Considering Deathcare Options
Most of us dedicate hundreds of hours researching and planning for a two-week vacation. When it comes to death, however, we mostly avoid thinking about it. As if denying its inevitability will grant us immunity.
One hundred percent of us die, and the percentage cannot be increased.
CS Lewis
If you’ve ever dealt with the death of your closest loved ones, you’ll soon realize that having some ideas of what to do is better than nothing.
Who do you contact? What exactly are they going to do? What do you have to do yourself? How much will it all cost?
You never know when death is coming, but a few minutes of learning now can help you make more meaningful decisions when you’re faced with it.
Family-Led Deathcare
Most people don’t know that, here in BC, we can do a lot of the work ourselves after our loved one dies. And we can choose to do it in a way that’s meaningful to us.
If our loved one has died at home, we can keep them at home until cremation or burial. We can have a ceremony at home. We can look after the transportation of the body. We can build the casket. Or decorate it.
If we’re able to bury at a small county cemetery, we can carry the person to the gravesite and bury them ourselves.
The Value of Choice
We can let funeral services providers handle some aspects — like paperwork — while we look after the things that are meaningful to us. The things that help us come to terms with our loved one’s death and move through our grief.
Most people automatically let funeral services providers take care of everything, but when too much is determined by someone who does not share or even know what’s important to us, we can feel like we have no way of actively participating in how we honour our loved one or process our grief.
Most people aren’t prepared to take on care after death themselves because they haven’t thought about it. They haven’t decided which aspects would be emotionally beneficial for them to handle.
If you’re reading this and thinking that you’d like to be an active participant when you’re faced with the death of a loved one, please reach out to us. Feel free to call us at 604-324-8285, email us at [email protected] or through our contact page here.
If you want a practical guide before/when death happens, check out KORU’s helpful resource here. To learn more about Family-led Funerals, read this page.
Other helpful pages on our website you may find helpful and informative:
Virtual Tribute: Grieving Together Apart
Photo Credit: Kenniku Tolato and Kanwardeep Kaur on Unsplash
