Before cremations as part of the cremation services offered in Sterling Heights, MI, the mourning process for someone who has died begins. Mourning the loss of a loved one serves a purpose for the living, and the process should eventually accomplish four very important tasks.

Mourning does not have a finite time limit. Everyone mourns for whatever time it takes them to complete the process. There is no right or wrong way to mourn. Just because your mourning doesn’t look like someone else’s mourning (or theirs doesn’t look like yours) doesn’t mean either of you are doing something wrong.

The five stages of grief made famous by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross don’t always happen in a specific order and they don’t always happen the same way to each person.

Mourning is a unique process for each individual, but the tasks that need to be accomplished by mourning the death of a loved one are the same.

The first task of mourning is the acceptance of the reality of the loss when a loved one has died. This acceptance doesn’t mean that all the realities that accompany death are understood or accepted, but it does mean that those who are mourning have recognized that they’ve experienced a permanent loss in this life.

The next task of mourning is to work through the pain of grief. How people do accomplish this task and how long it takes them to accomplish it is different from person to person.

No one enjoys having to deal with emotional pain, but for some people it is so difficult that they either ignore the pain, they suppress the pain, or they numb the pain. None of these approaches to emotional pain is healthy.

Ignoring emotional pain doesn’t make it go away. Suppressing emotional pain doesn’t lessen its effect. And numbing emotional pain is not only emotionally unhealthy, but can also be physically unhealthy as well.

Eventually, the pain of grief surfaces and it has to be addressed and dealt with, because it can’t be ignored, suppressed, or numbed forever.

It’s important to recognize that working through the pain of grief takes some people much longer than it does others. So just because somebody else is working through the pain of grief more slowly than others doesn’t mean they are not working through it. Be careful not to tell somebody that they need to move on and get over it, because you really don’t know how they’re working through this task.

The third task of mourning is adapted to a new environment where a loved one is absent. This can be extremely difficult, especially for spouses of and for children who were primary caregivers for the deceased loved one.

This new environment includes a permanent void that no one and nothing can fill. It’s an environment that also has practical barriers that may include finances, property, and companionship, among other things.

Most grief experts strongly recommend that any big decisions (especially regarding finances and property), be put on hold for at least a year after a loved one has died. This isn’t a promise that everything will be fine in a year, but there will be more objective clarity in decision-making.

The last task of mourning is to find an enduring connection with the deceased loved one while beginning a new life without them. This connection may include adding rituals that honor their loved one, such as laying flowers at their grave each year on their birthday and being comfortable regularly thinking about and sharing memories of them.

For information about cremation services in Sterling Heights, MI, our caring and knowledgeable staff at Lee-Ellena Funeral Home is here to assist you.

Before cremations as part of the cremation services offered in Clinton Township, MI, advanced age or terminal illnesses are often what ends up causing a loved one to die. Our society puts a premium value on living and it suggests that we do everything in our power to avoid and delay – even though it eventually comes – death.

Dylan Thomas’ famous poem, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, is a good example of this mindset. In the poem, the narrator urges his aging father to “rage against the dying of the light.” However, this mindset can ultimately end in a life that may have quantity, but that has little or no quality. It can also lead to unnecessary pain and suffering for the person who is dying.

We seem to have an instinctive desire to continue to live. We experience this desire as wanting to eat, to do things, to learn, to grow, and to look forward to the future. We have very strong emotional attachments to other living things, including our families, friends, and pets, and we don’t want to leave them. While we aren’t able to decide to continue to live, our actions can make living automatic.

When age and terminal illnesses reach an advanced stage, our thoughts are not of ourselves, but of others. We want to be with our loved ones and we may even feel a responsibility to not fail them or cause them pain and grief by dying and leaving them.

We may have unfinished business in the form of making amends or reconciling relationships. We may fear losing control of our lives, being dependent on others, what will happen as we die, and what will happen after we die.

All of these things may bother us so much that we find them difficult to think about. It is not uncommon for feelings or resentment, guilt, sadness, and anger, when the time comes that we have to face them, to arise with both the person who is terminally ill and their caregiver(s) because nobody wants to end up this way or see anybody else end up this way.

Even as death approaches, however, usually a sense of hope remains. But what that hope looks like changes as death nears. While it once may have been hope for the illness to be cured or for a little more time, hope is now transformed into present and immediate terms: a good night, one more visit with friends or loved ones, or, perhaps, an easy death.

Eventually, in the days and weeks before death, many people don’t have a desire to live anymore. They are not suicidal nor are they depressed. Instead, they have an innate sense that it’s time to let go.

This may manifest itself as a profound tiredness that doesn’t go away with rest. Often people reach a point where they’ve hit the limit of how much effort they can put into prolonging life. While refusing to let go may prolong life a little, death is still inevitable. Prolonging death may translate into a time when more suffering than living actually happens.

Some family members and friends also reach a point where they understand that letting go is best for them and their loved one. They’ve seen their loved one fight, struggle, and suffer, and they don’t want them to experience any more of that. Other family members and friends, however, may not be able to accept that dying is the next best step for their loved one and they may refuse to believe that is what’s happening.

Letting go does not mean our loved one wants to die. Instead, it is an expression of their acceptance that death is the next step in their journey.

For information about cremation services in Clinton Township, MI, our caring and knowledgeable staff at Lee-Ellena Funeral Home is here to assist you.

Grief resources are among the cremation services offered in Macomb, MI. After a loved one dies, you and other family members will start process of grieving and healing as you adapt to the a new normal – and a different life – without your loved one.

While you and your family will make great strides toward adjusting, adapting, and moving forward after your loved one’s death, death anniversaries will, especially in the early years, be very hard to face and deal with.

You may be surprised at how strongly all the feelings and emotions that you experienced when your loved one died may reemerge when your loved one’s death anniversary comes around. These may be an unexpected onslaught that you and your family don’t know how to handle.

It’s important, however, to understand that this is normal. Your loved one’s death was a traumatic event and a devastating loss. Their absence created a void in your lives that can’t be replaced or filled, even though time will soften its blow.

But you and your family may find that there are some constructive ways to channel those overwhelming emotions and feelings that can also bring you peace and comfort.

One thing you can do is to compose a letter to your deceased loved one. This can be very comforting, because you can pour out your heart about how you feel.

Remind your loved one how much you miss them. Tell your loved one all the things that you miss about them. Remind your loved one of all the special memories you shared together. Share with your loved one the funny stories that you laughed at over and over during your relationship.

Tell your loved one how much you love them. Detail all the things about your loved one that made you love them so much.

Let your loved one know how different things are without them. Bring your loved one up to date on all the things they’ve missed since they’ve been gone. Update them on your life and your family’s lives.

Let your loved one know about the challenges and struggles you all have had and tell them about the successes and failures that have happened since they’ve been gone. You may be surprised at how therapeutic this letter-writing is and you may decide to start a daily journal that you write to your loved one.

Another constructive way to handle death anniversaries is to do something to honor your loved one. Do something that supports something your loved one was passionate about. That may be volunteering for a non-profit organization, planting a flower or vegetable garden, joining a book club, or attending the games of a local sports team.

Another constructive way to cope with death anniversaries is to host a potluck dinner of immediate family and a few close friends. Have everyone bring a food and drinks and, as you eat, share stories and memories of your loved one.

It’s important for you and your family to be kind and gentle with yourselves on the death anniversaries of your loved one. It’s likely everyone will experience these anniversaries in different ways, and it’s important to recognize that and give everyone latitude and space for their own way.

Remember, as well, to look at all that you and your family have weathered, have overcome, and have accomplished since the death of your loved one. They would have wanted that, and they would be proud of you.

For more information about grief resources and other cremation services in Macomb, MI, our caring and knowledgeable staff at Lee-Ellena Funeral Home is here to assist you.

Cremations are among the cremation services offered in Sterling Heights, MI. We have been and are surrounded by the specter of pain, death, and suffering 24 hours a day as this novel coronavirus pandemic rages on throughout the world. We heard the number of new cases, the number of total cases, the number of new deaths, and the number of total deaths.

We are besieged from all sides with disparate numbers about the total projected death toll, not only around the world, but in our own country. We are dealing with death up close and personal every day. Because so little is known about COVID-19, everything we hear is just a stab in the dark, without real science and time behind it to know whether it will play out the way our experts think it might.

Everything is unknown except people are getting sick and are dying. We may get sick and die. We may have already been infected and don’t even know it. If we go out, we have to wear face masks. If we go to pick up essentials at the grocery store or the pharmacy, we have to follow a pattern through the store, stand on marked lines at checkout, and talk to the cashier through a piece of protective plexiglass.

We don’t know if we’re next. We don’t know if a family member is next. We watch families grieving over their loved ones and we share their pain and suffering. We grieve with them.

But there are other sources of discomfort besides the pain and suffering we can’t get away from, the medical unknowns, and the worries for our own health and the health of our families.

Discomfort comes from social distancing from our loved ones. We may have parents who are older and more vulnerable to contracting COVID-19 because of underlying health issues. We can’t visit in person with them, or hug them, or hold them.

We may have parents or other family members who are in assisted living facilities or nursing facilities that have been locked down to outside visitors. Maybe we can get lucky enough to see them through a window, but, then again, we may not.

We may have family members who have contracted COVID-19 and they are critically ill. We aren’t allowed to be with them in the hospital and, if they succumb to the virus, we will not be able to be with them when they die.

As if all of this is not discomfort enough, we have other things that are causing discomfort. Our work routines have been disrupted. If we’re among the fortunate, we may be working from home for the first time in our careers, which is a major adjustment, especially in companies where team environments are valued and utilized.

However, like many other Americans, though, we may have been furloughed (even in the healthcare industry) or laid off. If we worked in the hospitality or airline industries, we don’t know whether those jobs will ever come back, and we don’t know what we’ll do to survive and take care of our families.

Even in industries where jobs will exist in the future, there may not be as many of them as technology replaces people at a seeming (people are truly any company’s most valuable resource because of their knowledge and experience) fraction of the cost.

All of this discomfort is actually grief over so many losses. And if you have had a loved one die since the beginning of 2020 or you have a love one die now or in the remainder of the year, it will be a big layer of grief added to existing layers of grief. It may seem overwhelming.

Seek professional help if it is. You are not alone.

For more information about cremation services in Sterling Heights, MI, our caring and knowledgeable staff at Lee-Ellena Funeral Home is here to assist you.

A brief tour of the history of cremation services, which are offered in Macomb, MI, will reveal some interesting facts about this form of final disposition. You may believe that when you choose to be cremated or to have your loved one cremated that you are doing something that is untraditional.

However, the practice of cremation is almost as early as the history of humans. The reason that Americans think of cremation as untraditional is because until about 50 years ago, the primary form of final disposition in this country was burial underground.

But in the earliest history of humans, cremation was more common than underground burial. The reasons are many.

First, in ancient civilizations, there was little knowledge about how to preserve bodies after death. Decay set in quickly and it was imperative to dispose of human remains quickly. Cremation made sense. The cremation remains were often buried on family land.

Generally, burial was cultural. For instance, in many of the Middle Eastern cultures, burial in tombs with a stone covering the tomb was quite common. The stone was used to prevent passersby from having to endure the stench as the body naturally deteriorated.

In Egypt, burials for elite members of society – rulers and other nobility – were done in pyramids. Ancient Egyptians developed a way to embalm the deceased to preserve the body for quite some time. When the elite were buried in their pyramids, they were surrounded by all the things – including food and drink – that the Egyptians believed they would need for their journey to the next life.

Ancient European cultures, on the other hand, preferred cremation. When soldiers, politicians, and war heroes died, their cremations were done on a funeral pyre (think of a huge bonfire) and their lives and deeds were celebrated by mourners who ate and drank and engaged in other activities around the funeral pyre for several days.

However, as the world shifted toward embracing Christianity about 300 years after the birth of Jesus Christ, almost all of those cultures moved away from cremation and back to burials. The reason was not because the Bible prohibited cremation (an erroneous narrative that permeated Christianity and was propagated throughout most of the history of Christianity), but because cremation was associated with pagan cultures. Burial was a way to distinguish between being a pagan and being a Christian.

By the time the New World was discovered, burial was the primary means of final disposition among the earliest colonists, most of whom were either Catholic or Protestant. Roman Catholicism was the religion that prohibited any cremations for the longest period of time, with relaxation coming only in the 21st century.

During Christianity, however, there were some times when cremation was widely used to dispose of the dead. Most notably, these periods were in the middle of worldwide pandemics such as bubonic plague, where transmission was rapid and death almost as rapid. In an effort to halt the spread of these virulent diseases, the dead were either cremated or buried underground at depths deep enough to ensure that the infection would not spread to the living.

It was not until the late 1800’s that scientific proof that, at that time, cremation was a more sanitary way of disposing of the dead than burying them. Still, the idea and practice of cremation was widely shunned by religions and the public.

The modern popularity of cremations is a result of practicality. Cemeteries and graveyards are running out of room for underground burials. Population mobility makes it very unlikely that most people will die where – or even close to – where they were born and lived growing up.

With the ease of transporting cremation remains and the many ways to use cremation remains, including burial in a columbarium or an urn garden, cremation has become a logical choice for many Americans.

For more information about cremation services in Macomb, MI, our caring and knowledgeable staff at Lee-Ellena Funeral Home is here to assist you.