Dad Gravesite Spray

My father died a few years back. He was not a world leader or a star athlete. His name was never bandied about the gossip columns, and it won’t be found in future history books. Like most fathers, my dad was just an average guy. He worked hard to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads. Dad was the one who ran behind the bike yelling encouragement as you struggled to balance. He spent hours pitching slow balls while you practiced your swing. He showed you how to pound a nail and fix a leaky faucet. He gritted he teeth and remained calm when you ground the gears while learning to shift. And he told unbelievably corny jokes! 

Dad was always the one saddled with the job of straightening you out when you crossed the line. But he was also the one who pushed you to explore life and strive to do your best. He helped you move into your first apartment and congratulated you on your first job. When you were young, Dad was the wisest man you know. By your teens, you couldn’t believe how dumb he was. Somewhere in your mid-20s you were amazed by how sharp he’d become. Dad didn’t change, but you did; and he was with you every step of the way.

Father’s Day is Sunday. If your Dad is still with you, spend some time together. If he’s passed on, remember your Dad and all the things he taught you. Visit his grave, leave some cemetery flowers and say “thank you” one more time.

They say everyone dies alone, but planning a funeral should be a family affair. Just as you plan and discuss legal, retirement, medical and other major life issues with your family, you should discuss your funeral and burial preferences well before you reach the end of life. In our society, a funeral is a time to pay tribute to our dead, but a funeral should also succor the living. Family members should have an opportunity to express their opinions about funeral practices that would be meaningful to them and that might bring them comfort in their grief.

There is no one “right” way to hold a funeral and bury a loved one. Choices should be dictated by any wishes expressed by your loved one before he or she died, but funeral choices should also meet the needs of the family members left behind wherever possible. Discussing these issues while everyone is still healthy and active can make end-of-life decisions easier to make when the time comes.

Families should make burial and memorial choices based on their personal beliefs, family preferences and budget. It can be helpful to interview area funeral homes in advance and review price lists. Commonly requested services are often bundled into cost-effective packages, but most funeral homes will also offer individual services from which families can pick and choose. Discuss options and prices with the funeral home director, then with your family and select options that fit within your family’s budget.

“In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes,” Benjamin Franklin once said; but how Americans address death has changed with the times. The high cost of funerals in the midst of a difficult economy is enticing some Americans to embrace funeral customs that haven’t been practiced since before the Civil War.

In the U.S., home funerals were common before chemical embalming gained acceptance in the later 1800s. When a person died, family members would wash the body and dress the deceased in his or her “funeral clothes.” These were often an individual’s nicest clothing, a man’s Sunday suit or a woman’s nicest dress worn to weekly church services or special holiday gatherings. The deceased would be “laid out” in the parlor or bedroom of his home. Family and friends who attend the “viewing” to pay their respects to the deceased and console the family. Due to the lack of refrigeration, viewings typically lasted three days, sometimes less in the summer, before the body was interred.

This kind of do-it-yourself funeral is gaining a niche following from people who wish to keep funeral rituals simple and inexpensive. Under the direction of “death midwives,” family members bathe, dress and lay out the body in the home of a relative. Dry ice is used to preserve the body while family and friends visit to pay their respects. Inexpensive cardboard or pine caskets can be purchased to transport the body to a crematorium or to the cemetery for a green burial.

“In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes,” Benjamin Franklin wrote more than two centuries ago. With the income tax deadline approaching, it doesn’t look like much as changed. Fallout from the recession may have injected some uncertainty into life, but you can still count on death and taxes.

Just like you plan for taxes, it’s wise to plan for your death while you’re still hale and hearty to ensure that your wishes are followed. Families appreciate a road map when making final decisions for their loved ones. Pre-planning for your final days well before you die also removes the emotional and financial burden of decision-making from your loved ones when they are distraught and grieving.

Experts recommend having the following documents or arrangements in place well before you die. They also recommend reviewing your decisions at least once a decade and making adjustments to plans and documents to reflect changes in your life and family.

• A will provides for care of underage children and distribution of possessions and financial assets.
• A Living Will specifies your wishes about medical measures to be taken if you are seriously ill.
• A Medical Power of Attorney names the person empowered to make medical decisions for you if you are incapacitated.
• Long-term care insurance provides for living assistance as you age.
• The Cemetery Registry allows you to pre-purchase burial plots.
• The Gravesite Masters can arrange for the long-term care and beautification of your gravesite.

Most people have trouble talking about death, particularly their own; but it’s a conversation we need to have with our loved ones. Even in our younger years your family should know whether you prefer to be buried or cremated. If there is a particular cemetery or town where you wish to be buried. And any other matters about which you feel very strongly. When a loved one dies, families want to honor their last wishes. Leaving behind clear instructions about your wishes can be very comforting to your family when you die.

As you approach the end of life, many people choose to plan their funeral services, selecting hymns and Bible verses or poems to be shared. Many people also make prior arrangements for their burial well before death. They select their casket and headstone and purchase a cemetery plot or make arrangements for cremation and interment of their ashes. Many select gravesite flowers or special gravesite markers to beautify their graves. Many even write their own obituary or arrange for online memorials and life legacies. These people see their funeral as a way to share a final message with their loved ones.

The Gravesite Masters can work with you to put in place many of your final arrangements to provide your family with peace of mind after you are gone.

Easter Cross Gravesite Decoration

After the winter snows have melted away, spring brings rebirth and renewal. Trees begin to bud, the grass starts to green and spring bulbs begin to poke their tender shoots through the ground. Soon daffodils and tulips will bloom, carpeting the landscape with color. Many cemeteries were created as beautifully landscaped parks and arboretums and blossom with the rich colors and heady scents of flowering trees and bulbs each spring. The beauty of nature can be a balm to the soul whether grief at the passing of a loved one is fresh or a still dull ache.

Spring calls families to revisit the graves of their loved ones. Particularly during the Easter season, families come to honor their loved ones, decorating their gravesites with spring flowers and Easter crosses. The Gravesite Masters has a beautiful selection of Easter gravesite decorations that include beautifully decorated crosses, charming bunnies and lovely flower and ribbon Easter eggs. Our selection of spring floral bouquets in cemetery cones includes a wide variety of flower varieties and colors for you to choose from.

The Gravesite Masters can deliver and install your choice of spring or Easter gravesite decoration on your loved one’s grave at cemeteries anywhere across the United States.

Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day when many Americans celebrate their Irish heritage. Even if they’re not Irish, many families invite friends and family members back to their home after a funeral for a buffet dinner. Stories are told and memories about the deceased are shared over food and drink. The practice harkens from the traditional Irish wake and is a way to support the grieving family and ease the transition to grief.

The traditional Irish wake was held in the home of the deceased or a close family member. The deceased was laid out in the parlor. Family and friends would gather to party and drink, tell stories and sing songs, to celebrate the passing of the deceased and the beginning of his afterlife. Early Celtic people believed death was the beginning of a new life in another, better place and equipped graves with objects and possessions the deceased might need in the afterlife. A funeral was cause for celebration; hence the joyful, sometimes raucous tone of Irish wakes.

Another fanciful though largely discredited reason for Irish wakes holds that the Irish fondness for stout, which was drunk from pewter mugs caused lead poisoning, one of the symptoms of which is that the victim can become catatonic (comatose) and may appear to be dead but awakens in a few hours. Irish legend says a victim’s drinking buddies would lay him out and keep watch to see if he would arise from the dead!

Solar Light Angel

More people die in January and February than at any other time during the year, according to statistics from the National Vital Statistics System; but you’ll rarely see the word “died” in their death notices. Obituaries are rarely cut-and-dried factual articles written by newspaper reporters; most are memorials created by the family of the deceased. Perhaps it’s a wish to soften the finality of death, perhaps it’s an effort to keep the inevitable at arm’s length, maybe it’s human denial; but when you read an obituary you’ll find that most people tend to distance themselves from death by using euphemisms for life’s final event.

“Death is hard to deal with,” Geoffrey Nunberg told McClatchy Newspapers. The University of California at Berkeley linguist said most people avoid the “D” word when describing death. “This is one reality that’s hard to face head-on.”

Our avoidance of death is nothing new. Euphemisms for death can be found in the Bible, Homer and Shakespeare. The phenomenon seems universal, cutting across centuries and cultures. “Passed away” is the phrase most favored in obituaries, although there are many others:

• “Crossed over”
• “Joined his wife”
• “Left us suddently”
• “Passed over to his reward”
• “Returned home”
• “Went to sleep peacefully”
• “Taken away from us”
• “Slipped away quietly”

Some psychologists believe it would be healthier for us to face death head on. They believe using “dead” and “died” to describe death helps people face the finality of death and grieve.

Grieving families can find it difficult to make informed decisions about funeral and gravesite arrangements for their departed loved one. Emotion clouds judgment. Distress makes it impossible for many people to let go of their grief long enough to make the many practical decisions that accompany the end of life. The shock of death and pressure to make funeral arrangements can be overwhelming. The result can be hastily made emotional decisions that ignore the family’s financial reality.

Some unscrupulous funeral homes take advantage of the family’s distress to sell them high-priced funeral products and services that they either don’t need or can ill afford. According to the National Funeral Directors Association, the average cost of a U.S. funeral was $7,323 in 2006, an increase of 45% since 2001, and prices are still climbing. The high cost of dying is causing many families to pick and choose services from respected online funeral product providers rather than purchase a funeral home’s comprehensive package.

Many families now choose online obituaries and Remembrance Registries instead of expensive newspaper obituaries prepared by funeral homes. Online memorials are available to friends and families across the country, not just local newspaper subscribers. Rather than purchase gravesite enhancements and floral holders or arrangements from cemeteries, people are seeking cost effective online resources. Many are purchasing their cemetery plots from owner Cemetery Registries.

The Gravesite Masters offers many affordable funeral products and services to help grieving families hold the line on funeral costs.

For those who never got their 10 minutes of fame while they were living, an Iowa funeral home has come up with a unique, if bizarre solution. The Des Moines funeral home will place your funeral announcement — with your photo, of course — on high-tech electronic billboards around the city. Family members can arrange to have a favorite picture of their departed loved one, along with details about their life and information about visitation and funeral services, posted larger-than-life in full color for the entire city to see.

The unusual billboard program is a first in the funeral industry, Jessica Koth, a spokeswoman for the National Funeral Directors Association in Brookfield, Wisconsin, told the Associated Press.  Billboard advertisements for funeral homes are common, but this is the first time Koth said she’s ever heard of someone putting information about the deceased or funeral service information on a billboard. The new program has caught some flak for lack of sensitivity, but the general manager of the Des Moines funeral home defends the practice, saying it’s just a modern take on newspaper obituaries.

Who knows whether the idea will catch on, but The Gravesite Masters believe family may be better comforted by online memorials and interactive life legacies and remembrance registries that allow family members to share their memories, thoughts and pictures about their departed loved one.