Guidelines for Getting to Know Your Funeral Director

Who is Your Funeral Director

This dedicated individual is college educated a professionally trained to care for the dead and to help the living during one of the most difficult times during their lives.

Your funeral director is a caring and sympathetic person who understands the suffering that is experienced in losing a loved one. He/She has the knowledge and experience to help you make the right decisions regarding funeralization.

Education

• Graduating from an accredited college with an associate's degree in Mortuary Science.
• Taking courses such as anatomy, pathology, psychology, sociology, counseling, management, law and ethics; and specialized courses including embalming, restorative art, funeral directing and funeral home management.
• Serving a one or two year internship at a funeral home approved by the state to supply supervised practical experience.
• Successful completion of a state or national board examination.

Continuing Eduation

The most common continuing education courses offered for funeral directors are in the areas of Grief and Bereavement, Ethics, Counseling, Management, and Embalming.

Community and Professional Involvement

They are often asked to speak about subjects concerning their profession to schools, colleges, and senior citizen groups. Funeral directors also offer such services as group tours of the funeral home, reference libraries available to the public, and informational brochures.

Funeral directors serve the needs of their profession through active involvement in their state and national funeral directors association.

Services

The following are many of the typical services provided by your funeral director:

• Transferring the deceased from place of death to funeral home.
• Professional care of the deceased, which may include sanitary washing, embalming preparation, restorative art, dressing, hairdressing, casketing and cosmetology.
• Conduct a complete consultation with family members to gather necessary information and discuss specific arrangements for a funeral.
• File all necessary legal documents as may be required.
• Acquire the requested amount of certified copies of the Death Certificate needed to settle the Estate of the deceased.
• Compile an obituary and place in newspapers of a family's choice.
• Make arrangements with cemetery, crematory, or other place of disposition.
• The providing of a register book, prayer cards, funeral folders, and acknowledgements, as requested by a family.
• Offer the assistance of notifying relatives and friends.
• Arrange for some cash advances for cemetery expense, clergy honorariums, music, flowers, Death Certificates, obituaries, additional transportation, etc.
• Care and arrangement of floral pieces and the post-funeral distribution as directed by a family.
• Arrange for pallbearers, automobiles, and special services (Fraternal or Military) as requested by a family.
• Care and preservation of all floral cards. Mass cards, or other memorial contributions presented to the funeral home.
• Guide a family in the cost consideration of a funeral. Your funeral director by no means will allow one to go beyond his/her financial means in the selection of a funeral.
• Your funeral director will direct the funeral in a most professional manner, and be in complete charge of the funeral procession to the cemetery or other place of disposition.
• Assist a family with Social Security, Veterans, Insurance, and other death-related claims.
• Assist in the selection of a competent attorney or monument dealer, only at the request of a family.
• A post funeral meeting, by the funeral director, with a family, to deliver such items as the register book, floral and mass cards, and to ascertain whether or not they can be of further assistance.

Legal Compliance

These agencies direct policy towards funeral directing, funeral home licensing, health and sanitary codes, funeral pre-financing, consumer protection, handicapped accessibility, and environmental protection.

Periodic inspection of funeral home premises and records are made to ensure the funeral director is operating within state and federal laws.

Pre-arrangement and Pre-financing

• Their wishes are known and will be carried out at the time of need.
• They have lessened the burden upon their family.
• They have taken advantage of financial opportunities offered through pre-financing.
• Your funeral director is knowledgeable in this area and can explain what must be done and the best way to do it.

The Funeral

Although the actual rituals involed in funeral ceremonies differ with each culture, the purpose of all of them are the same:

• To confirm the reality of death;
• To acknowledge the importance of the individual who died;
• To support and comfort the bereaved survivors;
• To provide a socially acceptable environment to openly express emotions.

For most bereaved people, attending a wake and funeral is the first step in facing the reality of death. This step is often difficult to take, but it is one that can be the most significant event in a survivor's struggle to recover from the loss of a loved one.

The funeral, like no other event, acts as a rite of passage that signifies the change in relationships brought about by death. At the cemetery, when you walk away from the grave, you are physically leaving your old life behind and beginning a new life.

When someone you love dies, you are not alone in your sorrow. The person who died was a member of a larger group of family and friends who also grieve their loss. The funeral can provide the family and friends with the opportunity to express their feelings of loss while acknowledging their respect for the deceased and their regard for the survivors.

The sharing of these feelings is a therapeutic way to gain strength from one another. The support and help that you receive can often be what gives you the strength to go on at a time when you feel least like living.

Traditionally, for many, the funeral is a religious service. The purpose is to acknowledge the mortality of the body, while reaffirming the immortality of the soul. The religious ceremonies that are part of a funeral not only help us to cope with the loss, but also convey a very distinctive meaning to death, which may give comfort to those who grieve.

When Death Occurs Far Away

How People Feel About Funerals and Funeral Directors

The 1995 Study of American Attitude Toward Ritualization and Memorialization by the Wirthland Group showed that most Americans would attend a funeral service or visitation as a way of showing their feelings after a death.

Would attend service/visitation	95%
Would send flowers	88%
Would send a card	87%

Earlier studies have shown that:

• 98.4% of people rated their preferred funeral home as excellent or good.
• 76% of widows said the funeral director was the person who helped them most when comparing them with clergy, physicians and neighbors.
• 89% of respondents felt that the funeral director was helpful to them in making good decisions when arranging a funeral.

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