Helping You Through

Contributions for Your Favorite Charity - Nominate Your Charity in the Comments

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:10:15 -0500

I got this idea a few weeks ago reading my Real Simple magazine and an article on how people give back over the holidays. One reader wrote that she has a charity giveaway on her blog. Great idea!

So here’s the rules; Just hit the comment button below and nominate your favorite end of life non-profit organization. For every subsequent comment from another visitor agreeing with your nomination I will donate $1 to the charity with the most votes, up to $500. It can be a local, state, or national organization related to any end of life industry: funeral service, hospice, organ donation, grief and bereavement, burial assistance fund, military , mentor associations, or something I haven’t thought of. I’ll close the comments out on December 23rd , and let the voters choose the winner.

I reserve the right to deem any organization unsuitable for the contest. The charity must be a non-profit, and must be verifiable as legitimate. I won’t donate to any group that I morally or ethically oppose, such as an assisted suicide organization.

Make your nomination now and let’s see if we can raise $500 for your favorite end of life non-profit. Don’t forget to tell your friends and colleagues to vote too. You need them to win!

Cyber Monday

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:07:18 -0500

You’ve probably heard of Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving when “crazy” people get up at 4am to get a good deal on a present, (the rest of us are in a “Turkey Coma” at 4am the day after Thanksgiving). So, Cyber Monday is the Monday after Thanksgiving when people go back to work and shop for the great on-line deals.

There’s even a website dedicated to helping you plan out where you’ll shop on Monday, www.cybermonday.com. It gives the scoop on the deals of over 500 companies and what their on-line deals will be on Cyber Monday.

One of the companies listed, www.Overstock.com, believe it or not is selling caskets with free shipping on Cyber Monday. We really need to take the phrase, “Now I’ve heard it all” out of our vocabularies. If Costco can sell caskets I guess Overstock.com can too, but here’s some things you should know. Two of the caskets are rated with 5 stars, I find that hilarious, obviously the occupant didn’t rate it… or did he? Here’s the actual text from one of the five star rating reviews, “This is a nice casket very plush and it does not feel cramped inside, lots of leg room. I highly recommended this product.” It takes 2 days from the date of order to deliver the casket, but they don’t deliver on Saturdays, Sundays, or Holidays. And here’s the interesting part, caskets aren’t exempt from their return policy. I looked high and low on the site, read the fine print of what you can and can’t return, I went as far as “add to my basket”, but can’t find anything that says you can’t return a casket. You can’t return underwear to Overstock.com but you can return a casket. Does anyone else find that odd? Gross? Wrong? Pick an adjective.

So have fun shopping at work on Monday, and visit CyberMonday.com and even Overstock.com, just be sure to read the return policy on everything you buy, and make certain there is one.

Favorite Foods Dinner

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:36:04 -0400

I read a fantastic article, “Honor Your Loved One’s Memory with a Favorite Foods Dinner” from the Grief Digest Quarterly Magazine. Although born out of a family tragedy, the author, Harriet Hodgson, came up with a great idea and I’m so thankful she shared it with us.

Harriet was helping care for her dying father-in-law when her daughter was killed in a car crash, two days before her father-in-law died. Reeling from their losses, her family decided they could only grieve one loss as a time, and as her daughter was a young mother, all of the resources went to mourning her. The family members decided to have a memorial service for her father-in-law at a later date. Although their circumstance brought about this meal, it’s a great idea for honoring the life of a loved one, including anniversaries of the death, or milestone birthday’s the loved one would have celebrated.

Her Father-in-law’s favorite thing was to have dinner with his family. One of his most famous saying was, “When are we going to have fat and salt?” So in order to honor him they decided to have a Favorite Foods Dinner. There were three rules:

The food preparation and clean-up had to be easy.

Fun had to be included.

The dinner had to be meaningful.

They placed a large photo of “Dad” to greet people as they walked in the door. They used paper products for easy clean up. Harriet typed up some of his favorite sayings and passed them out for other to read, of course most were humorous. They ended the evening with a slide show and photos of Dad with his family. What a nice way to honor the memory of a loved one.