Funeral Consumers Alliance

What a great rebuttal, Josh! I appreciate also how respectfully you treated Charles Cowling while pointing out one by one the fallacies he accepted in Thomas Lynch's statements. As the home funeral movement grows, I predict that our death-phobic culture gradually will come to accept a full continuum in death care, from family-directed funerals that have no place for a licensed caretaker to total dependency on a licensed caretaker in caring for the dead until the moment of final disposition. Funeral homes that demonstrate a willingness to serve only in a very limited capacity when that is what a family desires and develop transparent pricing on their general price lists that make it clear that they will not impose full basic services fee on these limited services will be the ones that home funeral practitioners will choose to work with. In North Carolina, FCA of the Piedmont and a local Crossings group are planning to collaborate in an effort to canvas funeral homes in our areas to see if we can get some of them to bring transparency to their GPLs over the issue of family-directed funerals that they are required by the Funeral Rule to bring to more conventional funeral goods and services. THIS is an approach to advocacy that will serve the funeral consumer, not legislative measures designed to limit the roles families can play in caring for their own after death.