This 7-year-old has a lemonade stand to pay for her mom's tombstone
An Alabama community has been inspired by the child's selflessness.
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To be clear, there's no indication in this article that the family couldn't afford this. It sounds like they've got great family support. It also sounds like this was an activity this 7 year old took up completely independently, not because someone was like "oh no, we can't afford a tombstone." The article reads like this 7 year old is using this activity as a really positive way to cope with the loss of her mother, and then their supportive community picked up on it and ran with it.
You are correct and I just went off the title. I sometimes forget that these are usually articles I can click on.
To be clear, there's no indication in this article that the family couldn't afford this.
The article seems to indicate:
But that’s not it. Multiple local monument companies reached out to donate a tombstone to the family, and enough money has been raised to pay for her mom’s funeral costs.
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Excellently stated - you're so right. For any others who might wonder, as I did previously:
I'm tired of feel-good stories about the community pitching in to help someone overcome the bleakness of capitalism during a time of need. This shouldn't be necessary.
It's a tool of the rich who control the media.
Glad you already posted my thoughts exactly. What a terrible timeline we live in.
Individually, in a way that in no way stops other tragedies. Yeah.
Posadism's looking real good about now.
There’s a community for that.
Surprised the cops haven't been by to arrest the little girl and bust up her lemonade stand
Well she is white. They only do that to the black ones. Still pissed at the Karen who did that and for the cops for actually answering the fucking call.
So much of the community was there – police officers, a motorcycle group, judges, EMS workers, nurses – to show their support. Numerous businesses – the list is long, and it keeps growing – brought checks or pledged money to help. Others have donated clothes for Emouree and brought food.
@Fredselfish is right about race being the reason.
DYK funeral homes are being taken over by two companies, who then jack up prices. It's a duopoly. Even death is now a fucking scam.
I was a funeral director for 9 years but recently left the industry. I didn't feel like I was helping anymore. All of the 5 funeral homes in my town are now owned by 2 corporations. Courts have ruled a corporation cannot buy out all the funeral homes in one town, so these corporations work together to divide up towns.
The main concern of corporations are things like low accounts receivables, high insurance sales, high sales of packages, and corporate stock price. Our offices had TVs that displayed these stats on a loop and ranked corpoate owned funeral homes as well as their individual staff based on these numbers. Staff with subpar numbers would be given "coachings" and "retraining". I got a lot of those. I was coached not to "fall for sad stories" and how to judge what a person can afford by looking at the car they drove, what they were wearing, and slyly asking what they do for work.
Some of the coaching were beyond shady and straight up illegal. Local regulations required that we show our least expensive option to all clients. My bosses would instruct me to hide those options unless it was obvious the client couldn't afford anything else. Local regulations prevented me from making untrue statements. I was told to present our premium package that 15% of people purchased as "our most popular package". It was not. The cheap package was our most popular package, but also, most clients did not purchase a package as it was less expensive to just buy the things they wanted individually.
When I brought up that clients were unhappy, bosses would regularly tell me "So what? Are they going to go to X Funeral Home? Cause we own that one too." The entire focus was making the KPI numbers go up. I get that this is how corporations operate, but we were selling funerals not cars. It just didn't feel right.
My advice is to determine how important funeral services are to you. The modern day funeral is an idea crafted by funeral homes to make money. If you really like the idea, be prepared to pay for it, but don't feel like you have to. There's nothing wrong with organizing a small service on your own with you and close family. There's nothing wrong with not having a tombstone. Determine how important it is to you and don't let others pressure you into spending money on something you don't value.
The way we treat our dead, and the people coping with the grief of losing their loved ones is like number 2 on the sentience scale.
So practices like this, predation on recently bereaved family members is pretty much pulling the entire human civilisation backwards. It's barbaric, entirely unnecessary and completely incompatible with social living.
In a civilised society, such things would be abhorrent and the people involved would be ostracised, exiled from culture; engaging with them would have been taboo.
Good on you for leaving such a system behind. When we all subscribe to such value systems we will be far better off.
Why have you not yet named these corporations? Why have you not named your boss? You continue to serve these same interests with your silence. Shame on you for it.
I liked the Speaker for the Dead from the Ender's Game series. Instead of some guy reading off fluff about how kind they were, how they would be missed etc, they had a position called Speaker for the Dead who would speak there.
Before the funeral event, the Speaker would be like a journalist, studying to learn and understand the person who had just passed. Then the eulogy would be more of a story of the person's life, what goals they pursued through life, etc. Explain why and who the person was. Felt kind of like the difference between just seeing the grumpy man in Up, and seeing the intro to the movie to see who he was through life and why he was grumpy now.
I wish our funerals were more like that. Let me see and understand the entire life that just ended. Let them have their story one more time.
Who needs a funeral home or tombstone. I've told my family to burn me and not have a traditional funeral. I want them to spend the least money possible. Put me in a necklace, plant a tree, spread my ashes somewhere, whatever. Things that don't need to be done in a funeral home. It will be hard enough for them to go through losing their father/husband, last thing I want is to cause financial hardship.
(I'm by no means taking away from this story, it's terrible.)
FYI, cremation can still be expensive. If you are serious about spending the least amount of money possible, consider telling your family you'd like to be donated to science. But, do be aware, there can be some controversial things under the umbrella of "donated for science", and they'd have no control over what.
Can I donate my body to Disney animatronics?
Doesnt matter to me. Science can do whatever it wants with my meat when I'm through. Dissect it, preserve it, shoot it out of a cannon, stuff it and use it as a sex doll, it doesn't matter. It's not me at that point, it's just meat and bone. Although I'm probably an outlier, I never got the whole reverence for the dead thing. They're dead, literally nothing after that fact matters.
Relevant video covering the subject:
This is my take however I would be ok with my body being used for organ donation and medical research. Apart from that I don't plan on hording any reelestate in my death.
I told my wife I'd be OK with anything up to and including the body farm but it's her call. She seems to be OK with donation to science but body farm is a step too far. I'm cool with that.
On my best day this story will make me feel very sad. On a bad day I just really wish billionaires and those who aspire to be ones die (or get eaten)
My father passed in '21 we just got his headstone put in. $3700 and that was because we buried him in a private cemetery that belongs to my church and they don't have any INSANE requirements. We had to wait 8 months for the granite stone to come in from MFing Italy.
My boss's father passed and they buried him in a more... Conglomerate let's call it, cemetery and they had to buy the headstone specifically from their own people. Cost them 10k about!
It's such a freaking racquet!
My grandmother recently died and she prearranged everything, from where the service would be, to the coffin, to the plot and headstone.
I dread at what the cost would be if we had ti pay out of pocket for all of this. She had an open casket, will be buried with her husband, and so on.
It is a racket, with my dad we had him cremated and aservice and I think it was about 3k if memory serves.
awwwwtf
