MISSION: Arkansas Home Funerals was created to educate and empower
Arkansas families and communities in family-led home funerals and green burial practices.
Welcome! This website has been developed as a service project to my community. My hope is to educate families about their rights to a family - led home funeral and offer assistance and guidance. I have attended Jerri Lyons of Final Passages Level I & Level II Death Midwifery and Home Funeral Guidance workshop. I am available to groups for presentations on home funerals and green burial practices. I also serve as a resource to families and friends needing help in arranging a home funeral.
My interest in home funerals and green burials began as a teenager. As a budding environmentalist and a teenage obsession with the poem, Thanatopsis, I naturally gravitated to those subjects. However, it was not until I moved to San Diego and discovered Thresholds (RIP Barbara Kernan), a home and family directed funeral business that my interest grew. I learned the reasons for the decline in home funerals in the United States. I also learned about the BUSINESS of the funeral industry and the questionable practices disreputable funeral homes take on grieving families.
As an oncology and geriatrics nurse, I witness patients and families facing the realities of death and dying on a daily basis. Too many times I have felt helpless and unsettled when a patient dies in the hospital and the family, who have been at the bedside 24/7, leave the body to be tended to by medical staff. What if families knew they had other choices? The choice to bathe and dress their loved one as a final act of love. The choice to have a family led home funeral at the bedside. The choice to take the loved one back home for a final farewell surrounded by friends and family in their home surroundings.
With love and light, Rebecca
My interest in home funerals and green burials began as a teenager. As a budding environmentalist and a teenage obsession with the poem, Thanatopsis, I naturally gravitated to those subjects. However, it was not until I moved to San Diego and discovered Thresholds (RIP Barbara Kernan), a home and family directed funeral business that my interest grew. I learned the reasons for the decline in home funerals in the United States. I also learned about the BUSINESS of the funeral industry and the questionable practices disreputable funeral homes take on grieving families.
As an oncology and geriatrics nurse, I witness patients and families facing the realities of death and dying on a daily basis. Too many times I have felt helpless and unsettled when a patient dies in the hospital and the family, who have been at the bedside 24/7, leave the body to be tended to by medical staff. What if families knew they had other choices? The choice to bathe and dress their loved one as a final act of love. The choice to have a family led home funeral at the bedside. The choice to take the loved one back home for a final farewell surrounded by friends and family in their home surroundings.
With love and light, Rebecca
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Please write to me if you have any questions or need assistance.
I have a selection of films related to home funerals that can be presented to groups. Films include:
The Most Excellent Dying of Theodore Jack Heckelman (1:09 hr)
Being Here Now: A Journey through Death and Dying (58 min)
A Family Undertaking ( A PBS documentary) (55 min)
Alice's Sacred Passage
