Among the cremation services offered in Clinton Township, MI are resources that can help us process death and learn life lessons from death. Perhaps the world had one of its best teachers of life lessons from death in Brandeis University sociology professor Morrie Schwartz, whose two year journey from diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to death was chronicled by Mitch Albom in Tuesdays with Morrie.
Morrie could’ve taken the road, as his disease progressed and he lost more of his motor skills, of feeling sorry for himself and shutting himself off from the rest of the world. However that was not Morrie was. Months before his death, he invited friend friends and family to a living funeral so that they could tell him what they would’ve said at a memorial service.
Unlike most Americans in Morrie’s time and in our time today, Morrie is not afraid to face death nor to talk about death. Even though ALS marched predictably through Morrie’s life, leaving him weakened and dependent, more and more, on other people, Morrie’s mission was to take death out of hiding and bring it into the open. His hope was that he could initiate a cultural shift in the way Americans see death.
Americans, in general, are afraid of death, ignore death, hide from death, and to everything in their power to avoid death. Yet Morrie took the approach that when you talk about death, you learn about life. The bottom line is that if we don’t realize that life is temporary and has an end, then we don’t remember about how important it is to live fully in the time we have allotted.
Morrie’s mission didn’t get traction right away. People read Albom’s memoir and loved it, even though there were parts where a box of tissues had to be close by. Yet, as soon as they closed the back cover, the same people went on ignoring, avoiding, and hiding from death.
However, change began about 20 years after Morrie died. It began with people chronicling their own dying processes online in forums and blogs. The first two health areas where people talked about the progression of their terminal diseases were congestive heart failure and dementia.
People with congestive heart failure began online support groups, where they talked about the health issues that they were suffering as the disease progressed, they supported each other, they encouraged each other, and they memorialized those among them who died as a result of the disease.
As people began being diagnosed with different types of dementia, some who were in the early stages decided to write about their journey. There are many blogs out there with final post detailing the date and time of the blogger’s death. Additionally, spouses and children who became caregivers for their partners and parents also began blogging, either while their loved ones were alive, or after they had died.
Author Ellen Goodman began a grassroots campaign in 2014 to get Americans to talk about what they wanted the end of their life to look like. The Conversation Project offers support and advice about talking about death. Michael Hebb, a teaching fellow at the University of Washington, started the Death Over Dinner, campaign to invite people to talk about death while they’re having dinner.
For more information about cremation services in Clinton Township, MI, our caring and knowledgeable staff at Lee-Ellena Funeral Home is here to assist you. You can visit our funeral home at 46530 Romeo Plank Rd., Macomb, MI 48044, or you can call us today at (586) 412-8999.