The case for hosting your own funeral

☎️ The concept of a “wind phone” started in Japan in 2010, when a gardener set up a disconnected telephone booth as a place to talk with his recently-deceased cousin. Soon, visitors began coming to the booth to connect with lost love ones, and the idea has since spread across the globe (also inspiring the name of a publication on Medium about loss)
Issue #81: ChatGPT-4o explained, eating carbs last, and learning to disagree and commit
By Scott Lamb

Grief is a sort of paradox: A thing we’d all much rather avoid, but also a necessary and natural part of living a full life. The more connected you are, the more likely you’ll spend time wrestling with grief at some point, and yet when it arrives at our door, most of us are wholly unprepared.

There are all sorts of ways people deal with grief and dying. And like any part of the human endeavor, those ways are changing with time. I loved this recent story about the concept of a living funeral (which, like the wind phone, apparently also began in Japan), where friends and family gather to celebrate the life of someone dying before they’re gone, sort of a reverse spin on the usual order of things.

One of the biggest trends in funeral pre-planning is “green funerals” — a 2023 report by the National Funeral Directors Association says 60% of Americans are interested in more environmentally friendly funeral options, like biodegradable coffins or “aquamation,” which as one Medium writer learned, means using water and a chemical solution to dissolve a body. 🫠

Another writer has been documenting his personal approach to Swedish death cleaning, or döstädning: The ritual of clearing out your living spaces of clutter so as not to leave that work to the people you leave behind, popularized by the 2017 book, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. Think of it like a living funeral for your stuff.

Hospital chaplain Wyatt J. Dagit’s recent story about things to avoid saying to a grieving person is also helpful in thinking about death and grief differently [editor’s note: we previously featured Dagit’s story in issue #76]. His list of “don’ts” includes well-meant stock phrases that breezily deny the reality of grief (“everything will be okay”) or offer empty solace (“he’s in a better place”), and offers the wise advice that saying nothing is often the best option: “Let them be sad, because that is the appropriate and healthy response to loss. There will be plenty of time later for talking. In the moment, they need someone who cares enough to say nothing.”

What else we’re reading

• If you’re trying to understand what’s new and interesting about ChatGPT-4o — beyond the Her-like audio interface — this is the explainer you’ve been looking for: What Makes ChatGPT-4o Special? The shift with this latest iteration from Open AI is that the model isn’t just ingesting text, but audio, images, and video as well. For example, “Beforehand, to ChatGPT, a dog was literally the word ‘dog.’ But for GPT-4o, audio, images, text, and video are now natively part of the model.”
• Save the bread basket for last? Nephrologist and author Dr. Jason Fung shares some research saying that the order in which you eat food can impact your blood glucose and insulin levels. His practical advice for lowering insulin includes eating fewer carbohydrates, more fiber, more resistant starches (nuts, seeds, beans), and having proteins and vegetables first, carbs last.

Your daily dose of practical wisdom: about disagreeing with a boss

Sometimes, no matter where you work, you’re going to disagree with the choices people above you are making. That’s when knowing how to disagree with someone more powerful than you is a valuable skill. “Sharing your disagreement in such moments is not only crucial, it’s a strong sign of a healthy work culture,” writes author Vinita, and I couldn’t agree more. She outlines eleven useful approaches for making this kind of disagreement effective, and I especially like the last two: “Don’t treat your opinions as facts,” and “don’t agree to disagree, disagree and commit.”

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Edited and produced by Harris Sockel & Carly Rose Gillis

Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com