Category: funeral home

After a funeral at a funeral home in Tallahassee, FL, it is common for family members – especially those that are more distant, but sometimes even those who are the closest ones – to drift away from the family and never come back into the fold.

If your loved one who died was the matriarch or patriarch of the family and the central force that kept the entire family together and in touch with each other, this loss of connection is much more likely.

Sometimes there are fractures – temporary or permanent – among immediate family members, especially if there are already existing tensions or problems among siblings. However, even if the siblings don’t have any problems at the time of your loved one’s death, fractures may happen after their death because of legal matters such as wills and inheritances.

It’s even more common, though, that distant family connections break after your loved one dies because they were the thread that ensured that those connections were intact. With distant family members it is likely that many of them live in different places, lead different lives, and may have only seen each other a couple of times a year for holidays.

This doesn’t have to happen after your loved one dies. There are many things that surviving family members can do to strength the immediate and distant family unit after a funeral.

One thing you can do is to get everyone’s contact information, including email, social media accounts, phone numbers and addresses. Initiate a regular practice of sending a short update email to everyone every few months or create a private family group page on social media where family members can post updates about themselves and their families.

If you have relatives who aren’t using email or social media, be sure to check in with them by sending them a text message, calling them, or sending them a short handwritten note or card every few weeks.

Another good idea for strengthening your family after the death of a loved one is to create a family newsletter that gets published every three months.

Invite family members to send news and pictures of their family events or milestones that you can be included in the newsletter. Take advantage of the technological skills of various family members to make this a collaborate project so that you don’t have the sole responsibility for putting the entire newsletter together from start to finish.

A third way you can strengthen your family after a funeral is to plan regular gatherings, either in small groups, or with the entire family. One of the best ways to do this is to have an annual family reunion.

Pick four or five locations where family members already live that might be good locations (enough hotel and restaurant accommodations, as well as activities) for reunions. Circle through each venue as you plan reunions so that the tasks of planning them (securing blocks of rooms in hotels, setting up one or two meals in restaurants, etc.) is split among different family members and doesn’t depend on one person doing all the planning every time.

If feasible, it might be a good idea to have one reunion in the rotation take place near the cemetery of the family patriarch or matriarch so that everyone can visit their graves and future generations can learn about the history of their families.

While it takes work to strengthen families after funerals, the effort will pay off.

If you’d like to learn about funerals at a funeral home in Tallahassee, FL, our compassionate and experienced staff at Lifesong Funerals & Cremations can help.

Many people want to help out during a funeral at funeral home in Tallahassee, but they’re unsure if it’s even appropriate or, if it is appropriate, what they can do to help take care of the bereaved family that is mourning the loss of a loved one.

Funerals are composed of many moving parts that may seem like they automatically happen, but they don’t in actuality. In the background are many people who are work hard so that things go smoothly. So, how can you help?

One way to help a grieving family during a funeral service is to take care of the guest book. Guest books are typically placed at the entrance of the location where the funeral service will be held.

Guest books give people who come to pay their respects to the deceased an opportunity to make sure the family knows they were there. The bereaved family receives the guest book after the funeral as part of the funeral home’s services to them.

Taking care of the guest book consists of directing mourners to the guest book to sign it during both the visitation and the funeral service (some people will attend both the visitation and funeral service and some will attend only the funeral service).

Most funeral homes have staff that will take care of moving the guest book if the visitation and funeral service are held in different places, but it can help the family to know that someone they know is taking care of the guest book.

Another way you can help during a funeral is to keep a written record of all gifts and flowers sent to the funeral service. The grieving family will send thank you notes after the funeral service to all those who participated in the funeral or who sent flowers and gifts. Having a list of those names of those people and what they contributed helps make the thank-you note writing easier.

Be sure to record first and last names, addresses, if they’re included, and the actual contribution made. You can take photos with a smartphone of both tags and the gifts so that the family will have visual reminders to help them when they begin sending thank-you notes.

A third way to be helpful during a funeral is to attend to any needs the family may have. You can make sure that they have water to drink during the visitation and, if there’s a reception after the funeral service, something to eat and drink. The family may not even be thinking about any of these things, but they will appreciate your show of concern for their well-being.

A nice gesture of help could be to buy cloth handkerchiefs for each family member to have during the visitation and the funeral. You can also provide a small bottle of hand sanitizer with each handkerchief, so family members can use it as needed while greeting mourners.

Most of the time, funeral home staff take care of parking for the funeral, but you can still offer your assistance with parking before the funeral and with traffic flow after the funeral, especially if there is a funeral procession to the cemetery after the funeral.

A final way to be helpful during a funeral service is to volunteer to help seat people. The funeral director will guide people into the room where the service is being held, but an extra hand to help people find seats will be appreciated.

For more information on how to help during a funeral at a funeral home in Tallahassee, our caring and knowledgeable staff at Lifesong Funerals & Cremations is here to assist you.

When you’re deciding on music for funerals at Tallahassee funeral homes, you can literally go with almost any song you can imagine. However, if you are having trouble coming up with ideas on your own, there are some very popular songs that are often included in the music that is played during funeral services.

What music you decide to include in a funeral service for a loved one is a very personal choice and any song or songs can be played as part of the funeral service. Sometimes people choose songs that have special memories that are associated with their loved ones. Other times people choose songs that were favorites of their loved one.

But sometimes people find themselves at a loss of knowing what kind of music they should play during the funeral service.

Music included in funeral services can be secular, religious, or classical. The following list includes some of the most popular secular, religious, and classical songs that people opt for in funeral services, along with a brief explanation of why they are appropriate selections.

In secular music, one song that is frequently included in funeral services is Vince Gill’s “Go Rest High on That Mountain.” Gill began composing this song as a tribute to country artist Keith Whitley (who died from alcohol intoxication), but he did not finish the song until his older brother had an unexpected heart attack and died. The song is soaked in a beautiful combination of grief, emotion, and celebration.

Another secular song that has become a popular selection in funeral services for younger people who’ve died is Deathcab for Cutie’s “I’ll Follow You into the Dark.” This song is about the natural passing of time in life that eventually ends in death, with the acknowledgement that the people we leave behind will will mourn our passing.

A mainstay secular song that is included in funeral services is “Dust in the Wind,” by Kansas. This song puts a wide-angled lens on life, both capturing its fragility and its brevity. The title of the song is an oblique reference to both Ecclesiastes 12:7 and Genesis 3:19 in the Bible.

A final secular song that is commonly chosen for funeral services is Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” performed by Jeff Buckley. This song expressed mourning for love and loss, while it provides wise counsel and comfort to the brokenhearted.

Among religious and classical music that is popular for funeral services, one of the most often played songs is Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria.” This song is essentially a prayer that is set to music, and many people find it to be very consoling.

A very common religious hymn that is routinely played at funeral services is John Newton’s, “Amazing Grace.” This song is about forgiveness, redemption, and salvation, which are concurrent themes in both life and death.

“My Shepherd Will Supply My Need,” which was composed by Isaac Watts, is an adaptation of Psalm 23 in the Bible. This is a very comforting song that reminds people of the consistent presence of a power greater than us who is taking care of every one of our needs from the time we are born until the time we die.

A final classical song that is often selected to be included in funeral services is Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.” This piece of music starts out very quietly in the beginning and then blooms fully into notes of both sorrow and hope as the song progresses.

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

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.  

After funerals at funeral homes in funeral home in Tallahassee, FL, you will probably be most aware of the emotional and mental symptoms that the grieving process produces. You may spontaneously cry over big and little things that remind you of the loved one you have lost. You may alternate between feelings of intense sadness at losing your loved one and happiness when you remember good times, special occasions, or things about them that were special to you.

You will ride this emotional rollercoaster, which sometimes will make absolutely no sense and will make you feel as though you might be just a little bit off your rocker, for quite some time after your loved one’s death.

The mental symptoms of grief over the death of a loved one are as pronounced, especially early in the grieving process. You will feel as if you’re mentally hazy and you will experience memory problems and attention problems because your mind is preoccupied with grieving instead of the business of daily living.

This subsides as the grief process progresses, but it can be quite unsettling to experience at the beginning. This is why it is a good idea to have someone who can think objectively and clearly at your side during the initial days after the death of your loved one. This is also why the advice is given to not make any major decisions in the first year after a loved one has died.

But grief also has physical symptoms. Some of these are not serious and go away with time, but others can lead to severe health problems – or even death – later on.

One of the physical symptoms of grief is unrelenting fatigue. Part of this can be attributed to disturbed sleep patterns after you lose a loved one. You may find yourself unable to sleep for more than a couple of hours before waking up. You may sleep fitfully, never descending into any periods of deep sleep.

You may find it almost impossible to sleep because your mind is racing, and you can’t shut it off. Often this non-stop thought process alternates between memories of your loved one, things you have to do now that your loved one has died, and the unknown future of your life without your loved one. In addition, there may be regrets interspersed that you can’t do anything about now that your loved one is gone, but you can’t find a way to make peace with them and let them go.

If you’re not sleeping well or at all, you will be tired all the time. This can lead to serious problems. You’re more likely to have accidents when you are fatigued. These might be accidents that occur while you’re driving or while you are working. There is a good possibility that these accidents will be severe or, possibly, even fatal.

Another problem that arises with sleep deprivation is a higher incidence of making mistakes or using bad judgment. While many mistakes may be minor and easily corrected, some of these mistakes can be quite serious and lead to disastrous problems. Bad judgment works the same way. Sometimes using bad judgment leads to a little discomfort or embarrassment, but other times, it can cause you significant trouble for a long time, if not for the rest of your life.

Sleep deprivation and fatigue also increases your risk for developing dementia later in life. Cleaning out toxins in the brain – a significant contributor to dementia development – is one of the functions that happens during sleep. This function can’t be done when we’re awake because it requires too much energy. Sleep provides the right environment for this high-energy cleansing to take place.

If you want to know more the impact of grief after funerals at funeral home in Tallahassee, FL, our compassionate and experienced staff at Lifesong Funerals & Cremations can help.