77 Blind Dates and a Funeral

Elizabeth, known as "The Green Reaper," shares her journey as the first woman in Oregon to independently own a funeral home and discusses how she's transforming funeral services with eco-friendly options. She reveals how the pandemic changed death care by empowering families with knowledge about their rights and choices beyond traditional cremation or burial.

Elizabeth Fournier

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-fournier-32211b5/
• Website: http://www.cornerstonefuneral.com/
• Email: elizabeth@cornerstonefuneral.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elizabethgreenreaper/

• Families have more rights in funeral arrangements than most realize, including keeping loved ones at home longer after death
• Consumers can purchase caskets from retailers like Walmart and Costco
• Elizabeth became interested in funeral service after experiencing multiple family deaths as a child
• She conducted neighborhood pet funerals and processed her grief by creating funeral processions with toys
• Being both funeral director and daughter when her father died was especially challenging
• Despite stereotypes, many funeral directors are motivated by a desire to serve rather than profit
• Elizabeth wrote three books, including "All Men Are Cremated Equal: My 77 Blind Dates" and "The Green Burial Guidebook"
• She met her husband (the cremator at her funeral home) after completing her 77 blind dates
• Her guidebook provides practical information on alternative burial options and home funerals

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Chapters

• 0:03 Introduction to Friends from Wild Places
• 1:03 Modern Funeral Options and Family Rights
• 4:23 Elizabeth's Journey into Funeral Service
• 9:05 Personal Challenges in the Funeral Industry
• 15:24 From 77 Blind Dates to Marriage
• 21:47 The Green Burial Guidebook
• 25:16 Episode Closing

Transcript

Voiceover: 0:03

Tales from the wild, stories from the heart. A journey into the mind and soul of fired up business professionals, where they share their vision for the future and hear from a different non-profit organisation every month as they create awareness of their goals and their needs. Dive into a world of untamed passion. As we join our host, Shireen Botha, for this month's episode of Friends from Wild Places.

Tanya Scotece: 0:36

That's amazing. That's amazing. And serving your community as a female-owned funeral home offering both traditional and non-traditional options. How has your journey in funeral service been? For example, do you see any trends? Do you see any interesting things that you could share with our listeners, because most of our listeners are not in the funeral profession, so this is new for many of them.

Elizabeth Fournier: 1:00

Sure, absolutely so. I think. When someone dies, people presume the options are well, I can cremate my person or I can bury my person. So it's eye opening for people to realize there's many other choices. When people learn things such as they can get their casket from one of our larger box stores Walmart, costco, things like that people get really excited about that. Walmart, costco, things like that People get really excited about that. You can build a casket Most places in the United States. You can transport your own person to the funeral home, to the cemetery. You can actually bathe them before the funeral home comes. There's all these options. So it's interesting how that's becoming discovered.

Elizabeth Fournier: 1:45

When the pandemic came along about five years ago, that was a really hard and challenging time in funeral service. But I found so much beauty in that because people started watching YouTube videos and reading and educating themselves and checking out workshops online and all of a sudden they became armed with all this knowledge that when you have a loved one die, that's your person, you have rights, the family has so many more rights than they knew Before that people always felt well, I've got to turn the body over to the funeral home. But people are so empowered to realize. No, I can make some choices. I can tell hospice I'm not quite ready for you to call the parlor. I want to have another meal here. I want to just keep my dad home, or I want to maybe have a visitation of the house first before people come, or maybe I'll have the funeral home come, but then I want to maybe bring my person back someplace Again. It's really whatever you're comfortable with. And that's lovely, that's beautiful, beautiful.

Tanya Scotece: 2:50

Thank you, elizabeth.

Shireen Botha: 2:51

I really appreciate you sharing. I do have a question next, but I just want to add quickly a little bit of a Buzzsprout advertisement. As you I mean followers you know that we use Buzzsprout, we love Buzzsprout, and so we can't say enough good things about Buzzsprout and it wouldn't be right for us not to. We're not trying to gatekeep. So if you are trying to and you would like to start your own podcast, my advice to you just do it, and Buzzsprout is an amazing platform to use. If you're starting out and you're not sure how to get your, you know your episodes on all the different platforms. Buzzsprout will do that all for you. So Friends from Wild Places is a place where we are a safe place for business owners and professionals to come and really share their wild hearts from all over the world. We also feature non-profits, as you know, every month to really try and make a difference, and we'll get to our non-profit later on. So, listen, we're spreading our message to the world and you can too. Podcasting is very easy. It's inexpensive and really fun to expand your reach online. So if you want to start your own podcast, please follow the link in the show notes. This does let buzzsprout know that we sent you and it helps support the show. So just remember that the team at buzzsprout is passionate about helping you succeed.

Shireen Botha: 4:20

So, with that said, you know, back to you, el. Elizabeth, I'd really like to know. I'm not sure if you mentioned this already, but you've become a business owner, but your line of work being an undertaker and running a funeral home, I mean, how did we get there, like, out of all the different careers one can choose from? I mean, tanya can also probably talk in this as well, because this is her line of work as well. It's not an easy career that's just going to come across your path. There has to be some kind of experience of it initially for you to be made aware of being, you know, being a undertaker, as you put it. So, elizabeth, if you could just share with us listeners and that's just how did you get? Like what? How did you come to the decision of running your own funeral home and being an undertaker running your own?

Elizabeth Fournier: 5:24

funeral home and being an undertaker, my path is somewhat like a lot of us in the business, whereas somebody significant died in our life, and I think that happens where people will have a death and it changes how they look at life and then maybe they have a good experience at a funeral home and they'll say, oh, you know, I think I want to do this. It's not so common anymore for people to say, well, this is what mom and dad did, so yeah, I guess I'll go do it, just because there was just so many choices and it's very specific and it's definitely a very unique career. So when I was little, I had a very ill mother. Even though we moved to Portland, the illness still continued. She was very sick. My father's parents live with us. They were elderly and her and them they all passed away within a very short period of time.

Elizabeth Fournier: 6:10

So, being the kid in the house where there's a lot of deaths and I was going to the Catholic school at that time in the Catholic church and in a smaller community and you know the priest is always giving blessings at the school for the family or in the church setting or coming to the house, and there's always going to be a rosary or a vigil or a mass, and so you know it was. Just we had a deathly household there, a lot of funerals, burials, all that. So that changed my path and shaped things, because then kids would seek me out if maybe their hamster died or grandma was sick or maybe they thought something was happening. So you kind of become that go-to person for death and dying and grief, because most kids when they're 8, 10, 12, don't really have that, and we certainly didn't have YouTube or all these other Instagram places you could go. You just kind of, you know, find the person in the classroom who you think you can talk to, or on the playground.

Elizabeth Fournier: 7:10

So my walk became different. That way I would be presiding over the cat funerals in the neighborhood and then to get through my own grief, I would do things. My brother had a bunch of Hot Wheels cars and so I found myself lining them up and making a funeral procession, or I would have my Barbies dressed up and they were going to a funeral and I was definitely a blonde, sparkly, fun girl, so I never got really dark and macabre, but I had to work through and process my own grief too. I also would go visit the cemetery down the street where all my family members were buried and I would spend time and ride my bike and hang out there and it was very comforting to me and I would stand and talk to my mom's headstone and I did that really for many years until probably I was about gosh 40. I would find myself doing that all the time and going and having those conversations and that's just that's how I had a relationship with a mom.

Elizabeth Fournier: 8:05

So it started from there. I was going to go to mortuary college. My dad said, honey, you know this is a phase. Well, here we are all these years later and I worked for corporate funeral homes and for the Catholic church and had many funeral jobs throughout and loved working at different cemeteries and it was great.

Elizabeth Fournier: 8:24

But something was missing for me. And when I had the blessing and the opportunity of this little parlor in the middle of nowhere that needed someone to run it because it was going to close, I just jumped at the opportunity, and I'm so glad I did, because it wasn't one of those ta-da moments. It was a barn with a leaking roof that only had one person die a month. The person who owned it really couldn't pay me. I mean, it wasn't, I wasn't stepping into something glamorous or turn key, as you would say.

Elizabeth Fournier: 9:04

Everyone in my life said you are crazy, this is not a choice, what are you doing? But I thought to myself well, I am, in my late thirties, a female. The chance of owning my own funeral home is probably not going to happen, and so when I took this funeral home over, I was the very first woman in Oregon who owned a funeral home on her own without her husband, dad, something like that and we just kept going and going and going. And now here we are and I'm the Green Reaper, the undertaker of Boring Oregon, and it's been a just, joyous, lovely unfolding. I've met wonderful people like Dr T, that I can speak to her class and teach more Troy students and talk to them and answer questions and hopefully be very unassuming and hopefully be very realistic about it Because, again, the funeral world is whatever it is and ultimately our goal isn't to be comfortable. Our goal is to help people and to be there and be that light. And you know, silence is golden.

Tanya Scotece: 10:16

Wow, elizabeth, amazing that you I never knew that about the pets that you were the pet funeral director even in as a youngster right With the hamsters and the cats and things. Do you ever offer pet services for families who want pet funerals at your funeral home or?

Elizabeth Fournier: 10:32

not so in. As you know, in the United States, pet funeral home, people funeral home two separate things. We don't use the same crematory but I do have a chapel and if somebody wants to have their little puppy wrapped in a blanket or a casket or something, sure I can definitely offer to have people in to do that. I can't process the animal in the sense where I don't embalm it, I don't cremate it. People are welcome to use the space.

Elizabeth Fournier: 10:58

I also have a lot of smaller urns and people will stop by and they will want something for their cat and people will come in and buy um little urns for for what have you? I've had somebody once who wanted to have little containers for their goldfish. I mean, it really just depends on whatever somebody wants to do, so happy to assist, and then people will call because they'll have like their horse die. But you know, we can't really render a horse, we really can't bury a horse. Um, you can bury that on private property. I can give you the number of somebody who has a backhoe. But you're right, I'm not step by step involved in that because again I've got to keep my burial and my cremation and my um water cremation and my composting, all with humans.

Shireen Botha: 11:45

Wow, that is. That is so cool. It's actually very interesting. I think this whole line of of work is quite interesting, and I'm always so when Tanya talks about it. I'm always so glued and listening in, because I do. I think it's so interesting. You know, Elizabeth, on this journey that you've been on for so long, what would you say would have been one of the biggest struggles you've faced during this time, and could you share what that was and how you were able to get past it, and also a lesson that you've possibly learned from it?

Elizabeth Fournier: 12:28

interesting. Okay, I can give that to you two ways. One is um with families. I think the hardest part and the struggle is of the preconceived expectations A lot of families feel. If mom dies, then you're coming, you're cremating them, they can pop into the funeral home in three hours and they're ready to pick up mom. And then you have to say, oh gosh, I'm sorry, we still need to type a death certificate. There's a cremation authorization to sign and there's some steps that go into this and where that can register for a family. Oh, okay, I guess, yeah, you have to do a couple of things. They're also authorization to sign and there's some steps that go into this and where that can register for a family. Oh, okay, I guess, yeah, you have to do a couple of things. They're also very heartbroken because they thought, well, wait a second. I thought that I called the funeral home and that was it. Everything was taken care of and then mom's ready. So things like that that happened, that, I think, are just.

Elizabeth Fournier: 13:19

It's a hardship for families and had to have to kind of undo what they were telling everybody was going to happen for themselves. That's a tricky one For me personally. One hard piece I had was when my father died. We were very, very close and I was his funeral director. You know, sitting and typing his death certificate was just a really painful thing and finding you know, I really couldn't take bereavement leave and a few people had called during his funeral and I had answered the phone and they wanted to come in and just letting them know I'm actually at my father's funeral today and I won't be able to serve you till tomorrow and those families not having any compassion or understanding for the fact that this is actually my time to grieve.

Elizabeth Fournier: 14:15

And that was hard because I feel like I give my life to this job and I give 110%.

Elizabeth Fournier: 14:21

So, personally, those were some hard times where I wasn't given the grace just to say, hey, this girl's daddy died, let's just give her a moment here, she's still answering the phone, she's still doing the work, she's still making appointments, but let's just give her some grace. So that was, I think, personally, probably the hardest time for me in this job. But funeral industry is interesting. I think a lot of funeral directors get a bad rap. I think the funeral directors are sometimes seen as people who are just here to capitalize on your grief and your loss and sell you expensive things, and I've met a lot of really fine, wonderful humans in funeral service who have had a loss, or they are doing this job because they want to have a ministry or they feel that they want to give, they want to be a servant, they have a servant's heart and they want to be able to help, but it makes them feel good. So it's a very, very interesting profession you can say that again.

Shireen Botha: 15:22

Wow, elizabeth, you've written a book. Would you like to share with the listeners a little bit more about your book and how it impacted your life and those around you?

Elizabeth Fournier: 15:35

Yeah, absolutely. So I have written three. There's two that I don't talk as much about. They're memoirs.

Elizabeth Fournier: 15:45

When I was 35, I had an engagement and it broke off and I was then 36 and thought well, I'm marriage minded, I want to have a child Chop chop, better get going here. Child chop, chop, better get going here. So I put together a list of what I wanted and I gave it to friends and said I would love blind dates. I would love them to fit into this. I don't want just another date, I just don't want another boyfriend. I've got to find the one. So I would tell my father about every first date and talk about you know the book the guy was reading you know whatever I do. And after 10, 10 dates, my honey, you should write this down. This is pretty fascinating. And then, as time went on, he said honey, you should really write a book. This is great. So my first memoir is called all men are cremated equal my 77 blind dates. I did in fact have 77 blind dates in one year and I actually did get married and I'm still married. So I'm glad that worked out, glad that worked.

Tanya Scotece: 16:47

Then I wrote hold on hold, on hold on. We got a question, we got a question. 77 blind days. I'm caught 77.

Elizabeth Fournier: 16:56

I have a list of 10 points of criteria.

Tanya Scotece: 16:59

Yeah, so can you just summarize for all the single folks out there listening, like what was your experience with 77 blind dates? I mean, was it good, was it negative, was what's? Can you summarize that for us?

Elizabeth Fournier: 17:14

Yeah, yeah, thanks for asking. I'm going to say people are fascinating. I met nice people. They weren't for me but they were fine. You know, in the beginning it was really exciting. I would get excited, I would, you know, spend time on the hair. I'd be really into it. I'd share with friends and probably about blind date 15, I started wearing the same outfit. I started meeting people directly after work.

Elizabeth Fournier: 17:36

A lot of guys I have found were not very creative. Starbucks seemed like a good place. That's a you know kind of a coffee thing we go to in America and I really had a hard time meeting somebody at a Starbucks because I'm a romantic and I thought what if it worked out? But I'm always going to have to say our first date was at a Starbucks and something about that just didn't feel good to me. I wanted something a little bit more like we met at the pyramid, at the Egyptian museum, and we were, you know, talking about the Pleiades, but something like that would be a little more fascinating. A lot of these people I passed on to other friends. I would just think this guy isn't for me.

Elizabeth Fournier: 18:16

What I liked about having a list of criteria is we had the ethics, the morals, the values. A lot of that was hammered out because I didn't want to go through the whole getting to know you and then take several dates. I really didn't have time. It was chop chop. I really wanted to not go out with everybody's uncle, cousin, plumber, neighbor. I want to really have them and people did a really lovely job finding people. But you also have to have chemistry, you also have to have interest. There's got to be a spark. So I'm going to say it was positive. I would not go through that slog again If I was a single person. I don't even know if I would date again and nothing against those 77 people. Glad I did it. But I also was 36 years old and had a lot more energy and gumption and it just sounds exhausting thinking about it now.

Tanya Scotece: 19:05

Wow, all right so. So let me ask you two questions on that. A, what number was your husband? Was he? Was he 77 or was he? Was he higher up on the ladder? Where was he in the in the mix?

Elizabeth Fournier: 19:19

So that's a great question. He was actually the cremator in the funeral home where I worked. I referred to him as Creepy McCreeperson. I didn't like him. He was from New Jersey, he wore a leather jacket, he chewed tobacco, he was younger than me and he'd always kind of skulk around and ask about my blind dates and I thought, kid, you know, you're annoying, get out of here. Well, little did I know.

Elizabeth Fournier: 19:41

After my 77th blind date I went to go celebrate with a beer and a taco and as I was walking out of this wonderful place on a Friday night in Portland it was called the Hungry Skeleton, by the way, l a like a comalina. As I was walking out of there, a little female voice in my head said call Michael Potts. And I looked around because I figured it was somebody I worked with, somebody was messing with me. It was my mother's voice saying call this guy. I called him on the phone and he said I can't believe you're calling me. And I said, yeah, me either.

Elizabeth Fournier: 20:24

And we ended up meeting down the street and when I saw him I thought, wow, you're taller and cuter than I remember. And we ended up talking eight hours that night and then we had a date the next night and then about, I don't know. A year later we got engaged and there you go. So you know, life is funny like that, isn't it? This guy who I saw as this just nuisance? I just realized he had all the points on the criteria list except the age. He didn't meet the age I thought, eh, nine out of 10, not too shabby. And yeah, 19 years later, all good. So so he was, I guess, I don't know 77 plus maybe it was 78. I don't know.

Tanya Scotece: 21:04

So so the actual official date was do you consider it that a hungry skeleton? Or that was when you heard the voice from your mom that you called him. So where do you consider your first date with your husband, even though you knew him many years prior?

Elizabeth Fournier: 21:17

I'm going to say that night, cause I drove over and met him at a bar, which is, you know, not necessarily what I would randomly do if some guy says hey, I'm down the street, come meet me. You know, I'm not, that's not quite my style, but at that point I was already out. I got this, my mom's talking to me. I'm like I got to go check this out, and so there you go, wow, wow.

Tanya Scotece: 21:38

All right and share with us about your other books. That was one.

Elizabeth Fournier: 21:47

That's the one. So a little while later I wrote the Green Reaper and it's basically my life of being an eco mortician in Borough of Oregon and it talks about what it's like helping families in a green way and how I came to be a part of the community here and be a part of the funeral home and the struggles with you know when you have a funeral and you have garbage cans in the aisles because the roof is leaking. That's embarrassing. Also, got married, had a baby and then I brought the baby to work with me for the first two years. So I'm having the breastfeed while I'm answering the phone and we don't have family around here. It was a lot of trying to figure it out and then every time we went to the medical examiner, you know princess and go, you know dance around and just like all how life looks when you are a mom and pop trying to run this small business and make it happen. And then you know there's a child in the mix. And then you know all the things and it was interesting at that point too, because that's when people were needing a lot of burials in their yards. And what does it look like when you're holding a workshop where somebody is building a casket or having bereavement yoga in your chapel. So I thought, wow, this is some. Again, my father said so, this is some good stuff. You got to get it out there.

Elizabeth Fournier: 22:57

So because of him, I wrote another book about my life. I thought at one point okay, this is really ostentatious. I have two memoirs and I'm in my early 40s. This is ridiculous, so anyway. So the Green Burial Guidebook is the one that probably I'm most known for, and that is a guidebook where it says this is how you dig a grave, this is how you have a green burial, this is the anthropology of it, the history, the culture. This is how you do it, this is where things are going, this is where you can do it, this is why people do it, this is what it feels like, this is what it looks like and it's a guidebook in many libraries and all over the place. And this it's a good. Checklists are in there and it really teaches people. If you want to have a home funeral, how do you do it? If you want to find cemeteries in your area, where do you look? And it's all there.

Tanya Scotece: 23:53

Well, are your books on Amazon? Can they get them on Amazon?

Elizabeth Fournier: 24:02

Yeah, lovely. Oh, you heard. I suggest suggest to people get it from your local library or get it used. You don't have to cut down a tree to read the material oh well, oh there, you have it.

Shireen Botha: 24:08

Okay, listeners, you heard it. Uh, let me just say go out, get it, do it and read it. Uh, the green burial guidebook. I think it's quite an interesting book, I mean, even if you you know nothing about the line of work, I think it'll just be interesting read anyway. Um, those are the kind of real things that we don't deal with every day, but we we actually deal with it when family members pass away and, um, if you've experienced that, you understand all the pressure and the stress that goes in it, especially if it's a parent and there's other siblings involved, if there's a will left behind. If there's no will left behind, what goes into preparing who does what? Where does you know? Where? The whole thing. I think it'd be quite interesting to read Elizabeth's book, the Green Burial Guidebook. Go Get it Now. Thank you, elizabeth, I think that's really interesting. Tune in next week for part three of Friends from Wild Places.

Voiceover: 25:22

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