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.

Patriotic Cedar Cross

It was the nation’s bloodiest, most divisive war that sparked the creation of America’s first national cemetery. In July 1862, at the height of the Civil War, Congress initiated the national cemetery system when it passed legislation authorizing President Abraham Lincoln to purchase land to create national cemeteries for “soldiers who shall have died in the service of the country.”

Arlington National Cemetery on the outskirts of the nation’s capitol in Arlington, Virginia was the first national cemetery. Today 141 national cemeteries hold the remains of our country’s fallen warriors, including 14 burial sites at national battlefields. Any U.S. soldier who has served on active duty for a least 24 months, any sodier who died during or as a result of combat, certain reservists, and any soldier honorably discharged may choose to be buried at a national cemetery. In some cases, the spouses of veterans may also be buried at national cemeteries. Veterans are also eligible for a free grave marker courtesy of Uncle Sam, whether they are buried in a private or national cemetery. Veterans or their families may choose from granite, marble or bronze monument plaques by making application to the Veterans Administration Monument Service.

Gravesite Masters can help you remember loved ones who have served our country. We can deliver Memorial Day flags, flowers and memorials to cemeteries across the country.

“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.

Memorial Cairn

Flowers aren’t for everyone. The ancient Celts marked graves with cairns, stacks of rocks and stones of varying size from near boulders to small pebbles. Many cairns seen in Scotland, Wales and Ireland are conical but some are tall precarious towers of stacked rocks that seem to defy the laws of gravity. Over the centuries the building of cairns has been a time-honored way to memorialize the dead.

During the Bronze Age, large cairns containing burial cists, stone coffins, were built throughout the United Kingdom. Usually built on a hill above the deceased’s village, cairns served as both memorial and reminder of the deceased. A freeform tombstone marking an individual’s passing, the pile of stones may have served to discourage grave robbers or keep dead souls from escaping. In Scottish tradition, rocks were carried from the bottom of the hill to the cairn at the top, the cairn growing in size as each visitor added another rock to the pile.

It is tradition for each person passing by a cairn to add a stone. Stones must be added to the top of the cairn and be smaller than the stone upon which it is placed. Not only does the habit counteract the effects of weathering; but when the cairn marks a grave, adding a stone is considered a sign of respect. In keeping with cairn tradition, The Gravesite Masters can arrange to mark a loved one’s grave with a memorial rock or boulder, a timeless tribute and the beginning of a cairn to commemorate your loved one.

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.

The Cemetery Registry

The beginning of a new year is a good time to review family documents and make sure your affairs are in order. Death catches most of us by surprise. A grieving spouse and family is in no emotional condition to make burial plans and important financial decisions should you die unexpectedly. It is always better to plan ahead, including for your funeral and final resting place. If you have not discussed your funeral and burial arrangements with your family, perhaps this is a good time to do so. When loved ones die, grieving family members find it extremely helpful to have a sense of what their departed loved one wanted.

Many families find it helpful to preplan funeral arrangements and burial services, even if they choose not to prepay them. Purchasing your grave site ahead of time takes care of an important end of life decison, removing that burden from your family. Purchasing a grave site from The Cemetery Registry allows you to choose the cemetery where you would like to be buried. The Cemetery Registry is a North American registry of verified, authenticated private owner grave sites, cemetery lots and cemetery plots offered for sale by the plot owners. People who have purchased or inherited cemetery lots they no longer plan to use, often due to a family move, may also sell their unwanted cemetery lots through The Cemetery Registry.

For more details about buying or selling cemetery plots and lots through The Cemetery Registry, please click here.

Headstone Photograph Holder

Pictures keep our memories alive when a loved one passes. We display pictures of family and friends to commemorate their passing and keep them close in mind and heart. In photo albums we chronicle the lives of those we love: baby steps, toothless five-year-old grins, cowboy boots and ballerina tutus, the shy embarrassment of first date, first dance, first prom.

In camera flashes we capture the pride of high school accomplishments, graduation day, leaving home, college, jobs, new friends and new loves as those we cherish slowly slip farther away. In digital images we record the ups and downs, successes and failures, joys and sorrows of life that follow.

We seem to chronicle more of the happy, silly, funny moments of life than the sad and serious ones. But perhaps that’s just as well. When someone we love leaves us, it’s the moments of joy and happiness we want to remember, those are the memories that most seem to ease our grief. Adding a headstone photograph holder to your loved one’s gravesite can help keep our memories alive and provide solace in our grief. Every time you visit your loved one’s gravesite, you are greeted cold, lonely stone, but by the smiling countenance of your loved one.

Gravesite Masters offers several headstone photograph display options, including a solar-lighted display and one that includes a floral basket. Visit our website to view our complete selection of  cemetery products.

No one likes to contemplate death, but death is a normal part of the life cycle. Just as you plan for marriage, the birth of a child, the purchase of a home, your children’s college education, and retirement, you should think about what you want to happen in the final chapter of life. Sometimes death comes suddenly or tragically, but even when it creeps up on us slowly, too many of us fail to tell our loved ones what we want our final days to be like.

You can create a living will and medical power of attorney to spell out medical interventions that you do and do not want to be taken if you become incapacitated and unable to speak for yourself toward the end of life. Too often families have no idea how much medical intervention their loved ones want. Elderly patients may suffer needlessly if they haven’t provided a clear directive.

The burden of making memorial, burial and cemetery decisions after a loved one dies can be devastating to grief-stricken spouses and loved ones. When prior arrangements have not been made, unscrupulous funeral homes may take advantage of your loved ones’ grief. Preplanning these decisions removes the burden from your loved ones’ shoulders and ensures that matters will be handled as you wish and within your family’s budget. Your loved ones will be comforted in knowing that they are following your wishes.

If you are planning for the final chapter of life, The Gravesite Masters can help.