As The Hearse Turns

06/16/2026

🎙️ THIS THURSDAY • JUNE 18, 2026 • 7:00 PM EST

Some people choose funeral service.

Others spend their entire lives trying to avoid it...
..until they realize it was exactly where they were meant to be.

This Thursday on As The Hearse Turns, we welcome Ruthann Disotell — a woman whose journey through funeral service has been anything but ordinary. Raised above her father's funeral home, Ruthann once swore she would never follow in his footsteps. Yet decades later, she has become an embalmer, funeral director, funeral home owner, celebrant, grief advocate, inventor, educator, and one of the profession's most unique voices.

From growing up surrounded by funeral service to helping families find meaning through loss, Ruthann's story is one of resilience, reinvention, compassion, and purpose. Today, she continues serving the bereaved through her celebrant work and her grief-support initiatives, proving that funeral service isn't just a career — it's a calling.

Join Chris Boggs and Katharine Wagner-Elfner as we sit down with a woman who has spent a lifetime caring for others, challenging assumptions, and finding new ways to serve grieving families.

This isn't just a conversation about funeral service.

It's a conversation about purpose, passion, and what happens when life keeps opening doors you never expected to walk through.

📅 Thursday, June 18, 2026
⏰ 7:00 PM EST
📍 Live on Facebook & YouTube

You won't want to miss this one.

06/09/2026

When you own a funeral home with your husband and have a hot date planned for 5:00 pm, there’s really only one logical way to get ready: break out the mortuary makeup.

Forget Sephora. Forget Ulta. Nothing says “date night” quite like color correctors, cosmetics, and restorative art.

Before anyone takes this too seriously, this is complete satire. But in all honesty, mortuary makeup isn’t as different from everyday makeup as people think. The goal is the same: create a natural appearance, soften imperfections, add warmth, and achieve a healthy, lifelike glow. The products and techniques may be a little different, but at the end of the day, we’re still trying to help someone look like the very best version of themselves.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish this contouring and get ready.

06/07/2026

06/07/2026

Since we’re down in Orlando for a few days celebrating Skylar’s birthday and actually have a little downtime between all the family fun, I was thinking…

Would anyone be interested in meeting up one evening at CityWalk for a drink, coffee, conversation, and some laughs?

Nothing formal. No tickets. No big production. Just good people hanging out and having some real-life coffee conversation outside of Facebook for once. ☕️

Funeral stories. Life talk. Family. Business. Random conversation. Whatever the night brings. Maybe even an adult beverage or two. 🍻

If there’s enough interest, I’ll pick a night and make it happen while we’re here in Orlando!

Drop a comment below if you’d be interested 👇

06/06/2026

Sharing this one here, friends, because it needs to be said.

06/06/2026

Katharine: “ChatGPT, help me make an image in a Lisa Frank theme.”

ChatGPT: “Say no more.”

🌈✨🦄💖🐆🎤⚰️

Somewhere between funeral service education and a 1997 school supply aisle, this masterpiece was born.

Christopher Boggs - Mortician is away.

Katharine K. Wagner-Elfner, Mortician from Wagner-Elfner and Burg Funeral Home & Cremation Services is taking over.

The leopard print hearse has entered the chat.

06/05/2026

I am all about preventative healthcare and keeping up with routine appointments, but every single time I walk through the doors of the gynecologist’s office, I find myself wondering what exactly prompted someone to choose this career path.

I’d rather explain Facebook algorithms to my grandma, step on a Lego every morning for a month, call customer service and willingly press “0” fifty times, untangle Christmas lights that have been sitting in a tote since 1997, clean out the junk drawer in my kitchen, watch a 3-hour meeting that could have been an email, or scrub the prep room sink with my bare hands. I’d rather parallel park a hearse downtown during rush hour, explain to a toddler why the sky is blue for the 47th time, and organize the Tupperware cabinet knowing full well none of the lids will match.

Yet somehow, every year, there I am.

And then I have to laugh because I know many of you ask the exact same thing about funeral directors and embalmers. What would possess someone to choose a profession where they spend their days talking about death, caring for the deceased, and helping families through grief? And why on earth would you want to embalm someone?!

The truth is that every profession has people who are passionate about what they do, even if the rest of us can’t imagine doing it ourselves. So while I’m sitting there questioning every life decision that led me to that exam room, I’m also grateful there are people who genuinely love what they do.

Just don’t ask me to switch careers. I love what I do every single day at Wagner-Elfner and Burg Funeral Home & Cremation Services and I’m sure these amazing doctors can say the same thing about their careers as well ❤️

As much as I hate coming here, I’m grateful for the doctors and healthcare professionals who keep us ticking while we’re alive. Every profession has people who are passionate about what they do, even if the rest of us can’t imagine doing it ourselves. I’ll stick to caring for people after death and leave this line of work to the experts 😅

06/03/2026

Sometimes the stories that make national headlines are the exact stories funeral professionals wish never happened.

This is one of them.

A news story recently caught our attention, and after watching it, we knew we needed to talk about it.

Not for clicks.

Not for outrage.

But because it raises questions about trust, accountability, identification procedures, and the responsibility funeral professionals carry every single day.

On this episode, we're pulling back the curtain and having an honest conversation about a situation that has many people asking:

"How could something like this happen?"

And perhaps more importantly...

"What safeguards should be in place to prevent it?"

If you're a funeral professional, this conversation may make you uncomfortable.

If you're a member of the public, this conversation may surprise you.

Either way, it's a conversation worth having.

Watch the video and let us know your thoughts.

Because transparency doesn't mean only talking about the easy topics.

Sometimes it means talking about the hard ones too.

06/03/2026

Every time I make a video about funeral service, somebody eventually shows up and says:

“Funeral homes charge too much.”

Cool.

Now tell me what part you’re overpaying for.

The 2:00 AM phone call?

The licensed professionals?

The years of education and training?

The fact that we’re available 24/7/365?

The legal paperwork?

The death certificates?

The permits?

The transportation?

The preparation of your loved one?

The staff who miss holidays, birthdays, weekends, ball games, anniversaries, and family dinners because somebody else’s family needed them?

Or is it the fact that when everything goes wrong in your life, we’re expected to get everything right?

Because here’s the reality:

People will spend $80,000 on a pickup truck.

$8 on a cup of coffee.

$200 a month on streaming services they barely watch.

Thousands on vacations they’ll forget in a few years.

But when it comes time to honor the person who raised them, loved them, sacrificed for them, and helped shape who they became…

Suddenly everybody becomes a financial expert.

Interesting.

Nobody questions the bill after a surgery they didn’t understand.

Nobody questions the invoice from an attorney charging hundreds of dollars per hour.

Nobody questions paying a contractor tens of thousands of dollars to remodel a kitchen.

But somehow funeral directors are expected to be highly educated, licensed, available around the clock, emotionally supportive, detail-oriented, legally compliant, and perfect…

And then apologize for charging for it.

Here’s the part people don’t like hearing:

A funeral isn’t expensive because somebody died.

A funeral costs money because an entire team of professionals shows up to make sure your family doesn’t have to figure it all out alone.

And unlike most professions…

We don’t get a second chance.

No do-overs.

No “we’ll get it right next time.”

One family.

One service.

One shot.

So before screaming that funeral homes charge too much…

Ask yourself a different question:

What is competence worth when your family is having the worst day of their lives?

That’s a conversation most people aren’t ready to have.

👇 Let the comment section do what it does best. 👇