Parthemore Funeral Home & Cremation Services is partnering with Community United Methodist Church to host a "Blue Christmas" Service of Hope. The special service will minister to persons who are grieving the loss of loved ones or have experienced other losses. It will take place at 7:00 pm on Sunday, December 2, 2007 Snow Date: Sunday, December 9) at the Community United Methodist Church located at 16th and Bridge Streets in New Cumberland.

Chaplain Brian Medkeff-Rose, Spiritual Counselor at PinnacleHealth Hospice in Harrisburg, is the event's featured guest speaker. Chaplain Medkeff-Rose has had many years of experience ministering to families who have suffered losses.

The service will involve sharing among the evening's congregation, prayer, scripture, music and a time for meditation. There also will be meaningful opportunities to acknowledge personal loss and to commemorate loved ones including a special tea candle lighting on the altar and a Christmas tree ornament hung in memory of the deceased.

"Our mission has always been to care for the families we serve in their time of grief. We're grateful for the opportunity to provide some solace during the holiday season," said Steve Parthemore, President of Parthemore Funeral Home & Cremation Services.

For more information, please call Steve at 717-774-7721.

PBS Frontline Documentary Explores
The Life Of A Funeral Director

FRONTLINE's The Undertaking, coming October 30 at 9 pm on PBS, enters the world of Thomas Lynch, a writer, poet and funeral director whose family for three generations has cared for both the living and the dead in a small Michigan town. Through the intimate stories of families coming to terms with grief, mortality, and a funeral’s rituals, the film illuminates the heartbreak and beauty in the journey taken between the living and the dead when a loved one dies.

Filmed earlier this year, this hour-long episode promises to accurately depict the care and compassion funeral directors provide every day to grieving families with rare access to the day-to-day workings (from arrangements conference to embalming) performed at Lynch & Sons Funeral Directors homes in Michigan. The film features Patrick Lynch and his brother, author and funeral director, Thomas Lynch.

The Lynch family believes that the rituals of a funeral are more than mere formalities. “Funerals are the way we close the gap between the death that happens and the death that matters,” Thomas Lynch contends. “A good funeral gets the dead where they need to go and the living where they need to be.”

For Lynch and his family, their business has always been about more than just caring for the dead. “What I’ve written is that while the dead don’t care, the dead matter,” Thomas Lynch explains. “The dead matter to the living. In accompanying the dead, getting them where they need to go, we get where we need to be – to the edge of that oblivion and then returned to life with the certain knowledge that life has changed.”

For program times in your area and to learn more about the program click on the link below to PBS. After the Oct. 30th broadcast, viewers will be able to watch the full program online and participate in a discussion area and see extended interviews and more.

PBS Frontline - The Undertaking