“We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more…  It is a superhuman task.  But superhuman is the term for tasks that take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.” (Camus)

Here are some lanterns to light the path and guide you on your journey through grief.  They are guidelines written by path-finders who have traveled through grief before you.

• Seek and Accept Support.  You need acceptance and caring throughout grief.  If you lack support, make finding it your first goal.  Start with family, friends, or clergy, or call a local counseling agency or school counselor for advice.
• Accept Your Grief.  Time alone may not heal grief.  To work through it you must accept and deal with it.  Remember it is a natural healing process.  Roll with its tides.
• Find Models.  You may need evidence that survival and growth are possible.  Look for someone who can give you this hope.  Books and support groups may be good places to begin.
• Learn about Grief.  Many a person who has learned about grief has declared, “I found out I’m not crazy…I’m grieving.” Understanding grief can make it safer and more predictable.
• Express It.  Without expression grief can leave you frozen and stoic.  Find someone who can listen to your story-again and again.  You may also want to express it privately…through music, art, poetry or a journal.
• Accept your Feelings.  Grief has many feelings…some very intense.  Accept them and they will help you learn about yourself and the meaning of your loss.  Lock them up inside you and you will lock away parts of yourself.
• Pace Yourself.  Grief takes energy.  You may tire easily.  A slower pace alternated with periods of diversion and mild exercise will maximize healing.  So will good nutrition.
• Involve Yourself in Work or Meaningful Activity.  It can help you maintain direction, control and purpose, and occupy your mind.
• Don’t Be Afraid to Have Fun.  Laughter IS good medicine.  Allow yourself opportunities for diversion and freshness.  Children and pets are great providers of healing.  Nurture a friendship with someone who can help you play.
• Hitch Your Wagon to a Star.  Like the song says, “You’ve got to have hope…miles and miles of hope.” Faith is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to go on when fear is present.

Someone you know experiences the death of a loved one.  You realize that your sympathetic words and helpful gestures could mean great comfort to the, but sometimes it is difficult to know what to say or do.  Here are some suggestions that may help you:

• Communicate.  Show your concern by telephoning, by simply saying, “I’m so sorry,” and be offering to help in any way.
• Be yourself.  Simple, honest words will help much more than cliches like, “He is out of his pain.”
• Listen to your friend and watch your friend’s reactions.  Don’t force conversation, but if your friend feels like taking, be there.  Do not criticize, try to change the subject or probe for details about the death.  Being a good listener is one of the kindest things you can do for another person.
• Lend a hand with everyday concerns.  Answer the phone, greet visitors, prepare a meal or care for the children.  Helping in these ways will show your concern and be a great comfort.
• Understand that healing takes time.  Your grieving friend’s emotions will not go away in a week. 
• Allow time for sharing thoughts and feelings and understand that the exchange will help in healing.
• Write a letter.  Words expressing your sympathy and your special memories of the one who died will be a cherished keepsake for your friend.
• After a time, encourage your friend back into outside activities.  Be gentle and understanding.  “Beginning again” takes confidence and initiative that your friend may be lacking at the moment. 
• Offer encouragement, but be sensitive to your friend’s responses.
• Human contact, more than anything else, speeds the healing process.  Your grieving friend or relative will be comforted and strengthened by your concern, caring and help.

Camus said, “Don’t walk in front of me…I may not follow.  Don’t walk behind me I may not lead.  Walk beside me—-and just be my friend”.  Most grieving people do not need professional help…they need a friend.  O’Toole suggests a “baker’s dozen,” of ways you can be a friend to someone who is grieving.

1. Be There.  Grieving people need support and presence much more than advice.  It is important to offer support over time.
2. Initiate and Anticipate.  Grieving people often don’t know or can’t ask for what they need.  Suggest times you’ll be with them.  Tell them ways you’d like to help.
3. Listen.  It’s often hard to believe a loss has really happened.  Grieving people often need to talk about it a lot and tell the stories over and over.  Listening without judgement or interruption can be the most important gift you can give.
4.  Avoid cliches and Easy Answers.  “I’m sorry”…  “I care”…  “You’re in my thoughts” or “I’m with you” May be the best response.
5. Silence is Golden.  Sometimes there are no words for grief and no words that bring enough comfort to take away the pain.  Silence can demonstrate your trust and acceptance.
6. Accept and Encourage the Expression of Feelings.  Reassure the person that grief has many feelings…  that feelings are like barometers that indicate our internal weather.  Expressing feelings can help change the weather.  Suggest non-hurtful ways.  (Cry, punch bag, go running, etc.)
7. Offer Opportunities and Safety for Remembering.  There are many times during grief that remembering helps the healing and growth process.  Offer to revisit places and people who can help them get their questions answered or remember and can confirm the importance of their loss.
8. Learn About the Grief Process.  It will help with your fears and feelings of helplessness.  When appropriate, share this with your friend as a natural process.
9. Help the Person Find Support and Encouragement.  Help your friend find a variety of supports to deal with different feelings and needs.
10. Allow the Person to Grieve at His or Her Own Pace.  Grief is an individual process.  Your ability to not judge the length of time it takes will lighten the pressure to conform to other peoples’ needs or ways, and will enhance self-trust.
11. Be Patient…With yourself and your friend.  You may need to give more of yourself than you imagined.  Make sure you have your own means of support and self-care to see you through. 
12. Provide for Times of Lightheartedness.  Grief can be like swimming upstream…  sometimes you need to get out and recoup.  Laughter and play are wonderful ways to regain some needed energy.
13. Believe in the Person’s Ability to Recover and Grow.  Your hope and faith may be needed when theirs fails.  Your trust in the other’s ability to heal is essential.  Listen and be with them in emotional pain.  Do not push.

The Reverend Charles Meyer shared some wonderful thoughts for easing the pain of losing a loved one.

Talk About the Loss.  Shakespeare rightly wrote:  “The grief that does not speak whispers the o’erfraught heart and bids it break.”  Talk about the pain, the loneliness, the anger, the depression - all the feelings that arise - with a good friend, a counselor or a member of the clergy who will listen openly without feeling obligated to “fix things.”

Grief is Physical.  Bereavement is not only emotionally exhausting but physically exhausting as well.  Many survivors feel constantly tired or lethargic and may feel the need to sleep or rest more often.  This is the body’s way of processing the emotional stress.  Grieving persons need to exercise and eat regularly.  This will help reduce stress, provide needed energy and even balance out mood swings.

Just Because Someone is Dead Doesn’t Make Him Right.  People frequently say, “He would have wanted me to do this.”  But they didn’t always do what the loved one wanted when he or she was alive, and death does not confer posthumous infallibility.

All obligations to a loved one end at death.  Survivors need to follow the course of best interest for themselves, regardless of what the loved one’s wishes may have been.

It is Possible to Feel Opposing Emotions Simultaneously.  Most of us have been taught to believe that feelings exist in an either/or dichotomy.  So why, when someone dies after a long illness, do we feel extremely sad, yet extremely relieved at the same time?  The fact is that we can feel both sad and relieved, loving and angry, as we try to make sense out of what has happened.  The bereaved should allow all their emotions to emerge and then sort them out by talking with a trusted friend or undertaking some creative expression, such as keeping a journal.  It is also okay to wallow.  Despair, depression and deep sadness are all normal reactions to loss and should not be denied or discounted.

Releasing Pain Is Not Erasing Memory.  Strange as it may sound, most people are apprehensive about giving up intense grieving.  They believe that their sorrow, both public and private, is a sign of caring, and by giving it up or lessening it, they may also be diminishing the caring.  In fact, the exact opposite is true.  Gradually letting go of pain allows time and space for more vivid and pleasant memories to surface and become a part of daily living.

You Can Be Alone Without Being Lonely.  Loneliness is a self-inflicted condition; it can come on you when you’re alone or with a group of people.  It is possible to spend enjoyable time by yourself; however, it does require filling that time creatively and deciding who you are now, what you need now and what you want now.  It also requires giving up the fantasy that couples and families are never lonely.

Expect to Be Blindsided.  One of the most embarrassing and frightening experiences of great loss is to be perfectly normal one minute and, for no apparent reason, to dissolve the next.  It is as though a part of us is always on the lookout for remembrances.  You may be doing housework alone, visiting friends or watching television, when you suddenly become tearful and sad, usually without knowing why.  Take comfort in knowing that this is normal, and eventually it will happen less and less frequently.

Laughing Is Not Disrespectful.  Even though someone has died, funny things will happen at work, at home, to others and, believe it or not, to you.  It is okay to laugh at these things without feeling guilty about not spending twenty-four hours a day grieving.  Humor has always been a great stress reducer.

There Is Love After Loss.  Although there is an initial loss of libido after the death of a partner, your sexual feelings and the need for closeness and warmth will return.  That need may also be accompanied by feelings of guilt (about “cheating” on the spouse) or fear (of dating again or risking rejection).  Remember that it is okay to change, to be sexual and sensual.

Life’s Too Short Not to…  This phrase is a helpful one to remember when you are faced with spontaneous, difficult or even fun situations.  When the opportunity to do something new arises, don’t turn it down just because you wouldn’t have done it when your loved one was alive.  More often than not, these situations will actually prove to be enjoyable.

Mourning: A major problem for bereaved people in America is our lack of universal mourning rites that help them express their grief and that provide some structure for “filling up the emptiness caused by the loss,” as Butler and express the task ahead of them.  Mourners are expected to be brave, to suppress their tears, and to get on with the business of living.  Yet feelings of loss run deep.  They need to be expressed and dealt with before people can reorganize their lives.  Without such expression survivors often have trouble accepting the reality of what has happened and are, therefore, unable to heal the wound in their lives.

The term ‘mourning’ refers to the behavior followed by a bereaved person or community after a death.  It is the Irish wake, to which friends and family come to view and keep vigil over the body of the dead person and to toast his memory with food and drink.  It is the Jewish shiva, the week following a death when the family covers all the mirrors in the house, renounces the wearing of shoes, and remains at home to visitors, who often bring gifts of food.  It is the flying of a flag at half-mast to observe the death of a public person.  As many of these customs fall into disuse in modern society, bereaved people lose some of their most valuable supports for coping with their grief.  MOURNING:  represents the culturally defined acts that are usually performed after death.

Bereavement: is the objective fact, the change in status of the survivor.  When someone close to us dies, we change from being a wife to being a widow, from a child to an orphan, a mother to a childless woman, a brother to an only child.  Even when that status does not change the survivors are still bereft of that person’s presence in their lives.  Bereavement represents the experiential state one endures after realizing a loss, and as such, it is an objective fact.

Grief: is the emotional response of the bereaved person, which can be expressed in many different ways, ranging from a feeling of emptiness to a feeling of rage.  Let us look at some of the forms that grief can take:

Anticipatory Grief: occurs in situations where the family and friends of a person who has been ill for a long time often prepare themselves for the loss to come by experiencing many of the classic symptoms of grief while the person is still alive.  This often helps the survivors, enabling them to handle the actual death more easily when it does come.  If such anticipatory grief, however, makes the survivors disengage themself from the dying person while she or he is still alive, it can create a devastating sense of isolation for the terminally ill patient.

What we call ‘Normal Grief‘ often follows a fairly predictable pattern, in which the bereaved person is likely to experience waves of strong emotions in a sequence that may parallel the responses to one’s own oncoming death.  Schulz (1978) identified three phases in the expression of normal grief:

1. The initial phase lasts for a few weeks after the death.  During this period survivors tend to react with shock and disbelief.  They are often dazed and confused.  As their awareness of loss sinks in, the initial numbness gives way to overwhelming feelings of sadness, often expressed by almost constant crying.  Toward the end of this period grievers sometimes become afraid that they cannot handle their sorrow and that they are heading for an emotional breakdown.  Some deal with this anxiety by using alcohol or tranquilizers.  Physical symptoms as shortness of breath, emptiness in the abdomen, loss of appetite, and insomnia are common.
2. The intermediate phase begins about three weeks after the death.  At about this time the people who have rallied around the widow or other principal mourner have gone back to their own lives, leaving her to cope with the resumption of day-to-day life without the dead person.  This phase lasts for about a year.  The widow will relive her husband’s death, going over all the details in her mind and in her conversation, in an obsessive search for the meaning of his death.  From time to time she is seized by a feeling that her dead husband is present:  She will hear his voice, sense his presence in the room, even see his face before her.  With time, all these sensations diminish.
3. The recovery phase begins at the start of the second year after the death.  While the widower still misses his dead wife, he knows that life must go on, and he becomes more active socially, getting out more, seeing people, resuming old interests, perhaps discovering new ones.  Many survivors feel stronger and proud of themselves once they have reached this point and they realize that they have survived an event they had always dreaded.

Morbid Grief:  Reactions similar in nature to those of normal grief but much more intense and long lasting are considered pathological.  At other times morbid grief reactions take on a different complexion.  The bereaved person may at first react with a sense of well-being inappropriate to the loss.  By forcing the grief inward, he or she may develop physical problems like asthma or colitis.  After the initial period of apparent calm, bereaved people often show changes in personality, becoming hostile, irritable, and so immobilized that they have to be pushed to initiate any activities.  They may become depressed, unduly worried about their own health, phobic, or panicky.  Some are overcome by guilt, blaming themselves for the death.

Gravesite Masters understands the need to express empathy, compassion, and understanding when a person wants to bring comfort and express their kindness and condolences to those who are grieving the loss of a loved one and offers a selection of bereavement and sympathy gift ideas.

After a loss, certain tasks must be accomplished in order for a greiving person to make a strong recovery.  These tasks include:

1. Emancipation from the Bondage of the Deceased:  When you care about someone, you emotionally invest part of yourself in that person. (cathexis).  The single most crucial task in grief is “untying the ties that bind” the griever to the deceased individual.  This does not mean the deceased is forgotten or not loved.  The detaching and modifying of emotional ties so that new relationships can be established. (decathexis)
2. Readjustment to the Environment in Which the Deceased is Missing:  This is the task of the griever to accommodate to the would with out the presence of the deceased.  May have to take on the skills and roles and deceased once performed.  Has to adjust to new identity, “we” to “I”, “husband” to “widower”, or “couple” to “single.”  Losses affect us emotionally, physically, socially, and financially.
3. Formation of New Relationships:  Having to take the emotional energy that was invested in a loved one and reinvesting it in someone or something else.  (dating, hobbies, volunteer work, etc.)

Worden, in his book Grief Counseling & Grief, describes the tasks in this way:

• Accept the Reality of the Loss: Acknowledge the fact that the loved one has passed, where you believe your loss is a definite reality.  There is no denial of the death in which you accept the full meaning of the loss.
• Accept the Emotional Pain of Grief:   Accept the painful feelings of sorrow that are associated with the loss. It is necessary to experience your feelings of grief so as to be able to emotionally heal from your loss. If you try avoiding your grief feelings, you end up in prolonging your grief and making your recovery more difficult.
• Adjust to an Environment in Which the Deceased is Missing:  Adapt to a new reality without your loved one.  This means developing new coping skills, as well as abilities and strengths, that will help you to adjust to the demands of life after the loss.
• Emotionally Relocate the Deceased and Move on With Life:   Find a suitable emotional place within for the departed.  Simultaneously, you commence reinvesting emotionally in life again.  You begin to direct your liveliness in new interests, new places, and new relationships

The father of a school classmate, who operated a funeral home in the local community, shared some of his insights on grief works:

• Walk through Grief - don’t run.
• Memories are not enough.
• Tomorrow must be created.
• Grief work takes time.
• Extending grief is not a sign of love.
• The waves come again and again.
• Anguish like ecstasy is not enough.
• Time helps but is not enough.
• You must begin again.
• Don’t try to solve all problems at once - one day at a time - make incremental changes.
• Travel.
• How you handle death is an expression of how you cope with life.
• Don’t allow anyone to suffocate or take over your life.
• Seeking help is not a weakness.
• When you lift your hand to help others you are understanding yourself.
• Walk through the valley of the shadows of death.
• This is your Grief.  How you handle it is determined by you.
• Grief is not organized.
• People do not want to experience Grief.
• Cognitive readjustment is necessary.

Loss will come.  Loss is intricately woven into the fabric of life itself.  There is no life without loss.  But as normal as loss is, it can leave us profoundly wounded.  It remains as mysterious and ominous as it is common and inevitable.  The pain of such losses may still be present, but is eased by the reality that the next phase of life holds fresh possibilities.

Other losses are the result of external forces which thrust us into horrifying despair.  Without warning our lives are absolutely altered and can never be the same again.  Like Humpty Dumpty, we know a great fall and no one can put the pieces together again.  Life as we know it is over.  The old is forever gone.  Still other losses come because of our participation in the process of loss.

People react differently to the loss of a loved one.  Expressions of grief take many forms.  Some factors that Influence the grief reaction include:

1. The roles that the deceased occupied in the family or social system of  the griever.
2. The individual’s coping behaves, personality, and mental health.
3. The individual’s past experiences with loss and death.
4. The individual’s social, cultural, ethnic, and religious/philosophical backgrounds.
5. The individual’s sex-role conditioning
6. The individual’s age
7. The characteristics of the deceased.
8. The amount of unfinished business between the griever and the deceased.
9. The timeliness of the death.
10. The individual’s perception of preventability.
11. The sudden versus expected death.
12. The length of illness prior to death.
13. Other stresses and crisis in your life.
14. The individual’s social support system.
15. The educational, economical, and occupational status of the bereaved.
16. The individual’s socio-cultural, ethnic, and religious/philosophical backgrounds.

 Grief is a reaction to all loss, and can be consuming and blinding.  We are often left with deep scares.  Grief is an experience which is survivable and can even be a passageway to a deepened and renewed life.  There are some guidelines which help:

• Acknowledge the reality of the loss and the power of the feelings.  It is not helpful to turn away from this truth or to deny its reality.  It may be painful and we may with it were not so, but it must be acknowledged.
• Let yourself experience the range of feelings that come to you.  You are likely to be hurt deeper than you ever have been before and to know an anguish never before known.  Expressing your feelings is more helpful than repressing them.
• Avail yourself of the support of friends and family.  Be with them.  Pour out your heart.  Let them care for you.  Grief heals when shared.
• Give yourself time to heal.  Grief is not an event so much as it is a process.  It comes in little pieces, over time.
• Expect relapses; it’s normal.
• Decide to reinvest in activities.  Before it feels completely right, you  need to return to some activities.  This is a decision of the head more than the heart.
• Develop a faith and philosophy which says that beyond this searing pain there can be renewal.  Christians remember the resurrection and recall that this experience was one of bewilderment, pain, anguish and despair which nevertheless gave way to new life beyond the grave.
• Accept the reality of the loss.  Acceptance does not mean you like the new  reality.  It simply means you face life in light of the loss and consequent pain and find ways to go on in spite of it.

 Psychologists are only beginning to learn about the grief process and have outlined distinct phases of grieving.  These are:

1. The initial response is a phase characterized first by shock and then by an overwhelming sorrow.
2. The second phase, coping with anxiety and fear, is characterized by worry of a nervous breakdown.  Some people depend upon tranquilizers during this period.
3. The third phase, the intermediate phase, consists of obsessional review of how the death might have been prevented and a review of old memories of times with the loved one.
4. Recovery is the last phase, which usually begins after 1 year.  People become proud that they survived an extreme trauma, and they begin to develop a positive outlook once again.

Here are some insights from the Grief Recovery Handbook:

• Grieving is the most misunderstood and neglected growth process a person can go though.
• Grief is a normal and natural response to loss.
• Grief can be felt not only in death, but also in divorce, marriage, addictions to drugs, alcohol and food, retirement, etc.
• …incomplete recover (of grief) can have a life long affect on a persons’ happiness.
• We’re taught how to acquire things, not to lose something.
• The grievers intellectualize.  This is more accepted than dealing with our ability to show emotion.
• Plus major grief experiences are infrequent not allowing us to get familiar with it.
• People think that keeping “busy” helps.
• Grievers are expected to ‘act recovered.’
• If we bottle up the grief instead of fully expressing we become a ‘time bomb.’

Gravesite Masters understands the need to express empathy, compassion, and understanding when a person wants to bring comfort and express their kindness and condolences to those who are grieving the loss of a loved one and offers a selection of bereavement and sympathy gift ideas.

While some people do not treat their pets anything other than glorified animals, many people appreciate and love their pets as if they were children and a part of the family. Some pets go on vacations, have spa treatments, wear clothing, have personalized stuff, and even receive gifts on their birthdays and on holidays. For these people, pet cemeteries are the only place for their extremely loved pets that have gone to animal heaven.

If you are looking for the perfect location for your passed pet’s burial (and you don’t want them to be alone), you can look for pet cemeteries close to you at Roadside America. Here you can search for celebrity pet burial spots, military pet burial spots, horse burial spots, and other great locations for you deceased pet to spend the rest of his or her physical years on earth. You can even find the original Flipper’s final resting place, which is in Marathon, Florida.

However, if you cannot stand the thought of having your loved and adored pet being buried in an unfamiliar place, you can opt to hold a burial service in your backyard.  To show honor for your pet, you can create a virtual pet cemetery. You can assign your pet a plot on the website and post a lovely poem, story, or anything you want at their plot.

Cremation is the way for some people with their pets. The website for the International Association of Pet Cemeteries and Crematories can be of assistance for finding a local, reputable cemetery or crematory for your beloved pet.   They also offer tips on coping, bereavement, and loss, but can also supply contact information for others who have dealt with a similar fate.

To deal with the loss of your loved pet, friend, companion, and child, there are numerous online resources.  Gravesite Masters offers Pet Cremation Urns and Pet Memorial Markers

funeral-pre-planning

While we do not like to think about or accept that we will eventually pass on and become one with the Earth, many people realize that our lack of acceptance of death severely underrates our families’ feelings after our passing. We do not want our families to make tough, emotional decisions, such as choosing a casket, choosing a memorial and burial service, selecting a burial method, and paying for the event.  We want our wishes to be followed, but, more importantly, we want our family to not worry or get frustrated and more upset during an already saddening time.

For this, many funeral homes and websites, such as AARP, Memorial Service Planning, and the New York State Funeral Directors Association, offer assistance in preplanning and arranging a future funeral. These websites can offer great information on comprehensive funeral costs, choosing a funeral home, prepayment options, and helping your family understand your decisions. Many funeral homes in your area will also assist you in preplanning your future funeral and honor those wishes.

Many people will opt to take this planning over having their families do it, but few people know where to begin. First, you should talk with your family about your decision to preplan your future funeral, why you made that decision, and what you want you funeral to be like.  You can prepare your family for bereavement, honoring your funeral wishes, and other related topics. Next, you should shop around for a funeral home with great references and resources, in your price range, is licensed, will assist you with preplanning, and will honor your wishes. After you choose the funeral home, you should choose the funeral director, if you have a preference.  Money is always involved with everything unfortunately. You can discuss with the funeral home their available payment options for a future funeral. If you have a will with a lawyer, you may want to send a copy of your preplanned funeral wished to your lawyer to be with your will in the event of your passing.

While this will be a trying, upsetting, saddening time for you remaining family, by preplanning (and paying, if available) you funeral will give them less to worry about and think about. They will be able to focus on each other and coping with losing an important life friend and loved one: you.  For care after the funeral, let Gravesite Masters assist with all your cemetery needs.

Your loved one has passed, and now you have to write about their life and the life that they left behind. Often, this is the hardest, most excruciating task to do and overcome after a trauma such as dealing with the passing of a loved one. It is difficult to emotionally invest the time and energy into an obituary, but it is also difficult to summarize his or her life, no matter how long or short, into one or two paragraphs.

Before beginning to task of composing an obituary, contact the newspaper or website that will publish the obituary. Ask them if the obituaries have a length limit.  After receiving that vital piece of information, just write down everything about the loved one’s life.  You should include his or her full name (including any maiden names), birthplace, birth date, schools attended (along with when and where), marriages and divorces, children and grandchildren, hobbies, educational degrees, parents, survivors, and spouse information. Collect all of your many items and create the short summary of his or her life. Next, you should include the funeral, burial, memorial, and family and friends events, along with when and where they will take place. If you choose to set up a memorial fund, you should include that information, including where to send the memorial gift. If you are accepting flowers, you should include that. Many people choose to create a memorial fund in honor of the deceased.  Those last longer than flowers. My mother-in-law was a high school English teacher who encouraged reading at all ages. In her memory, we created a memorial fund to buy books for local libraries, shelters, and schools.

Tips on writing an obituary can be found at the Obituary Guide. Here, you can find templates, writing tips, genealogy, and news information on obituaries.  Once you have written the obituary, Gravesite Masters will be happy to publish it on their website for FREE!  That’s right, a FREE Funeral / Memorial Service & Obituary Listing - If you would like to post a friend or loved one’s obituary and funeral / memorial service information on their website, Gravesite Masters will list this information for you for FREE!  They will include this information on our website shortly after it is received.  It will remain on their website through the date of funeral / memorial service and will be removed thereafter, unless a Remembrance Registry or LifeLegacy is purchased prior to that time.  To list funeral / memorial service and obituary information, click here.  Or, you may email the information to:  FuneralInfo@GravesiteMasters.com.  These are text listings only, so do not send photos.

Gravesite Masters makes it easy to pay tribute to your loved ones by creating a unique and beautiful online memorial or legacy.  More than a simple obituary, our Remembrance Registry and LifeLegacy become a unique, interactive online funeral visitation and obituary website. We provide a gathering place for family and friends to share their memories and loving thoughts as they grieve and celebrate the lives of those whom have touched their lives and have now passed away.  After you have created your distinctive online memorial, it becomes a virtual meeting place for family and friends to honor and share their love for their friend or relative as they express grief for their loss. You can invite then invite friends and family to contribute to it or participate in sharing their thoughts. In essence, you broaden the funeral experience beyond place and time so that all who care can participate in the memorial service.

Gravesite Masters believes that it is important to share stories of how people have touched the lives of others. The process of mourning and healing comes through sharing stories and memories with others. Crying, laughing, smiling, and reflecting upon a loved one’s life helps to bring about closure throughout the years. The most powerful potential of the Internet is its ability to connect people.  It’s all about people coming together to remember loved ones and celebrating their life. It’s not just for people. Pets are cherished companions and become such a part of your family. Creating an online pet memorial is a wonderful mark of respect to the life of a friend that touched a family so profoundly. Whether it is a family member, friend or pet, sign up today to create a special online memorial page for the loved one you have lost.  In addition to the FREE obituary listing, Gravesite Masters also offers several other memorial / obituary products…

Remembrance Registry - a unique, distinctive, and interactive online funeral visitation and obituary website. The individual Remembrance Registry pages feature photographs, a biography, and family profile, as well as our exclusive Interactive Guestbook and Family Forum message board. You have control of administering the existing Remembrance Registry with the ability to change almost any aspect of an existing Remembrance Registry using our family administration program.
 
LifeLegacy - an interactive living memorial that remembers loved ones, connects families, and celebrates life. It features an Interactive Guestbook, Photo Gallery, Sharing Memories section, Family Forum message board, optional password protection, the option to choose your own color design and more. You have control of administering the existing Remembrance Registry with the ability to change almost any aspect of an existing Remembrance Registry using our family administration program.  Whether you purchase this for a family member or a friend, it is the ultimate condolence gift. Finding unique sympathy and bereavement gifts that will be especially meaningful can be difficult.  Look no further! The LifeLegacy is a unique interactive living memorial that lovingly remembers and celebrates life. It creates a living, growing online tribute, as well as a communications touchstone for family and loved ones. The LifeLegacy is unequivocally the most engaging and compelling online memorial available.

Click HERE to view their ONLINE Obituaries, Memorials, & Legacies.  For their archived online Obituaries, Memorials, & Legacies, click HERE.  Visit our FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for additional information.