Making all the arrangements for a funeral is not an easy job as one can well imagine. Funerals are solemn affairs and are emotionally charged. If you are new to the business of funeral planning it will be tough going, especially when you try to keep your emotions out of it, as we experienced ourselves when faced with the possibility of having to arrange for one. It was difficult for us to go to the funeral home and attend to all the details in a business like fashion.
The funeral home director happened to be courteous, pleasant and down-to-earth. I had no idea regarding the expenses or about the items of requirement. The most apparent requirement is the casket which cots any where from $1,100 at this specific place to thousands of dollars. A medium-priced casket which met with our approval was priced in the category of $2,000. It felt weird browsing a “casket brochure”, however, it is not a bad idea to peruse when you are feeling fine instead of having to do it when you are emotionally disturbed.
After this first difficult choice of selecting a casket was made, the next thing to do is to decide on the type of vault that we would want. Vaults protect the casket from the soil settling down and caving in over the casket as time passes. That we had to choose a vault came as a surprise, because we hadn’t any idea about it. Naturally, after knowing why a vault is advisable to have, we ventured to choose one.
We decided on a vault that cost about $3,000. This was in the middle range of the prices quoted at the funeral home. The entire business of making these difficult choices was very tiring. Fortunately, there were not many more details to be taken care of.
Next was the specifics of a funeral that we chose to wait until later to complete. We were mostly concerned with how much this affair would cost and we stuck to the “merchandise” to choose from. There were packages of items such as guest books, prayer cards, and many other things to add to the funeral experience for memorializing the loved one. There were all sorts of designs from the feminine to the simple, the nature scenes to more contemporary designs. The one we chose had sheaves of wheat and was simple yet personal as my husband used to grow wheat and it was a comforting image for him.
Arranging the funeral for more specifics would come later but we did get to take home a booklet with all the choices we discussed so that we could compare to other sources if we wanted to see how they compared. I have heard of so many scams and overcharging schemes from funeral homes that this made me feel that this director was being honest and fair as he did not pressure us into any pre-payment plans or anything. This was in his favor and made us both feel more comfortable dealing with this funeral home.
There were certain monetary issues that the funeral director promised us they would attend to at no extra cost other than life insurance. We were only required to give them the names and numbers of our life insurance policies at our convenience, and they would take care of the rest of the remaining formalities so that we are not unduly troubled on a sad occasion like this. I had not known that they would attend to such things.
Overall, planning a funeral ahead of time should not be a traumatic experience. Some of us have past experiences with funerals that may not be good ones, and simply being at the funeral home can bring back memories that may be unpleasant. However, going to make prior arrangements can be therapeutic as it helps you have a chance to think about mortality in a matter of fact manner and you realize death is a part of life itself. Unfortunately, death, too, is expensive.