This is the Whole Care Network. Music Helping you tell your story one podcast at a time. Content presented in the following podcast is for information purposes only. Views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the host and guest and may not represent the views and opinions of the Whole Care Network. Always consult with your physician for any medical advice and always consult with your attorney for any legal advice. And thank you for listening to the Whole Care Network. Music When you're in the middle of grieving, the last thing you need to be doing is planning a service. In this episode, Nancy and I are talking with Greg Cannon, who has more than 45 years experience in the funeral profession, including that as a funeral director. In addition, Greg speaks and trains on planning ahead for your loved one's service. In this episode, we're sharing eight tips. Everyone, let's get started. Welcome. We are Sue Ryan and Nancy Treister. This podcast brings our years of experience in a variety of family caregiving roles to prepare you to navigate your caregiving journey. We're sharing our personal experiences, not medical advice. And because it's our passion to support you on your journey, we believe no topic is on limits. Let's get started. Music Welcome, Greg. We are so blessed to have you here with us today. We appreciate you so much that you're sharing your years of experience in all areas of the funeral profession. Most of what we're going to be talking about today can be done ahead of time. If you wait until death occurs, you're upset, you're grieving, you're in a time crunch. We don't want you to miss the opportunity to personalize the experience, honoring your loved ones, yours, and your family's wishes. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to share with you something that I'm extremely passionate about. The difference between a service being preplanned and happening at the at-need time is as different as night and day. When it's preplanned, then you have two decisions to make when the death occurs. What day and what time for the service. Preplanning allows you the opportunity to have conversation with your family, maybe even with friends about your particular wishes, and learn what's important to your family to help them process their grief. Also, creativity. There's so many things that happen today in funeral services. It's no longer a traditional funeral service. I've experienced things with families that the person that died was an avid football fan, a fan of the Georgia Bulldogs. And as part of that visitation time with extended family and friends, they had a tailgate party in the parking lot of the chemical hall with a 20-foot inflated bulldog. Also, the farmer that we handled the service for, the cemetery was not far from where he lived. We held the service beside the lake on his property. We placed his casket on a flatbed trailer, and his tractor was driven by his son to take him to the cemetery. Those are things that when you plan ahead, you make sure that those particulars happen. That's lovely. I planned ahead, I thought. My father passed away in January of last year, and I used that experience. My sister and I did a lot of the planning for his service, and I used that experience to create an outline and a plan for my husband. And I felt pretty good about it. And then when my father-in-law passed away in October, I thought, I have really got to get my act together. And so I created a much more detailed plan out of that outline for my husband's service. And then my husband passed away pretty surprisingly. I wasn't really ready for it. And I can't tell you how much having everything already planned, how much of a difference that made to me. Because it hit me much harder than I expected. And as Sue said, I was in the middle of grieving. And the last thing I wanted to do was think through all of these details. And I know I could not have been extremely creative, like some of your examples, Greg, if I had to do everything at the last minute. You know, Nancy, you made a comment that I'm quite familiar with when you said that you weren't ready for it. I hear that often, but I would also say that even when we know death is imminent, for an example, personally, my mother was an Alzheimer's patient for five years. And I'm the strong funeral director all these years of doing this. But I'm so thankful that we had planned her service ahead, because I'd never experienced the death of my mother before. And no matter how seasoned I was as a funeral professional, I would not have wanted to be planning that service at that point. But I would also say to you, make sure that you do what you said in great detail. And I encourage people to go to the funeral home because they can provide you with documents that will assist you in making decisions. That's such great tips. And honestly, that's kind of where we're going to start, which is tip one is, you know, pick your funeral home. Because as you said, they can help give you a bunch of information ahead of time to help trigger that pre planning. So those comments, Nancy, take us right into tip two, which means we need to decide, are we going to have a burial type service or a cremation service. And I think it's also important that we understand that when we choose cremation, it's not just simply the process of cremation. A lot of families that choose cremation have the body in bomb. They have an opportunity to visit with extended family and friends. They have an opportunity to say goodbye. They build a network of support through those extended family and friends. It also is a conversation that all too often has not had too many times when we sit with families. The question always comes up from the family. Well, mom never said what she wanted. But when it is pre planned, you have no doubt that you're doing exactly what that individual wants to be done. So when we're talking about whether it's burial or cremation, we need to make sure that we provide clothing for the funeral home or the crematory to dress that person. Sometimes you may find this amusing, but sometimes they want their old army uniform or they want the wedding dress without consideration of the fact that we've maybe gained a little bit of weight. So we need to make sure that whatever garments are selected will fit. And a little humorous part, there are often times when I handle a service for a man that the family seems to think that they only need to bring the upper clothing. They'll bring a suit, coat, and a shirt and a tie, but no pants. Well, we got to have pants too. So typically, the funeral home likes to have a full set of undergarments and then a full set of outerwear that would be viewed. One of the other common questions is what about shoes? Shoes are not necessary. As a matter of fact, they're difficult to put on a deceased body. So if it's important, if mom always wore those six inch heels and we want to put her in those for walking the streets of gold and bring them and we'll put them on her. But it is important that we go through that entire process as though we were at the at need point. And then we need a cemetery plot or something. I know that's even an option, whether it's cremation or burial. True. That's true. You're exactly right. Sometimes what I've learned most often is that when a family comes to make the funeral arrangements, most often they've already selected a burial site. But if they have not, then yes, consideration has to be given to that as well. And when they're deciding that, especially if the person that is dying is married, then you want to consider the adjoining space for the spouse. Right. One of the things that happened with my husband is that it was the first time I had had a more non-traditional kind of service and planning. We'd been very traditional with my dad and other family members. And yet with my husband, a man of deep faith, it was his wish to have what they called a green burial, which is that the body is not embalmed and you are buried in a shroud and he was buried in a shroud in the ground at a monastery. That was interesting. And it was just such a beautiful experience. It was. And yet there were a lot of pre-planning pieces for that to be the experience because the monastery was in Georgia and we were living in Florida at the time. So when we think about this, the planning ahead by having known all of the choices, what was important to him and why, and honoring that. And then to your point, Greg, about including the other family member or family members with that, all of those things were put in place. And so when he passed all of the, I had to make one phone call and everything else was all lined up, including getting into the cemetery at the time of the service. So it really made it a lot easier for me to focus on the other family members and to be fully present in the moment of the experience. Yes. Leading into tip three, Greg, is let's talk about the type of service. So even though funerals are not necessarily traditional anymore, the common verbiage with the, in the funeral profession is a traditional type service. And that can be relative to either burial or cremation. And what that simply means is that the body will be present in a casket. If it's a traditional burial, then of course that casket will be buried at the cemetery. If it's a traditional cremation, the casket that contains the body will then be used for the cremation process. So with that being said, just be aware that it, that would have to be a wooden casket if the body is going to be cremated. Traditional indicates that the body itself would be present and an open casket for viewing during that visitation time with family and friends. There's also what we call a memorial service, which means that the body is cremated before the visitation time. And of course, before the service, but in place of where a casket body would be the earn would be placed there and that would be the focal point during the visitation time and of course during the service as well. Sometimes, as you've already mentioned, Sue, there are other options for an example, a green burial. And with a green burial, there are a lot of things that we have to understand. That is that the body cannot be embalmed. That is that the body cannot be placed in any type of container that is not biodegradable. Even to the point that if the family provides floral contributions, typically those flowers have wires on them or picks on them. None of that can be present for a green burial because the concept is for it to be as green as possible, if you will. You know, we had, as I mentioned before, we had three deaths in our family last year. My husband, my father, my father-in-law and my husband, and we had three completely different kinds of services. But I want to support your point. So my father, we had a burial in a cemetery with military honors, and then we had a service at the funeral home and a reception at the funeral home. For my father-in-law, he said he didn't want a service at all. So we had him cremated and he wanted to be cremated. But to your point, I felt like that just really wasn't honoring him. But we did not have a formal service at a funeral home or at our church. We actually just had a family gathering in my backyard. And because I had just had such a positive experience with military honors, both my father and my father-in-law were in the Navy. I invited the military honors people to come and do a military honors presentation in my backyard. And it was so memorable and impactful and it surprised everybody. But having that farewell, I do believe was important to everyone. So I'm glad we did it is what I'm telling you. And then my husband was cremated, buried in his ashes, were put in the memorial garden at our church, and we had a regular church service at the church. So everything, all three were very different last year. Tip five is about preparing the obituary. We're going to prepare the obituary. We're going to choose the picture or pictures that are going to go with it and compile the information ahead of time. Be gathering it so that you've got access to it, putting things to that you can just pull from them at the time. And part of this, and I can speak to this as well, is that if you haven't done that and all of a sudden you have to come up with an obituary, you're doing it and there's a time crunch. And I unfortunately, the first time I did an obituary, which was for my mother who died quite unexpectedly. I forgot some very important family members. And to this day, I feel bad about that because they were very important part of our family. And yet since there was the time crunch and there was the grief at everything else we've talked about, I left out important family members. Don't do that. Write the names down ahead of time, plan ahead of time. I was just going to say, and Greg, I think, I think you had some suggested, for example, that you don't actually have to write the obituary. But it's good to prepare the obituary. That's correct. If you if you will simply write down the content that you want to go in the obituary notice, then the funeral home, the funeral director will actually help you construct it so that it flows well. But again, in reference to obituary notices. More and more today, people look for those notices via social media, not necessarily in the newspaper and newspapers today. For a lot of reasons are losing their readership. And so they're trying to sustain themselves and guess what happens. The charge for an obituary keeps increasing and increasing. So you can do what's called a death notice in an obituary column in a newspaper, which would simply have the name of the person that is died and when they died. And then it can reference you to the funeral home website where the obituary would be placed. And really good point. And I didn't know about having someone who could help write it. I'm trying to figure out who was related to who and how they were related. You have blended families and all of these things. So please that tip on having the funeral director help write it. Excellent. Okay. And then also along the same lines as tip six, which is, you know, you're in the middle of doing everything you're trying to keep your head together. There's a lot to deal with your own emotions, other people's families emotions and so on. Tip six is ahead of time, write down who needs to be notified and then create a tree. Who needs to be notified and who's going to notify whom so that it's not falling on your shoulders to notify more than a handful of people that start the tree. Basically, you get it started and then they all pre know who they're supposed to notify afterwards. So that's tip six and I highly recommend that once again, figure that out with my dad and then leverage it with my father in law and with my husband. And then that takes us over into tip seven, Greg, which is planning the service and Nancy, you've created a worksheet for that. I did. So we'll we'll put the worksheet in the show notes. But it's a good place to have really everything we're going to talk about quickly here. And then you can just document, you know, your decisions in the worksheet. So we'll include that in the show notes. Yes, and while doing all of that planning, be specific about things that are important. Maybe it's not the current clergy at the church, where you're attending, maybe it was the previous pastor that your loved one had a better relationship with. So make sure that it's the person that they would want to be a part of that. Eulogies, eulogies are shared not only by clergy, but by friends or family members. The one thing I would caution you about friends or family members that are not accustomed to publicly speaking. One of the best things that they can do is write down what they would want to say. If they don't, they will find themselves rambling. Importantly, they may become emotional. And if the content is written, then the clergy can take control and finish delivering the information. So I think that's that's really important. Well, one thing I tell people who are doing eulogies is you have seven minutes. I want you to write it. I want you to practice it and run through it. And I want you to figure out how long it took. You have seven minutes because people get up there and ramble and it's 20 minutes later and your 45 minute service just turned into an hour and a half. So, you know, anyway, that's my rule of thumb, seven minutes. Some people don't want flowers at their funeral. They think it's a waste of money. I've, I've put grandmother's quilt on her casket. I've put a golf club laying on the casket. Sometimes you can just put a picture. So all of those things need to be determined. A lot of funeral homes today produce what they call a video tribute. So you need to prepare for that by having pictures selected. Sometimes people are concerned about children being involved in funerals. I think if they're old enough to know right from wrong, they're old enough to try and understand what death is. And one of the best ways to let them be a part of it is let them choose their favorite picture of them with that person and include that in that tribute. Add as many personal touches as you possibly can. Because this whole event is about the person that has died. And so often today I've witnessed funerals where it's almost like we forgot to invite the main person. We don't want to do that. And so I. When you talk about that, and one of the other things that you had mentioned, Greg is a little keepsakes or memory cards or something that people can take. Yeah, I when my the people that knew my mom. Knew that she was a great cook. And as part of my mom's visitation time and service. Laying adjacent to where the guest book that people would sign. Was a stack of printed recipes that my mom was most famous for. And so I, we had to keep printing copies, because everybody wanted one. Anything as a takeaway. I had a family that the man that died was an avid golfer. And so as a funeral professional, I always try to do things that families aren't expecting. And so I ordered golf teas with his name on them. And everybody when they left the service, they had 1 of those to take with them. So those things play an important role. They play an important role. And as you're saying. Leaving the service that leads us to our eighth and final tip, which is there so often a gathering following the service. Yes. And so when we think about gatherings, some of the gatherings are before the service, some gatherings might be after the service, some gatherings might be to anybody who chooses to attend, some might be private gatherings. So think through all the different types of gatherings you may want to have if you have out of town family coming in, you may want to have dinner with the family at a restaurant the night before. If you have a late midday service, you may want to have the family together for lunch before the midday service. If you and those would be private gatherings. You most people if they have a service, a public service where anybody can come they'll have some sort of a reception after the service so people can greet the family, the immediate family at least and basically let them know they were there. You know people who come to a service want to have a chance to say their give their condolences and let people know they were there. So this is sort of a small reception after the service is pretty common. And then often what people do after this exhausting activity has occurred and just emotionally exhausted. So they'll go back to their home, and they'll have a gathering of family or close friends back at their home just to sit down and casually, you know, eat and relax and try to just take their shoes off and and try to, you know, just absorb everything that's happened that day, and have the closest people you can have around you when it's happening. Well, there are a variety of different ways that we do it as you can see and so Greg, thank you so very very much for all that you have brought to our listeners today this has been incredible and the breadth and depth of information you have is so valuable for all of us so thank you very much and do you have any final comments before we wrap up. One thing that we've not mentioned that I think is is important. I just understand that you don't necessarily have to go to the funeral home. Sometimes, somebody may be bedridden. They are or whatever the case, the funeral home will come to your home when that nice to know. So let's summarize. In this episode, we talked with Greg Cannon about all the things you can do ahead of time so that you're not left in the middle of grieving to plan a service. We shared eight tips. Tip one, choose a funeral home. Tip two, decide on burial or cremation. Tip three, decide on the type of service that you plan to have. Tip four, choose a location. Tip five, write the obituary or at least prepare for the obituary and choose a picture or a handful of pictures to choose from so that you're not running around at the last minute trying to find that picture. And then, six, create a list of people who need to be notified and get as the primary person, just get yourself one or two or three people that you should be in charge of and let them spread the word. Don't take that responsibility on yourself. Tip seven is to plan the service itself. And in the show notes, there'll be a worksheet with all the things you can think through ahead of time so that you're not starting from scratch there. And tip eight is to plan the gatherings before and after the service so you at least understand what's involved and who you want to invite and what kind of food you need and all the things that go with that. If you have tips on planning ahead for a service, please share them on our Facebook page, our Instagram page. We'd love to hear what your ideas are. If you like this podcast, please rate it, review it, follow it, subscribe to it. We'd really, really appreciate it. And as always, everything we talked about here will be in the show notes so that you can find it easily. And so thank you so much for joining us. This is the kind of thing that if you can get it done ahead of time will save you so much struggling when the time comes. We are all on this journey together. Yes, we are.
