How To Organize A Funeral

By Henry James, 30 Jan 12:38

There are few things which are absolutely certain in our lives. Will I find love? Will I get into that much sought after college? Will my mom-in-law like me for who I am? Will my favorite television character survive on “Lost”? Much of our lives are consumed with the day to day trivial “what ifs”. Death is a much more present certainty. For something that is so sure to happen to every single person on this planet there are so many unanswered (and unsought after) questions. It’s just one of those things in life that just maybe if you think about it too much… well, it just might happen sooner rather than later. And with death, that’s not optimal. However, unfortunately, it is something that should be looked into before the time comes if you don’t want your loved ones to be hurting financially and emotionally. But how exactly do you go about planning for your own death? What do you need to think about? What are the options? Will a huge corporation really try to stick-it-to-me even after I’m dead… Really?! Ugh. Here are a few steps to think about when organizing your funeral, or a loved ones funeral, or possibly your dog’s funeral, who knows who’s next honestly.

-The “discussion”.
-I need WHAT?! Who knew?
-Dealing with it: the Aftermath.

Things you might need

The “discussion”.
When you get down to the matter, death is first and foremost a matter of the heart. There is no amount pressure from society about how exactly you should be laid to rest. There really isn’t a precedent in society about what you must do. It’s always a good idea though to talk with your loved ones about what your wishes may be. Granted if I were monstrously rich, I’d force my family and friends to throw the biggest, most lavish party of all time with dancers and fireworks and possibly Elton John. Yet we all know that just isn’t possible for the majority of us, me included. My mother sat me down after my grandfather’s funeral last fall and told me what she would like done for herself and my father after they pass away. Even though she has followed the Christian faith her whole life and every one of our relatives has had the whole “traditional Christian service” (which don’t get me started on what is even tradition anymore), she would like a simple service and then be cremated. (She informed me that I, rather than my two older brothers, would get the urn because knowing me I’d make a shrine for it in my house… my mother knows my eccentricities.) I felt this was a very special talk, yet at the time very morbid, but I realized this was a talk that needed to happen. What do you do when you’re left with a loved one who’s passed and you have absolutely no idea what they would have wanted? Thus being said, the “discussion” is very necessary.

I need WHAT?! Who knew?
The next step can be a daunting one. There are many options for our dead and it’s really a good idea to know where you’re going to start. I’m going to go ahead assuming that you’ve had the “discussion” and know whether your loved one prefers burial, cremation, cryogenics, or any of the other multitude of ways of dealing with the dead. In the United States if you go to a funeral home they offer a variety of services for you to choose from. The standards are: viewing (sometimes called a “wake”), the funeral service (either at the mortuary chapel or at the church of the deceased), and a burial service. However, you’re not done with your decisions yet. Each of these has many options. Will there be a viewing at all? For that viewing will there be embalming involved or will it be a closed-casket? There is also the option of cremation, which has may or may not involve it’s own service. Most often times it depends on how the person died, the family’s religious necessities, or the needs of the surviving loved ones. One of the pluses of dealing with funeral homes is that they provide and help fill out the necessary paperwork, such as permits, arrangements with cemeteries and crematoriums, the needed transportation of a body from one place to another, and sometimes the obituaries for the news media. Most funeral homes are family-owned, or if they are owned by a corporation they at least give the look of being family-owned to make the whole process seem a bit more personal. (Honestly, who needs a big advertising display at a funeral? That’s the last place they should be.) When you get down to it, with all there is to think about with planning and organizing a funeral the most important thing that should be taken into consideration is the surviving loved ones. Maybe Uncle Carl’s wishes were for all his fingers and toes to be hacked off and each brother and sister, niece and nephew were supposed to treasure it. But is that really what you want to treasure and think about when remembering Uncle Carl? Maybe… ew. I’ve been to drastically long Catholic Masses that lasted all day and into the night. I’ve been to solitary three person burials on top of a lonely mountain in the middle of Nowhere, Idaho. The most important thing is that you know your options. What we, as Americans, call the “traditional funeral” is a pretty recent commercial invention. This involves the embalming, casket, viewing, ceremony, procession, graveside goodbye. This is a basically typical U.S. burial. In other countries they do things their own way. For instance in most parts of the Middle East the deceased is buried in a shroud directly into the ground without a coffin. Tradition comes in many forms around the world.

Dealing with it: the Aftermath.
Organizing a funeral, going to the funeral, and dealing with the funeral can bring about a whole slew of different emotions. An important final step in putting together a funeral is making sure you’ve come to terms with what you are facing. It may seem a very modern concept to think of your own emotional well-being at times like these, but I call that evolution. How many times have you heard someone lay the excuse on you that they did such and such thing because so and so died? That person just didn’t quite finish dealing with the aftermath of someone close to them dying and being laid to rest. There are many places to go to and many books to read on the subject of death and dying that are of help. The website www.funeral.org is a great site to help answer so many questions (some you might not even know you had) about the planning and options of a funeral. A good website to go to for dealing with death and dying is http://death-and-dying.org/.

How-to Extra Advice

For interesting funeral myths visit: http://www.funerals.org/faq/myths.htm

Tags: funeral, death, dying, funeral homes, burial, cremation, ceremony, viewing, wake

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