FUNERAL

The Group thanks our friend Terry Cain of Messenger for this guest post. Terry is a product specialist, thought leader, and trusted advisor to funeral home owners. After 20 years with a Fortune 500 company, he came home to funeral service and purchased the family business. For almost 20 years he has represented the Messenger family of brands to the industry. Kara was only 50 when she quietly drew her last breath. Knowing her time was close did not take away the sting, but t

Deathcare has seen its fair share of bad things. Evil has somehow infiltrated a profession that prides itself on care, compassion, and integrity, and a handful of bad actors have managed to cast consumer dispersions on the countless practitioners just trying to help families through some of their hardest days. There’s no easy explanation for how or why this happens. Other than the standard motives of greed, power, stupidity, or carelessness, we don’t know the bigger reasons t

There’s no doubt that funeral directors see their fair share of unusual and/or complicated causes of death; even small-town firms will deal with the occasional case of Legionnaires’ Disease or poisoning from household chemicals or foraged plants. But deaths from Dengue fever? Hantavirus? The plague? Deaths from these diseases are so rare that they make the national news. And, sadly, each of these CODs and several others have been reported since May 2026, alarming the public

Maryville, TN - The Independent Funeral Group, a growing network of independently-owned and -operated funeral homes from across the U.S., celebrated an incredibly successful year with a record number of members and partners at The Group’s annual Fall Conference at Cloudland at McLemore resort in Rising Fawn, Georgia from September 22-24, 2026. Members of the group and their families enjoyed presentations by Brittany Godfrey, Public Education Specialist at the DeKalb County, G

This is the second in a special series that takes a deep dive into the benefits and logistics of offering witnessed cremation services to families when appropriate facilities are available — and when families are open to it. Next week, we’ll cover the flip side of last week’s closure argument, and what unwitnessed direct cremation can quietly cost a family. “I went to my Nana’s cremation, and after she went behind the curtain, there was a slight gap, and all we could see is f

He will be deeply missed, and he will be remembered with tremendous gratitude and affection. Our thoughts, prayers, and deepest sympathies are with the entire Hightower family.

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