What The Funeral Home Director And Staff Do For You
When pre-planning your funeral, the funeral home director and their assistants perform many functions for you. There is a lot of work involved in executing your plan, and the staff is trained in many areas. Their goal is to take care of the details when you have passed on to remove the burden from your friends and family. Because you won't be here to appreciate all that they will do for you, here is a brief list of the functions of the funeral home director and staff.
Duties of the Funeral Home Staff
The director will perform some of these roles and others will be delegated to trained staff members:
- Transfer your body from where you passed away to the funeral home. If you passed away while out of town, they will help make arrangements to have you flown back.
- Procurement of the casket or cremation urn.
- Preparation of your body for a viewing and burial or cremation. This may involve several different people and includes:
- sanitary cleansing
- embalming
- restoration for viewing
- hair dressing
- cosmetology
- clothing
- placement in casket
- Coordination with the family on all of your pre-funeral arrangement plans.
- Filing of any state and local certificates and authorizations, as needed.
- Obtaining certified copies of the death certificate.
- Assembling information and creating an obituary for the newspaper and memorial service.
- Coordinate with the desired clergy and the use of a church, synagogue or temple.
- Coordinate with the selected cemetery, crematory or columbarium.
- Arrangement of flowers, music and other memorial preferences.
- Coordination of transportation to the cemetery and pallbearers.
- Assist the family with any post-funeral needs such as grief counseling.
- Assist the family with filing for veterans insurance claims, social security benefits and any other benefit claims.
- Deliver memorial items such as the register book, donations and floral cards to your family.
- If requested, the funeral home will deliver the flowers from the service to specified churches or charities.
Working with the Funeral Home Staff to Finish Your Planning
You'll work closely with the funeral home director to complete your pre-planning requests. Make sure you understand which tasks are the responsibility of the staff and which ones need to be done by your family. The more you let the staff do, the less stress your family will have when you've passed away.
In a section of your pre-planning document, make sure you detail the responsibilities of the family and how they should go about completing these tasks. Don't leave logistical problems up to the family. They will be grieving and don't need difficult tasks to solve. Go over these responsibilities with your family so they know what to expect.
The more effort you put into coordinating all of your funeral service planning, the easier the process will be on your friends and family. Visit a funeral home like Taylor Funeral Home for more information.