Fairhaven Funeral Blog » Pre-Planning

What to do when there has been a death.

Marla J. Noel — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 00:47:42 +0000

There has been a death, now what do I do?
By Marla J. Noel

There is a lot to do after someone dies. This is not the entire list of things to do, however, it is a simple guideline to start the process. If you have to read and use this list, I am sorry for your loss. I hope that this will be some help to you.

• Review any paperwork that may be on file at the decedent’s home for funeral plans and insurance information. Obtain the decedent’s social security number and any military paperwork. You will need discharge paperwork to receive a flag and other military benefits.

• Determine if there was a will and contact the attorney for any additional paperwork.

• Make sure you understand all of the death benefits and funeral coverage. If there is a cemetery plot already purchased, check to see if that location also has a funeral home. Making arrangements with one company generally helps to make the planning process easier for the family.

• Contact your mortuary and your clergy who will assist you in arranging funeral or memorial services.

• Determine the time and place of funeral or memorial service. This can be done at the mortuary, at your church or your mortuary may be able to suggest other locations.

• Select the clothes you will want your loved one to wear. Don’t forget the details like underwear, makeup or nail polish.

• Go through old pictures or writings of the deceased. This can be therapeutic, and you may want to do so with a small group of close family members.

• Make a list of people to contact, for example close friends, relatives, church relationships and business associates.

• Consider putting an obituary in the paper. Your funeral home can help you with this.

• Decide the type of service that may be right for your loved one. If they had not preplanned, then try to design the service around the type of person they were. Consider the friends and family and try to determine their needs. Frequently a funeral service may help begin the grieving process. Many times a quiet person will select a small intimate service, which a more boisterous person would like an elaborate service with music, doves, horse-drawn carriages, a bag-piper and in some instances, clowns. I have seen a lot of things at funerals, including a knight in shining armor.

• A funeral home can assist with all of the options relating to the type of service you or your loved one wanted. A traditional service does not have to be that traditional. A cremation may include a visitation or a memorial service. There are many options, and your funeral home counselor can assist with helping you understand what those options are.

• Prepare a Eulogy. Funeral service or no, this is a good thing to have for the future, even if you do not have a service. I always encourage services, if possible, even if it is a small service at the house. There are on-line sources to help prepare a Eulogy.

• Determine how many death certificates you will need. You will need death certificates to close out bank accounts, retirement plans and insurance policies. Some may accept copies, so ask first, if a copy will do.

• Plan out meals for the family for the next week. Consider a special gathering after the funeral service. This may be a good time to show a video montage, if you did not have one at the funeral service. This may also be a good time for friends and relatives to share their memories. The more relaxed atmosphere of the reception might make sharing easier for some.

• Find one or more hotels in the area for guests from out of town. The funeral home can provide a letter to the airlines to obtain a lower rate for traveling under urgent circumstances.

There are a lot of details to take care of when there has been a death. Sometimes, it is a good idea to reach out to friends, family or your church for help with this process. Your funeral home can arrange most of the details of the service, and most funeral professionals are good caring people who can help you through a d

Grief Support Groups -Why or Why Not?

Marla J. Noel — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:56:51 +0000

by Marla J. Noel

“I didn’t want to go to a grief support group,” a young lady who lost her husband in a car accident admits to the group.
“You know, I didn’t want to go either,” this time from a dignified woman in her sixties, who had lost her husband several years ago.
The rest of the group is quiet, yet they are all nodding their heads, as if in agreement. All of the group seems glad to be part of the group. They all share, and they all get an affirmation of their feelings.

I am confused by the fear or avoidance of a grief support group, however. I hear these types of comments so frequently. Why would you not ask for help? Most groups are either free or some nominal dollar amount. So what is the reason? I started to think about all of the reasons I have heard from people to avoid this type of help;
I didn’t want other people to see me cry.
I did not want to be reminded of my feelings, because it hurt too much.
I thought I should be able to figure this out on my own.
My family will help me to get through this.
I will get over this eventually
There are probably many other reasons for not going to a grief support group. However, I look at these reasons and my heart goes out to all of the people not getting help for their grief. There is no cure, no magic solution or any words that will make the pain stop. However, there are people out there who will listen to your story, share their story, and help you through a difficult time with their support and caring. So, I will give my arguments to all of those reasons I listed for why you would not go to a grief support group.

1) It is okay for people to see you cry. They will probably be crying also. Sometimes, there is nothing better than to have a good cry with someone else who understands.
2) Suppressing your feelings can be very harmful to your health, and can keep you from going through the grief process, which is a natural process for all of us. Acknowledging your feelings, and expressing them can be helpful.
3) I thought I should be able to figure this out on my own. If we broke our leg, we would go to a doctor. Why shouldn’t we seek help when our heart is broken?
4) My family will help me to get through this. Sometimes your family is trying to get through their own grief, and can’t help you. It is not their fault. Grief is a difficult emotion, and can affect us in many different ways.
5) I will get over this eventually. Sometimes we never do, for many reasons. While I have been at Fairhaven, I have received many unusual calls. I will never forget a call from a young lady who’s mother died seven years before this phone call. She wanted to be sure that there was a marker on her mother’s grave. She had been unable to visit the cemetery for all of those years. I wanted to help her with her grief, however, she did not seem to be reaching out to help herself.

So many people minimize the impact that grief can have on our lives. It is a very powerful emotion. The closer you were to the person you’ve lost, the greater the impact. There are usually so many wonderful people who can help you. Reach out, and grab a hand. Go to a grief support group. There are so many to pick from. If one is wrong for you, try another. You may meet some nice people, as well. Ask for help. You will be glad you did.

Planning- The Green Box

Marla J. Noel — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 22:44:47 +0000

by Marla J. Noel

I received this from a friend, who recently had a difficult experience with a friend who had not planned for her death, although she had been ill. Please think about this list, even if you are healthy and young, and spend some time putting together your Green Box. You can update this box every few years. This is written for the business owner in mind. You can adjust to your own circumstances:

The Green Box with 25 envelopes. Here are the labels on the envelopes:

Letter to spouse
Letter to each child
Letter to the employees
Letter to my mother/father
List of most important 5 employeesco-workers
Off balance sheet deals
Organizational Chart and future organizational chart
List of personal and business people that should be contacted in the event of passing
Strategy that I am thinking about but haven’t told anybody about
List of Trusted Advisors and their roles (may or may not be currently working with company) such as attorney, accountant, etc.
Instructions not addressed in Will
Copies of POA documents
Copy of Passport, Birth Certificate
Copy of all credit cards
Copy of physical property titles
Personal stock portfolio information
Details of Life insurance—personal and company owned
Details of all other insurance
Copies of personal property valuations (Jewelry, guns, collectables, etc.)
Computer passwords (Very Important)
Personal financial Statement
Extra passport photos- Picture you would like used for funeral or marker
Medical/Dental Charts
Funeral/Burial Instructions
Mementos and to whom you’d like them given

My Best Friend

Marla J. Noel — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:04:42 +0000

by Ian Crockett
Following graduation from college, rather than take a cushy advertising job in Downtown LA, I decided I would run away and join the circus. In the early 80’s there was a traveling circus headquartered in Southern California that featured several hundred performers, over 100 animals and a tent larger than a football field that would accommodate 5,000 people per performance.
When I first interviewed for the position of marketing director, which was a fancy name for Promoter or Advance Man, they indicated it would be highly unusual to hire someone married due to the ten and half months of travel required. My reply was you haven’t met my wife, so for the next three years we traveled around the United States in a black cargo van that had nice carpeting and paneling, but only two seats. We would rent furnished apartments or stay in motels with kitchenettes and lived in 35 different cities for one month at a time. Many friends and plenty of strangers said we were crazy and that one of us would put the other in a pine box. Instead it created a bond and a unique friendship that many couples never achieve.
Following that three year adventure, I landed a job in the world of advertising. The company, which I ended up purchasing ten years later, had clients nationwide. In my efforts to service them and build the agency’s clientele and reputation, I have logged over six million frequent flyer miles with over three million on American Airlines alone. For a couple that was joined at the hip for three years, being separated was excruciatingly painful. The same friends, but different strangers said it would ruin the marriage and tear apart that special bond they had seen with the two of us. Instead it brought us even closer together and made us cherish every second we spent together.
Three years ago, she became an ordained minister. During the reception an old friend gave her a congratulatory hug and pain shot through her body that originated from her stomach. After visiting the doctor, it was determined she had a pulled muscle and physical therapy was prescribed. However prior to one visit with the therapist, her blood pressure was over 200. They quickly rushed her to the hospital and placed her in the cardiac unit thinking she was having a heart attack. Several days later after a battery of tests, the new diagnosis was cancer.
Our first visit to the oncologist was on a Monday and we were relieved to hear it was treatable. Her first chemotherapy treatment was the next day and everything was looking up. That night, which was actually Wednesday morning, she awoke up in so much pain; I rushed her back to the hospital. Over the next two days, more tests were conducted and by Friday she was released to home hospice. Two months later my best friend for the last 32 years died.
I’m a business owner and a college professor. My circus years taught me how to put on spectacular events and my enormous amount of traveling has taught me to think on my feet. However I was the most unqualified person in the world to figure out what to do next. I knew she wanted to be cremated and I wanted to have an event that celebrated her life and let the world know how much she meant to me. Even though I had taken the two months off to be the one to care for her, I had not planned ahead or even thought of what goes into a memorial service. I just knew Fairhaven Memorial Services would be my mortuary of choice.
Fairhaven’s South Orange County management team will always have a special place in my heart. They actually came themselves to take the body away. They sat with me and patiently went through the order of service. They came up with ideas such as a memorial booklet that all guests would receive that included a poem that seemed as if it were written for her and the obituary I had written myself. We had pictures of us and ones that included our daughters and granddaughter enlarged, a picture video of her life accompanied by four songs I selected including Stevie Wonder’s I Just Called To Say I Love You, which is what I used to say each day when I called in from the road and a number of other items commemorating her time on earth.
The Fairhaven people didn’t know her, but helped create a day she could have orchestrated herself. Friends flew in from around the country, my employees and vendors volunteered to help bring to life the terrific Fairhaven ideas and suggestions and it was all done in less than a week. During her ordination, she told everyone that one day she would fill the church. On that day it was filled to capacity with people standing in the doorways. As I said in my previous blog, memorial services are for the living. This one accomplished all my objectives and would have had my wife’s approval. I thank Fairhaven Memorial Services for helping make the living present that day make the hole in their heart a tiny bit smaller and feel a little better about the incredible loss they all suffered.

A PICTURE SAYS MORE THAN A THOUSAND WORDS

Marla J. Noel — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:51:41 +0000

by Ian Crockett

While perusing the large selection of commemorative items in Fairhaven Memorial Park and Mortuary’s showroom, I saw a picture frame that included a container to house ashes. I thought it was a fantastic idea and the perfect memorial to my wife of 32 years that I recently lost. When the Fairhaven representative informed me the picture frame concept had flopped, I was stunned.
The intent is to have a photo of the deceased in the frame and their cremated ashes stored behind the photo. I would think that for many people this is superior to the urn since you only tell those you want to know. Those who might get “creeped out” over cremated ashes of a deceased in a living room never need to know there’s anything behind the picture.
I chose not to put a photo of my wife in the frame. Over the years, I’ve developed a number of friends from different times of my life that are now scattered all over the country. The moment they heard my wife had died, they all dropped what they were doing and rushed to my side. At the Memorial Service, a picture was taken of all of us standing in my front yard. It even included my Great Pyrenees dog Sabrina, who was my wife’s companion. It was that photo I selected to accompany my wife’s ashes. I have pictures of my wife all over the house, at my office and in my wallet, so I felt this was a fitting tribute to my very best friend.
Everyone I’ve told about the picture frame idea or have seen it, think it’s a fantastic idea. A couple of people who have lost their own loved ones have indicated they are going to Fairhaven to purchase one. When I tell them the concept wasn’t well received, they are as flabbergast as I was when I heard they were no longer being manufactured.
As a marketing person, I wonder if it was the idea or how the idea was marketed. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that if you build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door. That’s no longer the case since the world is a lot larger and channels of distribution are established. If you fail to have the correct channel or don’t create awareness to a product or idea, the world will never know you had the superior mouse trap.
In the digital age, photos are more prominent, so perhaps it’s time to approach a frame manufacturer to rekindle the idea while offering the proper marketing support to make sure the world beats a path to their door.

Cremation Services

Marla J. Noel — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 21:06:27 +0000

I know that the options for cremation are confusing to some people. Particularly if you have not pre-planned or had the experience of arranging a funeral. Cremation is a popular choice for many people. However, a cremation service does not mean that the ceremony is any less important.

It is my personal belief, and a funeral is a very personal choice, which typically evolves around personal belief, that the funeral should be a direct reflection of the person you are having the funeral service for. For example, if your loved one was quiet and reserved, the service should probably be quiet and reserved. This might include a minister, or an officiant, some quiet music, a few words from one or two family members. If your loved one was a gregarious sort, you would probably want livelier music, perhaps symbols of a hobby or work. At Fairhaven, this has included a motorcycle or favorite antique car at the service, clowns for a person who was a clown, bands, choirs that the person sang in, you get the drift. For one young boy who loved knights and castles, we had a horse and knight walk down the center isle at the service. This is what he wanted. The funeral service is a ceremony for the living to remember and pay tribute to their loved one. It can be special and creative, however, better to plan what you want in advance. Your family may not know you want the clowns, a horse and carriage, a dove release or bag pipes at your service.

If you are planning a cremation for a family member, you can have a service that will reflect that person’s personality and can be a gift to all of the friends and family left behind. If you are a good planner, you may be able to do this yourself. Of course, I would recommend the help of your local funeral director. They are familiar with planning services, and can make suggestions and arrange for a location, a minister or celebrant, and music, to make the rest of what you have to do during a difficult time much easier.

Pre-Planning for the Digital Age

admin — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:15:35 +0000

Charity Gallardo
Network Administrator
Fairhaven Family Group

This is the information age. Everything you ever wanted to know about anything is at your fingertips via the internet. We all have email, instant messenger, Twitter, blogs, websites, message boards, and more. They all have logins requiring passwords. We start saving the passwords in our browsers because we can’t remember them all. On a daily basis this works pretty well for most people. However, what if you got sick? What if something unexpected happened to you? What if you died?

Recently, a friend of mine had to deal with this very question. A close friend of his became ill with cancer for the fourth time. Lisa had a very popular blog and wondered what would happen to it when she died. Her husband and children were not bloggers. So she turned to my friend and gave him her “power of blog”. When she went into hospice and could no longer blog, he updated her friends and fans via her blog. And when she finally died, he let everyone know by posting on her blog. The blog was used to alert people to her virtual service and it went silent with Lisa’s final blog post, posted by my friend Karl.

Thinking about your presence on the internet is something most people do not do. Yet most of us belong to online communities where someone would certainly notice if we stopped coming around. When Lisa died, within a month or so, the blogging community I belong to began passing around the link to a service called Legacy Locker. I checked it out because I own a dozen domains and maintain websites, forums, and blogs not just for myself but for other people including my daughter. If something happened to me, I wouldn’t want those people to lose their communities and blogs.

Legacy Locker provides a safe and secure way to pass your online accounts to your friends and family. It’s the “power of blog” to the nth degree. It’s relatively inexpensive and easy to figure out.

After ten years in this industry, I know the value of pre-planning. As a techie, I realize that I need to make provision for all the online things I maintain for myself and others in case something should happen to me. Pre-planning your funeral and taking care of your will make good sense. In this age of information and technology, making plans for what happens to your online presence should be a part of that pre-planning. That’s why I’m in the process of setting up a Legacy Locker for all my domains and accounts.

If you belong to any online groups at all, if you have any blogs or websites, you should look into this. In addition, if you play any online games or belong to any groups where your credit card is charged automatically on a monthly basis, this type of service is for you. Otherwise, your family will end up having to pay for all those charges during a time of mourning.

Preparing ahead of time helps minimize the stress your family will go through. If you prepare for what will happen to your pet or car in the event of your death, you should also consider dealing with your email, blog, and other internet presences. The people and friends you interact with in those communities will be grateful for information about you and in turn they can help support your family through a difficult time.

When you’re ready to pre-plan, you should definitely add your internet presence to the to-do list. Whether you choose Legacy Locker or you simply make a list of your passwords and logins, preparing in advance gives you peace of mind, knowing that your online world will be taken care of and informed.

Find out more about Legacy Locker on their FAQ page.
See what CNN had to say about Legacy Locker.

Funeral Questions

marlanoel — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:08:21 +0000

This May be a Morbid Question But???

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard this from someone who doesn’t have a funeral director friend. There are so many questions that we have about death, but are afraid to ask. However, questions about death and dying are important questions to ask, and the information can help you through a very difficult time. So what are some of those questions?

How much is a typical funeral? Good question. There are a broad range of providers with a broad range of prices. You can go with a cremation service for as low as $495 or you can go to a full service provider and purchase a burial estate and a service for $50,000. For this amount, the burial plot should be very nice. A few questions you should ask are, what is included for the $495. Some cremation societies tack on other costs, like transporting the body to the funeral home.

Another question I hear frequently is “Is embalming required?” Embalming is not required by law. Most funeral homes require embalming for a visitation for the health and safety of the public. Embalming is the replacement of body fluids with a formaldehyde type of solution, which cleanses the body. At Fairhaven, we require embalming for a visitation and we require embalming for most entombments, which is burial in an above ground crypt.

Can I buy my casket in advance? Also another good question. You may purchase your casket in advance. When you select the casket at the funeral home, the funds will be placed in a trust or a funeral insurance product. This is required by state law. For those who choose to go to a casket store, be careful. The casket stores are not regulated the same as a funeral home, and some have gone out of business and are not able to deliver the casket when it is needed. It is best to use this option if you plan to use the casket soon, or if you have a place to store the casket. If you pay for your casket in advance, a casket store does not need to put the money aside to protect your purchase

What do you mean by Direct Cremation? This is a great question. This means something different to the consumer than what it means to a funeral director. To you, this may mean you want cremation. You may want other services also, such as a visitation or a service, or a memorial service. If this is the case, be sure to ask the funeral director about your options. It is important to ask the provider you think you are going to use what services they provide. Some do not provide a full service with a visitation, however, if you want a cremation, you can do many different things along with the cremation that are meaningful and helpful to your family for the grief process.

Is a funeral service important? When I first began in this business 14 years ago, I didn’t understand the value of a funeral. However, after observing many families getting together to celebrate a life, I truly understand the benefit to those left behind and what an important step it is in the healing process. I strongly believe in letting your funeral home assist with holding a service. It can be confusing and complicated. I have seen friends step in and offer to help hold a private service, and I have seen disappointment over differences of opinion about what the service should be. Most people only get one funeral, and I think it should be a direct reflection of that person.

There may be other questions you have about funerals, mortuaries and cemeteries, but do not want to ask. However, understanding this part of life, which is inevitable, is a smart thing to do.

I am affiliated with Fairhaven Memorial Services in Mission Viejo, California, and would be happy to answer your questions about funeral services. Please remember that state laws are different from state to state. The state of California regulates the funeral homes, cemeteries and crematories through the Department of Consumer Affairs. They have produced a booklet that every funeral home in California is required to give you to help you better understand your options. They are generally very helpful if you are confused by an experience you may have had. Most of the people you will meet at a funeral home are very caring, and have chosen this profession because they want to help people.

For more information about Fairhaven Memorial Services in Mission Viejo, California, go to www.fairhavenmemorialservices.com.