What's up everybody, Jason here for jaspyscasebreak.com. We just sold out, 21-22, Panini Elite Basketball, six box half case break, Pikachu's number 18. And this is the second half of the case. Poor last ball mojo, got the last two teams. All right guys, so this is the second half of the case. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna rip open three boxes at a time, then we'll go through the hits. We're gonna run back and do the same thing. Three boxes right there, let's pull some big hits. Scotty Barnes, whoa, there you go, little case hit. Next up, Toronto Raptors, who has the Toronto Raptors? Lewis, there you go man. Hawaii Leonard. Alvin A's for the Washington Bullets, which would be the Washington Wizards now. Larry Markinen, Zion Willingson, Kai Jones, and we got Alperin Sengun, 10.99. DeMar DeRozan, who's just killing it right now. Jayshon Tate, Kevin Porter Jr. Yolkich, we have a redemption, Christian Wood. All right, let's kind of see these and then we'll see what the redemption is. All right, rookie yearbook autographs, card number 20, Usna Garuba, and we're gonna double check. I believe that's Houston Rock, it's correct. 23rd overall pick. All right, next box, Corey Kasper, Pimp Ops, Tijian Warren, and we have Miles McBride, the 210. And Jayden Springer, rookie yearbook to 10. Philly, gonna Danny. And Jayden Brunson, the 99. Prima. All right, third box and then we'll go to the next three boxes. Purvis Short, Impact Impressions, Golden State Warriors. Wow, and we have Jalen Green, eight out of 49 pen pals for the Houston Rockets. Danny with the Rockets. And Carl Anthony Towns, the 99. Quinn Graves. And Charles Vassie, the 99. Oh, yeah. See if Sun's autograph, hopefully. That's why they still make old school autographs. That's why they still have old school autograph players. Hollywood, and they always will be. All right, so again, this is the last half of the case, everything. We do have more lead. Actually, we only have one more case left, so number 19 and 20 will be our last case, at least for tonight or tomorrow, whenever we sell that out. Don't know if we'll get more. B-King, I think Davion, I think we, I've only seen like one numbered card of Davion that I've ever pulled. I think you and Oliver are really like, you know, the ones that have been trying to chase them, you know? It doesn't want to pop out. I remember pulling one Davion numbered card. I remember what break that was, but I haven't seen anything else, though. And I think Oliver said what Joe wasn't much either. No, Brody, I haven't seen that man. Le Veron. Josh Hart. Jack Sigma. Super Sonic's going to O.K.C. Thunder, Sean Madden. Anthony Davis. And we got a Bones. Luca Garza. Little teaser there. Detroit. Danny. Jaylen Johnson, and it's kind of sticking up right there. Let's see the bottom foil. All right, next box. Steph Curry. Dennis Rodman. That's nice. The Worm. Chicago Bulls. Matthew, that one. And a Shaq Milton. 49. 99. Westbrook. Wow. No way. One of one Josh Giddy. I would pull this. There you go. Congrats. That is for Sean Madden and the O.K.C. Thunder. Man, I so want this card, but probably out of my price range. And I don't think Sean Madden could sell it to me anyways. Beautiful, beautiful card. One of one. And that is a big hit right there. I would pull my O.K.C. Thunder. More Thunder. Lou Dort. I have no idea. I haven't even looked through to see what these go for, to be honest.  That is a pretty nice card. Brandon Clark. Scotty Barnes. Nice box. Lamella Ball. And Andrew Wiggins to 49. Bobby Portis. Number 2149. James Booknett. I'd probably think a couple thousand, too. I have no idea what the numbered cards are going for. And then multiply them, et cetera, et cetera. But I would think a couple thousand. And it's a good return on the investment, right? Because the boxes are only like 350 or so. Brian Gray. So the early bird promo doesn't mean that you're getting extra spots. It means that the first 18 spots that are sold will be put into a randomizer before we start the break and one customer out of the 18 win a free spot in the break. So it doesn't mean if you buy a spot, one of the first 18, you're guaranteed a free spot. It's more that if you're an early bird, you get an opportunity to win a free spot. Doesn't mean you're guaranteed a spot. And Kai Jones. And more Kai Jones. Alrighty, guys, well there you go. That was a break. That was a great ending. I had a feeling after doing the first case that there should be some bigger rookies in here. And yes, there was. Yes, there was. So I'm happy to that happen. I pulled one of my favorite players right now on my thunder. Okay, see Josh Giddy, one on one. We put some nice rookie autographs as well. The case that Scotty Barnes was there. Casper had a 10 right there. Jayden Springer, Jaylin Green. This is a pretty nice half-case there right here. I got a top of the rest of these autographs here, but I appreciate you guys. And there's that Josh Giddy again, uno of uno. Very nice. Again, number 19 and 20 are from a fresh case. Number 19's on the website. Potentially do one of those later tonight if you guys want. JasperysCaseBricks.com, I appreciate you guys.


Everybody Matt here for late in sports cards ripping one box of 2023 tops archives signature series baseball retired player edition This is for Jason H. Good luck. This is from tops total. That is eight of 15 auto Eric. Gagne.  I don't think before this product. I'd ever pulled a gun. Yeah, Otto All right, there you go Jason that'll do it for your box appreciate it. We'll get that right out to you


QuickBooks Online 2024. Record purchase of fixed asset, otherwise known as depreciable assets, property, plant and equipment or PP and E. Get ready and some coffee because we get work done on time with QuickBooks Online 2024. Here we are in our get great guitars 2024. QuickBooks Online sample company file we set up in a prior presentation. We're going to be opening up our major financial statement reports like we do every time reports that are on the left hand side. We're in the favorites right click it on the balance sheet open link in new tab right click on the profit and loss open link in new tab and the trial balance right click open link in a new tab. If you don't have the trial balance in your favorites you can search for it up here but I think it deserves to be there if you don't have the balance sheet and the profit and loss in your favorites then you're just wrong okay it's not a matter of opinion those two are everyone's favorites those are the main financial statement reports first a word from our sponsor yeah actually we're sponsoring ourselves on this one because apparently the merchandisers they don't want to be seen with us but but that's okay whatever because our merchandise is better than their stupid stuff anyways like our trust me I'm an accountant product line yeah it's paramount that you let people know that you're an accountant because apparently we're among the only ones equipped with the number crunching skills to answer society's current deep complex and nuanced questions if you would like a commercial free experience consider subscribing to our website at accountinginstruction.com or accountinginstruction.thinkific.com so get over it and fix it so I'm going to close up the hamburger on the second tab and we're going to change the range just for the first month of 2024 first month of operations in the new software a one oh one two four tab oh one thirty one two four tab run it to refresh it we'll then tab to the right close up the hand boogie and we'll range to the change oh one oh one two four tab twelve thirty one two four tab running it to refreshing it again nothing's in it and we'll tab to the right close up the hand boogie again and alter the base one more time oh one oh one two four tab uh not twelve oh one thirty one two four and run it to refresh it that's what we have thus far let's go to the balance sheet give a quick recap of what we have done we started up our new company file in QuickBooks we laid down the foundational items typically found in the cog up top like the company preferences and the lists chart of accounts as well as the products and services contacts such as the customers vendors and employees and now we're thinking we also entered our beginning balances imagining we're pulling this information from a prior accounting system and now we're doing our first month of data input imagining the first steps we do are those often done for a new business and that would be or one that is growing so we have transactions also that aren't likely to be part of the normal cycle because we first have to set up the business making purchases such as purchasing the inventory and property plant and equipment in order to be purchasing inventory and property planting equipment we first need the cash so how did we get the cash on the books if you're a new business well you could take out a loan in which case you'd be the other side would be going to liability that's how you could finance the business you could put it in yourself as the owner or you could take on another owner possibly being a partnership and see if you can get some investment from another owner or incorporate in which case you can get it from another owner in the form of them purchasing the stocks for example now once we have the money we we then now have our checking account have stuff in it we took some of that money and we put it into a short-term investment just to hold on temporarily until we're going to be spending it and now what we want to do is start making our purchases of the fixed assets note that the fixed assets you can think of as basically investments the their long-term assets that you have in the business they're the things they're going to help you to be generating the revenue now the fixed assets is another area where we would think well is there a normal form for the purchase of fixed assets in our plus button up top no there's not right there's not a normal form for the purchase of the fixed assets you might be saying well it's a check form or an expense form or possibly a bill form we might be able to use those forms but notice that the purchase of the fixed asset is not typically something that we do as a normal cyclical process when we think about the expense form check form or bill form the thing usually that comes to mind on those forms would be us paying for expenses utility bill the the supplies the inventory that we're purchasing as a normal type of cycle system when we think about buying a building for example which is the most extreme example or land well that doesn't happen all the time if we were a guitar shop and we sell guitars we don't always buy buildings so that's not something that we typically have a form for so then the next question is well how what form should we use to be recording something like the purchase of a building well if cash is affected we can use the cash forms like the expense form and the check form or the check register or the the bank feed system however sometimes you don't pay cash right possibly you financed the purchase of equipment in that case you might have to default say to a journal entry now in this first month we're going to do more more systems where we have cashed based systems and then in the following month we'll do some more that is going to be accrual or do not have the cash base so in our case we actually got the cash here that's why we put it here so we can pay the cash for the purchase of the equipment so we already basically took out the loan we didn't take out the loan to finance the equipment directly but took out a business loan got the money and now we're going to spend it on the equipment so equipment's a little bit different as well because it's going to be a fixed asset a lot of times many small businesses like to think i want to be on a cashed based system and they feel like they don't want to do any accrual thing because the cash based system might be the easiest thing to do and if you have the capacity to do that that might work great because then you can use the bank feeds to record transactions as they come through on a cashed based system but even if you're a small business and you have a schedule c you're going to have to do some accrual things because there's just such an extreme deviation between a cash based system recognition and accrual based recognition that it makes sense to use the accrual number one and number two if you do taxes in the united states the tax code is going to force you to do that and the fixed assets is one of those things let me kind of explain why if for example you were to purchase a building for a one hundred thousand dollars in january you just expensed it as building expense that would mean that the other side of the transaction would be on the income statement if you then ran the income statement comparing month to month january and february january would look like a very bad month because you would have a hundred thousand dollar building expense bringing net income into a big loss most likely but that's not really correct because when we're trying to measure performance we did not really have a huge loss because we're going to use that building for like 30 years into the future that's why the accrual method is important because it helps us with that comparative process for those large purchases so so it makes sense most times when people buy a building even if they pay cash for it they don't think i'm just going to expense that because that would be weird because it just intuitively know that that doesn't sound right it doesn't sound right because you're doing the accrual thing by putting it on the books as an asset so we put it on the books as an asset and then how do we expense it we expense it in the form of depreciation over time over the life of the building we talked a little bit last time about the fact that depreciation is not perfect because we're only allocating the cost and we notice we noticed that we could have a difference between the fair market value and the cost right it's just going to be an estimate so let's just think about how we can do that note that when you're when you're purchasing a building then you would want to have a sub ledger a sub ledger that's going to break out what you're actually purchasing in part because you might sell it in the future and you'd have to take it off the books as an asset and in part because you're going to have to calculate the accumulated depreciation now oftentimes small businesses in particular might not do that within the quick books system and one reason is because you have to do it for taxes anyways if you're in the united states which means the tax software is going to have to have each piece of equipment on line by line so that it can calculate depreciation not on a book basis but a tax basis but the fact that you've already given that information into an accounting system means that you could use that same accounting system that same software to also calculate the book basis if you want it to be different or simply use the tax basis as your depreciation method which might be appropriate for small businesses so if you give this information to your accountant then their tax software might look something like this right this would be supporting the information on our books in a similar way as the sub ledger of accounts receivable will break out the ar by who owes us the money by customer so for example here we could say okay the cost of the equipment i don't want to have it on my sub ledger as just one big lump sum of the equipment i'd read i need to break it out by what we purchased so these are the things we purchased as of the beginning balance so we had 15 plus 23 plus 12 plus 5 plus 2 plus 3 plus 7 plus 8 that gives us our 75 that is here so there's our 75000 right so that's going to be our our beginning balances we had up through up through the prior year now in the current year when we make purchases which we're imagining we're doing now we're going to we're going to purchase more equipment uh if we purchase multiple pieces of equipment we don't want to put it on our sub ledger schedule as just say furniture and equipment generic account and one lump sum we're going to put it on the books as what we actually purchase like an office desk and we're going to have furniture office table we just made up some stuff here uh but just note that when you work with your accountant in order to get the proper depreciation calculation you're not going to have to give them you can't just give them one lump sum you want to give them as much detail as you can so they can put the information on the books line by line now i also just want to point out that you might say well why does that matter because i could just put it on the books as one lump sum and the depreciation calculation will basically be the same because there's a mid-month convention so it doesn't really matter however it doesn't matter too much possibly in the year that you put the equipment on the books but if you put all this stuff in your sub ledger as one line item and then you sold one of those items that you've grouped together now in the sub ledger let's say you sold the office chairs then you're not going to be able to record the sale easily because you'll have to break out the information and so and into its components right so so it won't hit the stuff won't hit the fan it's kind of like payroll you want to get it right the first time uh things are going to hit the fan not when you put it on the books but when you start to sell and dispose of things because you'll find that you will not be able to locate the thing that you're disposing on the sub ledger or that thing will have been grouped together with other things so make sure you're working with some tax professional that knows what they're doing with regards to the sub ledger so you don't end up with a mess now the depreciation methods over here note that if you're on tax depreciation you're probably going to use the you know acres or whatever the tax basis uh will be and you might just use that as your book basis even though it's not exactly accurate you might have 179 deductions that allow you to deduct a lot upfront or special depreciation and you and so you might just say on the book side i'm just going to use that tax depreciation even though it's not really accurate for bookkeeping because the tax code has different objectives because it's easy otherwise i'll have two depreciation methods or you can tell your accountant hey look you're doing this schedule already on the tax return i would like you also to tell the software that on the book side of depreciation i want to do something different possibly like a straight line a normal straight line depreciation in which case they can give you a sub ledger for your books which will be different than the sub ledger for the taxes also this sub ledger usually for tax software will have specific sub categories like machinery like furniture and fixture and machinery and equipment in this case so when you're buying things on your side and grouping them into property planting equipment you want to have the same sub categories as the sub ledger which will often be in outside software in the tax software so ask your accountant what are the sub the sub ledger accounts because as we saw when we looked at the general ledger the things given from quickbooks are really expansive and kind of tedious looking and possibly are not the format that you might want to use if you're using tax thought software as your sub ledger you want to kind of tie into the sub ledger from the tax software then as we do that also just realize that you could have an accumulated depreciation account that represents total accumulated depreciation meaning all depreciation for all categories that would be kind of like the easiest thing to do but i think most likely most people would probably break out the accumulated depreciation by category okay so just a couple tips as we go through as we go through this so let's say we're we're purchasing equipment in practice we might actually just write a check right we might go in here and write a check for it or have an electronic transfer at which point we would record it at that time or we might use bank feeds meaning you might be purchasing something from an office supply store which you normally just expense as office supplies but you have a large purchase now we're going to say $18,000 which would look funny if you just expense it in office supplies so when you look at the bank rules which we'll talk about in future course or section when we look at the bank feeds you might want to set a boundary and say the rule is if you're under a certain dollar amount like just a random dollar amount like five thousand or something or you know even whatever it is i'm going to just expense it if it's over that dollar amount which is an arbitrary dollar amount right we're just trying to make it simple we have to draw a line somewhere if it's over that dollar amount i want you to not just expense it and possibly put it on the books as a fixed asset okay so but we're going to go to the first tab now and we could record it with an expense form but i i think it will be easier to go to the register so let's practice using the registers which are similar to the bank feeds which will still create an expense form let's go into the register here but it will do that that shortened data input which will hopefully help us to get the idea in the checking account chart of accounts checking account and we'll get the idea that that the register will will be still creating the actual full form of in this case we're going to use uh an expense form so i'm going to go expense and then we'll say this happened as of 010924 we're going to say and the payee we're going to say that we bought it from office depot i just bought some of furniture from office depot but someone stole it right off my porch i think pretty sure it's pretty crazy got some crazy kids around here i don't know furniture we're going to say payment it was a nice chair too i could sit indian style in it that's what i wanted so i can try to sit like indian style it could my legs get tired but whatever whatever it didn't have any arms on it so my knees don't hit any case furniture and equipment so we're going to say it's furniture and equipment point is it's going into a fixed asset type of account it's going into a fixed asset type of account and so there we have it what's this going to do decrease the checking account by 18 000 it's going into uh the fixed asset account no impact on the income statement so notice other purchases and often when we use the expense form it would go to the income statement account but it's not here we're going to save it and check it out let's go on to the balance sheet run it again to see what's happening with it and drill down on the check-in account and we can see the new activity new activity there it is the expense form name office depot we put purchase furniture and the other side went to furniture and equipment if i go into that expense form it doesn't take us to the register it takes us to the full expense form which looks like this so there's the category it's not an inventory item it's a category but it's not an expense even though we use an expense form because the expense form is basically just a check without the check number let's close this back out and go back the other side of course in our fixed assets now for the furniture and the equipment so if i go into that one we've got the 93 and there's the activity so just realize now the the thing we want to realize like with this sub schedule which you might feel overwhelmed about you're like well this is crazy sub ledger how how do we maintain this thing if it's not in quickbooks for example well on a periodic basis possibly at the end of the year or even monthly or even whenever you buy the equipment you can provide this information to your accountant so possibly at your end for small businesses you're going to give your accountant this information or possibly give them access to your quickbooks file where they can drill down and find this information so that they can put this new piece of equipment on their books but remember that 18 000 might be standing for not just my one chair it stands for all a bunch of office stuff right so we don't want them putting it on the books as just one lump sum purchase if it actually represents as we're imagining here separate purchases like there's the office desk table there's my chair right there we have to write it off as a as a shrinkage already but you know there's that's the idea and then we also have these two down here plus three plus two we're going to be putting 28 on there in a second so this doesn't tie out exactly but i think we're going to be adding 28 000 after we do the next one as well but the point is you don't want to put it on there as one lump sum even though we purchased multiple things at one time because like i say if i now now once my much my chair was stolen it's like well what am i going to do if i put it on there as one lump sum then how am i going to take the chair off the books because i have to find the related accumulated depreciation to properly remove it from the books so that means that on on quickbooks you might want to give as much description as you can in here possibly in the memo to describe what you purchased and this is also an area where it might be useful to actually take a screenshot or a pdf shot of the of what you purchased so that you can then provide that to the accountant so they have the details and if there's any kind of if any kind of number related to it like the product number or something like that they can put it here so that when you when you sell the chair or when there's shrinkage or something stolen you can identify the actual thing that was stolen it's got its own line item so that you can then take the chair off the books properly right so you want you want to be careful of that so so you might actually so all the accountant needs then is the added information the additional stuff because you don't buy new equipment all the time i was expecting that chair to last me like 10 years right i don't buy chairs that often so like you know you don't buy it all the time therefore there's not going to be as much activity in this count much different than the cash account which has a ton of activity and therefore the accountant or the tax preparer can see that limited activity and get the backup information and just add to the schedule that looks tedious but has been growing over a long period of time now you also have to make them aware of the shrinkage by the way the things that are stolen for example so if i saw that my office chair was stolen the accountant wouldn't know that right so i'd have to actually tell them that i no longer have the office chair you need to take it off the books you know you have to tell them the decreases as well so they can fix that one or or we can do the jewelry for that okay so that's that one let's do another one let's make another purchase we still got some cash in there so let's make another purchase i'm going to go back to the left hand side and we'll go in here again in our register and i'm going to make this one as of the 11th let's say notice i hit the plus button to go up a little bit and then this time i'm going to buy it from amazon we at our place we've got this new amazon this new lock box system so they're supposed to deliver it to the lock box but the people never do but then i put like a message in the amazon to use the lock box but it didn't work last time because then fedex delivered it instead of amazon and fedex delivered it wrong again so but whatever and then it got stolen but that's okay i'm just going to say this is going to be so you might want to put in the memo like this is my chair that this chair number two that i'm purchasing again and then we're going to say it's for seven thousand dollars and this is an expensive chair or multiple maybe we have multiple things here this my chair is just one of the things on there is chair number two plus other stuff which i don't really care about right now and then we're going to say that it's going to go to the furniture and fixture account obviously in practice this information is going to be it's going to be you want it as detailed as possible so that you can give it to your account so i'm going to say okay now if i go back into this by the way if i go into here and i edit this form then down below you could add attachments so if you're working with your tax preparer you're going to say hey look this is what i purchased here's the generic category that seven thousand actually represents multiple things take a look at the attachment so you can see the bill or invoice for it so that you can properly put it on the books breaking out the detail as you should so that if something gets stolen or something i can write it off properly without having a a mess going around here so so at least i can do that much at least i have control over that much making the accounting proper so let's go to the balance sheet and run it and check it out again back into the checking account and we're going to say that we now have the expense amazon boom let's go in here now notice how much activity is in the checking account because the checking account is something that we use all the time so if i go into that account that we go back to our our expense form with us which is the long format closing that back out and back notice that the checking account will have a lot of activity accounts receivable will not have as much activity typically but it will be used constantly if you invoice clients increasing with invoices decreasing with the received payments inventory also not nearly as much as activity as the checking account but it will start to accumulate a lot of activity over the year as you purchase and sell inventory investments probably won't have a lot of activity the furniture and equipment will not have a lot of activity because you're not going to be purchasing stuff all the time here and that's why again it's a it's not as difficult to manage as you might think because this might be all of all that we purchase in the entire in the entire year so there's our seven thousand that we can then provide to the accountant who at the end of the year can put it on the depreciation schedule and then they can properly calculate the depreciation either on a tax basis or they will do it on a tax basis to do the tax return which we can either use or we can also have them use a straight line method that we can then use to do adjusting entries on our side so so I think what did I say the total added up to again where's my calculator uh 28 28,000 so if I go over here we put what happened okay I'm actually going to make a correction I think we need to make a correction to this one this one right here and I'm going to I did this on purpose by the way in case you were wondering so that we can show you that we can drill back down to the source document and correct this one so this 18,000 I'm going to drill back down onto it and then say the dollar amount was wrong it should be 16,000 I couldn't read my worksheet because my eyes are going bad a little bit actually I'm trying to work out my bad eye that's right my good I would have caught it but I'm working out my bad eye so that's how that's why but let's go ahead and save it and then but I did it on purpose that's not why I did it on purpose but also I'm also working out my bad eye okay so there we have it so there it is so so then this should tie out then uh to to what we have on the purchasing side of things over here and we will uh and so so there there's that and then later we're going to also have to deal with the accumulated depreciation that's typically done with an adjusting entry so adjusting entries are typically done at the end of the month or year so we'll talk about how to do that but the general concept is you put it on the books as an asset and and therefore you're going to have to allocate the cost of it because machinery and equipment will actually still be consumed over time so you would think it would be kind of like supplies or inventory that you would decrease this account and record like equipment expense over here as you consume it but instead we don't do that we used accumulated depreciation and depreciation expense why well partly possibly because the it's just an estimate if I bought a forklift I still have the same forklift on the books but now I'm thinking it's worthless because we've used it and therefore the value of it is going down I don't know how much it's actually worth though therefore I'm not going to I'm not going to post to the actual account as though I had less forklifts because I have the same one but instead record another account which might give an indication to people that this is just an estimate so the difference between these two accounts therefore is the book value but the book value is just an estimate and and and and therefore that kind of gives an indication that it's an estimate so it's a little bit more complex than just writing down this account itself but that's kind of the justification that's why we end up with this contra asset account which is an asset account that basically brings assets down has it has an opposite balance okay so this is where we stand right now this is our balance sheet as of this point in time after the correction nothing yet on the profit and loss still because we're still purchasing stuff to really get in the swing of things for the first month of operations in our new accounting software here's our trial balance easiest form to use I believe to compare your books to our books if your numbers don't tie out to these numbers try changing the date range possibly increasing it because it's often a date issue if you see the numbers change drill down on the number find the transaction go to the source of it such as the expense form change the date and then run it back again so we have up top we've got the assets checking account accounts receivable inventory investments and then the accumulated depreciation there's the contra asset that's why it's a credit like where all the other assets are debits there's the furniture and equipment that we changed this time here's the liability starting with the accounts payable then the credit card balance due then the loan and then the equity section which includes our investment as well as the owner's equity representing income that has accumulated over the life of the company before we started it in this books in the prior accounting system which has not yet been distributed in our case in the form of draws if it were a corporation that would be in the form of dividends


My hope is that at the end of this evening that all of you will have perhaps a lot of questions answered, maybe learn something new and perhaps have time to share some funny stories actually from our industry. So I think with that said, I thought during the course of the day, you know, what should I start with, you know, because we have different speakers. And I thought, let me perhaps just share some San Francisco history, you know, funeral related. While I don't have any props to show, but I've had this little sheet of paper on my desk from 1967, long before computers, the gal at the San Francisco Health Department. She used to type out manually all the funeral homes on this list and she had a little graph to month by month how many permits or in other words how many funerals each funeral home was handling. And the interesting thing on this little sheet of paper is in 1967, we had 41 funeral homes listed in San Francisco. 41. Today we have eight.   And so in my 40 years, I thought, well, let me just kind of maybe talk about from a historical standpoint, you know, what's happening while, you know, as a young man, you know, starting an apprenticeship in Portland 40 years ago, I served in an embalming apprenticeship there. And I came to San Francisco where I continued another two-year embalming apprenticeship, became licensed as a funeral director and I initially started with a very, very traditional setting. You know, my employer back in those days owned five funeral homes in the Bay Area. Three of them were in San Francisco. And back in those days it was largely, you know, different ethnic groups, different religious groups, you know, that we all primarily cater to. And I would say by and large those were predominantly traditional burials with a little sprinkling of cremations here and there. Fast forward, you know, 40 years later, this is now just kind of the opposite. Now we have, you know, predominantly cremations with a sprinkling of traditional services. So as a funeral director, as a manager, you know, I handle all of these different groups. And I think still kind of representing the traditional funeral home. I think I probably won't spend any time talking about what others here are doing. But yes, times have changed. And I would like to maybe talk about the importance of, you know, what happens, you know, when you pass away? We have people dying more and more at home. You know, years ago, I would say maybe a couple of decades ago, people were primarily dying in nursing homes and in hospitals. Today we have thanks to hospice. More and more people are passing away at home. Sometimes they're under hospice care. Today I had a gentleman that walked into our office and his dad passed away. And I said, oh, okay, where's he at? I just assumed he must be in a hospital. And he said, no, no, he's still at home. And I said, oh, okay. I said, was he under hospice care? And he said, no, no.  So I had to walk him through this whole process. You know, what happens, you know, once that one dies unexpectedly at home, you know, which is a big, big difference.  Their job will be to confirm that dad has passed away. I said, I'm a funeral director. I'm not a paramedic. I'm not a doctor.  So I said, that's what they're going to do. And I said, but before they leave, they will already dial the San Francisco Medical Examiner's office. And I said, so probably an hour or two, you will get a white van pulling up. And the deputies that will show up at your residence, their job now will be to decide what has happened to the deceased. You know, was this a natural death? You know, was this, was there an accident? Was this a homicide, a suicide? So those deputies will start asking you questions, you know, did dad see a physician? And it will be their call essentially to decide, will they take the deceased down to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy, for an investigation? Or will they release the body to the family's funeral home of choice? So that's what happens, you know, when you pass away at home. I would say one of the things that I'm really passionate about, that I have seen in the city, you know, where we don't necessarily have, you know, especially a few years ago, a lot of untraditional families or relationships. I would get on every month, individuals coming in here trying to make an arrangement for a loved one. They had no legal relationship to this individual. They didn't have power of attorney. They were not related by blood.  You have no legal authority to make any sort of arrangement. And unfortunately, over the years I have watched these individuals having to contact a natural family, perhaps in another state, coming into San Francisco and having to make an arrangement for a son, for a daughter, that oftentimes did not reflect that which the deceased would have wanted. And I thought this is so terrible. I've seen so many terrible services, I have to say, that I would just cringe. And so years ago, you know, being a member of the Upper Market Merchants Association, we had workshops. And I've encouraged different merchants and friends and neighbors. You really have to understand the importance of having at least power of attorney for health care, perhaps for finances.  And it's hugely important. I think everyone in this panel will confirm that in the state of California, when someone passes away, the legal decision maker, according to Health and Safety Code 7100, is if the deceased himself, he or she did not make those arrangements with some funeral home, then it's whoever has this advanced health care directive. It also has power of attorney for health care. So that individual, the buck stops with them. That supersedes any other relationship, be it a spouse, siblings. So it's hugely important. And I would really, really like to encourage everyone. This is a free form that you can just download, but it's a very, very important form. And it's surprising how many people don't have this form in place. And if you don't, again, you're having to leave this up to a natural family to make decisions for you. So anyways, that's something I just thought, let me just convey this. And as far as I think changes that I have seen, you know, even though we have gone really from very, very traditional services, you know, I still handle lots of traditional services, but these are primarily pockets in San Francisco of different ethnic groups or different religious groups that still have a strong feeling on the traditional service. That's where we exist as a funeral home. We still handle lots of untraditional services. I would say the cremation rate for us is probably now like at 70%. We shipped bodies this last week. We had a family that came from the Ukraine. They had a son that was not well. They were not able to help him in this country. So I had to send this four-year-old boy back to Kiev. I had a gentleman that just got off the airplane from Germany, and he died just after he checked into a hotel. I had to send him back to Germany. I had a middle-aged lady that was visiting from India, and I had to send her back to India. So these are some of the functions that, you know, we still do as a traditional funeral home. You know, I have to work with consulates or with embassies. My job is to know international shipping laws because each country has different varying laws. So that's basically my function as a San Francisco funeral director. I'm kind of a dying breed, if you will, because of changing times, you know. While I have high respect in a Claudette who works for the Will Body program, both of us used to work together, and it can perhaps even share a story. You know, because Claudette speaks Spanish, I historically handled three different convents in San Francisco. Two of them are cloistered convents where the nuns never, Catholic nuns never leave the building. And so I would have to come in with our staff, and Claudette, who spoke Spanish, and a lot of these nuns spoke Spanish, were very useful, you know, where up until a few years ago, one of the nuns would pass away. They didn't want for the nun to leave the convent. They wanted for us to prepare the body and embalm them there. So my late employer, the late Mr. Sullivan, would prepare the body there. Nowadays, we would bring the body to the mortuary, have the nun prepared, brought back on a gurney, and Claudette would help us dress there in the convent. And anyways, I see that I'm being told that my time is up. Anyways, I'll be happy to answer any questions, and thank you all for coming here. And as I said, I hope you guys will get some answers to some questions that you may have had. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Janeth Gomez. I work with Furnwood Cemetery.  What happens to our body when we die? Imagine your life being celebrated by your loved ones. This is our chapel. Where will you be buried in a meadow or amongst trees? One of the benefits of green burial is conservation and restoration of land. Natural burial grounds involve practicing land stewardship and restoration planning. Furnwood practices sustainable and ethical burials in addition to protecting open space, wildlife, and natural habitat of the grounds. They are a national wildlife federation certified wildlife habitat. This is part of our, we have, traditional as well as green burial. This is what you normally see, traditional gravestones. When you go to your common cemeteries, this is usually the site that you will see. At Furnwood and Green Burial, your body is shrouded in woven natural fabrics, such as cotton, linen, bamboo, or silk. This body is shrouded, there is no casket, there are no liners. You're lowered into a grave. Some people, one of the things about green burial is there is no chemicals, no metal, no plastic goes into the ground. Your loved ones are able to place flowers or other biodegradable items with you. Through green burial, you're closer to the earth, a part of the earth, with no concrete vaults or metal caskets separating you from nature. Fresh graves appear mounded but flatten with time as the body naturally decomposes and unifies with the earth. Tyler Cassidy created Furnwood to be a place where memory, ecology, and community thrive, a place where burial and cremation rituals are interwoven with land stewardship and restoration. Furnwood is a test of the revolutionary notion that cemeteries could use burial as a means to conserve and protect natural spaces and land. The way he came up with this concept was in 2004, he visited and was inspired by the woodlands burial lands outside of London, England. He saw that green woodland burial was viable and was attractive in a cremation dominant culture. It wasn't until the Civil War when bodies were being transported from battlefield to home that current funeral practices such as embalming became popular. So in many ways, green burial are simply a return to traditions of the past and some religious groups adhere to those practices even today. Green burial is different from natural burial. Natural burial strictly refers to the burial process. Green burial is a burial process as well as the cemetery in which the burial occurs. A green burial cemetery was meet certain eco-friendly criteria. Again, green burial does not involve using formaldehyde, a known carcinogen that poses health risks to the people who work in funeral homes. Nontoxic materials are used for sanitation and preservation such as orange blossom, rosewater and essential oils. As you look across in a green burial cemetery you'll see several stones that look like they're just a part of the landscape. What they actually are are gravestones. One of the things that we do is we don't use traditional. It's traditional granite. They're usually unfinished stones. This is just an example of stones that families are able to choose from or bring in one of their own. Fernwood also has a scattering garden. So there are people that if they don't want to be buried they're able to just have their ashes scattered in this garden and your family is able to come and visit. And I'll be available after for questions. Thank you. Hi there. My name is Jerry Grace Lyons. I live in Sebastopol, California. And my journey began in 1994. I was doing a completely different career job of type of body work at a medical center and a friend who was a nurse and a Reiki master went to work one morning and to take care of an 80-year-old woman. And after breakfast said she wasn't feeling well. They called 911 and the paramedics came quickly but they weren't able to resuscitate her. She was 56 years old and she had a history of asthma and they pronounced her on the way to the hospital. But in her wallet they took her purse with her and in her wallet they found a card that said in the event of my death call this person Norma Wilcox in San Francisco. The woman who died, Carolyn, lived in Santa Rosa but had been close friends with Norma for over 20 years. And so they called Norma and told her and Norma phoned somebody up in our area and quickly the word got out. And we all met at Carolyn's home that night and Norma explained to us that Carolyn had written out her instructions of how she wanted to be taken care of when she died. And those instructions said she did not want to be sent off to a mortuary. She wanted her friends to bring her home from the hospital if that's where she died. That she wanted those friends to wash her body and dress her and do ceremony with her in her own home and to play this music that she loved and have flowers that she loved around her and take care of her body there.  I mean we were not only in grief and shock over her sudden death but now we're finding out that we're going to bring her home and take care of her body. And we had never heard of that. I'm curious to know how many in this room have heard of people taking care of their own loved one at home. Quite a few of you. And of those hands that went up were any of those people recently cared for at home or how many of those were taking care of more recently where you've actually seen them in the home? Just one or two. So for the most part these are stories perhaps you heard of parents or grandparents who used to do this.  So this was my first experience and I along with all our friends did not know that it was legal to do this. So we brought her home and we had this most incredible experience caring for her body in a very personal, very intimate and very loving way. And we found it wasn't hugely difficult. It was just like washing the body of a friend or a relative who is sick and you are giving them a bed bath. That's what we did. And we did it in a very loving and honoring way. And then we had her at home and we had let other people know that she had died suddenly and after we cared for her body people started to come by to say their goodbyes and to pay homage to do what people do when they are in deep grief and we had ceremony there just like Caroline asked for. We brought her out into the living room on a little futon mattress and we sat around her and we told stories, we laughed, we cried, we talked about how we knew her and many experiences we had with her. And then we took her to the crematorium on the third day and there they had a box prepared for us to place her in and they cremated her. So that was my initiation into this work and it was so profound for me such an awakening for me that this was something you could do that really helped all of us deal with our grief and deal with our shock to be able to touch her body in this loving way and carry her right to the crematorium was very, very special and amazing and I started thinking about why more people weren't doing this and how precious that time was that we had caring for her body and getting used to the fact that she was dead because it was impossible for our minds to accept her death instantly. We just can't do that as human beings. We hear this information and we kind of go into shock but it's hard to take it in that the person is no longer alive. Well this led me on a whole journey and a year and a half later started a non-profit called Vinyl Passages and today I have and my husband and a number of other people that we now have in a core council that we are training as interns we have all guided over 400 families through family directed home funerals. The family has the legal authority to make all of these decisions and that authority is given to us in a little booklet that's put out in every funeral home in the state of California on page 7 I think it is it's called Home Death Care and you can find it online through the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau in the state of California and it says that families can make their own arrangements care for the body at home and they can even fill out and file the death certificate and the disposition permit documents that need to be filed with our state of California the county in which the person died and that you can then transport the body to a crematorium or cemetery of your choice. So this has been an incredible, incredible journey it was really hard when I began because it has just been enough generation since we all cared for our own loved ones because people had forgotten that you could or what it was like or how to begin or even feel comfortable at home doing it and I recognize that right away so that's when I formed a group at my home and we started going out and talking to families and guiding them once we found out all the laws and how to stay within the law and how to fill out the paperwork correctly we could then teach the families how to guide them through this and then each family that we helped would go through it and have the same transformative experience that I had with Carolyn every single one of them at the end said I can't imagine doing it any other way now that I've been through this in this way just a family we helped last week the women said at the end I had no idea how comforting it would be to have my beloved home with me for a couple of days past her death and there's no time limit so in California you have unlimited time most families keep someone at home three days but we've had four or five and six day weeks we use dry ice to preserve the body and it does a very very good job and again we're educating the family on how to do all of this and we're walking beside them so they feel comforted and know what to do so I'm just going to show you a few quick slides so you have a sense of what a home funeral looks like this is a pine box that one of our young women she was 32 when she died she bought the pine box from a woman who makes plain pine boxes and she began to stencil it with the help of her friends people can decorate the cardboard cremation casket in whatever way they want so this is a group of family members doing just that they painted it green because it was just brown cardboard and then they started decorating it this is their person after they washed his body and dressed him and brought him in to a certain room in the house and decorated him with flowers and you can see he's looking very honored there young man, the 11 year old Jules his 38 year old mother died from melanoma and he and all his friends were decorating the box these are just a way of people expressing their grief through art therapy you can decorate the box any old way you want and we've seen hundreds and hundreds of different ways this person was a quilter so her friends all took different squares and all made it look like a quilt children love to participate in the home funeral they find their role in every different way I had a 5 year old lead someone into a room and tell the persons they could sit there talking to her grandfather and said it's okay you can sit here and talk to grandpa it's just fine and children love to decorate that's the inside of the box where the person was going to be lying in honor these people used Day Kapaj this young woman decorated the inside of the caskets her mother would be looking up at clouds and then the lid, the top lid beautiful families have used all kinds of vehicles for their loved ones cars, vans, trucks including this one so Sarah sadly got cancer and her husband then built a pine box and friends helped him decorate it and then he drove her on that favorite truck of his to the crematorium people go right into the crematorium and they say their final goodbye there sometimes and watch the casket go inside the retort or chamber where the persons can be cremated again this is Jules and his friends filling in the grave where his mother was buried very cathartic experience for young men all people really and there's an example of a crematorium where people are watching the casket go in and helping sometimes push it in and start the machine and these are a few green bureau pictures which you just got to hear about no grave liner and we do a lot of education around this and we have a whole three tiered program of courses where people can learn how to be a guide like myself and or just explore death and dying for themselves and how to prepare for it as well as help somebody else through a transition and again just some more green bureau pictures okay that's it thank you very much I'm Claudette and I'm here from sorry can everyone hear me I'm here from the UCSF World Body Program if you've ever wondered what happens when a person donates their body to science they come to us we accept whole body donations for research or education we accept donors from all over northern California from the Oregon border down to San Luis Obispo and we also provide specimens for universities, community colleges hospitals in all of northern California as well oh sorry you have to get right up close oh okay is this better yes yes yes yes thank you what was I saying a lot of people wonder if we're the same as the Oregon donation people and those are the sticker on your driver's license folks and we're not they provide living organs for living people those are transplants so if anybody needs a kidney or a heart or something like that that's the that's donor network west the willed body program accepts whole body donations and these are used for research for surgical training for instruction in universities but the people who donate never donate organs to another living person if a person wants to register I left some registration packets over there I see that they're gone but if you can always go to our website or call our office and we can mail something out and our registration packet asks some personal information and this is all information that would go on a death certificate but it asks some additional information about medical history and I'll explain why we ask that in a minute what's important in registering is that you tell your family what your wishes are and have a discussion with them first we would hate for anybody to be blindsided at the moment of your death and find out that you're going to be taken away and they're never going to see you again if you donate your body to science it's not possible to have a traditional service like what Fred would provide it's not possible to do a six day home funeral we don't return cremated remains and that's a deal breaker and that's understandable so it's important to have that discussion that way if you do decide to donate they can plan something ahead of time often times families will call and say hey John died he's a registered donor with your program can you hold off on picking him up for a day so that we can have people wait until the next day so we can have people come over and say goodbye and of course we can do that whenever possible so things like that we can accommodate but that's only possible if you have the discussion with your family so that they can they can think about that before the time comes let's say someone does decide to donate and they come to our program they'll come to our facility and we'll decide how each donor gets used and there are several areas that are more ways that a donor can be used and how I'll decide is by looking at the needs at the time we might have a course coming up where they're doing tons of spine surgery or we might have a huge need for embalmed cadavers and then I'll look at the donor's medical histories and I'll also assess the donor I'll take a look at every person and look at their scars if somebody has an 8 inch scar on their knee that probably means they had a knee replacement so we won't send them for knee surgery but if somebody's had a hysterectomy I'm not going to send her for hysterectomy work because there's no uterus there I wouldn't send a man either we'd send the appropriate donor for the appropriate use some different uses that we have are things like surgical training if any of you have had a surgery recently or know someone who has you know that a lot of it's laparoscopic now and laparoscopic surgeries where they make you know a few small incisions and they'll use a camera to do the surgery and we need to have surgeons trained on the new technology we need to have them trained on the new procedures and there are a lot of facilities here in the Bay Area that provide this training and we provide the cadavers for that training people fly out here from all over the world to get experience in this new technology and we all stand to benefit from it surgeries eventually I think something that I personally find really exciting in the area is new procedures that are being developed and maybe devices that aren't on the market yet to give you an example we have a vascular surgeon that works out of General Hospital who invented a device and his invention was so good that he received some money to continue developing it and this is if you've had dialysis or you're familiar with somebody who's had dialysis you know that an access point is necessary before somebody begins treatment and this is a surgical procedure it's an arterial venous fistula and this is where they connect a vein and an artery together and that's the access point and a lot of dialysis patients have some trepidation before going into this surgery it's a surgery you go under anesthesia it takes about six weeks to heal and there is a chance of infection and this surgeon developed an implant or I'm sorry a device that can be implanted percutaneously so just under the skin this would be an office visit this would be something that could be done in one to two hours it would have very little healing time much better outcomes and it would reduce cost and the CDC put out a statistic that over 25% of people over 65 have diabetes in the United States type 2 diabetes in the United States so these are the things that matter and so what he asks of us is to send him arteries and veins so I'm constantly harvesting arteries and veins from arms and sending him to him so that he can continue developing this and I'm really excited to see where this goes and to see this help people and eventually help me probably because one in four is a lot of people so if I don't get diabetes then maybe the next the other thing that our cadavers are used for is for bioskills work or biomechanics so that's new implants like for knee replacements, hip replacements if you need shoulder work, spine work all of these things and all new implants that are developed have to be tested on cadavers first or new residents also have to train on cadavers first before actually doing this on a living person so in these few ways I think we've all been impacted by people who've donated their bodies the bulk of the work that we do and what we provide the most of is embalmed cadavers in medical schools and community colleges and quickly embalming is a process where we inject a solution that contains formaldehyde into the body, we'll use the body's own vascular system so we'll inject through a vein and this will distribute through the body and into the capillaries and preserve the human being and like Janet was telling you we do it for long-term preservation at a funeral home, it's for cosmetic purposes so we'll send out these embalmed cadavers to different schools all over Northern California and medical students are often nervous their first day working with a dead body some of them have never seen a dead body before as days progress and they continue learning more and more from this person they create a connection they start to see how the person lived through the way their body looks they start to learn about the person maybe through their disease or their abnormalities or whether they've had children or not they start to think this is a person who was alive and had thoughts and feelings and loved and was loved and this teaches our medical students compassion which is something that a book can't teach them this is something that virtual reality or computer simulation doesn't teach and that's the value in having people donate their body to science that's our future physicians actually learn how to relate to people and how to respect humans and a reverence for life more than they would have if they had just learned this from a book personally I think it's important for us to see the weirdness in people we're all a little different and working with humans who have donated their body to science rather than a machine shows us diversity that we wouldn't see otherwise we wouldn't see in a book and I don't just mean diversity in the sense and the way that we commonly talk about it as far as race or gender I was making a skeleton once and this doctor donated his body to science and he was really excited to donate his body to science and I sent him for surgical training and he came back to our facility and I thought he would want to be a skeleton like this guy would love to be a skeleton so I decided to make him a skeleton and I was cleaning off the bones and I was going through the bones in the feet and I couldn't find two of the phalanges the bones in your fingers and your toes one bone from each pinky toe was missing and I was looking everywhere and I was horrified and I was angry and how do you lose that I'm the only one here you can't lose something it's a locked facility and then I thought what are the chances that I would lose the same bone on each foot so I googled it this has to be a thing and it turned out that it's a thing that the population is missing a joint and their pinky toe a lot of you that are laughing right now are missing a bone in your pinky toe and it's little things like that little weirdness about us we've gotten we had a man come in that had cytosine verses which is where your organs are are inverted they're like mirror images of each other so your heart's on the left his heart's on the right his liver's on the left we had another man come in with four functioning kidneys and these things are benign these things they cause no there's no problem for him he was living his life he probably had to pee all the time but he had a good life when you get people like that who are different but fine it's fun and we like to preserve these people and send them to future physicians so that they can see it's important to learn about what's going to kill us but it's fun to find out what's not going to kill us and that's what human donation provides that's what working on people as opposed to animals or as opposed to computer simulation or virtual reality provides thank you one more minute I guess in closing this may be a thing for you this may be something you're interested in it might not be either way keep in mind people that donate their body to science or heroes because we've all benefited in some way from people who have given us this gift thank you very much hi everyone our next speaker has arrived we introduce to you Amy Jones Amy has been with the Neptune Society of Northern California for five years before that she worked in disability and life insurance she has also been a hospice caregiver Amy is passionate about helping individuals handle this issue for themselves so that their wishes are clear and so that their survivors avoid the stress of making arrangements while grieving please welcome Amy Jones to the Neptune Society welcome good evening everyone it was great to be here and have a chance to talk to you can you hear me okay? all right cool well I think the best way for me to start is how I often start with someone asking me why in the world are you working for a cremation company whatever possessed you to do such a thing and strangely enough I think it actually started when I was about eight years old my family is a very traditional black Baptist denomination and of course we went to church all the time and even as a child I went to the funerals and we had our own celebrations our own processes just like every other ethnic group but the fact when my grandmother died I watched all of these grownups that I'd heard about heard them spoken lovingly about the scoundrel stories about that character they never were on the scene when we had gathered as a family for festive occasions but when somebody died here they come brand new clothes brand new cars showing up and hanging out for days on end and I thought that was ridiculous it just didn't make sense to me but I was also a child that cut all my hair off my head so I've recognized that my thinking is different so cremation isn't for everyone but through my life I've experienced that not everyone has family has friends there to grieve and to support and as I came into this industry I realized that many people just they may have those people in their lives but they don't want them involved they want to get everything set up and they want to leave strict orders many of them don't even want their body viewed once they're gone and so we at the Neptune Society and other full service cremation companies offer folks the opportunity to set up arrangements in advance so that you can not only explicitly state what it is that you want but we can help you prepare the paperwork in such a way to ensure that your wishes are honored at the time if you're deaf I would also like you to know that a lot of folks are reluctant to talk to me about cremation because I'm either not serious enough in my presentation this is a rare day when you see me wear black and brown at the same time usually I'm wearing a very bright color or I wear a lot of blue and they say you're the cremation lady, yeah but I don't deal with death I deal with the preparation of death so let's talk about it from that standpoint but also now I've lost my train the wishes are honored and that everything is in place and that no one has to make any decisions for them I've even encountered quite a few people especially in San Francisco that don't want their relatives to be notified that they've died and so just like every other aspect of our lives different people have different needs we're here to provide the support for what you need I have nothing to no judgment to make and none of the people in our staff come at it from that standpoint we're here to support you to let you know what your rights are let you know what your family's rights are and I'm here to assist you in getting you where you need to be so cremation is an option for people that are looking for something a little differently to be handled a little differently and to support things like procedures at home, home celebrations that's where I was going a lot of people don't want to talk to me when they see that I'm with an Neptune Society because they associate my company with our boat out at Pier 39 and they assume that we only do things a certain way we do whatever we need to do and frankly maybe 20% of our families use the boat actually the boat is probably used predominantly by people that don't want a formal service they just want to remain scattered post cremation if there are any family members remaining they want us to notify them when it was done and how it was done that's it so I am excited to have to be a part of this panel to have an opportunity to talk to you about really what a decision that is yours to make is your body as you inferred earlier this evening we have kind of skipped over the last few generations we've forgotten about how things used to be done and we've forgotten that the old folks always said this is what I want and this is how I want it done we need to take that responsibility back it's our body this is my body and I don't want anyone else making a decision about how it's to be handled and I don't want to burden those folks that are left behind whether it's a judiciary or a relative I don't want them to have to make a decision well okay is it going to happen on Tuesday or Wednesday or is it going to be a viewing or not come on take care of your own business whatever it is and then make sure you talk to someone so that all the ducks are lined up in a row and nobody can come behind you when you're gone and you can no longer speak for yourself okay we got a plan alright let's do it thank you thank you speakers, thank you audience now it's time for Q&A please hand me your blue cards Chelsea on this side and Randy over there and we'll collect them and give the speakers your questions if I may just listening to our panel here I'm saying to myself boy I just want to live so I have a question and it's can people walk stroll in your wild life open space area if you're just general public and have no loved one buried there absolutely one of the things that our owner likes is that it is a community space we are actually located next to Golden Gate National Forest we have a lot of hikers bikers that come through the area we have people walking dogs so it's definitely you're definitely welcome to tour and like I said we have a lot of the community that uses it even our room of remembrance is used for celebrations we've had birthday parties not just funerals not just celebrations of life in Mill Valley it's on the others just north of Golden Gate Bridge so here's a question it says most all deaths SF County be referred to the ME or medical examiner no only just actually very recently from the various from county to county so I'll just speak about San Francisco City and County anyone that passed away at home all home deaths all home deaths used to be reported to the medical examiner's office nowadays this just occur this last year if the individual who passed away is under hospice care then that is no longer reportable but anyone else yes this absolutely I'm dealing with again the gentleman this morning I'm having to talk to a physician who hasn't seen this deceased for about two months but the medical examiner's office was rather adamant that the doctor who was treating this patient for about like 20 years signed off on a death certificate so yes those have to always be reported to the medical examiner's office another question is what is the cost to bury or to burn so again we are a crematory our cremation start at about $1,000 by law you are required when you cremate to have a rigid container such as Jerry was talking about we've had the same thing where families come in they decorate the cremation container in order to bury the burial plot start at $8,000 another question is how long before you start to smell so the the body starts to go through changes almost immediately but bombing is not required by law it is a temporary preservation I was an embalmer for I've been an embalmer for about 16 years so I'm familiar with that process as well but basically you need to either be refrigerated or the body just needs to be cooled down and we've had people that want to stay at home for a day or two and they just need to be encouraged the families to get dry ice that again is another way of refrigeration when we bring them into our care the family is not prepared to immediately have a ceremony but we do also encourage families to come in and do the bathing and do the shrouding and really be a part of it and then they also it says pay now dig later so we do have pre-need services which is as a lot of the people on the panel have been talking about I congratulate all of you for being here and speaking about it I think that's one thing that too many families are left with the shock of the death and they don't know what their loved one wanted they don't know what their loved ones wishes were as Fred was talking about it's very important to have that advanced health care directive the one person that you've assigned that can make those decisions for you after death but there are as some of them have talked about you are able to place your wishes come in with any one of us and we can help you with that the forms that need to be put in place or what is your plan that way you have a decision on what happens after you die well I'd like to comment on what was just being said I have a different perspective given all the hundreds of families that I've helped with taking care of the bodies of their loved ones in their own home we see a very slow decomposition most of the time I'm not going to say 100% but in the 90% people as long as their body is washed well and dry ice is brought in to use to preserve the body we see very subtle changes over the first three days and surprisingly most families point to their beloved who died and said look they are smiling almost every time so and what makes me sad is that families often miss that they don't see they think they are going to see something where the body is just breaking down and looking terrible and instead what they see is an expression come over their face and often look like they are smiling so I just want to say that from my own personal experience this question I'm not sure I understand but I will try how has the concept of control over your body after life impacted the changes of the concept of control over your body versus AMA control over your body wow that's a little complex isn't it how that impact of the change of the concept of control over your body versus AMA I don't know I I guess all I can say is that it is our body and we do have some control over what is being done to it both when we are alive hopefully and following our death and I think the more people that take responsibility for their own bodies and make these plans make these advance directives and write down what it is we want the easier it is on all the people around us that's what we found out with Carolyn that in our shock in our grief we didn't have to try to sit there and figure out what she would have wanted and try to make a lot of decisions when we were all in shock instead we could just follow her wishes her plan and that made it so easy on us yeah I don't know about the AMA's control over your body I mean yeah if you're in the hospital I'll just say that if you're in a hospital and a family wants to take care of the body after the person died you have a couple of choices one is you can either ask the hospital if you can go in and have some time to wash the person and take care of their body dress them and have a little ceremony before they're taken away by a funeral home or you can request to take them and take care of them yourself and that is entirely possible and we just did that for family last week I don't know whether that she