Thomas Lynch, funeral director and award-winning author, once commented how the word “grave” originates from the same root that provides words like “gravitas” and “gravity.” In this session we explore how those three words are connected and how best to honor those who have died. While the funeral industry offers one set of answers, Rupert Callender, called “the best funeral director of all time, by a country mile,” has another approach, including rituals and markers that point a path forward in and through our grief. These rituals are explored in this session as well as what not to say when someone dies, what it looks like to choose a “green funeral,” why grief is a “boomerang,” and how Callender became the world’s first “punk undertaker.”

Rupert “Ru” Callender is a renowned undertaker in the U.K. He has carried coffins across windswept beaches, sat in pubs with caskets on beer-stained tables, and helped children fire flaming arrows into their father’s funeral pyre. He is the author of What Remains?: Life, Death and the Human Art of Undertaking, of which one reviewer said, “You’ll be changed. It’s an instant classic.” Callender is the co-founder of the Green Funeral Company in Devon, England, which is considered one of the country’s best-known eco-friendly funeral services.