The planning of a funeral is possibly the most daunting job of life, especially given the emotional context that one loses their loved one. It’s a job that calls for ample thinking, sensitiveness, and details. Here, I have prepared this step-by-step guide through which you may walk yourself along with planning your funeral and guide your way out with clear-headed and compassionate steps forward.
Purpose of a Funeral
A funeral, therefore is not only a ritual but is how pay respect to a life lived, gives closure, and provides space to let friends and family grieve together. This process helps constitute the choices on kind of service to be undertaken and what elements would belong in that service. Whether one makes wills or not, what matters is to honor a life and not fulfill the life left behind.
Preplanning and on-the-spot planning
The funeral plan usually comes when a person makes a pre-arrangement, where mortals will prepare ahead. This brings consolation to the near and dear and is guaranteed to deliver what a mortal wanted. A post-death or after death form of planning the funeral usually arises in the process of immediate planning, where urgent conditions exist. When a mortal plans, thought can be well put; hence, if urgent conditions occur upon death, speedy decisions must come forth in midst of sorrow.
Main Choices in Planning for the Funeral
Type of Funeral Home to be Utilized: Select a funeral home. Look in your local community of who is service there and as previously stated look at reputation, services offered and price. The vast majority have packages. Demand a detailed accounting of what services they provide.
Style of Service: There are numerous other choices regarding the types of funerals. These consist of viewing with funeral with formal burial or cremation.
Memorial Service: A service that does not view the body typically in the form of cremation or burial.
Direct Cremation or Burial: A simple process with no service
Celebration of Life: Celebrate the life of the person who has deceased in a location which is informal and personal. Select based on cultural, religious, and individual preference, the type of service.
Disposition of the body: Determine it is to be buried, cremated, or donated to science. Most states have varying laws, but most require the purchase of a casket and a grave plot for burial. When cremation is desired, an urn is usually selected, along with a plan for handling the ashes. Medical schools or programs in science usually facilitate donation.
Where and when: Determine the location of the service, be it a funeral home, place of worship, or outdoors. Establish the time for the service. The time may depend on when out-of-town guests can best arrive.
Personalization: Personalization adds meaning to a funeral. Ideas include:
Music that had personal significance to the deceased.
Readings from literature, religious texts, or poetry.
A slideshow or display of photos and mementos.
Speeches or eulogies by loved ones.
Symbols or rituals which pertain to cultural or spiritual beliefs.
Financial Planning: Funerals are quite expensive; it can range from a few thousand dollars to even tens of thousands of dollars. A budget manages these costs. The three main major cost areas are:
Funeral home services.
Furrniture.
Burial plot or cremation services
Transportation such as a hearse,
Obituary publication and printing materials,
Flowers, catering, and any other add-ons.
Check whether there existed prepaid funeral cover or a life assurance plan to settle on expenses. Payment plans exist with many mortuaries also.
Legal and Administrative Arrangements
It is quite significant but also some legal and administrative work. The above will be very comprehensive; in most respects, and are:
Producing lots of death certificate
Sending notices to loved ones and to interested authorities.
Closing all the accounts as well as to manage the estate
Any death benefits filed with Social Security or veterans.
Help for Surviving Family Members
Grief is patternless for everyone, and the process of a burial can be used as an outlet for social support. Let the mourners share some of the good times they have lived with the deceased, let them express their sentiments or lie down on the shoulder of one another. Even professional counseling about grief or support groups can be given to the family for the coming weeks and months.
How to Make it Easy
Assign tasks: Give tasks to close friends or family so that the task is not heavy on one person’s shoulders.
Seek Professional Help: Funeral directors are professionals who know how to handle logistics and can be of great help.
Maintain Open Communication: Keep the family and close friends updated so that all their needs and expectations are met.
Maintain record of everything : Record all your decisions, receipt, and others contact information.
Self-Care
It would become quite effortless to forget that any self-care happened during the periods of planning and preparing for funeral and cremation. Take time to rest, eat healthy, and process emotions because it is alright to get help or take a breather when the things get too heated.
Of course, there’s a little emotional process as planning a funeral is involved here. Really it’s a period of celebration for good things in everybody’s life. Well planned by careful forethought, you’d have a quite meaningful goodbye where it will all be comfort and healing for the whole group involved. If one is pre-planning for his own or one’s loved one’s death event, then he’ll find everything required within these lines of this very book.
