Death Goes Digital

Rachel is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Leeds Beckett University. She is novelist, dramatist and prize-winning short story writer. She has published many novels among them Sisterwives, and The Properties of Water which was the Winner of the Linen Press Spring Shorts award in 2014. Rachel works freelance as a facilitator of writing workshops, an editor and mentor, and she is a panel member of the upcoming UK Storgy Northern Short Story Festival in June 2018.

From Kevin Hill - “GabrielsVault was conceived thinking about the past, but, in turn, we built a platform to easily capture our most treasured moments to send them into the future. To capture today what can be even more important tomorrow, when delivery of that message or memory to the right person at the right time can amplify its meaning. With the use of our resources, GabrielsVault helps you strengthen relationships with people who are most important to you. Along with our users, I’ve begun creating, storing and scheduling surprise messages into the near and distant future for my wife, children, friends, and even great-grandchildren I may never meet. I hope someday my family will smile at hearing reflections of my favorite moments with them. And, whether I’m fortunate enough to be here or not, they may take comfort in my voice and always know how important they were in my life.”

Check out My Last Soundtrack 

Check out The Celebrant Directory at:www.thecelebrantdirectory.com

Check out Jane's work at:http://beforeigosolutions.com/http://giftedbygrief.com/

Paula Kiel is a PhD candidate in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. She is thinking and researching how contemporary media blur boundaries and challenges established categories such as local and global or presence and absence - and even life and death. Her curiosity with these issues brought her to consider how digital media is involved in death-related practices (such as public mourning and memorialisation) today.

Toby and I chat about how to bring together the ancient rituals of life and death, and the digital age of communication online can work together incredibly well-helping families find new ways of expressing and remembering the loss of someone they love.

Psychologist & author, Dr. Elaine Kasket is currently hard at work on All the Ghosts in the Machine. Researching the issues of death and digital legacy for 12 years, this book brings together many questions about what it means to be human in a digital age.

Will your family know where to find all your vital estate planning information? Centralise and organise all your vital documents with AfterVault and when you move on they will pass them on to the people you’ve designated.

Justine Wykerd is a civil celebrant based in Warwickshire. In September 2017 she was awarded "Celebrant of the Year" at the Good Funeral Awards. In this episode, we chat about what it takes to be a successful celebrant and how having an online presence is becoming critical to run your business. We also get a guest interruption from you deaf dog! Makes for a fun episode. 

Before becoming a funeral director, Louise was the editor of the Good Funeral Guide. She's also the director of Life. Death. Whatever. - An award festival and community that exists to change the dialogue around death and dying. In 2017, Louise won a Death Oscar at the Good Funeral Awards. She loves food, fashion, poetry and just about everything else. Poetic Endings is founded on the belief that a good funeral can be profound and transformational in helping to accept and acknowledge that someone has died. Facing death can be an overwhelming, traumatic and confusing time.

Is direct cremation a growing trend? Some people think so. In this episode of the podcast, I chat with Steven Cains, one of the founders of the new online direct cremation service, Harbour Funerals.

The Qeepr Team has created an interactive story-telling platform that allows you to fill in the “dash” of your life or a loved one with memories, messages, photos, smiles and laughter. You now have the ability to become a Qeepr to preserve and share the legacy of your predecessors. Qeepr is a social media site dedicated to memorialising the lives of the departed with the aid of modern technology.

Bounce Works have created an interactive game to help families cope with life limiting illness, death and grief. Apart of Me is a safe virtual space that helps families find their way through grief. Apart of Me is based on the research that shows talking with children openly and honestly but in an age-sensitive way about death and dying can prevent them from developing entrenched, complex feelings around their loss. Apart of Me helps families by developing emotional literacy and wisdom around death. It helps by curating a secure digital memory box of your loved one. Also, it helps by finding and connecting with other people in similar situations, a way to not feel alone in a difficult situation. In its prototype form, Apart of Me is launching its next phase through an IndieGoGo launch.

We have all been touched by the passing of someone we care about deeply. These experiences have highlighted how difficult and painful this can be for those left to mourn and grieve. Memorialize Me aims to help our users better prepare themselves and their loved ones for their inevitable passing. You can use MemorializeMe on your computer or download the free iPhone app to use your account wherever you are. Memorialize Me also provides a wealth of in depth, timely, and relevant death care related information to their user community. They provide applications, tools and reference materials to those in need of death care related services.

LivesArchived - Securing Your Life Story Online. You present the materials—personal papers, letters, clippings, art work, compositions, drawings, plans, photos and videos. LivesArchived provides a safe, permanent, public archive for them. They ensure transparency about where the information is stored and who stores it. Whether you want to create a work portfolio, family archive, ancestral history, personal library or loved one’s memorial, LivesArchived will meet your needs.

Huunuu believes in inspiring choices to create the life story you want to leave behind. The huunuu pipe dream had been around for many years and in July 2014 Co-Founders Clare and Steve Turner finally incorporated huunuu.  Using huunuu helps create those crucial conversations and lets you enjoy some of the most amazing and inspiring businesses from around the world that they have brought into one place.

Written in an honest, funny, poignant and revealing way, The Musings of a Crematorium worker is a new blog by Kim Morris. What happens behind the scenes day by day in a busy crematorium? Kim writes in the first person and with incredible insight on the events, process and thoughts as she works each day in a busy London Crematorium. Her blog is certainly worth a read for anyone who is interested in how working in this aspect of the bereavement industry is truly like.  

Easy to Use Online Template Editor Allows You To Create A Unique Keepsake. The free online template editor allows you the freedom to personalise a funeral order of service exactly to your requirements. Insert cherished photographs and type or paste in your own text hymns, poems and readings. You can personalise the front cover, back and inner pages with ease.

Swansongs is a global service established for archiving and dispatching legacy letters for at least the next one hundred years. 

Who Says a Good Obituary Has to Be Dull?  The traditional obituary is a gloomy collection of dry facts and chilly clichés. The internet has swept away space restrictions and made newspaper deadlines irrelevant. Social media has encouraged us to swap stories and celebrate our loved ones’ lives. Why should today’s tributes rely on the same dull script we followed 30 years ago? It’s time for the old-school obituary to slip into something more contemporary. How To Write An Online Obituary is a new book just published by Melissa Jayne Kinsey. In the book, she shows step by step how to write a fresh, original tribute and create a memorable virtual memorial featuring photos, videos, and music. 

In this interview, I chat with Marnie Summerfield Smith, a full-time memoir writer. We talk about how there is no such thing as an inconsequential life and no reason why everyone should leave some kind of record of their life story as a legacy for the future. Marnie explains a 3 step process to writing your memories and also options of what to do with the memoir when it is finished. If you have ever thought about penning a few lines of your life this episode will give you the tools and hopefully the inspiration to start.

In this episode, I interview David Sawyer the founder and CEO of TSOLife - The Story Of Your Life. TSOLife is a unique platform that allows you to create, store and share the story of your days. Whether it's your story or even that of a loved one, TSOLife makes it easy to preserve memories for future generations. Using TSOLife couldn't be simpler.  For more information visit https://tsolife.com/

In the last six months, I have written 106 funeral services. Wrapped up in the mystery of those unwelcome days, are four valuable lessons I have learned. Lessons about life and how you can leave a digital legacy for your family. Helping 106 families face death teaches you about life. 

"Talking about sex will not get you pregnant, neither will talking about a funeral kill you." Said Gail Rubin, founder of A Good Goodbye.

Lesson Two - Life Is Short We cannot judge a song by its duration Nor by the number of its notes; We must judge it by the way it touches and lifts our souls. Sometimes those unfinished are among the most beautiful.

Helping 106 families face death teaches you about life. Death comes to us all. It comes mostly at times when you least expect it. It comes to the old, the sick, the young and the healthy. It comes. It will come to you. In the last six months, I have written 106 funeral services. Wrapped up in the mystery of those unwelcome days, are four valuable lessons I have learned. Lessons about life and how you can leave a digital legacy for your family. This is lesson one - Share The Stories of Your Life

The Legacy Recorder - We are working to support more people in documenting the people, experiences, and stories of their lives. The highlights, the low points and the seemingly mundane moments that combine to create a lifetime. Through one on one and DIY services, we aim to help you create a meaningful legacy.

Securing Your Digital Legacy Vivala.me is an easy to use platform that allows you to control exactly what happens to all of your documents, images, videos and more after you have died.

Stephanie Longmuir is a Funeral Celebrant and founder of my endnotes.com, Australia's first digital funeral planning service. Over the last seven years, she has led over 900 funeral and memorial services. Myendnotes is developed in response to the hundreds of families that she met who wished they had asked all those important questions of their loved one while there was still time.

Tina Shang and Jayson Davis are the founders of Jang Consulting. They specialise in social media solutions for organizations based on each firm's unique business goals. In this episode we talk about how innovative funeral businesses are using a weekly live Facebook program to reach new customers and how to grow the digital impact of your funeral business using social media.

Dov Sugarman is the Strategic Partnerships Manager at SafeBeyond. Safe Beyond is an advanced legacy management service. The platform provides an innovative online and mobile app solution for the easy and secure management of your life story and your meaningful digital content, with enhanced distribution capabilities for the future delivery of personalised messages, and digital assets. You decide when, where and with whom your messages and other digital assets will be shared. In this episode, I chat with Dov about building strategic partnerships with other industries to educate, engage and create opportunities for people to know about and use the Safe Beyond platform.

Tim Snaith is a Partner in Winckworth Sherwood’s Private Client team, regularly advising on trusts, estates and succession planning (including the many tax issues that arise with the same, along with the problems presented by the loss of mental capacity). Tim was recently named as one of the UK's top 35 private client lawyers under the age of 35. With a diverse client base including individuals, trustees, beneficiaries and executors, his clients are both UK-based and those with connections abroad. Tim often works alongside other professionals of other disciplines such as accountants, investment managers and independent financial advisers. His most recent Huffington post article was The Death Taboo - What’s Your Digital Legacy?

Memontage is a digital memorial platform where you can upload any kind of memory of a loved one who passed away, a photo that always makes you laugh, a link to a song they sang off key or a recipe of a cake that smells like home. This site invites you to invoke the senses and create a Memontage that tells a story using smells, tastes, sights, sounds and flavours. You do not need to have old memorabilia in hand but just think back and find representations of each memory. It's a new way to store your digital legacy.

It all started in 2010 when Andrew Smith ended up in the hospital for 6 days. There is nothing like sitting in a hospital bed to get you thinking about life and death! Andrew decided he needed to write his final wishes down. He got to thinking about the celebration he would like, the photos he’d want shared, and the music he’d like played. But where can I write this all down? In that moment the Final Wish website and platform was born. A place to collect and share the stories of a life and more importantly how it would want to be remembered.

Kathy Kortes-Miller thinks about dying and death a lot! She knows it helps her to embrace life full on. She is an unconventional death educator with a passion for palliative care and improving the end of life care for all. Kathy has been teaching and researching at Lakehead University for over a decade inspiring and challenging the future healthcare providers of tomorrow to be prepared to care for individuals who are dying and their families in all healthcare settings.

In this episode, I chat with Max Shelly of Echoleft. Echoleft brings together every part of a life story in one place. Photo albums in drawers and cupboards, family overseas, stories told in a forgotten email. Bring them all together for everyone to look back on through this online memorial site builder. Now, you can show children and grandchildren the impact of a loved one's life through a beautiful website. Unlike social networks, Echoleft keeps your memories private, in your control and free of advertising. Echoleft also helps others by selecting a charity and accepting memorial donations with one click.

Dr Mark Taubert is Consultant physician and Clinical Director for palliative care at a Welsh cancer centre. In this episode we talk about the use of digital media in palliative care and the letter to David Bowie that Mark wrote published in the Huffington post.

We chat with Darren Richmond founder of The Soldiers Box The Soldier's Box - the secure cloud based service for storing, organising and managing your treasured photos, home videos, online accounts, household information or any other important digital file. Organise your digital world while you're alive and leave your files to loved ones when you're gone.

When someone dies, their online identity does not die with them. If a deceased Facebook user leaves behind a once active profile, friends and family members may choose to use this virtual space to express grief, interact with one another, and engage in active memorialization. Young adults who are traditionally marginalized in the grieving process can take advantage of the digital space to engage in mourning rituals.

"The fact that we are all going to die is an indisputable reality of the human condition. Whilst the beginning of our lives are celebrated, discussed and chronicled, death and dying have become medicalized, sanitized and whispered about in many Western cultures".

MyNews is a family sharing website creating a space where people can share the sad news of a bereavement and in time create a loving memorial to share fond memories, photos, thoughts, and remembrances.

Born and raised in the West Midlands, Caroline grew up in the beautiful county of Shropshire and trained as a celebrant in 2012, several years after she experienced her first real grief due to the death of her Mother. She has journeyed and grown within her vocational profession and has gained experience of working with people from all walks of life, backgrounds and cultures. She is truly passionate about what she does and always takes something meaningful away with me from each family that she works work with. We chat funerals, the use of social media to connect with families and how the future is shaping for working as a funeral celebrant.

SafeBeyond is an online service to help with digital end-of-life planning. Safebeyond’s after death messages are programmable to be released at a designated date in the future, during a special event, or in a precise location. While this seems cutting edge now, in the future this will become commonplace. In this episode we learn how SafeBeyond started and why it is such a mission driven project for its founder Moran Zur.

What Makes An Effective Funeral Celebrant? Stories have captivated mankind since the beginning of time. The art of the story is a skill and ability needed if you are a funeral celebrant. Being able to listen well, find the story and tell it with sensitivity and relevance is what makes an effective celebrant. In this podcast, I chat with Linda Stuart a Life Cycle Celebrant from Ontario, Canada. We talk about how Linda's creative website has driven new business, the use of social media and red wine and chocolate! A great mix!

Loggacy was born from Thomas's personal desire to ‘never be forgotten’. A desire accruing from a sadness that people look at black and white photos of their ancestors and wonder what they have achieved, what they have experienced and what they have seen. He founded Loggacy, with the intention of attaching a story to these photos; connecting generations of families and friends through a safe and secure digital platform.

Digital technology is transforming the funeral industry in ways never imagined a couple of years ago. One technology that is disrupting industry in all areas is 3D printing. In this episode, I chat with Mike Hepburn from EturnalMemories. Using the creativity and originality that 3D printing offers, they are creating one of kind urns that are gaining lots of interest. We also chat social media for funeral homes and the way that the industry is headning. 

Chatting with Ian Dibb the Founder of Once I've Gone. We believe in embracing and living in the moment, but many of you will have families and friends to look after, now, and also once you've gone. Our aim is to enable people across the world to plan for tomorrow, while living today. To keep secure their vital documents, to create and keep safe special memories and to plan for the future wellbeing of their loved ones.

Stepping into the unknown can be scary. Will this new venture work? That is what I feel like as I start this new journey for Death Goes Digital. This too is the place that many Funeral Directors and Celebrants find themselves in when it comes to moving their business online. The Death Goes Digital Podcast is here to help! Every two weeks I will publish a new episode with valuable information to guide, help and coach you how to take your funeral business forward in an online world.