Blog | Lifesong Funerals

A Tallahassee, FL funeral home can give you guidance on how to create sympathy cards that are meaningful and give a grieving family the comfort and encouragement they need. Sympathy cards are designed to make those who have lost a loved one feel comforted and supported by other people.

However, your first task is to find the right kind of sympathy card so that you can write a meaningful message to bereaved family members. When you look online or go to a card store, you will find a lot of words already written on them.

You may intuitively feel slightly put off by these kinds of sympathy cards because they don’t express what you feel in your heart. There’s a good reason for that.

The greeting card industry, like most other writing industries in the 21st century, pays freelance or contract writers to write the content in these kinds of sympathy cards. As a result, the messages can feel hollow and like they lack the warmth and sympathy that you want to convey to grieving family members.

It is best to avoid buying this type of sympathy cards and simply signing your name and sending it to the family that has lost a loved one.

If you’re unsure of whether you should send a sympathy card like this because you don’t know quite how to express your own feelings, think about how you would feel if you’d lost a loved one and you received one of these cards that someone close to you just signed and mailed to you.

To the bereaved family, receiving a card like this can make them feel as if the sender didn’t care enough to write anything themselves, sent the card out of duty and not care and concern, or that the sender was simply too busy to be bothered with more than a signature.

While all of this may be untrue, that may be how the grieving family perceives it. Therefore, you should select a very simple sympathy card that is blank inside where you can write a note to the inside. Your note doesn’t have to lengthy, but it needs to be heartfelt.

Two of the best ways to write meaningful sympathy cards is to simply express your condolences on the family’s loss or to share a fond memory of their loved one.

Clichés should be avoided at all costs. Don’t write that you know how the family feels or that the death of their loved one is a blessing or for the best.

While you may imagine how the family feels, but you don’t actually know how they feel. Therefore, use phrases like, “I can imagine…” instead. Calling a loved one’s death a blessing or saying that it is for the best doesn’t feel that way to a family who is grieving the loss. This can be unintentionally hurtful.

If you’re sending a sympathy card, but you know only one member of the deceased’s family, address the card to that person. Write to the person you know, but make sure you extend your thoughts to the rest of their family.

Make your sympathy card meaningful by making the family – or person you know – aware of your concern and that you are available to visit, to listen, or to help them.

Finally, be sure your handwriting is legible. If your cursive writing is difficult to read, then print your note. In addition, include your full name, because a lot of Steve’s, Mary’s, Mark’s, and Ann’s may be sending sympathy cards. You can also, optionally, include your cell number and an email address if the family wants to contact you later.

For help from a Tallahassee, FL funeral home with creating a meaningful sympathy card, just ask our caring and knowledgeable staff at Lifesong Funerals & Cremations.

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.