivers. “What we want to do here is make sure that everyone finishes their life with a sense of dignity, no matter where they come from,” said VNA Health’s director of marketing, Easter Moorman. “Even grief can be met with life and dignity. It’s difficult, yes, but it can also be a job filled with hope.”

—Brian Osgood See vna.health.

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DANIEL DREIFUSS

Understanding the

Advance Care Directive A serious cycling accident on Gibraltar Road, a

freeway collision, a stroke — any of these could take away your ability to communicate, and they can happen at any age.

The Advance Care Directive is a vital legal document that dictates the type of health care you want to receive if you are unable to make health-care decisions for yourself.

Why You Should Be Planning for Health Emergencies, No Matter Your Age The free, user-friendly form identifies your desired healthcare agent, someone who understands your wishes and will speak on your behalf when you can no longer do so. If there is no directive, the responsibility would go to your next of kin, which may not be the person ideally suited to making critical medical and end-of-life decisions.

It’s important to note that if you are not legally married to your significant other, he or she cannot weigh in unless you have designated them as your health-care agent on record.

If you have chosen to be an organ donor, this should also be included in the directive.

Rebecca Simonitsch, the advance care planning program manager for Cottage Health, says that 90 percent of the work to complete the document are the conversations sur-

rounding the decisions. Research has shown that families who did not have a directive to work from experienced more anxiety and guilt even years after the death of a loved one because they question whether they made the right decisions.

Partly due to the misconception that these directives deal only with old age and death, the Alliance for Living and Dying Well in Santa Barbara has launched a vigorous, multi-agency campaign to educate people, hosting monthly workshops throughout the community. They are recommending the MyCare document for everyone over the age of 18. It is available at mycare.cottagehealth.org as well as through a medical provider and at the Cottage hospitals.

You do not have to be a patient at any of these hospitals in order to submit your directive. Other legal advance care directives may be used as well. You may also file your directive with the California Secretary of State’s Advance Health Care Directive Registry.

For those who are already ill, another option is the POLST, or Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment.

This is a portable medical order signed by a health-care professional that states which treatments a seriously ill or frail patient wants in case of a medical emergency. The bright-

Rebecca Simonitsch

pink paper should be placed in a visible location, usually in front of the refrigerator, so that emergency personnel can access it quickly. See polst.org for more information.

Advance Care Directive Resources Alliance for Living and Dying Well: 2040 Alameda Padre Serra, Ste. 110; (805) 845-5314; allianceforlivinganddyingwell.org Cottage Health Advance Care Planning: 400 W. Pueblo St.; (805) 324-9102; mycare.cottagehealth.org Sansum Clinic Advance Directive Assistance: 215 Pesetas Ln.; (805) 681-7672; acp.sansumclinic.org/advance-care-planning

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Finding Your

Funeral Fit W

hen you die, do you want to be buried? Or perhaps cremated? Where will your body or ashes go? What kind of funeral do you want? A sacred and somber affair? Or a celebration of life complete with music and jokes? And who should be there? Better yet, who shouldn’t? Will you livestream the occasion for those not able to attend? (Yes, that’s a modern reality.)

How to Plan for Your Final Farewell Perhaps the most important question of all, especially for those who you’ve left alive: Who’s going to pay for it all?

Most people have no experience planning a funeral, but once someone dies, there are a lot of immediate decisions that need to be made. “Just like talking about sex won’t make you pregnant, talking about funerals won’t make you dead — and your family will benefit from the conversation,” explained Gail Rubin, the self-proclaimed Doyenne of Death who started the Death Café movement and has written numerous books on the topic.

Learn more about her at agoodgoodbye .com.

Funerals are so pricey that they are actually one of the most expensive “purchases” consumers make, according to the Federal Trade Commission. In Santa Barbara, the average cost for services with burial is $12,257, while direct cremation is just $2,315.

Become a savvy shopper by arming yourself with facts and figures from such price-aggregating platforms as Funeralocity.com and Parting.com, both recommended by AARP. Crowdfunding niche sites such as FuneralFund.com and

AGracefulGoodbye.com are specifically designed to help friends and families cover costs.

There is also the home funeral option, of which Dan Flynn is a huge fan. As the managing funeral director of Simply Remembered Cremation Care — whose slogan is “Here’s hoping we don’t see you too soon” — Flynn wants people to hark back to the old ways when relatives had a leading role in the death of a family member. He believes that when a family bathes and dresses their departed and has services in the home, there’s a much stronger sense of closure for everyone concerned. See simplyremembered.com and page 12 of this guide for more on Flynn’s services.

Cremation surpasses burial as the most popular choice, although it’s not as environmentally friendly as previously thought, with a carbon footprint equivalent to a 500-mile car journey.

Options for what to do with cremains have burgeoned into a flourishing business replete with urns that transform ashes into a living memorial tree, diamond jewelry created with carbon from the ashes, and pressed paper turtles that float on the ocean before disintegrating. Some of the more inventive choices include tattooing with a mixture of ashes and ink, sending ashes into outer space, or blasting them off in fireworks. Of course, many of us will simply end up in our kids’ sock drawers.

Perhaps the newest post-life option is human composting, which Washington State recently became the first state to legalize. More sustainable than cremating, its technology is designed to speed up the process of decomposition. Bodies are placed in a receptacle along with organic material like woodchips and straw. Over the span of 30 days, remains become soil that can grow new life.

Mortuaries McDermott-Crockett & Associates Mortuary: 2020 Chapala St.; (805) 699-5944; mcdermottcrockett.com Pueblo Del Rey Funeral Services: 3120 State St.; (805) 895-8409; pueblodelreyfuneralservice.com Simply Remembered Cremation Care: 36 W. Calle Laureles; (805) 569-7000; simplyremembered.com Welch-Ryce-Haider Funeral Chapels: 15 E. Sola St.; 450 Ward Dr., Goleta; (805) 965-5145; wrhsb.com

Jennifer Parks

Jennifer Parks:

A Motherly Mortician Modern Americans are so removed from death that a motherly mortician seems more fantasy than reality. But that’s the work of Jennifer Parks, the general manager and funeral celebrant at McDermott-Crockett & Associates Mortuary.

“We get to be their storyteller,” said Parks of the deceased people that she cares for and their grieving families, many of whom are devastated by sudden loss. “We speak for them when they cannot breathe. We hold together every piece of their heart.”

Formerly a doula in San Francisco, Parks initially turned down the job when it was suggested by a friend whose family owned the mortuary, but in 2004, she gave into her “servant’s heart” and accepted. She’s embraced the role ever since, even when that means doing plaster casts of dead infants’ feet or tending to the young victims of some of Santa Barbara’s worst tragedies. She also stands in for the unclaimed deceased of the tri-county region each year when their ashes are spread at sea, hosts an extravagant Valentine’s Day party for those who’ve recently lost their sweethearts, and runs a quarterly series of life-skills classes, such as cooking for one.

Though she’s not a grief counselor, she often acts as one, providing a “lifeline” to parents, siblings, children, and spouses of all ages as they weave through the funeral process. “Really listening is the most important thing,” she said. “People want to tell their story, that they were here and they were important.” To her, it’s very similar to her past career in childbirth. “This work is sacred, whether you’re coming in or going out,” said Parks. “This is incredibly personal and intimate, —Matt Kettmann and it’s a huge gift to be able to hold them in my hands.”

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DANIEL DREIFUSS

Welch-Ryce-Haider

Funeral Chapels & Crematorium

Offering Santa Barbara’s Only On-Site Crematory.

Your loved one never leaves your care.

Dan Flynn

15 East Sola Street Santa Barbara FD303

Dan Flynn

Wants to Change How You Think About Death

450 Ward Drive Goleta FD1138

D

an Flynn shows me around Simply Remembered Creation Care, his small shop on Calle Laureles Street, with the enthusiasm of a craftsman. At first, this struck me as strange. Who gets this excited about ways to die?

But over the course of our conversation, Flynn displayed a passion for helping people honor their loved ones in a

Since 1924

805.965.5145

Simply Remembered Offers Endless Ways to Tailor the Process of Saying Goodbye way that’s sincere and very touching.

“What we want to do here is give people a way to say goodbye to their loved ones in a way that’s personal and honors their memory,” he explained.

Flynn walked me through the fascinating modern history of how we commemorate the dead and the cultural and historical events that have combined to give us the process we have today. Up until relatively recently, the options for the disposition of a loved one were fairly limited. Religious norms meant that cremation was a rarity, and funerals were mostly the realm of families, who took care of the corpses and set up burial ceremonies themselves.

That all changed with a few key historical events. Embalming became popular after the death of Abraham Lincoln.

“They took his body on a tour by train to his final resting place, and it kind of kicked off this embalming craze because it was the first celebrity embalming,” said Flynn.

The next big event was the outbreak of Spanish influenza in 1918, an epidemic that led to the death of 675,000 Ameri12

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cans. “Traditionally, families took care of preparing the bodies, setting up funerals, etcetera,” said Flynn. “But now we have this horrific disease, and families simply don’t have the capacity to prepare funerals when several members of their family might be passing away in one month.”

The process of preparing bodies and setting up funeral resources became professionalized, outsourced to private enterprises and out of the hands of families. Thus was born the modern funeral industry.

But this came with a catch.

“It’s nice that a lot of the process is now handled by someone else, but the flip side of that is families are no longer intimately involved with this process of preparing a loved one’s final goodbye,” explained Flynn. “So there’s not as much closure.”

Cremation became popular with its acceptance by the Catholic Church in 1963, and that opened new doors for families who wanted to make the final goodbye more personal. “With cremation, there are just endless ways that you can personalize things and connect this final goodbye to something special you shared with a loved one,” said Flynn.

Today, the personalization possibilities are “nearly endless,” explained Flynn.

“If you’re artistic, your ash can be incorporated into a piece of glass-blown art.

If you’re environmental, you can opt for a bio urn that will lead to the planting of a tree. We can even incorporate ashes into an item that has special sentiment to a family. One family had their father’s ashes integrated into his favorite fishing tackle box,” said Flynn. “What we want to do here is give people a way to make this a process that’s personal, so that families can have a sense of closure.”

See simplyremembered.com.

—Brian Osgood

DANIEL DREIFUSS

Choosing Your

Cemetery

T

here are four places for internment in Santa Barbara, depending on where you live, your religion, and your decision to be cremated or not. For my husband and me, it boiled down to this: The Goleta Cemetery has residency requirements, and we’re not eligible; Calvary Cemetery is solely Catholic, and we are not; and the Historic Mausoleum at Old Mission Santa Barbara has added a columbarium with niche spaces for cremated remains — and although it’s lovely and open all faiths, it just Which of Santa Barbara’s to didn’t feel right, Four Burial Grounds given my Jewish roots.

Is for You? So, we made an appointment with Laura Ringquist at the Santa Barbara Cemetery Association.

Chatty and knowledgeable, Ringquist was similar to a real estate agent showing off properties as she drove us past potential plots while outlining their merits and costs. When I asked about upright granite tombstones, she informed us that many modern cemeteries only allow for flat grass markers so as to minimize maintenance — understandable from a pragmatic point of view, but somehow antithetical to our vision of a graveyard.

Santa Barbara Cemetery rates range from $6,000 for an urn placement in a niche to $130,000 for companion sites in

the Sunset Section. Those prices do not include internment fees, vaults and liners, or mandatory regulatory fees. The memorializing stone and engraving are an additional ticket item.

Santa Barbara Cemetery Like the majority of people in California, we will probably be cremated, so there’s a nice little spot in the Sunrise Urn Garden that will one day have our names on it. We picked the location because there’s a nice stone bench for our kids to sit on when they visit, the number of the plot is the same as the area code where I grew up, and, at the moment, the surrounding plots are unsold, so we’d have no neighbors.

Despite our area’s predilection for environmentally conscious living, there are no “green” cemeteries in Santa Barbara.

This is when the body is buried in a simple biodegradable container with no toxic chemical embalming — embalming is not a legal requirement for burial — and no concrete vaults.

The “green burial” movement is gaining momentum due to lesser costs, environmental responsibility, and the increasing desire to return to the old way of doing death — ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

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Cemeteries Goleta Cemetery: 44 S. San Antonio Rd.; (805) 967-3608; goletacemetery.com Santa Barbara Cemetery: 901 Channel Dr.; (805) 969-3231 sbcemetery.org Calvary Cemetery: 199 N. Hope Ave.; (805) 687-8811; catholiccm.org/location/calvary-cemetery-sb The Historic Mausoleum at Old Mission: 2201 Laguna St.; (805) 682-4713 x139; santabarbaramission.org/mausoleum

Plan your legacy.

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With generosity and foresight, people like you ensure that it remains one, providing future students with access to an outstanding higher education.

Join the SBCC Foundation’s Legacy Circle! To learn more, please contact Gretchen Hewlett, Chief Development Officer, at (805) 897-3537 or hewlett@sbccfoundation.org.

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The Process of Grief:

Bereavement Services

S

ometimes it starts with a diagnosis, and there is time to prepare. And sometimes it just happens. I’m almost the same age as my father was when he died, keeling over from heart disease — death was the first symptom.

Although he died relatively young, I’ve often wondered if this was perhaps a kinder, softer way, that he was spared a protracted, slow-motion medical demise geared to prolong a quality of life that he wouldn’t have wanted.

My mother-in-law, a fiercely independent woman who taught four generations of students who uniformly loved her, died on her 95th birthday no longer capable of self-care, no longer recognizing her own children. Both deaths were heart-wrenching in a different way.

Bereavement counseling can be very helpful to process the pain of mourning. Individual, family, and group sessions are offered by

VNA Health, Hospice of Santa Barbara, and the Ridley-Tree Cancer Center, as well as through specialized therapists throughout the community.

Michael Cruse, the bereavement services manager at Hospice of S.B., says that people arrive with different needs depending on the nature of their grieving. Dying people often come to counseling because they feel they cannot talk freely with their loved ones. Family members struggle with anticipatory grieving, the fear and pain of losing someone who is important to them. Sometimes clients show up five years after a death, triggered by some traumatic event that served as a catalyst. People who have mental disorders are more vulnerable when struck by grief, as it can aggravate those conditions.

Thankfully, bereavement counseling is free of charge at Hospice of S.B., available to all who need it.

Think Outside

Plan Your Own Funeral: Sooner or Later Workbook

Y

ears ago, when longtime Independent reporter Martha Sadler left the paper (for the second time!), she focused her efforts on a new project: developing a workbook for those who’d like to plan their own funeral before the time comes. The result is Sooner or Later: A Planner for Your Own Unique Memorial Celebration & Other Advance Arrangements, a ring-bound guide to dealing with your own final farewell.

“Sooner or Later is one part party planner and one part very practical organizer for all things death and near-death,” said Sadler. “The party planning part came about because I thought I was at death’s door once, and I found it comforting and diverting to dream up a memorial event.

Music, menu, activities—croquet, anyone?

A theatrical production? But while I con-

ceived it as something to look forward to postmortem, it also works fine for people who prefer their celebration of life before they die.”

The book’s practical part includes information on writing wills, a draft obitu obituary, and instructions per pertaining to children, pets, and belongings. “There’s even a section for love notes to your survivors,” said Sadler. “It’s pretty exhaustive, but easy to condense because it’s in a three-ring binder.”

The book is decorated with illustrations inspired by “Edwardian-era cartoons” that Sadler explained are “appropriately morbid, some of them, but also witty and charming, which I think is helpful considering the tasks at hand.” —Matt Kettmann

Sooner or Later is available at Chaucer’s Books (3321 State St.; [805] 682-6787; chaucers books.com). For more info, see soonerorlater.us.

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Make a Gift that Helps Generations to Come at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History

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Nineteen years ago, the Museum partnered with Mr. Dibblee to publish his extraordinary geological maps, and he designated his estate for the support of the map publishing effort and to establish an earth sciences position. Today his $1.4 million endowment supports the Dibblee Curator of Earth Science, a position currently held by Jonathan Hoffman, Ph.D. For more information and/or for a complimentary, no-obligation conversation about making an endowment or a legacy gift, contact Rochelle Rose CFRE, Development Officer - Legacy Giving, at 805-682-4711 ext. 179 or rrose@sbnature2.org.

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A beautiful goodbye.. your custom eulogy written by Santa Barbara’s Molly-Ann Leikin Emmy-nominee, Executive Speechwriter

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Why I Support the Scholars Circle “Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.” I have long set great store by the sentiment expressed in this Chinese proverb. It is why I enthusiastically support the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara.

And it’s why I am a proud member of the Scholars Circle, the Foundation’s planned giving society. I want to be a force for educational attainment for decades to come.

Please join me by including the Scholarship Foundation in your estate plans. A legacy gift will enable you to support college-bound students beyond your own lifetime.

An investment in the education of our youth is an investment in our community’s future.

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Need assistance setting up an irrevocable gift to the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara? Contact us at (805) 687-6065 or giving@sbscholarship.org.

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