one stop shopping

I found out that you can get a lot of things taken care of at the funeral home. I was un/fortunately aware of most of this due to the fact that I had been part of the Team o' Family that was on hand at the same funeral home for the preparation of my father's burial in 2000. They'll be more than happy to take care of the details and add the costs right in to the final bill. Such as:

• The newspaper obituary; cost is dictated by length and photo inclusion. I already knew that mom wanted it short, sweet and image-less.
• The program for the actual funeral; I submitted a photo for this one
• Procurement of multiple official copies of the death certificate
• Transportation for the family for the entire day of burial
• Guestbook, stand for the guestbook and additional chairs for home visitation

And other such random stuff, some of which I am almost certainly forgetting. Another reason it's important to know what's going on with the money is of course, working out payment for the funeral home. In a perfect world, we'd all have pre-paid our funeral expenses, but in my case, all we had was the plot which we weren't really going to use. Most likely because the FH knew our family, I was able to get things rolling with a promise to pay as soon as we liquidated my mother's bank accounts.

The clergy for the funeral was the minister from my mother's church and she did not require payment of any kind, so we planned on giving her an honorarium after the service instead. In some ways, planning and executing my mother's burial felt a lot like doing the same for my wedding except on crack because everything had to happen in less than a week with no advance planning. It's rife with tiny details and even though most of these folks still see you as the six year old they used to know, you're the person in charge now and they will come to you. The questions you get will range from the practical to the 'buh?' Where should donations should be made in lieu of flowers (even though flowers will come anyway)? Since there won't be pallbearers, will there be VIP seating for groups of which the deceased was a member? Who will be riding with the family in the limo and will you need more than one? Very important: who will be speaking in remembrance? Multiple folks? What should the time limit be for each person and how will we keep them on track?

In the end, I just kept it as simple as possible. The one thing I might have done differently was to somehow find a way to let people know ahead of time that she was going to be cremated. I think there was a great deal of suppressed shock when people came into the church to an urn instead of a casket. When it was time for me to speak, I explained it as her request and with some (hopefully) humor. Funny (to me) side story: turns out mom wasn't even in the urn as the Fun Home (nods to Alison Bechdel) still hadn't managed to track down her physician to sign the death certificate and you apparently can't bury (or cremate) a person without it. I think they expected me to wig right out because they didn't tell us until we were piled back into the limo to go to the cemetery, but I actually found it a tremendous hoot.

Next time: WHERE ARE THE KEYS????