The process will often start with a, an appointment at the funeral home. Um, a welcome is done. And introduction to the facility. We want people to understand how comfortable and convenient things are here. They can begin to see the flow of what can happen and imagine themselves walking into what’s next.

We take them down to a very private, secure room, where we just start talking. That initial funeral arrangement consultation can take anywhere from an hour to two hours.

Um, that time together, over some coffee and tea, is designed just to help us be relaxed, start a conversation, address details. Our objective really being, we have to answer the question, “How are we gonna say goodbye?” Um, doing that appropriately, meaningfully and in a financially prudent way as well.

It’s kind of a give and take. So you are giving information to the funeral director as far as Vital Statistics and, you know, what your thoughts and feelings are, but then you’re also gonna be receiving quite a bit of information. There is quite a bit of education if you’ve never gone through it before, to find out what all your options are. Which can start from as simple as, “Would you like burial or cremation?” all the way to “How do you want to memorialize your, your family member?”

Thought that, you’re gonna be given a bit of a job list to do. I never let the family leave – we’ll, we’ll plan the time and the place – but we give them a little check-list. Can you get the clothing in now? We want the family to engage. Can you go and start thinking about what photos would be appropriate to put into the video tribute? Here’s an aid to help you in writing the eulogy. Who would be the person speaking with that?

People come in fairly, fairly stressed, stressed-out, not knowing what to expect, um, and then hopefully – if – if it’s a good arrangement – they, they end up feeling pretty good, and usually end up sharing some funny stories, and it’s kind of that, a bit of a release time for them.

When ,uh, when it’s done, it’s important that we deal with the communicating of the financial obligations involved in the decisions that have been made, and so it’s our goal always to complete a funeral arrangement by actually taking the time to actually itemize that, uh, help the family with understanding big elephant in the room, “What’s it gonna cost?” We try to make it easy for people.