Cremations are one of the cremation services offered in Chesterfield Township, MI after someone dies, but some people have lifestyle factors that put them at a greater risk of dying at a younger age than their peers. One of those lifestyle factors is having a career that requires you to work at night instead of during the day.

Are you aware that people aren’t biologically designed to work at night? The body has its own timeclock. Each of us operates on a similar timeclock, which is known as our circadian rhythm. Our natural circadian rhythm corresponds to light and hormones.

At about the same time that the sun rises in the lower 48 states of America, our bodies produce a hormone that wakes us up and makes us alert. Similarly, about the time the sun begins to set in the lower 48 states, our bodies produce a hormone that starts winding us down and making a sleepy by the time it is fully dark outside.

Before the Industrial Revolution, which began in the late 19th century, just about everybody worked in conjunction with the natural circadian rhythm. In a society that was centered around agriculture, people got up when the sun came out and they went to bed when the moon came out.

With the Industrial Revolution, American society move away from agriculture and toward manufacturing. Large companies replaced home-centered farms and cottage industries, and with large investments funding manufacturing operations, American business became focused on profits.

With the development of incandescent lighting, the titans of the Industrial Revolution realized that they were not limited to just working during daylight hours. This meant that companies their profits because their employees could work 24 hours a day.

It was at this point that the idea of a first, second, and third shift was developed. The first and second shifts, which were eight-hour shifts, fell within the body’s natural circadian rhythms (although, after 9 pm, an increase in accidents was more evident).

However, the third shift, also known as the graveyard shift, fell outside of the body’s normal wake/sleep pattern. Therefore, workers on this shift consistently had more accidents on the job, more serious and fatal accidents at work, and more serious and fatal accidents on their way home after their shift.

Today, more professionals, such as medical personnel and information technology specialists, also find themselves working a night shift (usually 12 hours instead of eight hours), and, like their manufacturing counterparts, are having a higher rate of accidents, serious injuries, and fatalities both on the job and in traveling home from the job.

The higher rate of accidents is directly attributable to sleep. People who work the night shift have to try to sleep during the day when the body naturally wants to be awake. Likewise, they have to stay awake at night, when the body naturally wants to go to sleep. Sleep deprivation is common, and it not only causes accidents, but it can also be damaging to health.

A recent 22-year study of almost 75,000 nurses showed dramatic health effects for nurses who worked rotating shifts (the worst kind of work schedule for the body) for long periods of time.

Nurses who worked on rotating shifts for more than five years, for example, had an 11% higher early death rate than nurses who had never worked on the shifts. Nurses with more than 15 years on rotating shifts or 38% more likely to die from heart disease than nurses who worked day only shifts.

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

Access to grief resources is among the cremation services offered in Clinton Township, MI.

However, some grieving family members may need more grief support so that they are able to process their grief and achieve a state where all-encompassing grief doesn’t overshadow everything else in their lives.

While all of us have the knowledge that, at some point in our lives, we will experience the loss of someone we love, what we can’t know is how the grief of that loss will affect us. Even if we already lost loved ones before, we will never be able to predict how we will respond to subsequent losses of loved ones.

The circumstances of death can make grief more challenging to deal with. Those circumstances can include the loss of a parent, the loss of a spouse, or the loss of a child. The death of our loved one may be sudden or violent, or it could be the result of a long illness.

On top of this, there may be other personal factors that shape and define the kind of grief we experience. These factors can include our religious beliefs, our cultures, our temperaments, our ages, and our lives’ experiences.

Because of this, it’s important to remember that there is no right or wrong way to grieve, and that the intensity and length of acute grief differs from person to person.

However, no matter how differently each of us processes grief, our grief shares some similarities.

After the initial shock and the acute, intense emotional pain that comes when a loved one dies, at some point (from a few weeks to a few years) the grief, though still always present, will eventually become more manageable.

And even though we will never not miss our loved one, we find a way to accept that this loss has happened. At that point, we can start to move forward with a much greater appreciation of the time and experiences we had with our loved one.

Getting through the grieving process is often a product of the support we receive along the way. This support can come from the grief resources provided by the funeral home, or our families, or our social network. And with these sources of support, many of us discover that, in time, we can process our loss and get through the roughest patches in the grieving process.

However, for some people, these sources of grief support may not be enough. For these people, grief is consuming and overwhelming to the point that they are debilitated by it and can barely function, much less see any kind of path forward in life.

Psychologists call this type of grief “complicated grief.” Complicated grief is an extremely protracted and all-consuming type of grief that literally stops our life in its tracks. If you believe that you are experiencing complicated grief, you should seek additional support from a professional therapist who is qualified to help you move past this intractable kind of grief.

Some of the signs of complicated grief include relentless sadness, profound and unshakeable depression, feelings of hopelessness, and suicidal thoughts. Other signs of complicated grief are withdrawal from social activities, difficulty sleeping, difficulty eating, and obsessive thinking about your loved one who has died.

When you’re experiencing such deep emotional and mental pain, you may believe that it is impossible to relief. However, by seeking professional grief support, you have access to a lifeline that can help you resolve the pain and move forward with your life.

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

Help with planning a memorial service is one of the cremation services offered in Macomb, MI.

Just as your relationship with your deceased loved one is unique and special, your memorial service for them can be unique and special as well. But even though the memorial service will be a deeply personal tribute to your loved one, you will also want to make sure that the memorial service is an event that can be fully shared by everyone who is there.

These are the main things about a memorial service that you will decide.

First, identify all family members and friends who will be actively helping you plan the memorial service. It’s important to remember, however, that this list of people may change or grow as you get into the details of planning the memorial service. You may also find that some family members and friends might want to be involved later, while some who are already involved may decide that the process is too stressful or that their grief makes it difficult for them to be involved.

If you start and continue the memorial service planning process with clear and open communication, it will take shape more smoothly and will result in a beautiful service that honors the memory of your loved one.

Be patient with yourself and with the people helping you plan the memorial service. The shock and grief of losing a loved one is difficult emotionally, and that may make you and everyone else more sensitive and reactive when things go awry (and they will, but they can be righted easily and quickly).

So, from the beginning of the memorial service planning process, commit to keeping everyone who is helping you in the loop so that you all are working with the same current information. This will keep a lot of frustration and confusion from bogging down the process.

The easiest way to communicate with everyone involved in planning a memorial service is to make a to-do list of what needs to be done. This list will include items like:

• Selecting a date and location for the memorial service
• Deciding on a format for the memorial service
• Writing the obituary
• Creating a memorial service program or memorial cards
• Collecting memorabilia to display at the memorial service
• identifying readings for the memorial service
• Selecting music for the memorial service
• Hosting a reception after the memorial service

Once you’ve identified the to-do items for the memorial service for your loved one, then you and those who are helping you plan the service can divide the tasks so that everyone is involved and everyone is able to contribute with their own unique gifts and abilities as a tribute to your loved one.

Don’t be afraid to delegate. You have people around you who want to help you make the memorial for your loved one special. Let them carry some of the weight, so that you’re not overwhelmed with both grief and all the details of planning the memorial service.

The funeral home director will be an invaluable resource as you plan the memorial service for your loved one. They will be able to help you with what options are available, and most importantly, they can facilitate and organize any vendors, location, flowers, music, and catering that you may want to have.

If you have special requests for things like military honors (for military veterans), the funeral home director will make all the arrangements for this to be a part of the memorial service for your loved one.

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

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.