Category: funeral home

Flowers are a funeral home in Tallahassee tradition. Flowers have very special meanings for funerals, so even if the obituary for someone who has died specifically asks for expressing sympathy or remembering the person by making a donation instead of sending flowers, you will find that some people will still send flowers either to the funeral home or to the bereaved family.

Flowers equal emotional expression for many people, which is why they choose to send them when someone dies. An online donation to an organization, a cause, or a charity, while needed and appropriate, doesn’t feel as connected emotionally as the act of picking out flowers or a plant for the funeral or to be given to the family.

There will always be flowers at funerals. Usually, the family of the deceased provides flowers. The immediate family provides the casket spray, while other family members provide standing sprays. Additionally, in some family traditions, individual flowers are laid on the casket at the gravesite as a token of respect.

If you choose to send flowers or a plant to a funeral for someone who has died, you should know a little about what certain flowers mean and how you can use flowers to best express your emotions and relationship to the deceased.

You may choose to send flowers to a funeral because the deceased has no surviving family to provide flowers. In this situation, you might want to choose flowers that symbolize innocence and purity or friendship. Good flower choices for purity and innocence are lilies and white roses, while yellow roses are universally recognized as expressions of friendship.

You may decide that you want to make sure the grave of the deceased has a regular fresh supply of flowers. You can make arrangements with a local florist for the flower delivery as often you desire – from once a month to once a year. If you choose to have them delivered once a year, pick a significant date like the deceased’s birthday or date of death.

A well-known American example of yearly flowers left at the grave is that of the gravesite of author Edgar Allen Poe in Baltimore, MD. From 1949 to 2009, a mysterious visitor visited Poe’s gravesite every year on Poe’s birthday (January 19). The still unknown visitor left the same thing each year: three roses and a bottle of cognac. Presumably, when this annual visit ceased in 2010, the stranger who paid homage to the late writer every year had met the same fate as Poe did in 1849.

Instead of having a florist make up a flower arrangement, you may choose to pick out your own flowers to arrange yourself. While there is significant to the type and colors of specific flowers for funerals, if you’re designing your own arrangement, then you should choose flowers that are aesthetically pleasing to your eye and make them into an arrangement that you like.

If you’re an immediate family member of the person who died, you may have been one of the family members who asked for something other than flowers to remember your loved one by. However, there is still something very personal, very comforting, and very sentimental about providing flowers for the funeral of your loved one or by making sure that there are flowers at their gravesite all year long.

For more information about flowers for funerals at funeral home in Tallahassee, including grief resources, our caring and knowledgeable staff at Lifesong Funerals & Cremations is here to assist you.

At funerals at Tallahassee funeral homes, your presence means that you either knew or cared for the person who died, or you know or care about the family or individual members of the person who died. While many of the funeral traditions of the past have relaxed in the last few decades, the respect that should be given by mourners to the deceased and the family of the deceased has not.

If you’re unsure of what is considered respectful, then these guidelines will help you.

First, don’t bring very small children (under the age of five, at a minimum) to a funeral or graveside service. Little ones don’t understand what is going on at a funeral, so they’re not missing anything by not being there.

In addition, very young children can be very noisy and disruptive, not because they intend to be, but because making noise is the only way they have to communicate their basic needs to adults.

Funerals and graveside services are quiet occasions where both the grieving family and the gathered mourners are reflecting on a life that has ended and on their own mortality. There should be no disruption during this very contemplative and reflective time.

Second, make sure that what you wear to a funeral service or a graveside service is appropriate. Some people don’t understand exactly what this means, and it can either cause an uproar (if you look like you’re going clubbing, for instance) for the bereaved family and other mourners or it can cause discomfort for you (if, for instance, you wear a work uniform or clothes that are specific to your trade or profession and the service is during the middle of your workday).

The family may be explicit in their loved one’s obituary about attire. For example, some people never wanted to dress up when they were alive, so their families may point to that and invite people to attend the funeral service or graveyard service in comfortable attire. Even if that is the case, you should wear clothes that are modest, in good taste, and that are not sloppy, tattered, or torn.

If the deceased’s obituary doesn’t specify a type of attire, then business casual attire is considered to be respectful attire. However, if you are attending a service during your work day and you have a uniform or work clothes on, it is perfectly acceptable to attend the funeral or graveside service in those. The family will be glad that you took the time to be there.

Another way to show respect at a funeral service or a graveside service is to be on time. You should plan to be wherever you need to be at least 15 minutes before the scheduled start time of a funeral service or graveside service (if you are driving in the funeral process from the funeral home to the cemetery, you should be at the funeral home 15 minutes before the scheduled departure time).

Turn your phone off, mute it, or, better yet, leave it in the car when you are attending a funeral service or a graveside service. For a very short span of time, you can show your respect for the person who died and their loved ones by having your attention solely focused on them. Whatever’s on the other end of that phone can stop and wait for the duration.

If you want to know more about showing respect at Tallahassee funeral homes, our compassionate and experienced staff at Lifesong Funerals & Cremations can help.

Long before thinking about funerals at funeral homes in Tallahassee, FL, you may have created a will. You know you did it. You think you know where it is. You are fairly certain you know what’s in it.

However, if you have a will (if you don’t, you should), you very likely created it a while back. You may have created it when you got married. You may have created it when you had or adopted children. There was likely a very compelling reason why you decided to create a will.

However, there may be a lot of water that has gone under the bridge since you originally created your will. Life has changed. You have change. Your family has changed. And the odds are good that much of that information in the will has changed or needs to be changed.

A will does little good if the information in it is obsolete or wrong. Wills, like people, are living instruments that we create to protect the ones we love. Therefore, we should take the time to regularly to review them to make sure they accurately reflect current circumstances and our current wishes.

So, how often should you review and/or update your will?

The short answer is any time something changes with your assets or with your family status.

However, if this is your first time reviewing your will in a long time, before you consider asset changes and family status changes, consider whom you have named as the executor of your will.

The role of executor is one of the most important in ensuring that your family is protected and taken care of after you die. Because of that, you need to make sure that the executor you named to execute your will is still the same person as the person you originally designated.

It may be that the person you named as your executor is no longer alive. It may be that the person you named as your executor was a close friend or acquaintance at the time, but that acquaintance faded away over the years or the friendship changed and you are no longer even in touch with each other or know anything about each other’s lives.

It may be that the person you named as executor is still very much a part of your life, but no longer has the capability of being your executor. They may have mental health issues or they may suffering from a type of dementia that has left them mentally or emotionally incapacitated.

Whatever the case, it’s time to talk with someone who is currently close in your life about being your executor, and then make sure your will gets changed to name the new executor.

The other change that you may need to make is in the people you’ve designated as legal guardians for your children. If your children are still minors, but the people who are named as legal guardians are no longer living or do not have the financial resources to take care of your children, then you may consider changing the legal guardians who will be able to adequately care for your children if you die.

Asset changes and family status changes that require that you update your will can include:

• Marriage
• Divorce
• Childbirth or adoption
• Death of beneficiaries and heirs
• Large real property purchases or sales (homes, vehicles, businesses, etc.)
• Changes in financial status (including paid off or newly acquired debts, such as mortgages)
• Opening or closing a business

If you want to know more about will reviews at funeral homes in Tallahassee, FL, our compassionate and experienced staff at Lifesong Funerals & Cremations can help. You can come by our funeral home at 20 S. Duval St., Quincy, FL 32351, or you can contact us today at (850) 627-1111.

After funerals at funeral homes in Tallahassee, FL, you and your family will be engulfed in the grief and sorrow that comes after someone you love has died. In those immediate days following a loved one’s death, the focus will be on them: their memory, the life they lived, the void their death has left in your lives.

However, soon after the death of a loved one, the reality of practical matters such as settling their estate and knowing who has legal rights regarding them and their affairs sets in. And it is in this time that confusion can sometimes abound. Here is what you need to know.

Any powers of attorney that were in effect before you loved one died are no longer valid. This includes, obviously, medical powers of attorney, but perhaps not as obviously, durable powers of attorney. A durable power of attorney appoints someone to handle legal and financial matters for another person who is living, but is unable to handle those matters themselves.

Once the person dies, the durable power of attorney ends. The only person authorized to handle legal and financial matters for the estate of your deceased loved one is the person whom they named as the executor in their will or the trustee in their revocable trust (this may be the same person who had durable power of attorney while your loved one was alive, but it sometimes is not).

If your loved one died without a will, then the only person who will be authorized to handle legal and financial matters of their estate is the person whom the court appoints as the executor of the estate.

After your loved one dies, it’s important that all their assets are protected. The time after your loved one dies will be emotionally chaotic and it will leave you and your family vulnerable to being taken advantage of – sometimes by family members themselves – by people who want to personally benefit from the assets your loved one left.

Before the estate is opened – this is the legal term for the beginning of settling your loved one’s estate – all assets should be protected from anyone taking them or distributing them. Once the estate is opened (the instructions in a will or revocable trust initiate this), then only the person who is named as executor or trustee is legally authorized to take or distribute assets, and only in accordance with your deceased loved one’s instructions.

Debts and taxes follow the estate of your loved one. Therefore, it is important that debts be paid from the estate and taxes filed on behalf of the estate (for the tax year in which your loved one dies, if there is taxable income).

However, these financial liabilities of the estate do not become financial responsibilities for heirs, beneficiaries, other family members, or friends. If there are not enough financial assets in the estate to satisfy these debts and obligations, then so be it. No one else is obligated or required to take them on and pay them.

Make sure to notify everyone of your loved one’s death. This includes credit card companies, government agencies, cell phone carriers, utility companies, and other entities that need to know. When you contact these companies, you can either close the accounts, such as credit cards and cell phone carriers (unless you are jointly named on them), or have them put in your name only so that the estate doesn’t accrue additional debt.

If you want to learn about funerals at funeral homes in Tallahassee, FL, our compassionate and experienced staff at Lifesong Funerals & Cremations can help. You can come by our funeral home at 20 S. Duval St., Quincy, FL 32351, or you can contact us today at (850) 627-1111.

Before funerals at funeral homes in Tallahassee, FL, you may find yourself fearing the end of life. You are not alone. Many people, especially in the Western world, are afraid of death. But why are you – and a lot of other people – afraid of death?

To answer that question, we need to understand the emotion of fear and how that emotion and the contextual environment of that emotion has changed over time.

Fear is a response to a direct threat. Before human civilizations became so complex, most fears were generated from our physical environments. For example, if we were confronted by a bear or stepped in the path of a poisonous snake, fear for our lives was the natural response. This was a real fear based on real circumstances that were happening.

However, as our human existences have become more sophisticated, in the Western world particularly, and these real physical threats have become more of an aberration than part of our normal existence, our fear has turned toward intangible threats.

Intangible threats are things we haven’t experienced and things that we can’t perceive with our senses. These can include things like the loss of a job, the loss of independence, and the theft of our assets by cyber criminals, and the loss of life.

We think about these intangible threats – that may not have happened and, in most cases, are unlikely to happen – and we develop fears about them. As author Mark Twain famously said, “I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

So, this change in how fear gets generated necessitates another question. Why are you afraid of death?

Death is a unique experience in life. We experience it only once. Those who’ve experienced it before us can’t come back to tell us what happens and what it’s like. Therefore, we truly don’t know anything about death – as an experience – except that it happens.

Because death is an both tangible in the sense that it will happen and intangible in the sense that none of us knows what the experience of it is until it happens and we can’t share that with anyone else, it can evoke a response of fear about something will happen in the future.

But the fear of death is more than just about the experience itself. The other fear can also be about what happens after death. Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 9:5 that the living know that they die, but the dead don’t know anything. Jesus Christ Himself, in talking about his friend Lazarus in John 11:11, said that the dead sleep. When we’re asleep, time passes and, for the most part, we are unaware of any of that time.

However, Western literature has been overlaid on the theology of the Bible, and it has suggested that when we die, we don’t sleep, but instead we get an immediate change in consciousness – and place outside the grave – that can either be okay or not okay.

One of the biggest literary influences on how we perceive the afterlife is Dante Alighieri’s The Inferno. Written as a political satire against his enemies in Florence who opposed the Pope and were backed by the Holy Roman Emperor, Dante created a complex and tortuous multilayered Hell that he consigned his enemies to.

Through time this Hell was integrated into Christian theology as the place where “bad” people go when they die. The fear of going “down” instead of going “up” (even though John 3:13 specifically says that no human except the resurrected and spiritual Jesus has ascended to heaven) is also intertwined with death.

If you want to learn about funerals at funeral homes in Tallahassee, FL, our compassionate and experienced staff at Lifesong Funerals & Cremations can help. You can come by our funeral home at 20 S. Duval St., Quincy, FL 32351, or you can contact us today at (850) 627-1111.