Funeral home is probably the place for him to go. Fewer people usually go to the actual burial. Visiting at the home is probably more for people who knew the family well.
In those circumstances, I go to the funeral home and sign the book. If there is a receiving line of some sort, I give my condolences to the family. If not, I try to find them to do so. It always depends on the size of the crowd. That is why I want my name in the book. And they may not even remember who was there.
I wouldn’t attend the burial or home visit.
eta: If this is a colleague he knows well, I might do the other events as well. It is giving me pause, that he only met the wife once. That suggests you didn’t socialize with that couple? That is what I’m giving an opinion on.
I agree. If he has to choose, I would vote for the funeral home. also I think going to the home also could be okay, if he had also paid his respects at the funeral home and had a close relationship with the colleague.
The question for me would be: How much support does this colleague need from me? How much family is in town? Close friends? If the answer isn’t clear, it is better to do too much than too little. jmho.
He has met the colleague only once, or he met the wife only once? If he knows the colleague well, I’d say he should go to the funeral and then the home.
Funeral home is where I would go if it was someone I wasn’t terribly close to.
Sometimes there is also a gathering at the funeral home the day before the actual funeral. A couple of times, when I knew one person from the family, I went to this event instead of the actual funeral. Family members are usually there, and there’s no formal ceremony going on, so there’s an opportunity to chat a bit, and the family members may appreciate having people they know to talk to.
Yes, for some religions, a viewing, a wake or a visitation is common.
Met the wife only once, the colleague he knows pretty well. He gives one of the lectures in the course he runs. He’s going to go to the funeral home reception which also has the virtue of being closest to the lab.
I’ve sat shiva with people and gone to wakes, but in all those cases there wasn’t another reception as far as I know.
Going to the family home for shiva/service is a nice thing to do too
@VeryHappy, easy solution. Pick up the phone and call the funeral home you would likely use (or a couple of them if you are not sure) and ask the funeral director these questions. They should be able to explain exactly how everything can be arranged. If they cannot, or they are rude, then call another funeral home and make a note that you/your family should never use the rude funeral home. Every funeral home is different. The one where I worked sent a bill later. Nothing was required to be paid up front. Many states also have strict rules on things like billing, with some states requiring a very detailed itemized bill for every aspect of the funeral services (more detail than most loved ones would want).
Most funeral homes allow you to make pre-arrangements with or without prepayment. It’s a good idea to take that stress off of loved ones, but I guess most of us wouldn’t want to do that unless we knew our time was short.
Anyway, call a funeral home. Funeral directors answer these questions all the time.
Due to this thread I spent several hours yesterday and today both getting together our assets/insurance stuff, wills, and perused the local funeral home’s site and priced my preferred options ($1800 pretty good!–excluding “cash” items) and filled out a preferences sheet for them. My husband is freaked out and can’t tell if I think he’s getting ready to croak or I am.
Double posting to say I also read the novel “Still Alice” yesterday about early onset Alzheimers and it didn’t help this feeling of “get your ducks in order.”
My mother did all the preplanning and only made one mistake which the funeral home helped us correct. She did not consider how large of a location we needed. My mom’s side of the family is huge!!! It was 30-40 people if you only included her kids, grandkids, her siblings their kids and grandkids. The rest of the church were my mom’s 1st and 2nd cousins, their kids and grandkids.
I haven’t read the entire thread, but I wanted to share that it cost over $25,000 for the transportation of my nephew’s body, his funeral, and burial plot. The funeral home did NOT have a payment plan. My sister had gotten life insurance for all three of her kids in January, but due to the cause of his death, the policy wouldn’t pay anything. My dad stepped in and paid the bill.
My sister said it was like planning a wedding in two days. Unbelievable number of details. There were over 600 people at the visitation, and probably close to 1,000 at the funeral, which was held at a large church (there wasn’t a funeral home large enough for the expected crowd). The church members brought food for lunch afterwards (not that many people stayed for the food).
My main takeaway from this experience is that I need to take out life insurance policies on my kids, if possible. Due to their bleeding disorders and mental illnesses (2 of the three of them), that may not be cheap.
Wow, ML, thT is steep. With preplanning, mine is less than half that. The number of people attending the funeral shows how loved your nephew and his family are. One of those, “if only” he had known how much he was liked by others. I can’t imagine the pain to the family members.
Has anyone been to a burial of cremains? My mother would like to be cremated, but she has a burial plot next to her parents. I’m guessing there could be a funeral home viewing, a cremation, and then a graveside service. But I’ve never seen an urn being buried.
^ They bury a cement box and place the cremains urn inside it at the gravesite. I did learn that you “can’t” divide up any cremains that are to be inurned in a Catholic cemetary. (Funeral homes sell small urns as memorials into which you can add a bit of the cremains to keep and these small urns can be distributed among family members.) Just one more thing to consider.
@preironic I have been to several. At the gravesite the cemetery has opened the hole and places a ground cover around it, similar to how a casket plot is opened. They place the cremains in a container or box on the ground cover and you have your service there. After the family leaves, the cemetery puts the container into the ground and fills in the hole, similar to how the casket is usually not lowered while the family is there. (I think that process is a little too mechanical and upsetting so it is usually done after the family leaves)
When you say a viewing, are you referring to a visitation or an actual viewing of the body? If you have a viewing of the body then obviously you have to have inurnment at a late date.
My experience is the actual cremation takes place before the visitation or funeral service and then the ashes are interred immediately. Although in my MIL’s case we had a memorial service and then interred her ashes closer to her birthday in nicer weather.
I have conducted services for many burials of ashes. For some there has been an actual viewing of the body which was present at the funeral home or church and then the body was cremated afterward and buried. For others the body was cremated and buried prior to the memorial service or afterward (and sometimes the ashes are in an urn on the altar or a stand during the service).
Next week I am officiating at the burial of a woman who died two years ago in another state. Her family is coming back for a reunion and mom had wanted to be buried here. A few days after that I have a similar service.
My best story is asking a husband if he wanted me to be at the burial of his wife’s ashes (the body was at the funeral). He said he was burying them in the yard amongst the dead dogs.