Paying Attention at Your Loved One’s Funeral

When you attend your loved one’s funeral at a Tallahassee, FL funeral home, everything may seem like a blur. Your mind is divided between all the decisions you’ve already had to make and the ones that you still need to make.

You are grieving and everything seems a little foggy and unfocused. You are numb and in shock and are not registering everything that is going on around you. You simply don’t have the ability to handle everything that’s coming at you, including at the funeral service for your loved one.

You will likely not remember everyone who attended the viewing and/or the funeral service. You may find that there are portions of the funeral service that you know happened, but you simply cannot remember them happening or how they happened.

While the funeral home will provide a guest registry so you know who attended the viewing and the funeral, it may surprise you to see how many people came that you don’t remember being there.

You may look at the funeral program sometime later and see things that you didn’t know when in there or even portions of the service that you can’t remember taking place.

People say a lot of very comforting and supporting things to you when you are having a funeral service for your loved one. However, after a while, the words may simply go over your head and you may have a hard time remembering specific expressions of encouragement, comfort, and support.

This can mean that you miss offers that people have made to help you and your family out in practical ways – such as providing food, picking up groceries, running errands, or taking care of the lawn – in the days and weeks following the funeral service.

Another thing that you may not remember about your loved one’s funeral service is its emotional tenor. You may have worked so hard at controlling your own emotions so that you weren’t an emotional wreck that you turned off all your attunement to other people’s emotions as well.

All of these things are common occurrences when you lose someone you love. However, there are ways that you can make sure that you can have them captured for the time when you are able to absorb them and understand them.

One way that you can ensure, for example, that you don’t miss any practical offers of help after your loved one’s funeral service is to make sure that someone who is not an immediate family member is in the receiving line during the viewing or visitation.

This can be a trusted friend or a more distant family member who is not as emotionally impacted by your loved one’s death. Their purpose is both to help you and your family maintain your composure and to make mental or written notes of what people are saying to you while they come through the line. They serve, in essence, as your eyes and your ears during the funeral process.

Another way to remember the funeral service itself is to have it recorded. Your funeral home can provide the technology to make sure the entire service is recorded and that you and your family have copies of the recorded service that you can view later. Watching this video later can be quite comforting and quite inspiring.

For more information about videoing funeral services at a Tallahassee, FL funeral home, including grief resources, our caring and knowledgeable staff at Lifesong Funerals & Cremations is here to assist you.