It’s never easy to plan for a loved one’s final services, but when someone passes on, you are going to want to work with one of the funeral homes in West Seattle, WA to ensure their needs are met. It’s wise to think about what they might want and what your family needs during this hard time. However, you also need to keep an eye on the budget and figure out how you are going to pay for the costs you incur. Here are some of the things you might do to cover those necessary expenses.

Use Your Loved One’s Life Insurance

Many people have life insurance policies and when they pass on, those policies are meant to cover their final services. If the policy is on the small side, the money might cover the service and that’s it. If there isn’t a lot in the policy, you can keep services small and simple and still get your loved one’s needs met. Some policies are larger and once you cover the funeral services, you can then use the money for household expenses or other memorial options.

Pre-Payment Options

The easiest way to cover funeral home costs is pre-payment. This occurs when your loved one planned and paid for their final services in advance. Or, even if they didn’t plan out what they wanted, perhaps they had a savings account with a certain amount stashed away for the event when the time comes. You can use that money to pay for the funeral services and not worry about using anything of your own.

Savings Accounts

Not everyone has a life insurance policy and not everyone plans ahead and has money saved for their own final services. In those cases, you might be able to access your loved one’s savings account and use the funds they have in place. Otherwise, you may have to use your own savings to get things ready for honoring your loved one.

Memorial Funds Friends Sent

Friends and family members will often send cards, flowers, money, and other items. The memorial funds that people send can be used in any way you see fit. If you need help covering funeral home costs, the first thing you will want to do is use those funds for those expenses. After that, you can donate the funds to a charity or set up a permanent memorial of some kind.

Family Member’s Chip In

Your family might come together nicely when they hear that your loved one has passed on. They might offer to help with plans, costs, and other items. You can take their money and apply it to something specific or they can put it into a pool for you to use in whatever way you see fit. The funeral homes in West Seattle, WA are there to help you with arrangements as well as budgeting. They should be completely upfront with any costs and they can help you keep things within a certain parameter so you are able to meet needs and cover costs.

You may have attended services at funeral homes in Bellevue, WA, but perhaps it has been a while and you want to recall what they are like and what you need to expect. Or, because more people are having cremation services now than ever before, it’s possible that it’s been a long time since you have attended a service of that nature and you want to remind yourself what will happen so you are as prepared as possible. Here are some of the elements involved so you know what to expect.

The Visitation Occurs Before The Funeral

Traditional funeral services usually have a visitation before the funeral. That portion of the service will happen the day before, a few hours before, or at another time. There is a range of times for visitation. It’s more like an open house. You can come and go as you want and just stop in at a time during that open window. When you arrive, you will see the person who died in their casket. You can also visit with the family, say your goodbyes, and pay your respects. You don’t have to stay the whole time. Usually only immediate family will do that so they can see those who come by.

The Funeral Process

The funeral service can give you the closure you need and it’s a nice way to honor your loved one. There is a hard and fast start time on that service, so you will want to arrive on time. You will hear singing, readings, a eulogy, and other things about your loved one. People will likely be emotional and crying and you will see tissues around the room so everyone has access when they need them. You will likely dress in something dark and conservative and there might be a receiving line that can help you to speak to the family and share your condolences.

The Burial Processional

Once the funeral is over, after an hour or less, usually, the group will line up in their cart and proceed to the cemetery in a line. Everyone will arrive at the same time and gather around the cemetery plot chosen for the person who died. Someone will share a few words about your loved one and perhaps you will place flowers on their casket.

The Reception Afterwards

When the services are complete, many families often like to have a reception of some kind. They can gather together, have a meal, catch up, share memories, and support one another with more time together. It’s a nice way to honor your loved one while you get some time with your family and share a meal with one another.

If you are having services with funeral homes in Bellevue, WA for a loved one, it may have been a while since you have attended a formal funeral. Knowing what to expect can help you to proceed with the process in the right manner. You will want to be as prepared as you can be for what you are about to face.

Grief is always going to be a hard process to get through and the professionals at funeral homes in Tukwila, WA will tell you that it’s different and unique every time. What you go through is different from what your family members go through. What you go through this time is also going to be different than the grieving process you may have gone through in the past. One thing remains the same throughout any grieving process…you need to take care of yourself. Here are a few items of health care that will help you to get through the grieving process in the best possible manner.

Eat Regularly And Healthily

Normally, your diet may be whatever you can make quickly and grab on your way through the day. But when you are grieving, it’s more important than ever to eat healthily and on a regular basis. You might not always feel hungry, and that’s okay. Pay attention to time and ensure that you eat regularly. If you don’t want a whole meal, grab a fruit and some vegetables to feed your body the nutrients it needs to have energy. Grieving takes energy and having the nutrients you need will only help you in that grieving process.

Rest Often

When you are grieving, you might feel more tired than usual, even if you are able to sleep at night. If you have trouble sleeping, it’s even more important to rest during the day when you are able to get away from the plans and from family. If you feel overwhelmed or tired, there’s no reason not to lie down and take some rest. It can help to set your mind straight, get the foggy feeling out of your mind, and to feel re-energized.

Get Fresh Air

Taking a walk around the block can help you to refuel, get your body moving, and get some endorphins flowing. The fresh air can do you good and when you move your body, it can really help you to put things into perspective. Being in nature can help you to remember things that you like about your life, which can help you to move forward with your grief.

Never Isolate

While there are going to be times when you want to be alone with your emotions, and that’s perfectly fine, you don’t want to push people away completely and leave yourself to your own devices at all times. Don’t isolate yourself because you need people to help you get through this grief. You need support and it’s important to get that from the people you care about the most.

Start A New Hobby

Once you get through your loved one’s final services, you might want to find ways to move on and care for yourself in new ways. Start a new hobby after you deal with the services at funeral homes in Tukwila, WA. You might take on a hobby your loved one enjoyed or just something you’ve always wanted to do and always put off. It can help you to move on.

Funeral homes in Seattle, WA are there to help you when you have need for final services. Whether you want to plan your own services ahead of time, or you need to plan things for a loved one who passed on, they will help you to get what you need. If cremation services are on your radar, there are considerations to think over as you think about the process, how it works, and the timing of it all. Here are some things to think through with care.

Direct Cremation Details

Direct cremation happens soon after a person’s death. You will want to be sure that cremation is what you want before you move forward because it is a permanent process. But the direct cremation process doesn’t include any pre-event services. It happens within a few days after death without anything else happening beforehand. Cremation happens in the same way every time, but the timing of the process can vary. Direct cremation is fast, efficient, and effective.

What Might Work For Your Situation

If you are planning your own services, you get to decide what’s best for you. Planning ahead means that you have time on your side so you can consider the options and make decisions when you feel ready for them. When you plan for a loved one, you might have to decide things faster and figure out what works well for your situation in a quicker manner. You will have to think about the circumstances, what your loved one would have wanted, and what is in the best interest of your family members. If direct cremation is a good fit, and you are sure about that, you can move in that direction.

What The Budget Calls For

What you can afford to spend is going to be a factor in any service you might be able to arrange for a family member, or for yourself. It’s wise to think about a budget that is both reasonable for services as well as affordable to you. If it’s on the small side, that’s okay. You can get what you need by going for cremation that is more direct. If that’s what you can afford, there’s nothing wrong with going that direction, simply for cost reasons. Direct cremation is completely honorable and respectful, no matter why you use it.

The Options Around Direct Cremation

Direct cremation is often used because people simply want more options—and it gives plenty of them. You can do whatever kind of memorial service you want for your loved one, at any time and in any location. You can also enjoy the choices when it comes to final resting places. Many people choose direct cremation because of the options that float around it. You are able to customize and personalize every part of the process.

Any cremation package you choose follows regulations and is going to include a simple container, but you can also choose your own urn from funeral homes in Seattle, WA. Columbia Funeral Home & Crematory has all of the options you need for the entire process.

Your primary concern after a loved one passes on is that their needs are met. They can no longer care for themselves, so you must work with funeral homes in Bellevue, WA and ensure that your loved one gets what they need. Once they are transported to the funeral home, you can take a little time to think over what you want to do for them. If you decide on cremation, that’s one big decision out of the way, but there are others to make. You might plan a memorial service, for example, or buy an urn for them. In fact, you might buy several urns. Here are a few reasons to use more than one urn for a loved one after their cremation.

Several Family Members Can Have Remains

You might have several family members who want to take your loved one home with them and your loved one wouldn’t want to spark any arguments. Instead of trying to negotiate, simply get as many urns as you need and split your loved one’s remains among them. Everyone can take a part of your loved one home with them and put them in a place of honor.

To Maintain Longevity

If you plan to keep your loved one in your home, you might consider placing them in several urns and allowing other people in the family to have part of them as well. While you always hope your home is a safe place, you never know what is going to happen. What if a fire occurs and the urn is destroyed? What if it gets knocked over, broken, and the remains are spilled out? When others in your family have remains, too, you have peace of mind that your loved one is still safe, even if something happens to one urn.

Prevent Family Feuds

Not every family gets along well and there might be some members that want to scatter remains while others want to bury them. With cremation, everyone can do whatever they want because they can all have a little bit of the remains. Separate the remains into different urns and distribute them among family members for whatever special resting place they want. It can help to prevent family arguments at a time when you really need to pull together.

The Costs Are Not Way Higher

You may have a budget to watch out for and you may be concerned that buying several urns will break your budget. Keep in mind that when you buy more than one urn, you can get smaller urns. Buying several urns in a smaller size can often equal one urn in a larger size. The costs don’t have to be way higher. You can also have family members buy the urn of their choice for your loved one to take that cost pressure off you.

When you are looking into cremation services with funeral homes in Bellevue, WA, the professionals at Columbia Funeral Home & Crematory are here to help you if you want to get more than one urn.

Final services can help you to get the closure you need, and they also give you a chance to say a final goodbye to your loved one. But they aren’t going to magically heal you, either. Your grief is going to continue, and you are going to have to find ways to continue the grieving process on your own. The professionals at funeral homes in Tukwila, WA have plenty of grief resources that you can utilize, if you so choose. But you can also do some of these things that might feel good to you as well.

Start A Grief Journal

It’s hard to understand what you are going through, but when you keep a grief journal, you can see how things are going within your grieving process. Visit your first entry versus your twentieth and it can show you what progress you have made. It also gives you a place to vent, no matter what you want to say, and can help you to have an outlet for your grief.

Continue Old Rituals

If you always watch a certain Christmas movie with your loved one every year, there’s no reason to stop doing that. Perhaps invite a friend over and carry out that old ritual, complete with hot chocolate and popcorn. You can enjoy things you used to adore doing with your loved one in a new way to honor them.

Create A Memory Box

There might be special items that you attribute to your loved one and you can create a memory box in their honor from those things. You can include pictures, crafts you made with them, recipes they enjoyed, and other such things. It can be in something as small as a shoe box, or as large as you have to store. You can pull that box out whenever you want to think about your loved one and go through the items.

Plant A Tree

It can be nice to see a new life growing in your loved one’s memory. Plant a tree in their honor in your yard and as you watch it grow, you can appreciate the tree, think about them, and watch it grow over the years. It’s a nice way to honor them while doing something for the earth at the same time.

Have Intermittent Memorial Gatherings

You don’t have to have just one funeral or memorial service for your loved one. You can also have memorials at other times of the year. Perhaps gather yearly on their birthday and have cake to honor them. You can even get gifts and give them to their favorite charity in their honor or do other things in their memory.

When you are trying to honor a loved one, well after their final services, you can always contact the funeral homes in Tukwila, WA you worked with on those services for ideas and options. The professionals at Columbia Funeral Home & Crematory are always here for you, even well after the services are complete.

You may have attended final services in the past, but perhaps you never had the chance to make arrangements with funeral homes in West Seattle, WA before. Not everyone has experience in that area and if you are faced with planning something for a loved one who has passed away, it’s possible that you don’t even really know where to start. Here are some tips to help your family get what they need through this process.

Talk To Close Family Members First

When you first hear that a loved one has passed on, you are going to want to reach out to family members who loved them as well before you do anything else. Call the family members that need to know what’s going on and they can call others for you from there. It can be hard to make those phone calls, but they deserve to hear the news directly from you as soon as possible after the death occurs.

Find A Funeral Home To Help

Once you have talked to family members, you are going to need professional help from a funeral home. Take a little time to yourself to look into the area funeral homes so you can decide on the right fit for your family. Once you have professionals lined up, you can let them know where your loved one is and they will transport them to their facilities. After your loved one is in their care, you have peace of mind that they are in good hands. That can help you to move forward and figure out what you need to do for them.

Get Ahold Of The Death Certificate

No matter what you decide to do for your loved one’s final services, you will need to get a death certificate for them. That is often an automatic process, but there might be something you have to do to get it going. You can always consult with the funeral home to find out what you need to do. Once you have that process started, all you have to do is get copies of the certificate. You will need lots of copies and the funeral home can help advise you as to how many you should get.

Start Making Arrangements

The death certificate is a document you will need, but you are also going to need to make arrangements for your loved one. They need certain things and it’s important that you meet those needs. You will have to decide between a funeral and cremation service, among other things. The professionals will be there with the information you need to make the right choices, whatever those may be.

If you are working with funeral homes in West Seattle, WA for the very first time, don’t worry about the details coming together because those professionals are going to guide you every step of the way. Contact Columbia Funeral Home & Crematory and we will honor your loved one in whatever way you see fit.

No one wants to have to choose a funeral home in Bellevue, WA because more often than not, it means that you have lost a loved one and you have to plan their final services. However, when the worst happens and someone in your family passes away, you want the right experts on the job to ensure that your loved one is cared for and that you don’t have regrets over your decisions later. Here are some of the regrets some people have when they choose a funeral home too quickly without looking into the details closely.

Having a Bad Location

Funeral homes are located in a number of different areas and you will want to take a look at that location and make sure it’s convenient for you. If you choose a funeral home without knowing their location, you might regret that choice later. They might be way out of your way and it could take a lot of time for you to travel back and forth to make plans. Or they might be located on the other side of the city from where your chosen cemetery is, which makes the drive between services a pain for everyone.

Getting Gouged On Prices

It’s important to look at the price lists of any funeral home you consider before you commit to using their services. They should be open and upfront about their pricing. If you don’t ask to see the prices, but agree to use their services, you could find yourself in money trouble later. They might charge prices that are way above the norm and you could feel like you are getting taken advantage of during your time of great need.

Realizing The Company Doesn’t Have The Services You Want

Another thing you have to do as you look into funeral homes is take a close look at their service options. A lot of them have similar services, but if there’s something specific you want, you have to make sure they have it. If you don’t look, you might find later on that the funeral home you are using doesn’t really have what you want and you have to settle for another service option just because that’s all that is available.

Finding Out Disreputable Information

You will want to look at funeral home websites, but also at reviews outside their websites so you can see what their reputation in the community is like. If you don’t look at that information, you may sign up with a certain funeral home only to find out later that their reputation is less than stellar.

You want nothing but the best for your loved one and it pays off to take some time to look into the funeral home options so you don’t have these, or other, regrets later on. Check the various options for a funeral home in Bellevue, WA, including the professionals at Columbia Funeral Home & Crematory and we are here to openly let you know what we have available for your family.

When you have traditional services for a loved one with a funeral home in Tukwila, WA, it can take a lot out of you to make those plans. You want them to have a visitation, a funeral, and then a burial service. But you might want to continue to honor them after all of that is behind you. Perhaps you don’t feel right about leaving their grave blank, for example, and you want family and anyone else who sees the grave to know that your loved one is cared for deeply. Here are a few ways you can decorate their grave and some things to think about as you move forward with your own life while you remember them and how special they were to you.

Follow Cemetery Rules And Guidelines

The first thing you will want to do is make sure you know and understand the rules that the cemetery has in place when it comes to grave decorations. This is something you will want to read up on before you choose a cemetery to make sure you are okay with their regulations. But it’s also a good idea to go through the guidelines again before you decorate so you remember what all is allowed. Some cemeteries don’t allow you to lay things right on the grave because it’s just another thing the maintenance crew has to pick up. They might require vases next to the urn for flowers or something of that sort. Others might have certain timelines for decorating around their mowing schedule and so on. Know the rules so you can decorate in an accepted way.

Consider The Season

You might want to incorporate seasonal things into your decorating plans. For example, in the fall, consider a wreath with fall colors or flowers that feature reds and oranges. You might even bring some pumpkin-looking items or other harvest things. In the winter, perhaps red and green colors and Christmas décor would be nice. In the summer, flags and other things around the fourth of July can speak volumes. The season can help you decide what you want to do.

Look At The Weather

The weather will also be a determining factor. You don’t want to lay flowers on the grave only to have it snow the next day. You don’t want to put a paper flag in the ground when it’s going to rain and disintegrate the paper. Let the weather guide when you decorate and what you bring as well.

Consider Your Loved One’s Style

As is true with the final services you had, you will want to consider your loved one’s personality and style so you can decorate in a way you know they would appreciate. If they were a fan of a certain color, for example, incorporate it. If they liked a certain season, make sure you have something up around those times. The professionals at funeral home in Tukwila, WA can help with more advice so call Columbia Funeral Home & Crematory at any time.

When you are preparing a final service for a loved one, there are lots of details that go into that planning process. The professionals at the funeral homes in West Seattle, WA are there to help you go through the details and make the plans. They will also aid you in making decisions because they can provide you with the information you need to make wise choices. When you think about the venue you want to use for the service, you might be somewhat limited, but there are always going to be options. Here are a few things to think about when you are choosing that important location.

Flexibility On Date

If you aren’t sure what date you want for your loved one’s funeral service just yet, check with the venues you are considering and see how flexible they are on the date. Or, if you have a date in mind and you want to stick with it, if at all possible, you might be able to rule certain locations out if they don’t have an opening on that date. The day you have the funeral will be important since you will generally want to have things set up within a few days of your loved one’s death.

Acoustics For Good Hearing Options

You need everyone attending the service to be able to hear well. It’s frustrating for anyone to attend a final service, wanting to honor someone, only to find they can’t hear the eulogy and the music is too quiet to enjoy. Make sure the acoustics in the location are good when you consider what venue you are going to use. They should have a nice sound system and perhaps even options for those who are hard of hearing.

The Overall Ambiance

As you look at the venues in person, or check out pictures online, you might want a certain ambiance. The room you use can set the tone for the whole funeral and you are going to want to ensure it sends the right message. You might want something bright and airy that has nice artwork and has a hope-filled atmosphere, for example. You don’t want a dark location that is too depressing. Everyone is already going through enough and they need hope, not depression.

Accessibility For Guests

If you have guests that have trouble with mobility, you need a location with good accessibility options. You might also simply want a location that is convenient and easily accessible for those who live in the area and for those who are coming from out of town.

The Amount Of People It Can Serve

Keep the numbers in mind as you look at different venues as well. If you want to invite only close family members and friends, you don’t need a large venue or it will feel empty. On the other hand, if you are opening the services to the community, you don’t want something too small or it will be cramped. Funeral homes in West Seattle, WA can help with all of the details and choices.