Want to silence a room? Ask an elderly person about their funeral wishes and watch their family take a collective gasp and shrink back in fear.
After hundreds and hundreds of patient assessments, this continues to be a predictable moment. It seems the closer you get to the reality of death, the more afraid you are to recognize the elephant in the room.
Rarely does this bother the elderly person because they are more in touch with the truth. For many seniors, funerals are a significant part of their social outings. It’s where they see old friends and catch up on personal news.
So, let’s bring funeral planning into the light. Expose the topic to all for the sake of mourning family or friends. Because those are the people who will inherit the chore. I call it a chore because the whole process changes from planning (which is something done in advance) to a chore once the elderly person dies.
The Burden of Funeral Planning
The burden of funeral arrangements after the fact has an abundance of problems; problems rooted in high emotions and low information. The person who inherits the job of making funeral arrangements often struggles to find the following information:
- Cremation vs traditional burial
- Which funeral home
- Which cemetery and if there is a plot already owned
- Were pre-arrangements done already
- Service preference, clergy, scriptures, casket bearers
- Open or closed casket
- Obituary – what was most important to the individual – people and accomplishments
Then there is the statistical information to gather on the deceased:
- Full name and place of birth of the deceased person’s parents
- The deceased person’s full legal name, date of birth, social security number
- How long the individual lived in the current community
- Their place of birth
- Level of education
- Occupation, employer, years employed
- Military: enlistment and discharge dates, service number, branch of military, rank at discharge
How to Ease the Burden
When looking at just a fraction of what’s needed, are your thoughts changing? Are you becoming braver? It’s true that some elderly people are reticent to express their wishes and be involved in their own funeral planning. However, I have found this to be the minority.
Most elders I have worked with are willing to face the inevitable, the fact that they will die. And with this reality in mind, they provide information and express their wishes. There is a palpable difference between advanced planning and arrangements made in the crisis of active mourning. I hope you never experience immediate post-death planning. It’s awful.
Be brave. Be willing to silence the room for a moment. For when the sad inevitable happens, you will breathe a sigh of relief for the funeral planning you did ahead of time.
There are five fill-in-the-blank forms in the funeral planning chapter of the Blueprint to Age Your Way:
- Fears Regarding Aging and Death
- Funeral and Burial Wishes
- Obituary (get a sneak peak at the form here)
- Specific Bequests
- Funeral Information to Gather in Advance
Go to www.AgeYourWay.com and sign up to receive advance information regarding the launch of the Blueprint in February 2017.
