Holly Pruett
Life-Cycle Celebrant, Home Funeral Guide,
Death Care Educator & Conversation Leader

Whether your loved one dies from COVID-19, or from an unrelated illness, accident, overdose, or suicide – death will look different in the time of pandemic. Ritual and ceremony can help you honor a loved one's death, connect with others to support the dying and their community, and engage meaningfully with the grief of these times - even with the restrictions of physical distancing. 

Working from my home, I can partner with you to:

• Design and lead "virtual" funerals and memorials using online connection platforms
• Write meaningful, memorable eulogies and obituaries
• Educate your family on safely caring for your loved one after death at home, including slowing down to mark the moment, body care, and current green burial and cremation options 
• Involve your family and community in creating rituals to serve your needs at this time, with or without the support of technology
• Plan rituals of remembrance or memorial ceremonies for a future time
• Officiate small, local in-person services around Portland, Oregon observing physical distancing guidelines (subject to current public health regulations)

Free & Discounted Services 

• The Pandemic Care Guide I published on the public information web site Oregon Funeral Resources & Education provides free access to accurate, current public health information along with inspiration for what to do when a funeral isn't possible and extensive resource links
• Free 30-minute phone or online consultation to individuals and families anticipating or affected by death during the time of the pandemic
• Free access to my set of questions to inform a eulogy (can also be used to inspire shared story-telling about a family or community member before or after their death)
  
• Online webinars and consultation on these topics at no cost to community groups
• 50% reduction in my regular pricing for individuals and families experiencing COVID-19 economic hardship

Qualifications & Experience 

• Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant (Celebrant Foundation & Institute) & Home Funeral Guide (Final Passages)
• Co-creator of the public information website Oregon Funeral Resources & Education; founder of the Death Talk Project (est. 2016), PDX Death Café (est. 2013), Death:OK, Let’s Talk About It (2015) & Death Talk Goes to the Movies (2015-2017); facilitator for Oregon Humanities’ Talking About Dying program (2015-2018)
• Certified in Thanatology: Death, Dying & Bereavement by the Association for Death Education & Counseling
• 5+ years of study with Stephen Jenkinson (Orphan Wisdom School); Masters in Applied Behavioral Science

Contact Me 
Please use my Contact Form to let me know how I can assist you.
Read more About Me, my celebrancy Services, and my background in death education.

As a gift to the community during the COVID-19 pandemic, here are questions I draw from as a Funeral Celebrant when I'm partnering with families to help them tell a life's story. With gratitude to my teachers and mentors through the Celebrant Foundation and Institute for some of this content, and the dozens of clients who have further shaped them.

These questions may help

• family members prepare what they would like to share during a ceremony
• a person preparing for their own death determine what they would like to share about their life
• inform the writing of a central eulogy or obituary

Choose only those questions that appeal to you; there is no need to answer them all!
 
Full Name:
Nicknames, how referred to by family/ loved ones:
Date of Birth:
Date of Death:

1. Biographical details, for example:
   
   • Circumstances of birth: where, characteristics of family (ie birth order)…
     
   • Childhood: Schools, organizations, clubs, athletics, friends, family, personality traits, health, travel hobbies, looks, tastes, talents, likes and dislikes of any kind such as:  nature, animals, sports, cooking, arts, languages, difficulties, special achievements.
     
   • Teenage years: Schools/universities, organizations, clubs, athletics, friends, family, personality traits, political, faith based or secular, health, travel, hobbies, looks, tastes, talents, likes and dislikes of any kind such as:  nature, animals, sports, cooking, arts, languages, difficulties, special achievements.
     
   • Adult years: Relationships & Family: married, divorced, remarried, committed relationships, homes, jobs, organizations, military service, titles, athletics, friends, family, personality traits, health, travel, hobbies, looks, tastes, talents, likes and dislikes of any kind such as:  nature, animals, sports, cooking, arts, languages, difficulties, special achievements.
     
   • Marriage/ Children/ Grandchildren:
2.  Interesting/ illustrative stories to share from anyone in the family?
3. Favorite memories?
4. Are there writings from the honoree, excerpts from letters or emails that allow us to hear them in their own words? 
5. What was most important in their life?
6. What was s/he passionate about; what got them excited?
7. What did s/he find joy in doing?
8. What were their dreams?
9. Favorite ways to spend time?
10. Favorite books/ authors?
11. Were there any significant events in their life that had a strong impact or influence on how s/he lived their life?
12. What was their philosophy of life? Did s/he have any favorite sayings? A motto that sums up their approach to life?
13. Cultural beliefs or traditions that could be tapped at this time?
14. Beliefs s/he held about dying, death, or what happens after death?
15. What were their religious or philosophical beliefs?
16. What did s/he find sacred or of value?
17. What symbols or rituals were meaningful?
18. What were their favorite possessions?
19. Favorite color/flowers?
20. What were their strengths and weaknesses?
21. Is there a shadow side to be acknowledged, aspects of the personality or life story that were difficult but a core part of who they were that deserve to be honored?
22. If they were a character in a movie or a play, what role best describes them?
23. What words best describe them?
24. If you had to choose only one word to describe their essence?
25. What did s/he do to make you laugh? 
26. How would s/he want to be remembered?
27. What will you do to honor their memory?
28. When you remember them, where do you picture them?
29. What do/will you miss the most?
30. How would you describe their legacy, i.e. what about them, or of their life, is living on? What was the most important thing they taught you?
31. What theme would you like to run through their ceremony? ie “the story of ______ is the story of…”
32. Is there other source material that could be woven into the eulogy, e.g. condolence notes, things written by or about the honoree at earlier times in their life, favorite song lyrics or verses?
33. What else….?

When Packy the elephant was delivered at the Oregon Zoo in 1962, he made news around the world: the first elephant born in the Western Hemisphere in 44 years! After living to be the oldest Asian male elephant in North America, his death was mourned deeply.

I had the honor of writing and officiating a memorial service for Packy, attended on a rain-soaked Saturday morning by 500 and viewed, via live-stream and since, by more than 73,000. (Scroll down for a video link and the printed memorial program.)

While Packy's pachyderm family filled the neighboring yard, Packy was honored with a Rose Ceremony led by the Royal Rosarians to Beethoven funeral music performed by the trombone section of the Oregon Symphony. Longtime TV news personality Tracy Barry and the Zoo's elephant curator Bob Lee - Packy's lead caregiver for 17 years - brought tears to many cheeks as they eulogized their old friend. Thomas Lauderdale, of the internationally acclaimed ensemble Pink Martini, performed an original new composition for Packy and led a rousing musical finalé of the folk classic Green, Green. 

After everyone joined voices in a customized Litany of Remembrance (see program, below), I closed with the poem We Give Thanks for the Animals, shared with me by Seattle Celebrant Danna Schmidt. The Rosarians formed one final honor guard for Packy, then participants of all ages had a piece of cake in his memory (Packy loved his cake!) and told their own stories.

As The Oregonian reported: "even in death, Packy continued teaching lessons." One dad who brought his two young daughters "saw it as a gentle way to introduce his young ones to the idea of mortality. 'It was a rare opportunity to introduce them to the concept of death in this kind of setting,' he said. 'It was a very tasteful ceremony.'"

Excerpts from my memorial remarks:

We’re joined today in our tears and our tributes by tens of thousands around the region and across the world who have been sharing their favorite Packy stories on-line. 
 
Everyone has a story about Packy. The older among us remember his birth, like Joyce Ritter who was in the 5th grade and called the first elephant born in the Western Hemisphere in 44 years, “the biggest news ever”. She says, “When you were a kid growing up in Eastern Oregon, you dreamed about the day you could go to Portland to visit Packy.”
 
For nearly 55 years Packy inspired millions of children and adults to learn about elephant and animal conservation – a critical mission, with as few as 40,000 Asian elephants remaining in their rapidly vanishing native range. And it’s not just we, his adoring public, who learned from Packy. Conservation scientists attribute much of what we now know about elephant care to Packy. The list of discoveries is as long as his trunk, including breakthroughs that are helping to reduce human-elephant conflict in Asia.
 
With songs, books, Rose Parade floats, and even a beer named after him, Packy has been synonymous with Portland for more than half a century. And so it was only fitting that the Royal Rosarians, the official greeters and ambassadors of goodwill for the City of Portland, claimed Packy as one of their own, knighting him on his 50th birthday as Sir Knight Packy.

The English poet John Donne called the elephant, “Nature's great masterpiece… the only harmless great thing.” As we begin our memorial program, let’s imagine ourselves watching Packy at play, release ourselves from the concerns of the world outside Elephant Lands, and focus our gratitude on the well-lived life of this beloved pachyderm.

*     *     *
​
This is the fourth ceremony I've been privileged to create with the caring stewards at the Oregon Zoo. See also Elephants Never Forget (the dedication of their new habitat), Honoring Cultural Survival (the rededication of two historic totem poles), and A Place of Honor (the reinterment of remains of residents of the old county poor farm).

You may have heard of a home funeral – but a funeral for a home? That’s what Nancy knew she needed as her family home was headed onto the real estate market.
 
Known as the “Pink Palace” in her hometown of La Crosse, Wisconsin, this 1880s-era house had witnessed 60 years of Wernecke family life. Nancy and her sister had grown up there, sneaking out of the windows as teenagers. Their parents, Pa and Meme, presided over sprawling additions including an upstairs apartment that housed Grandma Sally and Grandpa Bill, and home decorating schemes later likened to a Mad Men set.
 
Meme’s decorating was part of our childhood history. I got a canopy bed and purple poodle wallpaper; Julie, a bed fashioned in the shape of a stage. I remember the fragrant lilac bush and glorious peonies that lined the front of the garage where I got my first bee sting as I stopped to smell the flowers. I remember how Dad turned your lawn into a skating rink in the winter. He would join us on the rink, hanging on to a wooden chair for balance as he donned his black ice skates.
 
Grandchildren had played for hours around the indoor pool and the park-like yard featured monuments to two of them who had tragically predeceased both their parents and grandparents.
 
Nancy’s distress over losing this family treasure chest and local landmark was compounded by the expectation that any buyer would raze the structures and rebuild, the land considered more valuable than the idiosyncratic house. It was one straw too many on the camel’s back of a family that had recently suffered the deaths of first Pa and then Meme, with Julie’s health fragile, and Nancy still recovering from divorce and newly navigating retirement.
 
For years your walls held our laughter, tears, and many warm memories. Now you stand starkly empty, evoking sadness in my heart, reminding me of all of the important people and experiences that were the very essence and bedrock of you.
 
At the suggestion of a member of a grief program she was attending, Nancy decided to hold a funeral for the family home. She began by writing a letter to the home and assembling a video montage from decades of photographs. As she worked through her memories and associations, we distilled the essence of the home’s presence in their family life to three words that would serve as themes for the ceremony: Foundation. Sanctuary. Witness.
 
On a late spring day she assembled her nephews in the empty home, her niece too pregnant to travel and her sister Julie not well enough to attend. After reciting the Lord’s Prayer out of respect for Pa and Meme’s beliefs, we began with a candle lighting and a calling of names.
 
Think now of those loved ones whom you’ve known here in this home. Parents, grandparents, siblings, nephews, nieces, friends, girlfriends and boyfriends, spouses, caretakers… Let their faces and names come into our presence… let them be part of our circle of gratitude and celebration and farewell… let them know they are welcome and remembered.
 
Nancy read her letter to the home, speaking not only to what had transpired within these walls but updating this beloved structure on the flourishing of the lives nurtured here. After a video trip down memory lane, each person began a solitary walkabout through the many floors and corridors, returning with a representation of something they wished to carry forward from the home, and something they wished to release, written down on slips of paper.
 
Coming back together, the family shared stories and affirmed the legacy of the place that would continue in their own lives. After joining their voices in a Litany of Remembrance, goodbyes were spoken in a ritual of release that drew on the transformative power of fire.
 
And so, as we prepare to say our final farewell to you, dear home, we reflect on your gifts and life lessons. You’ve taught us about the impermanence in all of life. As we’ve left and returned to your sheltering foundation over the years, you have underscored the poignant presence of love in our many relationships. And you’ve witnessed the complicated relationships laced within the tapestry of the lives of all who have traversed the landscape of your rooms and gardens. We offer gratitude to you, dear home, for our many precious memories, for holding our joys and sorrows, for providing the sanctuary and foundation we could return to over the years. As we bid this final farewell, we move forward carrying many cherished memories in our hearts. We thank you for all we can return to draw upon, reflecting on your faithful witness that will forever touch our tender hearts.
 
The ceremony closed with champagne, Meme’s classic Cheez Whiz canapés, and dancing in the kitchen, before the family headed down to the banks of the Mississippi River to release the ashes of the papers they had burned.
 
For Nancy, it was the culmination of years of faithful tending to the grief of the deaths of her parents and other endings in her life, of recognizing the importance of fostering a culture of remembrance in a family that would weather still more tragic losses.
 
She had no way of knowing that as she prepared to hold this funeral for the home, a resurrection was in the works. Buyers came forward who saw not the prospect of the money to be made from the blank slate of this prime property – but, instead, the capacity of this home to provide a foundation, a sanctuary, and witness to the recovery of those who'd been exploited and abused.
 
After preparing to see the “Pink Palace” demolished, the family could now celebrate that it would serve as a shelter to those who needed a home. Just recently, these socially conscious developers announced a new program – the space will serve as a Scholars House for single moms who are in school, offering supportive community and a palatial play space for their kids.
 
“I’m absolutely ecstatic,” Nancy told the La Crosse Tribune. “I consider myself a humanitarian and social activist, and repurposing it that way warms my heart.” 
 
May each of you feel the lightness of release, the satisfaction of a farewell well said, and the richness of four generations of memories. May those memories enrich the lives of the next generation. May you continue to feel the presence of this home and all the life she has sheltered, as your foundation, as a continued witness to the ways you honor your family legacy. And may you continue to find sanctuary in your memories, and most of all, in each other.

*          *          *
​
​View photos of the "Pink Palace" through the years and read news coverage in the La Crosse Tribune: 
'Pink Palace' offers jaw-dropping window in time
'Pink Palace' to assume another persona as home for moms in school, their kids

Endings don't seem to be waiting for December 31st this year. After a 12-month cycle that saw the deaths of three in my inner circle, Amber and I traveled to Tucson this month to close a 13-year chapter in our lives.

It actually started back in 1999 when, on the uncertain brink of Y2K, we decided to sublet our houses and travel the country in a 1973 motor home we named Betty. Our originally-planned six months turned out to be not long enough. With summer gigs in Michigan and long-distance contract work, we managed to live in Betty for 18 months, until my father's brain cancer diagnosis called us back to the Pacific Northwest.

We spent the winter of that magical sojourn on some women's land just west of Tucson's Saguaro National Park. The Sonoran Desert was endlessly fascinating to us, with its idiosyncratically animated cactus shapes and all manner of bird and animal life: quail, coyote, rabbit, dove, owl, lizard, javelina.

After my Dad died and we resumed "life as normal" back in Portland, the desert continued to call our names. We returned on vacation and noticed many houses featured casitas out back. We contacted a realtor and not too much later, we'd sold Amber's condo in Portland and bought a three-bedroom house in Tucson with a separately-fenced, one-bedroom off the alley that became our beloved retreat for the next 13 years.

Not exactly a "vacation home" - no pool, no view. But the sky was nearly always blue. The plant and bird and animal life, abundant. The rental income from the main house pretty much paid for itself. Every time we visited, we enjoyed old favorite places. Every time we visited we discovered something new. ​We joined, most years, with over 100,000 others in the remarkable All Souls Procession, first memorializing my father with a personal altar, later processing in Marcy's nightgowns five months after her death.

But in this time in which we all must learn the ending of things, it was time to let go of the responsibility of owning property 1,500 miles away. We sold the place easily and booked a flight to go down to clear out our humble but cherished casita.  

​While I knew it would be sad to say goodbye to our sweet little place, I didn't expect to have so many endings wrapped into this one. ​

​"I talk to her every day," my friend says, of her mother who died last year. I've always been more tongue tied. Not with the living, usually. But with the dead.

Imagined conversations, remembered conversations - my thoughts are filled with these, exchanges with my father, my Nonna, my friends Bill, Marcy, Kathy, and more.

But to speak out loud - to them, to those who came before them, whose lives collectively, cumulatively, ended up as me - is to render me shy, uncertain, inept.

I used a song to unscrew my jaw when I knew I needed to say certain things to my dad at the memorial I held for him in my backyard eight months after he died. 

"Operator, well could you help me place this call? 'Cause I can't read the number that you just gave me. There's something in my eyes, You know it happens every time. I think about the love that I thought would save me."

Jim Croce (1943-1973) was the sound track to those fifth and sixth grade years when my father left us again and again for an affair he was unable to break off. And then he left for good, moving 6,000 miles away six days after his divorce from my mother was final on my twelfth birthday.

I bought two copies of Croce's Greatest Hits 25 years later when my dad was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer: one for him, one for me. Already unable to do many things for himself, he shrugged his consent when I offered to put it on the stereo. We wept through nearly every song. Those around us were badly discomfited. But I like to think that he and I, in those tear-soaked moments, were speaking the same language for perhaps the first time.

*          *          *

"The day my second daughter, Marina, was born, was the second happiest day of my life," Tamara Wedin says. "But it was also the second most heartbreaking. She was beautiful and perfect and had the deepest blue eyes you've ever seen...ten perfect little piggy toes...but she was not breathing. She had died two days prior, which we were fortunate enough to watch on ultrasound as her last heartbeat showed on the monitor."

Tamara has channeled her family's agony - grief that came close to taking her down - into a support program for other veterans who've experienced pregnancy loss or the death of an infant.
​
One in four pregnancies ends in a loss, according to Tamara, and studies show that for veterans and military families, the risks are even higher. Taps for Babies, now in its second year, is determined to educate others about the very real need for support after a pregnancy loss or infant death, and to make sure veterans are connected to the very best support the community and VA system has to offer. The event, the first of its kind for veterans in the nation, brings together grieving families, non-profit organizations, and VA staff.

At the inaugural Taps for Babies program last year at the Portland VA Hospital, I witnessed two of the most moving sights of my life. The first was the playing of taps for the "babies lost too soon" to military families. A uniformed honor guard, accompanied by the mournful notes of a bugle, slowly and ceremoniously folded a flag and placed it on an empty chair in the front of the auditorium. Those dignified moments were a time outside of regular time, in which the pregnancy and birth traumas experienced by veterans and their families received long-overdue acknowledgement.

Just as moving as the silence that filled the space around the bugle notes were the words we heard from an unexpected speaker. Among the children present on this family-focused day were Tamara's infant son and her older daughter Kiri, who had served as unofficial ambassador to those of us setting up exhibit tables, offering to help organize our displays.

When all the grown-up speakers had finished their remarks and the VA chaplain prepared to close the program, four year-old Kiri approached for the microphone. She told us about her sister Marina, about her death and the ways in which her family keeps her memory a part of their lives. She offered the simple lessons from their experience as a gift of support to others.    

Tamara tells me, "Kiri has already asked me if she is speaking this time. She asks me almost daily how she can help the mommies who've lost their babies. She always wants me to pass on the most profound things."

Tamara welcomes inquiries about the October 28 event in Portland, Oregon and how to get a Taps for Babies program started in your community. Currently working with the Orlando Veteran's Administration on starting a program, Tamara quotes the saying, "There is no expiration on my oath of enlistment." She says, "This program is ultimately about looking out for each other and leaving no one behind." Email: tapsforbabies@gmail.com

Last month, my high school best friend got the call every parent dreads. His child, newly graduated from college and about to start his first professional theater job, killed by a hit-and-run driver.

I was able to offer a small consolation for the stricken family and friends who flew from around the country to Noah's memorial service. Over the years, I've found the call-and-response Litany of Remembrance a useful way, in a secular service, for participants to join their voices together. It both anticipates the many ways the presence of the deceased loved one will be felt, and serves as a collective pledge to keep a place for them as life goes on.

Written by Roland B. Gittelsohn, an American Rabbi who served as Jewish Marine Corps Chaplain during the WWII battle of Iwo Jima, the Litany is often used in group ceremonies, hence the standard refrain, We remember them. With my clients, I suggest the more direct, We remember you.

The most powerful part of the Litany often comes when I encourage participants to add scenarios of their own that are likely to provoke memories, following the standard recital of seasons and emotional states. Specifics range from the teary to the playful. For my friend Marcy, an uncompromising conservationist always guarding against the waste of water, after When we have joys to share, we remember you, we heard When we flush the toilet, we remember you.

Helping a family prepare to bury their 31 year-old son recently, also killed instantly in a road accident, I suggested the idea of a customized Litany. Parents, siblings, aunts and uncles spent an hour or two crying, laughing, coming up with lines associated with precious stories, favorite attributes. The result used only the structure from Gittelsohn's original; every word of tribute represented a collective act of creativity by this devastated family.

I shared their example with my old friend Rich, and he and his family did the same for Noah. He sent it to me after the service with this note: "Please feel free to share it if it can help anyone else."

​I've just taken perhaps the longest break from my blog since I committed at the start of 2013 to write 50 posts in a year's time. 

The death earlier this month of my close friend/ neighbor/ former mentor Bill has caught the thread of all my sorrows.

Bill's diagnosis with a rare and aggressive form of leukemia came not 24 hours after Marcy's five-hour memorial service last August. During the six months Bill spent in a clinical trial (at a cancer center dubbed the City of Hope) in California, my father-in-law Dean Wilson suffered several health crises. In March he died less than 48 hours after entering hospice. Two days after we buried Dean, Bill returned home for what turned out to be his last six weeks of life.  

​On the surface, these seem clear examples of what Francis Weller calls the First Gate of Grief: the recognition that everything we love will die. In The Wild Edge of Sorrow Weller enumerates "Five Gates of Grief" (summarized here). The image of the gate implies something linear or sequential - you pass through one gate at a time, entering into what Weller calls "the communal hall of grief". 

I find myself at the threshold of all five of these portals. The threads of sorrow I've got ahold of feel like they're woven into the same cloth. As Weller says, citing Nye's poem, "The cloth is immense."

I recognize intimately the Second Gate: The Places That Have Not Known Love; the Third Gate: The Sorrows of the World; and the Fifth Gate: Ancestral Grief. But the warp upon which all these threads serve as weft is Weller's Fourth Gate: What We Expected and Did Not Receive – the grief of not being born into a village.

Weller quotes T.S. Eliot's lament, "Once upon a time, we knew the world from birth," and writes:

My studies these last two years at the Orphan Wisdom School have introduced me to the concept of dying as a village-making event. I've dedicated much of this current chapter of my life to tending relationships between the living and the dead and to strengthening community around the dying. I've glimpsed moments of the village showing up - beautiful, sacred moments. 

And I've also been a faithful witness to how each of these deaths - along with the burgeoning movement that seeks to "do death differently" - bears the marks of our times. 

Tugging at the thread of the sorrow of our times, a sorrow that hears the muffled but insistent sound of ancestral trauma, a sorrow that erupts as shame and self-abuse, can feel like an unraveling when there's no village to weave the larger story back together.

Seeing the size of the whole cloth is not easy. As Weller writes, "So much in this world needs our attention. So much is threatened and clinging perilously to the edge of existence. Grief is our witness to these painful realities. Grief is also our response that confirms our intimate bond with all of creation."

When I arrived to take my nine year-old niece to school yesterday, she had a job for me. "Emerald died," Josie reported. "We have to bury him." 

Emerald was a beta fish. She told me that his once-splendid tail had fallen apart and that the other fish in the tank had been attacking him. She had already laid him out in an Altoids tin and had a grave marker ready (recycled from the burial of Saski, her very first fish).

Her dad tried to give me an out - he knew I'd had a full load of family, friend, and client funeral services in recent weeks. But Josie already had me by the arm and said conspiratorially, "After all, Aunt Holly, it's what you're good at."

We dug a shovel out of the garage. Josie was pleased we'd found the yellow handled one; they'd used a trowel for Saski's burial and she had yet another tool in mind for whichever burial would come next. The idea of every one of their garden implements being employed in gravedigging seemed important to her.

She led me to a spot underneath a rhododendron bush where Saski had returned to the earth. We dug the grave, trying not to bisect any earthworms. Josie picked up each of the worms that wriggled to escape, comparing their lengths. After placing Emerald's casket in the ground we gathered petals to decorate it. She told me stories about Emerald and told Emerald stories about Saski, so that they might find each other in the spirit world.

But there was something missing. The ancient Egyptians sent their dead along with something from their lives so they wouldn't feel lost, she told me. She ran off to get a few pieces of gravel from Emerald's tank.

After those were placed I asked if she had a song for Emerald. She gave it some thought and then began a soft song of love and farewell. I joined her for a few final rounds. We covered the grave, placed the marker and some flowers, and went inside for breakfast.