While no one relishes the thought of having to make funeral arrangement for their parents, if this is a conversation that you can have with your parents well before they’re on their deathbeds, the actual funeral arranging can be much easier for you, as you can ensure that you’re giving them exactly what they would have wanted. However, knowing how to put these plans into place and how to broach the topic can come with its own sets of challenges. So to help you in figuring all of this out, here are three tips for helping your parents plan for their future funeral.
Know That Planning Is A Process
Planning for a funeral likely isn’t something that you’re going to be able to take care of in just an hour or so. Especially if you’re wanting to take some steps to actually pinpoint what specific services you’re going to use, you’ll likely have to put in quite a bit of time researching things and circling back to the conversation.
Knowing this, you should try to start off the conversation by asking the basic questions about things like if they want to be buried or cremated, where they would like their final resting place to be, and how they envision their funeral or memorial service going. These are the kinds of things that you’ll have to tell funeral services when the time for the funeral comes.
Ask About What They Don’t Want To Have
While the questions mentioned above might be basic, many people haven’t really thought about these kinds of things before so getting a straight answer can be hard.
To combat this, you might want to ask about what kinds of things they don’t want to have or take place during their funeral proceedings. For many people, it’s easier to know what they don’t want or don’t like than to choose what to include. Especially if your parents have been to some funerals for their friends or family members, they can base their decisions for what they like or dislike off of these experiences.
Document Everything Your Discuss
As you’re having these conversations with your parents, make sure that you write down everything that they express as either what they want or what they don’t want. While you might think that you’d be able to remember these things when the time comes, the stress you’ll be feeling then might make it hard for you to recall your parents’ wishes.
Along with writing down their wishes, you should also document any information about the service providers you plan to use or the pre-planning arrangements that have already been taken care of. This will make things much easier for you as the arrangements for the funeral get underway.
If you feel that you need to start helping your parents plan their future funerals, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you go about this.