Even before I read her books, I believed most people are unaware of their rights/options as a family member to the deceased. I have an ill family member. How do I educate myself and pick a decent funeral for cremation?
First set is from the medical examiner, all fingers on left and right hand. Second set was taken at the funeral home, I believe just from the thumb and ring finger on the left hand. These are supposed to be from the same person. Is there any reason the fingerprints would have changed like this between the two locations?
Funeral directors that work at SCI/Dignity:
Are you on call to go out for removals after business hours?
Whats your typical schedule like?
Do you get holidays off/holiday pay?
I just got hired at a cemetery in California this month. It’s an unexpected step into the death care industry and I’ve found that I love helping the people that come in every day. I do not have my salesperson license but it’s in the works. My employers are pressuring me to make sales by saying that they can not afford to pay people if I don’t sell spaces. One salesperson is planning on signing the purchase contracts after I fill them out. I’m also not supposed to tell anyone that I’m to be making sales 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 Also, they have several contracts from months ago where the certificates of ownership have not been filled out. They want me to type them up and make the dates on the deeds much more recent than the dates on the contracts 🚩? It feels like this is all blatantly wrong and that I should figure out my next steps but am I wrong? Is this common practice? I don’t want to compromise my future in this industry.
Might be a dumb question but do people yelp funeral homes? Is that a good way to find them?
hello, my grandfather was cremated last night. i went to witness. they had him on a wooden board/tray, not a closed container, and they let me spend a few minutes with him while the machine was warming up.
it didn't occur to me at the time, but i realized they probably should have cremated him in at the very least a cardboard box. i believe the regulations in my province (manitoba) also state that remains need to be in a closed container.
i know grandpa wouldn't have minded, but i can't stop feeling like something wasn't done correctly there. i also don't know if they used that metal tag that many sources say must remain with the remains until they're given back to the family (then again, they could have put it somewhere on his body or the board itself, but i obviously wasn't looking for that at the time). i haven't told my grandmother as she's also incredibly stricken with grief and we're dealing with other family issues in the midst of this.
i think it's probably okay, not like we can re-do it now, but i wanted to hear some professional opinions, if this is a typical or ok practice. i'm also wondering if it's typical/okay for them to run the cremation machine without a staff present, as the young guy operating the machine hopped in his truck and left around the same time we did (15 min after it began). i came back about an hour later just cause i was driving around, and the same guy with another guy pulled in and went inside as i was sitting nearby. I know it was left unnattended for at least the first bit as he said that if i wasn't there to witness, he'd be doing it alone (so no other staff could have been in the building until after he came back an hour later). again i don't think anything super bad can happen at that point, but i wonder if it's common for small funeral homes to leave the remains unattended while actively being cremated.
i should also say that this is a very small funeral home with only 1 cremation machine, so i guess it's not like they can really get him mixed up. also, this funeral home (they have a few different locations in our rural towns) is very highly trusted and is the only one in the town nearest to our home community.
i don't feel like they were doing anything super wrong but again just wanted to get some professional opinions on this. the guy running the machine was otherwise respectful, informative, and kind.
thanks 🤍
Any funeral directors here who have known of or helped a family have a home funeral and willing to share their story either as a DM or here in this forum?
I have recently started helping with removals at work. I have dine a few now but others have been in wheeled steachers, 1 was on stairs but we hwd ti use a crickets bag and slide for that one. Todqy was the first tine a carried a strecher downstairs and now I’m doubting myself a bit.
It was a standard stretcher with no wheels, just one you physically carry. The staircase was narrow with two right-angle turns and I was on the lower end going backwards down the stairs. I’m about 5’5 and the guy I was carrying with is around 6 foot.just for context.
The lady on the stretcher was small and elderly, so not a heavy person at all, but I still found it really difficult. We got her down safely and everything went fine, but the weight felt much heavier than I expected, ibwas in the bottom end, so walking backwards down the stairs.
I think what’s bothering me is that if I struggled with someone small, what happens if I ever have to carry someone heavier? We will call im a 2nd team for someone very large however this lady today was tiny so quite likley that id have to do again with a 2 man team in the same way. Is this something that gets easier with experience/technique or does it genuinely mean I’m not strong enough for this kind of work?
Would appreciate honest opinions from people who do manual handling jobs because I can’t tell if I’m overthinking it and its normal for a first carry like this or wether i may just have got the strength needed for someone that isnt small.
Thank you
I am assisting a family in Florida who recently experienced an unexpected death of a child. The family is unable to pay for funeral expenses. They receive government assistance for rent, food and medical insurance. My organization is going to assist with some of the costs, but we have a limit of $2K in financial assistance. I'm trying to help the family find additional financial assistance to pay for the funeral and burial. I helped them submit an application with The Tears Foundation, but they have not heard back from anyone there. Does anyone have other suggestions? It looks like the county will provide assistance if the individual is unclaimed, but this is not the case. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
Hi, please feel free to delete if not allowed. I’m not sure where else to post this. I’m looking for someone who custom makes memorial jewelry for a pet. I would love a ring with some of my dog’s ashes and maybe some of his fur, and also a small gem I can put onto a 16g ring for a cartilage earring so he’s always with me (I never take that earring off). If anyone has any recommendations for someone who might be able to help me out, please let me know. Thanks in advance🤍
How is the Texas market looking as far as job opportunities and salary expectations? I want to go back into the field after the military as a director/embalmer but want some advice on those things as I am a father and have children to provide for. Thank you.
Edit: San Antonio area (anywhere else in Texas)
I am not sure how to approach this, and want to know if embalming is a must to fly a deceased person from Greece to Canada. Also how does the embalming process work and if it's accepted in Islam. My father is in the ICU in Greece and doctors are telling us he is in a very critical situation, I hope he recovers, but if not I would like to prepare for the worst
I just had a ship-out the other day, or rather the receiving funeral home was in an adjacent state so they drove up to pick up the body a couple days after I embalmed.
I thought all was well until a day or two later we received a very nasty email from the receiving funeral home’s owner claiming the body was “very poorly embalmed,” complaints about the decedent’s mouth, and something along the lines of “I see on the report the job took two hours, and if that’s the best your embalmer can do in two hours then I’d suggest he take a bit longer next time.”
I will admit that the decedent’s mouth shape didn’t look fantastic and was a bit sunken, but they’re seeing an end result. They have no idea what he looked like before features were set. I spent about 20-30 minutes on the mouth alone because lower jaw/gums were extremely sunken with major gum recession and no teeth. There was very little structure to the lower mouth and at a point I just had to work with what I had so that I could get to embalming.
As far as the embalming itself, there were absolutely no issues. I used about a 26 index solution as I wasn’t sure how long they’d be holding onto him. There was no leakage, lividity, and he was firm as anything.
In this way I just categorically disagree that the embalming itself was poorly done. I can agree some what on the mouth, but part of me feels that the email was uncalled for and that experienced embalmers should understand that sometimes a mouth just won’t cooperate with you the way you need it to.
That said, part of me regrets not keeping at it a bit more with the mouth, but I truthfully didn’t think I could realistically get it any better than I got it. I could be totally wrong.
Has anyone had something like this happen before with a receiving funeral home complaining about the body? Any feedback is welcome
I don't want to be rude, but I was really wondering:
Is there a rule that funeral homes are not allowed to have nice websites?
Lately, I went through many different websites (even in different countries) and they all seem to be as alive as their customers...
Is it simply because there is enough business and a website is not really necessary? Or are they missing out on something here?
I work for a trade service. our shifts go from 6-6. I have a mix of day and night shifts during a pay period. my night shifts aren’t as bad with sleepiness until around the 3-4am period. However, I absolutely struggle when I work day shifts. I’ll get to work at 6am, and even if I am standing I begin to get really sleepy and dizzy. If I am sitting at a desk, I will struggle to keep my eyes open. Driving is a nightmare. How do other funeral professionals manage the out of the ordinary sleep schedules this industry requires of us?
^(I am a costume and fashion designer and started doing custom gowns for the deceased in close collaboration with the mourning relatives to be part of the grieving process.)
^(I did courses in grief counseling to prepare but would like to hear anything you think I should know doing this. Than you very much.)
UPDATE: I brought this over to r/bonecollecting and they identified it as coming from an ungulate, like a pig or a sheep. This was most likely butcher/food scraps, or maybe some animal pulled it out of the trash. I am feeling far, far better knowing this.
Gosh I hope not.
I was out digging in my garden today, just bought this house recently and have never tended to the garden before. I unearthed a small dead stump (like from a small dead bush) and underneath it I found a small memorial plaque of a gentleman that passed in 1982. Underneath that, I found *something.*
It's right about 3 inches long, 1.5 inches wide, and clearly broken off from something. It's fairly light, which is what immediately made me think it wasn't a rock. It was in one piece, but I was trying to figure out if it was a wood or not so I hit it with a brick. I wish I hadn't.
It's completely smooth and rounded on one side. It's very light in color, it just looks darker because I tried washing off half of it. Extremely porous on the inside. Hard enough where it took a couple good whacks with a brick to break it (sorry, I wasn't thinking.)
It's my understanding that funeral homes started pulverizing cremains in the 70s or so, and if he passed in 82, I'm guessing he would have been pulverized. But I want to be sure so I can dispose of it properly (if it's cremains, I will rebury. If it's a rock or something, I'm going to huck it over the fence into the woods.)
Located in southern MN if it helps at all, maybe this is some kind of weird root we have here or something. Here's a whole pile of pictures to hopefully help.
My husbands grandmother just passed. Like, less than 4 hours ago. The funeral home picked her up before we could get to the nursing home.
The funeral home and cemetery have overlapping services and can’t do the service for 3 days.
The funeral home is charging my mother in law $350 to see the body, they aren’t preparing the body in any way. No washing, embalming, makeup, nada.
Hi!
My mom got buried in January (~4 months ago) and I’ve been going to visit the cemetery about once a week since. It’s finally been nice the past week or two out (we’re from NY) and when I went today I saw a swarm of flies around the grave. They were hovering around the grass all around where the fresh dirt was and only around this grave not neighboring ones. I know what this implies but don’t want to think of it. Is this normal or something I should bring up to the cemetery. Thanks!!