Fitting Tribute Funeral Services

03/13/2025

March 11 was Funeral Director and Mortician Appreciation Day. We're all now licensed (except the baby)!

08/10/2024

Thrilling things happening at The Green-Wood Cemetery!
"An infusion of federal funds allocated to improve access to green spaces and fight climate change will allow the graveyard to plant 1,500 new trees over the next three years and care for 140 mature trees already thriving at Green-Wood, hopefully extending their lives and vitality. With the $498,035 award, funded by the federal Inflation Reduction Act and awarded by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Green-Wood hopes to expand canopy cover at the cemetery to 35 percent, meaning more than one-third of the graveyard will be shaded by trees."

An infusion of federal funds will allow the graveyard to plant 1,500 new trees and care for 140 mature trees already thriving at Green-Wood.

08/07/2024

City dwellers have long viewed Duchess County, NY, as a place of peace and respite. Now those who cannot afford the high price of NYC cemeteries and want everything natural can consider, when the time comes, the gorgeous earth-friendly burial ground in Rhinebeck.

They speak of chirping birds flitting through the forest, of beams of sunlight stretching through the tree cover, and of families solemnly shoveling dirt into shallow graves. “It’s just beautiful,” say loved ones, funerary experts, ministers, governing officials.  They are talking of Rhinebec...

08/04/2024

Two hundred people registered for our 90-minute workshop on green burial today! We wrapped courageous volunteers in burial shrouds and toured The Green-Wood Cemetery's newly landscaped Cedar Dell where folks can be buried in an earth-friendly manner--no vaults, no artifice. Green Burial Council lists nine earth-friendly burial grounds in the state of New York, and more cemeteries are coming around. Photo Gabrielle Rose-Reggie Gatteaux

04/28/2024

It sometimes seems that one fifth of my life as a funeral director is spent at the car wash watching or helping my vehicle become shiny, ceremonial, worthy of holding the dead. Interesting that the second definition cited for the word "casket" is a jewelry box, right? And the term "livery," still used on the general price list, refers back to the rental of horses to pull the bunting-draped carriage. You know you're working with an old-time hearse driver when he says "I'm going back to the barn."

While I've got plenty of sleek, black Lincoln Continentals available to me, more funeral families are preferring my 2022 Honda Pilot, believe it or not. This year more than ever. A remnant of Covid? Yes, I rest the seats down flat, keep a pretty Tibetan rug unfurled in the bay, and most caskets fit comfortably.

02/28/2024

In next week's “Ask a Funeral Director” virtual program, thanatologist Matilda Garrido will interview home and green funeral director Amy Cunningham about the current state of the funeral industry, thoughtfully planning your own funeral, and ecologically-friendly options that are in development.
Join us next Wednesday, February 28, at 6! Register at www.merchantshouse.org/calendar/reservations

In next week's “Ask a Funeral Director” virtual program, thanatologist Matilda Garrido will interview home and green funeral director Amy Cunningham about the current state of the funeral industry, thoughtfully planning your own funeral, and ecologically-friendly options that are in development.

Join us next Wednesday, February 28, at 6! Register at www.merchantshouse.org/calendar/reservations

Amy Cunningham‘s thirty-year career in magazine journalism took an abrupt turn in 2009 when her elderly father’s memorial event in South Carolina opened her up to the healing power and magnificence of end-of-life experiences and funerals. She attended mortuary school in her mid-fifties and became a New York licensed funeral director in 2012. Her well-respected blog TheInspiredFuneral.com and her earth-friendly company, Fitting Tribute Funeral Services, have contributed to the changing landscape of the funeral industry. When not directing funerals, she teaches end-of-life experience design, funeral planning, and the greening of the funeral business at Green-Wood Cemetery and the NY Open Center/One Spirit Learning Alliance where she is on the faculty of the Integrative Thanatology Death Education Counselor Program.