Behind the Scenes of Funeral Directing with Tasha Dugan and Amanda Kyle of Laurel Hill Cemetery

Host Jill McClennen, a death doula, end-of-life care planner, and funeral celebrant, interviews Laurel Hill Funeral Directors Tasha Dugan and Amanda Kyle about what funeral directing looks like behind the scenes. They discuss embalming and body preparation, service planning, costs, flowers, paperwork, and supporting families from the first call through the funeral. 

Amanda shares her path from animal rights work and veterinary care to funeral service, and Tasha describes moving from insurance and autopsy work into full-time funeral directing. They explore why ritual and personalization matter in grief, how death doulas and funeral directors can work together, and how doulas can help families communicate needs during arrangements. 

The conversation also covers weather challenges for burials, hand-dug green burials, pet funerals at Laurel Hill’s pet cemetery, aquamation legislation in Pennsylvania, and how media stories about cremation increase requests for witnessed cremations.

00:00 Doula Trust Story

00:15 Show Intro and Guests

01:59 Amanda’s Path to Death Care

03:20 Tasha’s Funeral Director Journey

06:11 What Funeral Directors Do

10:29 Death Doulas vs Funeral Directors

14:22 Personalization and Embalming Value

15:46 How Doulas Help Arrangements

23:56 Weather and Winter Burials

26:14 Weather Delays Services

27:17 Hand Dug Green Burials

27:59 Pet Cemetery Stories

32:12 Aquamation Legal Push

33:30 Cremation Documentary Fears

35:51 Death Arts Festival Recap

37:46 Death Doulas Meet Funeral Care

41:02 Contact Laurel Hill Team

42:43 Bookstore and Summer Events

44:36 End of Life Planning CTA

https://laurelhillphl.com/

https://www.facebook.com/laurelhillphl

https://www.instagram.com/laurelhillphl/

From Fear of Death to Funeral Director: Tasha Dugan’s Journey at Philadelphia’s Historic Laurel Hill Cemetery

Transcript

Tasha: [00:00:00] The doula being there, knowing what the family wants. That family had so much trust in their doula because they were there with them during that time. So it just made both of our lives easy as far as getting through the arrangement. 

Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death Clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula, end of life care planner, and a funeral celebrant.

Here on my show, I have conversations that explore death, dying, grief, and life itself, with the hope of creating a space where we can look at these topics a little more openly and honestly. Today, I'm joined by Laurel Hill Funeral Directors, Tasha Dugan, who's returning to the podcast, and Amanda Kyle, for a conversation about what funeral directing actually looks like behind the scenes.

We talked about everything from embalming and body preparation, to planning services, paperwork, and helping families navigate some of the hardest days of their lives. They share how they each found their way into [00:01:00] this work, why rituals and funerals still matter, and how personalization can help families feel more connected and supported.

We also talk about the relationship between funeral directors and death doulas, green burials, pet funerals, 

Amanda: acclimation, and the changing future of death care. Thank you for joining us for this conversation. 

Jill: Welcome, Tasha and Amanda, to the podcast. I'm so happy to have you on. Tasha, you are a returning guest, so I'm so excited to have you.

Amanda, I have not met you, so thank you both for joining me tonight. I'm really excited about this. Thanks. We are, too. 

Tasha: Very excited. Thank you for having me back on the show, Jill. I'm so excited that I have Amanda here with me today to share some of these stories so it's not just all on me now. Like, she has some amazing things and some reflections on the business as well to talk about, so I was excited to have her come on so she can share them as well.

Jill: Why don't you start us off, Tasha? I know you shared a little bit before. Amanda, can you just tell [00:02:00] us a little bit, too, about who you are outside of the work that you do? 

Amanda: Is there anything really outside of the work? So I have a background in animal rights. I worked for PETA for 11 years in cruelty investigations.

Did that for a long time and got burnt out on it. And then I was a veterinary technician for a little while, and I'm a big animal lover. And one thing that really hit home with me and stuck with me was euthanasia we would do in- Hmm ... vet hospitals and provide for people, and people were s- i- it- it's such a meaningful and impactful experience for people to have a good experience and a calming experience with losing a family member.

And I thought, "I can do that stuff." with people, and that's why I, I also was with my dad when [00:03:00] he died, and that was super meaningful to me and really important in being able to be with him, and so that's how I got into this field. 

Jill: Awesome. And then Tasha, I'm gonna link to your previous episode so people can listen to that one first if they want to, but just give us a little bit about you, who you are as well.

Tasha: So I got into this business by way of working in the insurance field. So I worked at Independent Blue Cross for 14 and a half years. During that time, that's when I decided that I was gonna go to mortuary school. I think that was in my 14th year, because I worked with a person who did delivery, and that's just picking up dead bodies when you get a first call, picking them up from their place of death to bringing them to the funeral home.

And I wanted to be behind the scenes of that. I wanna go to the refrigerator where the bodies are. So we came up with this [00:04:00] pact that we would go to school together and become funeral directors. I did, he did not, but here I am. Once I left Blue Cross from doing claims, I started working at the funeral home, and then I worked at Temple University Hospital in their pathology department for the next 10, 12 years I think it was, where I did autopsies.

But then I left Temple about four years ago. Was it four? Three or four. And I found myself here at Laurel Hill, which they had an opening for a funeral director position, and I figured maybe now is the time for me to be a funeral director full time so I could see all aspects of everything. And since being here, I've learned so...

I've gotten to know other great funeral directors that are here present and past. I'm just [00:05:00] thankful that I'm here at a place that has an array of services, things that I probably didn't even know that were an option back when I first started in the business. That brings us into then the cremations and the green burials and things like that.

Laurel Hill has all those options, and I'm just glad that I'm a part of that here. 

Jill: And Amanda, are you a funeral director as well? I apologize if you said it and I already forgot. Yes, I am. And so when... 'Cause I just actually recently did funeral celebrant training, and I think Tasha, last time we talked it was right before I did it- I have now done it.

I've done my first funeral actually. And, and it was one of those situations where it was also really sad, 'cause it was a friend of mine. He died at 55, and the family specifically requested that I do it. In some ways it's good I got a really hard one out of the way, because I don't know how I would've done if I would've done people I didn't know and then been like, "Oh, now I have to do my friend."

Instead, I [00:06:00] just jumped in headfirst. I was like, "All right, here we go. Doing it." And it was beautiful. It was really a very meaningful experience for me and his family, and even, like, all of our mutual friends. So that was super cool. But as far as the other aspects of what funeral directors do, that's where I'm still always a little fuzzy.

Do all funeral directors embalm? Do all of you do services? What's that look like for you as a funeral director? 

Amanda: So we do it all. We do embalming, body preparation, also meeting with the family and talking about what they want. Do they want a visitation, open casket or closed casket? How much is everything gonna cost?

Do you want programs? Like, all the little... What kind of flowers do you want? Stuff like that. So we do the whole start to finish, which I really like. At first I thought I only wanted to do embalming and body preparation, 'cause I really liked to prepare the deceased for [00:07:00] the family and have them have a good final goodbye.

But now that I'm doing it, I really love being with the family from start to finish and knowing that they can rely on me as their one contact, that I'm gonna ease the whole thing, and if they don't know what they're doing or if everything seems overwhelming, they can just call me and I will say, "Yes, your dad looks great.

Yes, I ordered the flowers. All this is gonna be fine," and just alleviate some of the stress for them. So I really like that. 

Tasha: Yeah, so I'll piggyback off of what Amanda says. A funeral director has many hats. Before I even knew what a death doula was, I know they were doulas, but I didn't know about a death doula.

And when I first heard about it and they give the definition about it, to me it sound like that's what we do. 

Jill: Yeah. 

Tasha: I think just, like, a true funeral director, [00:08:00] I know that they would call us, like, this cookie cutter type person. The new funeral director w- like how we are, we're the younger version of them.

It's not a stone cold, stone face type of a situation. We have more empathy, and then I attribute that to- More female funeral directors. 'Cause there are a lot more female funeral directors now. Women come with empathy, so we come with a little bit more empathy for our families. We seem to feel more of what they're going through, especially when it comes to mom.

I always tell Mandy, I don't play about moms, grandmoms, babies, stuff like that. 

Jill: Yeah. 

Tasha: So a lot of times our families might call us before the death even occurs. Mm-hmm. And so we'll just talk them into, like, maybe just preparing, pre-planning, things like that. So we will call it an imminent, an imminent death at that time.

Getting ready for a death. Now, what makes us different from the [00:09:00] death doula is that I might not go to the house and sit with them and talk with them or anything like that. But however, if it's my family, like my blood family, they're expecting me to do something like that. So then I find myself playing a role as a death doula.

Mm-hmm. But like I said, I didn't know what that was back then, but... So we wear a hat maybe as a counselor, because we do pl- pre-planning sessions, things like that. People may have questions and we have to go through pretty much like a tutorial of the things that are happening that explain to them what these services might be, pre-plan with them on what type of services they might, an arrangement that they might.

Maybe they're doing more memorial services now, or maybe they might have a different type of funeral presentation that they might wanna do. But responsibility is to help families find out how meaningful a service is to them. So we- Yeah ... let them make up what it is that [00:10:00] they wanna do, and we just let them know the rules and the parameters or how far they can go.

We play many hats. 

Amanda: Mm-hmm. 

Tasha: As far as cremations are concerned, our cemetery owns a cremation center, but the funeral director would be the one responsible for getting the body up there, doing all the paperwork to make sure that the consents are signed. So we're paper pushers as well. 

Jill: Aren't we all to some extent?

The fun parts of businesses. And when you mentioned death doulas, one of the things over the years since I've been a death doula, I've personally changed my views on funerals and the importance of funerals for when somebody dies. Partially starting when I was younger, grew up traditional Catholic funerals.

They're just, like, weird to me in a lot of ways, right? There wasn't a lot of warmth, there wasn't a lot of personalization behind them. I didn't necessarily see the meaning behind needing to have a funeral. And then now over the [00:11:00] years, there's definitely some tension sometimes between funeral directors and doulas, I find, because I think there's funeral directors that are like, "We already do that, so we don't need the death doulas to come in and do these things."

And then I started to have a couple deaths in my life where I was like, "Oh, now I see why we need something. We need that ritual." As humans, we- there's part of us that really needs that closure. We need that ritual. We need that feeling of coming together. And then, of course, I did my funeral celebrant training, and it was all other people that were funeral directors.

I was the only one that was not a funeral director there. We networked at the New Jersey Funeral Director Association's meetings. I was out there talking to people. Definitely got a little resistance from some folks. Some were really like, "Oh, that's interesting. Tell me more about what you do." And I was actually just thinking about it this week.

My friend died. The same day of his funeral that I was giving the service, my godfather died. Mm. So I woke up to the news that my godfather died. So yet again, here I was [00:12:00] performing the ritual in front of people while being in my own grief over a friend and basically somebody that was like my father, and just really feeling how important this funeral idea is.

And so how can we figure out, as death doulas and funeral directors, because honestly, if funeral directors would start to work with death doulas more, we could be your biggest advocate. We could really be the ones out there, "No, really, I promise you, because my uncle's not having a service. He doesn't want a service.

He said he didn't want one, so me, it's not gonna do one." There's all those people that are like, "No, I don't want anything. I don't want anything." As death doulas, we could be like, "Actually, let's rethink this, 'cause it's not for you, it's for the people that you leave behind. And it doesn't have to be the traditional Catholic funeral if you don't want that.

There's options. Let's talk about your options. Let me introduce you to some funeral homes." But there seems to be some still hard feelings between the doulas and the funeral [00:13:00] directors. So I think some of it is the younger ones coming in now might help. I don't know. Do you have any thoughts on how we can figure out this way to work together?

Because we all have the same goal in mind, which is serving families during a really difficult time. So how can we make it easier for everybody? I don't know. 

Amanda: I agree with you, and I think historically, the funeral industry has been just so much more about money. It's a business. But I do think that the reason that so many more women are getting into it is that it's a caretaking field, and I think...

And it, this is not, like, an anti-man thing. I just think- Mm-hmm ... it's, is just changing direction a little bit. Losing a loved one is such an emotional time, and you... People should be able to just deal with their grief however they need to deal with it, and really experience [00:14:00] it. And I think any way that you can get more support- Having a death doula and then that person working with the funeral director after the death occurs.

Anytime there's more support available for dealing with death, that should be a good thing, and I think you're right about the new younger people coming in. I think there's a changing view of death care now. I love being able to give families exactly what they want, whether that's... And at first when I got into funeral directing, I thought embalming is so silly and it's a thing of the past and I don't wanna do that too much.

I'm more into natural stuff. But since I've been doing it, I've realized that, like the traditional Catholic service, some people are really into that, and that- Mm-hmm ... gives them like the structure and the tradition. Hel- And I, I had a person who slowly... A lot of people die from cancer, but he had really lost weight over a really long time and wasted away, and I was able [00:15:00] to embalm him and just add some color to him and jazz him up to where he looked...

His wife said, "Oh my God, he looks like he did before he got sick." Her saying that was what made me like, oh, embalming really helps with some people. It helps give people closure. So what I love is being able to just give people whatever they want, whatever they're like, "I want my, this crazy '90s hip hop to be playing at the visitation," and we can do that.

Or, "I want everything in the room to be purple and blue," that was their favorite color, and we can do that and just have all kinds of crazy things or really traditional things, and the families, that was amazing. It just makes them feel comfortable and have a better experience. 

Tasha: And then in my opinion, how we can have the death doula work with the funeral director, I'm just gonna tell this story.

So w- I had a family who came in [00:16:00] who had come with their death doula. Nice. And this is where it was a little eye-opening for me, and it made sense. She was with them during the last few days of their mother's transition. She was there when their mother transitioned. She was able to be in a comfortable state with the family, where they would have side conversations or conversation of what they thought that they might wanna do, and in a relaxed state where they could really think or be right there with their mom so they could...

Maybe their mom might have made a gesture and said that's something that she would really want. That's what they would assume that she would say. But either way, they were there with her while Mom was transitioning. So all these thoughts are going through. The death doula was there to capture all of this.

So when she, when the death actually occurred and she called to let us know, we did the arrangement- [00:17:00] We picked her mom up, brought everyone here, arrangements set now. She comes with her death doula, and she introduced her as a doula, and I'm like, "I never heard of it," but obviously we already talked about that.

I'm excited there's a death doula here. But what I did experience was that the things that the family, um, couldn't express, they had the doula there to speak for them. Yeah. And because she was there, it's not like I had to stop the arrangement or reschedule or something like that, because she was comfortable enough with her doula to speak for her, and because she was there, it reiterated to me that all of this was valid.

So it makes it easy. It makes a funeral director's job easy to be able to get through those arrangements, know what the family wants, but the doula being there, knowing what the family wants. That family had so much trust in their [00:18:00] doula because they were there with them during that time. So it just made both of our lives easy as far as getting through the arrangement.

So when you ask me how can that relationship be better, they just have to accept it that there's a rep- that the family is gonna have all sort of representation. I'm a representation of the family as a funeral director. The doula is a representation of the family as the doula. We're all here to help, and if we want our job to be easier, then we all have to work together.

Where the resistance come from, and Amanda did hit on that earlier, it does have to do with the business side of everything. Some old school directors are afraid you're taking our business, but they don't realize that you can't spend as much time with that family because you have another family, and you have another family.

Like right now, I have five cases on my [00:19:00] desk. I'm lucky that this funeral home has four funeral directors, because so far we've gotten, like, 20, 30 calls this month, and I wouldn't be able to handle all that by myself. I would be pulling my hair out. I wanna be able to spend time with my families, but sometimes just not possible.

But when a death doula assigns themselves to a family, they can follow that family all the way through. Mm-hmm. And I find that to be appreciative, because if it was me, if I take myself out of this role, I'm just a regular person, too, and I have family, and I'm gonna make sure that I'm there with my family.

So that's... I appreciate it, and it's just a matter of other funeral directors seeing where it would benefit them. It's not stealing business. It's not doing anything like that. It's just a help, and that's what we all need. 

Jill: Yeah, I love that idea of how- We can [00:20:00] help speak for the families, because that's what we do when it comes to healthcare as well, right?

Like, we can go in, we can sit with the families and the doctors. And I did have somebody tell me, once at a networking event, it was an assisted living director talking with an elder care attorney, and they said, "I think a death doula might be the bridge for some of these gaps that we all know exist.

We've just not been able to figure out how to fix it." And this just seems like it's like another one of those gaps that death doulas can come in, because you're right, you don't necessarily have the time to sit with the families like we do, especially leading up to the death, when I get to have all those conversations.

And so I can go in, and then the person who's grieving doesn't have to feel as overwhelmed. They don't have to feel as much of that pressure to have all the answers right now, when really they just wanna be in their grief. And so that's actually... Yeah, that's a really good [00:21:00] point, that we can be the voice even when it comes to the planning funerals.

Tasha: And like I said, that's what I saw. I'm a advocate of doing research before you actually buy the product, and I know that this is probably another thing that may scare some of the funeral directors is because if you're letting the family know all of th- this information, how can that business of that funeral home really sell their product?

You don't wanna sell anyone anything. You just wanna be available to them for the things that they need. To me, it's all about the research, and if a family chooses to reference a doula or whether they wanna do the research on their own, at least they know what they're looking to do. And a death doula comes with that information because she or he has to learn that information to make sure that the family can understand that, so when they come to that arrangement table, they know exactly what they're talking about and what to [00:22:00] expect.

And to me, that's the best transaction ever. I love to work with families that know exactly what they want. And sometimes I overshare and they'll say, "Nah, thank you, I already know." I'm like, "Okay, good." 

Amanda: I agree. The, the idea of having just more support, I look at how hard it is for people when they're planning the funeral and how much they have to deal with gr- the grieving families, and I think if there's another person who can help them through that stuff before the death occurs, dealing with healthcare and, you know, all that, how could that be bad?

And I do think that we need to change the way we think of it as being a competition, and rather say, how can we work together, because I do feel like it's not gonna... It doesn't have to be anyone taking business away from somebody else. As a death doula, you can say, "How about you do this, and how about you do that?"

But you're not trying to take over and be the funeral [00:23:00] director. Mm-hmm. You're just gonna come in and help the family decide what they want, and guide them, and how could that be a bad thing? 

Jill: Yeah, that's where I was really surprised. Hospice I could understand a little bit when they're like, "We already do that."

But like funeral directors, I'm like, you definitely do not do... We don't do similar things. Mm-hmm. Like, I'm not trying to embalm any bodies. I'm not trying to have caskets and all that stuff. Of course, again, now I wanna do funeral celebrants, but like that is a whole separate thing. That is a different training that I did, not death doula training.

But yeah, I just, I don't know, I was a little surprised by that when funeral directors were like... There was even one that, like, sued a death doula for doing, I guess, I don't think she was even doing funeral planning. She was probably doing end of life care planning with somebody. But either way, she got sued, and it didn't go anywhere, but it's still a hassle, so I don't know.

But it's fun to talk about. And actually, I have a question with the weather, because we had [00:24:00] such crazy weather this winter. Does that affect the business? 'Cause again, the funeral that I just did, it was in January. It was after all this snow. We were literally slipping and sliding and falling on the snow 'cause it was so crazy.

But then I was like, somebody has to still dig those graves. What does the weather do? How does that affect it? 

Tasha: I know that this weekend, and even the, from the first snowstorm that we had just before this one, and it got really cold, and the grounds are, like, real hard a- or... But we don't work in the cemetery portion of everything, but we saw the effects of it.

Mm. And we saw that our grounds crew, they got a tough job. They gotta, they have to go out there, and they still do the dimensions of however the grave needs to be dug. Some go deeper than others. And the equipment that they work with, and have to be out there in those elements, yeah, [00:25:00] I think I'd rather stay on the inside.

Jill: Yeah. 

Tasha: There is an effect, but we try not to have it affect our families. Mm-hmm. When we set an appointment for this to be done, the grounds crew, they actually, they go out there and they meet those challenges. They try to schedule at least a day ahead of time to make sure that they can meet all requirements.

But like I said, there are challenges. We try to meet them. As far as on the funeral end, again, if we make arrangements given the weather, like we had a snowstorm, some people will choose to go graveside, some people will choose to be inside. Some people may not wanna come out at all and maybe reschedule their funerals.

It's just a matter of rescheduling, scheduling, knowing the weather, things like that. But we'll still go out, rain, snow, it doesn't matter. Some families don't care, they just wanna get it done, and then we just have to accommodate them. We might not always [00:26:00] like it, but we gotta do it. 

Jill: Yeah. Something I had just not ever thought about before, and then now all of a sudden I was like, "Oh, what do we do in situations when the weather's icy and snowy, the ground's frozen," like what do you do with that?

But it hasn't seemed to have affected you too much, which is good. 

Amanda: It's more what the families wanna do. Some families don't wanna have a service when it's freezing cold. And the same thing in the summer when it gets... We have days that get up to be 100 degrees. There are a lot of old people at services, and they have a hard time standing outside for that long.

And so with cremation on the rise, it makes it a lot easier to schedule your service for whenever you want. I think one thing that has changed a lot over the years, more people do cremation, and then they just wait three months until the weather's nicer to have a service. We're lucky for our cemetery.

It's such a huge cemetery, and we have a lot of equipment and a lot of guys who [00:27:00] can get it done. But I wonder if for smaller cemeteries that don't have as much fancy high-tech, if they just have to push it back and say, "Sorry, the ground's frozen. We can't do it for another week," or something. Yeah. It's usually more the family that decides when they wanna have it.

Tasha: I can tell you this, though. We've had maybe about four green burials in this cold weather. 

Jill: Oh. 

Tasha: And note that all of our green burials have to be hand-dug. Hmm. And you can't tell the family, "We offer green burial, but we're not gonna do it this week because the ground's frozen." No. So those guys have to get out there and hand-dig- 

Jill: Oh, my

Tasha: those green graves. And like I said, we've had about four of them this month, and that doesn't count January. Yeah, tough. 

Jill: Yeah, that is really tough because I could see machines being able to get through the frozen ground, but digging by hand, oh my gosh. Yeah, that is a whole thing. And [00:28:00] talking about green burial, but then also I just had a death doula on last week that is a pet death doula, and she said, "I believe Laurel Hill has a pet cemetery."

And I said, "You know what? I'm talking to somebody from Laurel Hill next week." "So I'm gonna ask." 'Cause I remember we had talked before, Tasha, about the cremation of pets and the aquamation of pets. Mm-hmm. But you actually have a section of this cemetery that is a pet cemetery? 

Tasha: Like, I can't tell you how many pets are in there, but it's a nice area that is located at Laurel Hill West, and it's actually, like, down the street from where I live.

But I can tell you that- The families that utilize it or actually bury their pets there, amazing. So last year we had a funeral procession for one of the pets. Oh. 

Jill: I was gonna ask about that part too. Do you actually do funerals for the pets? 

Tasha: Yeah. There's the pet cemetery center they call it. So there's a building that's [00:29:00] just across the street from the actual cemetery, and they can actually have the funeral service there.

They could have the little repast, whatever you wanna call it, there. But this particular service, they did have a service, and then they even had a horse and carriage carry the pet's casket to the grave. It was crazy. So, so one of the grounds crew, he was like, "Oh, wow." He'd never seen it before, so he had to record it, so he did.

If somebody looks on Facebook somewhere, they'll probably see it. But the horse and carriage did a nice little round through the cemetery to give it the aesthetics of the procession, and they stopped the traffic, 'cause there's a road that goes down there where plenty of traffic goes to get to the gym and everything down there anyway.

Mm-hmm. They stopped the traffic. The horse and carriage stopped. They had the whole pallbearer take the casket out and [00:30:00] bring it over to the... It wa- it, it was amazing. Wow. It was amazing. So it pretty much mimicked a human's burial, was a pet. And I'll tell you, every weekend, I see this same owner you wanna call it, I guess she would call that was her son, I don't know who it was to her, how she would consider it, 'cause our pets are our family.

Mm-hmm, 

Jill: for sure. 

Tasha: Yeah. They come to the cemetery every weekend. She brings her lawn chair. She has her spouse with her. Wow. They sit. They bring balloons. They bring fresh flowers. It, it's the same. And they visit. They even bought a tombstone for the grave. It's a flat stone. 

Jill: Yeah? 

Tasha: You can go over there and read it.

It's treated just as if it were like our loved ones in the cemetery just across the street. You should probably come and visit it, Jill. 

Jill: Yeah, I know. I wanna see it, 'cause that is really neat. I bury my pets in the backyard. I'm like, I'm one of the [00:31:00] backyard- ... pet cemetery people. Uh, I'm sure for a lot of people, my first thought too was like, oh my gosh, that must be so expensive.

That's prime real estate to be buried in your cemetery. So I can't- Yeah ... imagine- 

Tasha: Yeah ... 

Jill: burying a pet there. But again, some people are closer to their pets than they are other people, and they grieve more when a pet dies than they ever do when a family member or a friend dies. So- 

Tasha: Yeah ... 

Jill: if you have the funds, sure, bury 'em at Laurel Hill.

Why not? 

Tasha: Yeah. Like I said, what I love about Laurel Hill is they give you all of those options. So you have the pet aquamation right across the street if you choose to do that, or you could bury your pet, and they'll take you on a tour of all this. It... when people come to say, "Oh, Peter died," and we're thinking, oh, it's a death call.

Then we find out it's an animal. Oh my God. Okay. That must be 

Jill: a shock. 

Tasha: Yeah. To show up and you're like, "Oh." They walk in the wrong area. But they'll come out. They'll go pick a spot [00:32:00] in the cemetery, in the pet cemetery. Oh, that's my spot. That's where I want them. And, and it's, it's the same. Mm-hmm. The only thing is just that one's the pet and the other one's the human.

So actual- but we're trying to offer the water cremation for our humans as well. Mm-hmm. So we're already on that level for our pets, so we're trying to cross over and have that opportunity to do so as well for our humans, but we're waiting for that bill to get passed where we can be qualified to do.

Jill: Yeah, any changes with that? Has it made any progress, the bill for aquamation being legal in Pennsylvania? 

Tasha: They're still working on it, and hopefully this will be the year that it gets approved. So our president, Nancy Rosenberg, is really working on that with some of the senators here, Mary Jo Daley and all.

They're really trying to push that bill through, and we're just looking to get a little bit more aggressive on that this year [00:33:00] because it's already circulated a few times and you got... it went through it, but it didn't get passed. But this year we're hoping that it's going to be the ringer. 

Jill: I hope so too.

I think it's a great option. And I know New Jersey just recently did composting, human composting or- Mm-hmm ... organic reduction, whatever you wanna call it. Mm-hmm. It's coming now for New Jersey. I don't think we're quite there yet. Mm-hmm. So hopefully you'll get your aquamation set up and ready sooner than later.

Tasha: So staying on the subject of cremation, back to cremation. It's funny because I know some months ago, I think it was last year, it was a documentary that came on, and I think you might know what I'm getting ready to talk about, the cremation. It was the... It was a cremation documentary on HBO, I think it was, called The Mortician, or I might be saying...

But it spoke of a funeral home, I don't know if it was in Jersey or what. But [00:34:00] it talked about a funeral director that was cremating bodies two, three, 200 bodies all at one time. 

Jill: Oh my. 

Tasha: Yeah. For 

Jill: sure. 

Tasha: And it's funny, every time this sort of thing comes out and they find some, some horrifying story to talk about, and it gets the public all stirred up, and then it shows, sheds dark light on- Mm-hmm

existing funeral homes that are around. And I didn't think that it would affect, because we're a prominent business and we do everything by the books. And we just recently had a family who was so concerned that they decided that they wanted to come and witness their loved one's cremation because they saw that documentary.

Jill: Oh my. Yeah. I'm not surprised to hear that, first off, that there was a funeral home that was just like, "Ah, we're just gonna throw them all in together. Like, whatever. Scoop a scoop [00:35:00] out and we're good." Yeah. I'm not surprised that people watched it and now are, "No, I'm gonna watch the whole process 'cause I wanna make sure I get my person back."

'Cause yeah, I would be upset about it if I found out afterwards- Mm-hmm ... that I thought I had grandma on the shelf, and it turns out maybe grandma was in there somewhere. Who knows who else? But I have not seen that documentary, even though I'm surprised. Most of the time, whenever anything comes out in the news or in a TV show, everybody and their mother wants to send it to me, which is great.

Like, the guy recently in Pennsylvania that was digging up bodies, like, I heard about that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was like every day that week somebody was like, "Did you see this? Did you see this?" Yeah, I'm like, "Yes, I saw it. I saw it, and yes, I have some feelings about it." Whatever. Definitely a little crazy though.

Oh my gosh. 

Tasha: Exactly. But go ahead. I 

Jill: actually wanted to ask about your event last year, the death event, and how that went, and then I know, didn't you just [00:36:00] recently, or you're having, like, a dueling death doulas or something it was called? It was, like, a talk with a couple of death doulas, and I think Pat Quigley was gonna be in that.

Mm-hmm. So you've definitely been doing a lot more events at the cemetery that have to do with death. So I was just curious how that one went in the fall. 

Tasha: So the Death and Arts Festival. 

Jill: There you go. Yep. 

Tasha: That's the one that was happening when I spoke with you. Now, that one was very successful. Good. We provided the facility- Mm-hmm

for it, but we weren't the persons or the organization that ran it. 

Jill: Oh, okay. 

Tasha: But it was a pretty large event. Pat did do some of the shrouding events in there. From what I saw, the cemetery was super busy that weekend. They had a lot of visitation, a lot of visitors. The events were packed. That session that Pat did was [00:37:00] packed.

Of course, everyone wants to see a live shroud. People volunteered to be the body. That's another something that some people might get maybe a little skeeved about, but it was... People volunteered, they had fun, they learned new things, and it's something that our staff here would definitely choose to do again because- Mm

it was very informational and that's what they're all about, is the education, death positive movement. So I think that they're looking forward to hosting again. I think they said they only do that every two years, and so this is the off year, so that means next year they'll do it again, and I'm pretty sure they'll reach out to us again to facilitate.

As far as the shrouding, the doula thing, did you hear 

Amanda: it? The shrouding doulas. I heard of it, but I don't... Has that happened already? I don't think it happened yet. 

Tasha: I'm not sure. 

Jill: Yeah. I've gotten an email about it, and actually, at least [00:38:00] one of the death doulas, Isabelle, I do know, because I am now part of the Philly...

What do they call themselves? Philly Death Care Community or something. Again, I don't know. It's every- There's so many things to get involved with that take up time, so I definitely am part of the group. I have not really done too much with them yet, but I know it's a couple death doulas that are part of the Philly Death Care that are doing it.

And yeah, I don't know. I just, I thought that was fun to have an educational, again, informational session about death doulas and what we do, because people still really don't know, but it's a challenge. It's a challenge to get them to understand. 

Tasha: And that's funny. We're very familiar with Isabella. She was the one who reached out to us and inquired about coming to learn about some of the things that funeral directors do- Mm-hmm

and to educate us on what death doulas do, and this was- Nice ... pretty much [00:39:00] where we got the face-to-face educational value about what a doula is, and we had that in our Cypress room there, where they put things up on the wall. So that was a great thing. So from there, there was a relationship that was created between her group and ours.

I'm not sure if Russ is a part of that. 

Jill: Yeah. Yeah. But- I don't know if he's part of that one Philly Death Care that I was talking about, but there's also a collective of death doulas that Russ is definitely a part of, and I think Isabelle. I met the two of them together the first time I ever met them, yeah 

Tasha: So they also had a table at our Market of Macabre, I think it was the year before.

But we encouraged them to be a part of it because we want everyone to know about the doulas and things like that, because they can help. And if some of the other funeral directors start to see that they're being more accepted into the crowd, then maybe they won't be so scared. So [00:40:00] I encourage all of their participation in any of the events that we have.

And I, uh, 'cause I'm part of PFDA as well, a CEU event with another group, the Quaker State Funeral Directors Association, that I'm also a part of, where we're trying to get our CEUs due for the end of the year that just started. And the course that we had was a death doula presentation, and this was something that this set of funeral directors had just found out about what a death doula is.

Nice. So they had lots of questions for her, and I thought it was great because they're starting to learn that there's other avenues that you can take, and things don't have to be so stressful now if you have others that's in the profession that can help to alleviate some of those things. Yeah. That's great.

I'd like them to show up more. 

Jill: Yeah. No, it is. It's, I think, a great thing. I think we're heading in the right direction. 

Tasha: Yeah. 

Jill: Just like everything, it just [00:41:00] takes a little while. It's not gonna be super fast. So as we wrap up, why don't you tell us websites, email addresses, anything like that for if people want to reach out to either of you personally, or if they just wanna learn more about Laurel Hill and what you offer and all of the things that you can do to help families.

Amanda: My email is akile@laurelhillphl.com. Definitely email me with any questions. We always put on these events and stuff because I think Tasha says this all the time, being a funeral director is a calling, not just a job. Mm-hmm. For us at least, and I think that's becoming more and more of a thing. Just like I think for you probably being a death doula, working in death care is something that you actually genuinely enjoy doing.

Yeah. So anyone who wants to email me and ask questions about anything, happy to do it, whether you're using our funeral home or just have [00:42:00] questions. 

Jill: Yeah. I'll put your email address in the show notes so people can easily find 

Tasha: it. 

Jill: Okay. And then how about you, Tasha? 

Tasha: And for me, you can reach out to my personal email, which is t- Duggan@laurelhillphl.com.

And if you have any questions, anything about pre-planning, things like that, if you wanna know some fun facts or maybe even how to join mailing lists to find out some of the wonderful programs that we might have, such as maybe like joining the Friends of Laurel Hill, just reach out to that email address and I can get you to the correct people, and they could send out whatever you need.

But there's a bookstore there that has all type of information on historical facts about the cemetery. Mm. Real cool information. They also have the information on the friends list on all the different programs and everything that people can [00:43:00] enjoy. I'm excited to come towards the summertime, where we'll start having those movies in the cemetery, and, uh, just a whole lot of fun events that the cemetery will be having, whether it be at East or at West.

Feel free to email me and I'll get you to the right people. 

Jill: Can you just go to the bookstore? If I wanted to go in, does it have- Yeah ... regular hours that it's open? 

Tasha: So the hours are from, I'm gonna say from 8:00 to 4:30, because that's the time that we're open on business- The Funeral 

Amanda: Hill 

Jill: hours ... 

Tasha: yeah. If you're over that side on the East Side, please, they're welcome to go to the bookstore, browse around in there.

Debbie and them would love to see people coming 

Jill: in. Yeah. That's super cool. I don't know if I knew that there was actually a, like, bookstore there, so that's awesome. 

Tasha: Yeah, and they told us about the new merchandise that they got in, if people wanna have a... Uh, there's, like, a wind chime that has, like, little [00:44:00] cats on it.

I bought one. It's, it's hanging up on my porch right now. I love it. They have scarves. They have a bunch of things, books, history books, but the most important things in there are the history books. History books on the cemetery, things about some of the famous people that we might have buried here at East or West.

Yeah. It's a lot. It's a lot, and a lot to learn. 

Jill: Thank you both so much for taking your time tonight. I enjoyed this. It was nice to chat with you, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your night. 

Tasha: Us too. Thank you, Jill, for having us. Thank you, Jill. It's been great. 

Amanda: If you've been 

Jill: listening to my podcast for a while and you hear me and my guests talk over and over about how important it is to create a plan for the end of life and to have the conversations with your loved ones about what's important to you, and you're thinking, "Okay, maybe it's time.

Maybe I should actually sit down and figure this out instead of just hoping it all works out later," I get it. These conversations can feel overwhelming or scary or just [00:45:00] like something you'll deal with another day, but you don't have to do it alone. If you want help creating an end-of-life care plan for yourself or for someone you love, maybe it's your aging parents, a spouse, whoever it is in your life, you can book a complimentary 30-minute call with me, and we'll just talk.

We'll get clear on what's going on for you and what the next right steps might be. There's no pressure, just support. The link's in the show notes whenever you're ready. And if this episode made you think of someone, a sibling, a friend, or another caregiver, feel free to share it with them. Sometimes these conversations are easier to start when someone else opens the door first.

Thank you for being here. The fact that you're even willing to listen to this kind of conversation means a lot.