In this information-filled episode, Tawnya Musser and I explore the power and possibilities of home funerals. What exactly is a “home funeral”? How does it differ from one managed by a funeral home or institution? What might a home funeral look like, and how can family and friends take part in meaningful ways? Most importantly, how does it expand your options when you better understand this legal choice? In this conversation, we dive into what’s possible, what’s typical, and what’s realistic when it comes to home funerals. Learn how a personal approach of caring for and spending time with your dead can create space for community and connection. As Tawnya explains, “People often tell me, ‘I wish I had known this was an option.’ Not everyone will choose a home funeral, but everyone should know they have the choice.” 

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Transcript:

Diane Hullet: Hi, I’m Diane Hullet, and you’re listening to the Best Life, Best Death podcast. Today I’ve got Tanya Musser of Dear Departures here. Hi, Tanya. Hey, Diane. I’m excited. You know, Tanya and I, we first met through the Conscious Dying Institute, now called the Conscious Dying Collective. And then we also know each other through the Colorado End of Life Collaborative.

So, you know, both working in spaces in Colorado and just have been meaning to have a conversation for like a year. So I’m very excited to have you here and actually get this rolling. We’re going to do a two parter and part one, we wanted to talk more about home funerals because Tanya is a death doula and a life cycle celebrant.

grief companion and home funeral guide. And I think it’s really important that you have this national and international perspective in part, because you served on the board of directors for the national home funeral Alliance, and you’ve written a book. And so, you know, there’s a contributed to a book, I guess I should say, right.

We’ve got to give everybody credit, but the, you know, that whole. piece of the Home Funeral Alliance is really to educate individuals, families, and communities about caring for their dead. That’s the mission of the National Home Funeral Alliance. And this is something that I’ve done a few podcasts on, but I think it’s really important to come back to these super basic questions of how do we care for our dead?

What does it mean to have a funeral? Right. So that’s a long preamble by me. You know, what, what do you want to add? How did you come to this work of, you know, being a home funeral advocate and an educator? And I think it’s even worth breaking down, like, what does it mean to be a home funeral advocate?

Tawnya Musser: Absolutely. To me, being a home funeral advocate, Diane means that I am shouting from the rooftops. at all times about people’s choices and and rights and choices that they don’t know that they have. I do really want to thank you for having me on because I will take every opportunity that I can get to spread this message and awareness and the other advocacy piece really is being that person who can speak on behalf of or speak for and navigate systems for or with these folks who may unfortunately be getting pushback from from systems like hospitals or coroner’s offices.

So how I came to this work, unfortunately, like many others you know, who got into death caring really was by way of several bad experiences with death because of harmful and lacking systems. And I’ve had you know, Several friends and family members who died prior to my journey into death work, and all of them were unexpected deaths, mostly from things like accidents or addiction, suicide, and things of that nature.

So, nearly all of those funeral experiences that followed those deaths were incredibly unfortunate. We weren’t given the opportunity to have time, space, and privacy, nor the option to be hands on with our dead. The services were really impersonal, not to mention that in most of these cases, funeral poverty was a real factor.

These families got swept up in the funeral industrial complex where they departed, you know, were gatekept, and neither they nor I knew back then that we had And so it makes sense when I learned about them through the National Home Funeral Alliance, in my early 30s that I was both compelled and actually really angry.

So after, you know, a year or so of consuming NHFA’s content on a personal level, just kind of like lurking behind the scenes, I embraced how fiery and passionate I was about choice and death and dying. And one of the things that I did was enroll in training with the Conscious Dying Institute, like you said, now Conscious Dying Collective.

And The cohort that I was in was assigned a documentary called In the Parlor about home funerals, and one of the stories was about a family of bereaved siblings who adorned their sibs casket with a banner that had their handprints on it. And it was really evocative for me because my brother Robert was due to have a risky heart surgery just the following week.

And he did end up dying during that surgery and left behind my mother, his six siblings and some step siblings. And so I flew to Oklahoma from Colorado to guide my mom and family through a home funeral, our first, and it was on my uncle’s farm. And that experience really, really, really solidified the value.

inherent in community death care for me. And that was the summer of 2018. So now after six years of advocating and educating, I still constantly hear people say, I wish I would have known. I wish I would have known this was an option for my child. I wish I would have known this was an option for, you know, my wife, my husband, my partner, my person.

And so I’m working really hard to flip that script from, I wish I would have known to, I’m so glad I knew. 

Diane Hullet: That’s I what a great story. I mean, there’s so much in that like my head is spinning because Oh, gosh. I mean, what I want to say to listeners in part is, is it this isn’t all or nothing, right? It isn’t that you either you know, have your person die at home and do all the body care and everything and put them on dry ice and have them in your home, like that would be the most hands on, but it also doesn’t have to be that they die and one hour later they’re taken off in a body bag and you never see them again until they’re embalmed.

at a funeral home. And you know, like those are kind of to my, in my mind, those are the two extremes and there’s so much in between. And part of what I think you and I both really value is choice and time and just kind of slowing that whole thing down so that people aren’t just rushed into something that then they find out that isn’t really what they wanted.

Right. There’s something about that. So, and then I was also struck as you were talking, I was thinking about the first time. Say as an adult that I really heard of someone really taking this on was a friend whose mother died very unexpectedly probably had a stroke. I don’t remember the details, but hit her head, fell in her condo and died.

And so, oh my gosh, they figured this out the next day. And I believe she was picked up by the coroner and taken to the coroner’s office. And then my friend had this absolute clarity that that was not the right thing to do, that she wanted her mother’s body at her house. And she went to the coroner and she had to fight the medical system, fight the police and fight the coroner to get her mother’s body back.

And finally someone agreed and they were very reluctant. They were like, you know, you don’t want to do this. This is going to be very disturbing for you. And she was like, No, I am crystal clear that this is what me and my family wants. And so she ended up, they finally agreed to deliver her mother’s body on kind of a gurney that could go up and down.

And so they wheeled her into the house and they lowered it down. So she was kind of on the floor level of the living room. And they spent about 24 hours with her body. Washing it, adorning it with flowers, singing to her, the grandkids were involved. The other siblings came. It was this incredibly moving thing.

And I remember when my friend was telling me about this, just being blown away. Like I didn’t know you could do that. Like that’s a thing. This is like actually thing. She had such a powerful experience with it and she was so grateful that she had followed her instinct and. Just what you said. Most people don’t know they can do that.

And if you want to do that, you’re kind of pushing on a system that doesn’t really want you to do that. So, oh my gosh, there’s so much richness to share from caring for your loved one after they have died to a home funeral. 

Tawnya Musser: There really is, and like you said, there’s a spectrum, right, and this idea of any binary in life, like, how many actual binaries are there, like, there’s a lot of in between, a lot of gray area, and home funerals can look however folks want them to look, and that is what is so special about them, because they get to decide, they’re not having something dictated to them about That’s what makes them so special.

Keep on blogging. When and where and for how long they can see them and how much money they have to pay in order to be able to do that. 

Diane Hullet: Oh my gosh. And that’s what you meant by, say more about funeral poverty, because that was a great phrase. 

Tawnya Musser: Yeah, I mean, essentially funeral poverty is the folks who end up, you know, not being able to pay for services or go into debt in order to do so.

How many GoFundMes have you seen for 20, 000 funerals and services? And I’m not opposed to folks. If they want to have a big lavish thing with catering and tons of flowers and the whole big, you know, hoopla, but folks shouldn’t have to spend that kind of money. And unfortunately, you know, death is inevitable.

We’re all going to die. A lot of folks don’t have the willingness to turn towards that and plan and or they don’t have the financial means like a lot of us are really out Here struggling just to pay our basic bills And so if you can’t buy a pre need or set aside money because you you know Don’t know where your next meal is going to come from you know, what do you do when somebody dies and as I mentioned a lot of the deaths I experienced were unexpected ones and so They were young people.

These were my, my friends who were in their teens and twenties and their families didn’t have, you know, plans in place for that. And so these 20, 25, 000 funerals that were then also impersonal and restrictive and prohibitive and unfortunate, it was just like, now what, now what do you do when you’re that person who has that huge bill, when you could have saved a ton of money and had something.

More intimate, meaningful, private, personal, et cetera, et cetera. 

Diane Hullet: Yeah, I think this comes with so many of our misconceptions about death and in current society, right? Talking in generalizations about U. S. society, there’s just a lot of misunderstandings about what you, Can and can’t do, and what things sort of truly matter to people.

And, and one of the things that I always love to ask guests about is like, why does having a funeral matter? Because I happen to have a big bias that funerals matter a lot. And I hear a lot of talk these days of people saying like, I’m not going to have a funeral or my family doesn’t need to have a funeral.

Partly because they don’t want people to spend the money or waste the time, quote unquote. But why for you who work in this field, why do funerals matter? 

Tawnya Musser: It’s funny that you mentioned this kind of narrative around like, I don’t want a funeral because I’ve had two brothers die, so Robert died in 2018, and then I had a brother, James, who died in 2022, and that was his thing, like, I don’t want a funeral.

And so, at that time, I, I was in death work, and I’m a celebrant, and I literally, like, do entire ceremonies for folks, and instead, You know, we spent some time with his body in the hospital before he went to be a donor and stuff But then we just kind of had this like very informal gathering at some like random Mexican restaurant had like chile rellenos and margaritas and it just it didn’t feel the same and so Again, like I I believe in choice, but I think that when a lot of people say like I don’t want a funeral They’re thinking about What you would see in the movies.

They’re thinking about what you’re used to going to in the conventional world where it’s like this stuffy impersonal thing that costs a lot of money and You know for me Funerals really are a way of marking a major life event with intention When informed decision making and autonomy are cornerstones in that experience, funerals provide time and opportunity for the death to become more real in a time when it seems so surreal.

And to be frank, like, it’s not about you anymore. You’re dead. Like, I want to respect your choices, but it’s about the people that you leave behind. Funerals give us this space to process the loss through memorialization and storytelling and they allow us to be held by our community. And, you know, when it comes to a viewing specifically you know, a lot of folks will say, well, I don’t want them to remember me that way, or, you know, something to that effect, or I don’t want to remember them that way.

And I think we really need to consider what a privilege it is to even have the opportunity to have time with our dead because so many people don’t get that chance to say goodbye and to be able to care for their person, you know, one last time if it’s something that they want to be able to do. And so home funerals are a game changer.

Because when most folks think about a viewing, they think about that conventional funeral home setting where you have the two hour window and a ton of people lining up single file to peek into a casket at a waxy and embalmed and cosmetized decedent. And, you know, to be fair, I know some amazing funeral directors and embalmers and restorative artists who are working wonders with their art and airbrushing and the things that they offer, but a home funeral is so much more than a viewing.

You know, someone doesn’t even have to be on quote unquote display to have a home funeral. You can do just, you know, a simple shrouding and, and then, you know, still have that time. 

Diane Hullet: Oh, I love this. Let’s keep going down this track of like both, both what’s the range of what you’ve seen in home funerals and also how might a home funeral differ from, like you said, like a classic kind of viewing at a funeral home.

Yeah. Yeah. 

Tawnya Musser: Yeah. Yeah, home funerals are really this reclamation and trusting that we can care for and spend time with our dead if we choose to. And, you know, they invite us to engage in these ways that feel meaningful and manageable and they uplift choice and they create space for exploration and They can be so wonderfully accommodating to different needs and schedules.

You know, there’s the space where you can invite children to, you know, come in and be hands on. The, the person’s pod and circle, they get to be involved and be hands on if they want to. It gives folks something to do in terms of tasking, which can be really helpful for some of us when we kind of are like what do I do?

It’s like, well, here, do this. You know, when my brother Robert died, there were a bunch of us traveling from Colorado to Oklahoma. And so, to have him accessible for a couple of days, in order to accommodate our varying schedules and travel arrangements, you know, it was really, really helpful. And then, our family dynamics would not have been well served in a funeral home or a church.

Like, we needed space to be who we are, how we are as individuals and as a group. Meaning, we could laugh, cry. Cuss, hoot, holler, fight, and do all of that without onlookers or, you know, pressure to hurry things along. And again, like, we save those thousands upon thousands of dollars, and so when we think about that spectrum of Home funeral and, and, you know, the variety.

It’s like, yeah, you could like, logistically speaking, somebody who is on home hospice, who dies in the home, like that’s the easiest they’re already there, people have probably already been doing body care. They’re already comfortable with all of those things. There’s not likely to be a whole lot of trauma to the body.

Some disease progressions might have some things that could play it, play into it. But again, they’ve already been dealing with that type of stuff. They may choose to have hours or days. One of the things with, you know, hospice deaths. People in a lot of cases, not always have already kind of been preparing to say goodbye.

They’ve been saying some of those goodbyes, but when a death is sudden, when it’s, you know, an accident or like what you were talking about with your friend, those opportunities are such rich opportunities to give people that time because it is so shocking and jarring and to let them have that time to slow down.

and to say goodbye because they weren’t expecting it. You know, that’s sometimes where, you know, someone on hospice may only need, the family may only want, like, a couple hours. They bathe them, they make them smell good, they put them in their best dress or, or they’re comfy cozy so they can go be cremated or buried.

But the unexpected death situations Can tend to be the ones where people need more time. They need days, you know, and so to have a couple days, two, three, you know, days to To really be with it and and walk through that journey, you know and it’s just it makes a big difference and one of the other things I always like to talk to people about in terms of like options and like shades of home funerals is how many people do you want involved and who do you want to invite into your space and You know, one of the models I like is like the first day being private with, you know, just the close pod or family, maybe the second day being open house and then the last day being private again or something to that effect.

So if it’s not days, you can shrink that down into a more condensed time you know, version of that timeline, but making sure that there’s privacy. If people want privacy. There’s the ability for community to come through whether that’s in waves or certain groups of people like anyone from work can come through during these times, or anyone from the church is welcome these times, or do you just want to have a free for all open house?

I mean, there’s so, so many possibilities. And really, you know, when I’m doing this work and supporting somebody, it’s about getting specific about what they want, what they need, what they want for the person’s community and then making that all work for everyone involved as much as possible. 

Diane Hullet: I can certainly see the advantage of having an officiant or, you know, a person who kind of is the conductor who helps orchestrate all this and helps think things through.

So there’s this component of how much time and there’s this component of who’s invited both. Both close and private and then more public. What are some of those other components that that help a home funeral really kind of come to life? Ha ha, so to speak. 

Tawnya Musser: Yeah, absolutely. There’s so much opportunity for ritual and ceremony all along the way and it can be.

You know, when the death occurs, it can be upon the decedent arriving home. If they hadn’t died inside of the home, it can be clearing a space for that person. It can be you know, a ceremony somewhere within there. It can be you know, something very intentional around the body bathing. It can be something very intentional around the taking leave and when they’re leaving the home.

Clearing the space after they’ve left the home. So there’s so much opportunity for ritual and ceremony. And some people may just choose, you know, one or two of those things that really resonates with them. I really love to encourage people to involve the senses in these experiences. So what sights and sounds and smells and tastes, aspects of touch can be brought into this space, specifically ones that.

represent the dead and or might be supportive to the bereaved. So like we had an impromptu dance party the second night of my brother’s home funeral and I love when folks are bustling in the kitchen and cooking up the storm while someone’s playing some live music in the living room. Like it’s, it’s just a whole vibe.

And One thing I do want to mention when it comes to sensory stuff is that, you know, noises can be tough for some folks. Some people have sensitivities to things like smells. So when you’re thinking about like burning incenses or using essential oils, it might not be a good fit for everyone. So those are also things to consider is like, how can we be inclusive and accommodating and how can we meet certain, you know, everybody’s needs in different ways.

But using the senses is just, it really elevates it. and experience and I also really love the practice of just building like a simple memory table or altar. When my mother in law Rebecca died, we had a little end table at her home funeral next to her body and we had her bottle of Juergens cherry almond lotion on there.

We used that to anoint her by the way. We had her glasses and one of her little red rimmed teapots with some fresh red Gerber daisies sticking out of the teapot. We had some photos and a few of her other little things here and there. So that too, like just like creating a space, an intentional space, a beautiful space, whatever that means to somebody.

And you know, and then as a celebrant, I kind of mentioned some of those like ritual and ceremony possibilities. You know, it could be, it could be a backyard burial, or a, sorry, a backyard ceremony, and in some counties you can do a backyard burial. It could be, you know, like I said, kind of the, the guided body washing, you know, and facilitating some of that.

I really try to step back and be as hands off and, you know, stay out of it as much as I can. But when I am in that celebrant role, like, that’s what I’m there for, is to create some ceremony and ritual or to facilitate some of that for them. And so. Yeah, you know, and sometimes it’s like, okay, so the person dies, you have a home funeral and, and then we’re having a celebration of life down the road, right?

It’s like, now they’ve been cremated and we’re doing the party at the Botanic Gardens or the Denver Art Museum or out at a park or, you know, up in the mountains or in a bar. And so the stuff we do in the home might be very little and then the big thing happens down the road. 

Diane Hullet: Right. Again, I like this idea that there’s no one right way to do it, but you can really take what components of home funeral work feel right to your situation and, and kind of embellish that, or I don’t know, just let that flow from who the family is.

Like who are the people who are really involved? Are there any, you know, any major snafus to be aware of? Any, any legal things to be aware of? Funny snafus is more of what I was thinking when I said snafus, but also just like 

Tawnya Musser: No, you’re right. I mean, you’re honing in on that legal piece because two of the biggest questions that I get and two of the biggest sources of pushback and sort of fear mongering, like you were talking about with your friend, like, oh, you really don’t want to do that have to do with legality and body care.

And so. You know, home funerals are legal in all 50 states in America. A lot of professionals are misinformed. And, you know, there’s only 10 states that require you to hire a funeral director or be involved, to be involved with something like filing a death certificate, transporting the departed, overseeing a disposition like a burial or cremation.

But even in those states, being with and caring for the decedent in a private location is still possible. And so there are funeral homes out there who are Ill informed or will just outright lie about this access right and so in those states you have to be able to find a funeral home who’s willing to work with you to do the parts that are required by law to do but then give you that autonomy to be able to do the parts that you want to and that can really be a challenge and you know one of the biggest barriers to access is kind of you alluded to was is internal release policies at institutions like coroners offices and hospitals and nursing homes and hospices who will claim that they’ll only release the decedent to a funeral home which is not only prohibitive but those policies are often in direct conflict with the next of kin or appointed agents rights under the law and then there’s this curiosity and concern that people have around body care and preservation you know that like well you don’t want to do that you don’t want to see that and there’s a ton of fear mongering that happens in the funeral industry, and they’ll say horrible things about, you know, what might allegedly happen to a body if it’s not embalmed, or if you take it home.

And in most cases, they’re just being inflammatory. And using ice packs to slow natural decomp can be sufficient for a couple days of a home funeral. Bye! If someone does need to be embalmed for some restorative arts, you can have both that and a home funeral too, so it doesn’t have to be this either or, it can be the both and, and, you know, there are cases where there is trauma to the body, you know, meaning that there could be considerations how to navigate that and, you know, what happens if there’s been an autopsy?

What happens like when my brother, he was, you know, he had tissue and bone removed and then was brought to the farm and, you know, what if there’s been an accident there, these are very real considerations, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t do it. And so it’s important to know that. So snafu wise, legality and and body care.

I will say that one of the funny things that happened with my husband. I mean, funny now, but like, he was very distressed about neighbors seeing us bringing a body into the house. Like, what are they going to think? Is anyone going to call the cops? Are we going to have cops showing up at our house?

Because they’re going to see us rolling someone in, you know? And, and she was in a body bag. And it, I mean, it was, it was upsetting. But I just had to reassure him, like, do you trust that I can navigate that situation if for some reason cops show up at our door? And, you know, the answer eventually was yes.

But we shouldn’t have to worry about that kind of stuff, you know? 

Diane Hullet: Interesting. Yeah, it’s just our whole discomfort with it. Well, talk about the book that you contributed to and what other resources are there for people? And, and I want to put a word out too, like I feel like, like I think a home funeral isn’t something you necessarily decide, like somebody dies and that day you go, Oh, we should consider a home funeral.

I mean, you could do that, but this is one of those things. It’s. Probably best if you’ve thought about it ahead of time, talked about it with the person who’s dying. If there’s time to do that, like you said, the gift of time versus a sudden death. But, but you know, this is just another thing where I’m going to say, have the conversation upstream, right?

The more you’ve kind of considered it. Nothing. You have to have it all planned out, but you’ve considered what you want. The better advocate you’ll be for you and your loved one. Thank you. And for what everybody wants and also even getting a family all on the same page, right? That’s a whole other podcast where we’ll solve that problem, but tell us some resources.

Tawnya Musser: Yeah. Yeah. No. So, I mean, you’re so on point around this whole, like, if you have the opportunity to consume this content, if this is something that interests you for either yourself or someone in your life that is going to eventually die, like, get ahead of it now. Learn about some things listen to the NHFA podcast you know, check out the guidebook that I coauthored because can you do it on the fly?

Sure. But when that whole, I wish I would have known, literally, Diane, people will have somebody die. They will have them cremated. They will start thinking about a celebration of life. They will Google funeral officiant near me. Maybe if I’m lucky they find me and we’re a good fit and we start working together.

But when they’re on my website, They see that I do home funerals or that they, that I educate on that. And the person just died like a week ago or two weeks ago. And they’re like, if I would have known this. You know, so the other thing when I, when I’m doing education and advocacy, it’s like, please spread the word because my message ends with you listeners.

Our message ends with you. If you don’t then take that information and disseminate it further out. So I’m glad you’re hearing it. But if you’re open to making a social media post. Or, you know, having some casual cocktail conversation around like, Wow, I listened to this episode of Best Life, Best Death, and I learned this thing.

Like, tell people. Because it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Not everyone’s going to want to do this. But they should know that they can if they want to. That they have the opportunity and the right. Because so many people don’t know. So the guidebook Yes, I co authored it with a bunch of other lovely folks.

I wrote the chapters on planning a home funeral. I contributed extensively to the body care section and the appendices, which cover special circumstances like autopsies and organ donation and considerations. And my brother Robert as I mentioned, was a tissue and bone donor and came to us after his tissue recovery.

And there’s a picture of him in the back of the book in a vinyl union all suit. And that’s the, the suit that they put him in to mitigate any potential leakage from his recovery sites since there were literal pieces of skin and bone missing from his body. So I’m really, really proud of the guidebook in its entirety.

We worked really hard to make it a comprehensive resource that’s easily accessible as a pay what you can download. And oh, you got your print copy. I got my print copy too. All of the proceeds benefit the NHFA to further their mission, and these print copies are print on demand through Amazon, it’s what, it was just, we had to go that route, but unfortunately, the energy family gets pennies from the sale of these print copies, so if people can buy the print copy if that’s what they want, But then kick a little extra towards the NHFA to, you know, contribute to furthering that mission.

You know, the guide isn’t just for death workers, Diane. This really is for everyone. And that was our goal. My mission, our mission was to make this content about people not needing. to hire a quote unquote professional of any kind to care for their dead because no one should have to pay or access to and time with their dead.

Full stop. It’s great if someone wants to support a doula or a home funeral guide, but the whole point about community death care is having the right to pick and choose which pieces you want to be able to DIY and having the information to know how to do so, ideally ahead of time. I 

Diane Hullet: love 

Tawnya Musser: that. 

Diane Hullet: That’s wow.

Full stop. So the book is called Home Funerals Guide and Resources. And as Tanya said, there’s several authors, great, fantastic resource for people highly recommend. So if you’re curious, there’s a place to dive in. Thank you so much, Tanya. I think this has been really like just a lot for people to take in.

I love that we’re both super fast talkers , so you can find out more about Tanya’s wo**@de************.com, and as always, you can find out about the work I do at Best Life. Best death.com. Thanks so much for listening.