By Andrew Hoffman
In our society most people can see the benefits of making plans in advance. Despite this common belief, there is a certain segment of our society that live by the seat of their pants and are reactive as opposed to proactive. But even for those individuals who are not planners, many of them will agree that it is good to be prepared or at least think about future life events.
We as a people plan many things, what is going to be our first car, where are we going to go to college and for what degree, what job do we want to do or who do we want to work for, where are we going to go for our next vacation, when are we going to retire. There are tons of decisions in life, big and small, that need to be made and in most cases planning can go a long way as to how we are going to achieve our goals when we make those decisions.
So, with that being said I am going to tackle the absolutely last major decision that everybody needs to make and also talk about why and how you would prepare for it. What am I speaking of? Your funeral/memorial service of course! If you are a regular reader of my articles you probably knew I wasn’t going to talk about divorce or your retirement plan.
Here is the sad truth of life. At some point in my life, I am going to die. Here is another truth, at some point you are going to die. On a long enough time line everyone in this town, state, nation and planet will die. Why am I being so brutal with this fact that I am smashing it in your face? Everyone is mortal. Because, we as humans don’t like to acknowledge this fact and western cultures, especially Americans, will do anything to not have to deal with death until they have no choice because grandpa, who has been on hospice for a year, just passed away in his recliner rocker watching tv and they don’t know what to do! They had no plan in place!
I said everything in that paragraph above not to offend or upset any of you but to drive home a point that very few want to face and hopefully get you all to think. Our time here is not infinite and we should plan our end of life decisions based on that fact. I will tell you that on average I get about one to two phone calls a week from someone who is calling because they have a family member who is not well and is expected to die any day and they want to know what they should do. Well, it is good that they called but they really should have called me sooner because more could have been done in advance. Worse, about once a week I get a call, usually from a family friend because the immediate family is too distraught to talk to me directly, that a death has occured and they don’t know what to do. In these situations, I as a professional and the firm I work for help and handle the situation to get them where they need to be by the time everything is finished. But, it could always be handled better so that the death of the loved one, although ,heartbreaking and tragic, is not as chaotic and less stressful. Stay tuned for my next column as we discuss further.
Andrew B. Hoffman is a funeral director at Jeffries and Keates and Keates-Plum Funeral Homes. He is a twenty-two year veteran of the funeral industry.
