Cremations are one of the cremation services offered in Washington Township, MI. Some of these cremations will be for people who were very much loved by many, but who took their own lives.

Family members and friends have lost a loved one to suicide frequently wrestle with intense guilt, grief, and regret that they could not prevent the death their loved one. They also struggle with feelings of shame over how their loved one died, and this can leave them isolated in coping with their bereavement.

Over 100 Americans commit suicide every day. Suicide is ranked as the 10th most common cause of all the deaths that happen in the United States. Suicide is the third most common cause of death among young people (ages 15-24). For people aged 25-44, suicide is the fourth most common cause of death.

Some people who commit suicide have a long history of fighting with chronic and severe depression or other mental illnesses. Other people who commit suicide finally succeed after numerous previous threats or attempts to commit suicide.

Every suicide is followed too many questions and too few answers for the families and friends of those who have committed suicide.

However, some people who commit suicide do so without a history of deep depressions, mental illnesses, suicide threats, and suicide attempts. Those, perhaps, are the suicides that are most perplexing for their family members and friends.

When loved ones commit suicide with no warning, their family members and friends often have almost identical stories about the previous days, weeks, and months of their time with their loved one. Their loved ones who have committed suicide seemed relaxed, normal, and even optimistic or happy prior to their deaths.

However, it is really not uncommon for people who commit suicide to give any overt signs that they are thinking about committing suicide or they are planning how to commit suicide. It seems almost unfathomable that someone could keep such a life-altering decision hidden underneath a façade of being fine and being upbeat about life.

Although there are no hard and fast answers about how this could be, there are some common characteristics that come into play with all suicides.

One of these characteristics is the stigma that is attached to suicide. If a loved one let anyone know that they were thinking about or planning to kill themselves, they would automatically be seen as crazy or selfish.

Another reason why a loved one would talk about committing suicide is that they realize how painful (although that pain is diminished compared to their own pain) their death will be to those they leave behind. By simply being quiet about what they are thinking and planning, many people who commit suicide believe they are decreasing the amount of pain for their friends and loved ones.

Another reason why people may hide their plans to commit suicide is because they believe they will be stopped if others find out. People who commit suicide are suffering from intense emotional pain, and they may not be able to bear the thought of having to live any longer.

Although every suicide and the reasons behind it is unique, there are some common situations that may increase the risk of suicide.

These can include a significant life loss, a serious life crisis, a loss of social support, a chronic or terminal illness, or the suicides of family members and friends.

If you’ve lost a loved one to suicide, please consider grief counseling for you and your family. While you may never know all the whys about your loved one’s suicide, grief counseling can help you work through your own feelings about it.

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

Before cremation services offered in Shelby Charter Township, MI, you may be wondering if it is time to get hospice care on board for your loved one who has a terminal illness. Although many people think of hospice care as being something you do just before your loved one dies, the fact is that hospice care for the duration of your loved one’s terminal illness will give them a better quality of life and a dignified, pain-free death when the end comes.

Criteria for hospice care is that your loved one must have six or less months to live because of their terminal illness. When your loved one enters hospice care, all curative treatment for their terminal illness will be stopped, either because it isn’t effective (i.e., it won’t change the outcome) or because your loved one no longer wants to receive treatment.

Hospice care will manage the symptoms of your loved one’s terminal illness, ensuring that pain is well managed and that their quality of life is the best that it can be. This is commonly known as comfort care, and it is provided for your loved one instead of aggressive interventions to try to treat their terminal illness.

Since terminal illnesses don’t always progress according to predictive outcomes, your loved one may live longer than six months after entering hospice care. Hospice care can be continued with a simple recertification by their physician that states that they are eligible to receive hospice.

Your loved one’s hospice care is covered by most private health insurance plans, Medicare, and Medicaid. However, most non-profit hospice care agencies will provide hospice services to your loved one, regardless of whether they have insurance, or they are able to pay for their services.

If you want to begin hospice care for your terminally ill loved one, you can simply call a local hospice care agency. Once you contact the hospice care agency, they often begin providing care within a few days.

Hospice care agencies strive to make your loved one’s transition from life to death as easy and as comfortable as it can be. The hospice care agency will create a care plan for your loved one that addresses emotional and physical pain. If your loved one wishes, the hospice care agency can also address their spiritual needs in their care plan.

Hospice care for your loved one can be provided in their or your home, which is usually the preference of most hospice patients because they are in familiar and comfortable surroundings with their family nearby.

A hospice care team will be assigned to your loved one, but they are there to meet both your loved one’s needs and you and your family’s needs as you care for your terminally ill loved one. The team can include a supervising hospice physician, nurses, a pharmacist, a grief counselor, a social worker, home health aides, a chaplain, and volunteers who can provide short periods of respite for you and your family.

Pain management is a key part of hospice care. As your loved one’s terminal illness progresses, pain will increase. Hospice care team members will make sure that your loved one suffers as little as possible and is as comfortable as possible.

Quality of life enhancement is another key part of hospice care. If your loved one is having trouble breathing, for example, oxygen therapy will be provided. Any other medical equipment and medical supplies, such as hospital beds, pressure pads (to prevent bed sores), and gloves are also provided by hospice.

Hospice care will ensure that your loved one gets the best care possible and that their transition from life to death is the easiest that it can be.

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

After cremation services in Chesterfield Township, MI, families of the deceased have to take care of all of the affairs of their loved ones. Among these are dealing with financial matters, and that will very likely include debts the deceased owed to creditors.

If you die and you have life insurance or valuable assets, then your family will be in a good financial position and will be able to take care of all your affairs. However, it’s important to know that any debt that you have accrued will not die with you.

If you die with a substantial amount of debt, then paying those off could erase all the financial security that you intended to leave so that your family could be taken care of.

If you do not have life insurance or any valuable assets that can be sold, then your family members may have to take on the responsibility of paying off all of your debts. This will be a tremendous financial burden for them and could easily make endanger them financially, both now and in the future.

Approximately three-quarters of American adults have outstanding debts that must be paid after they die. The average amount of debt that includes a home mortgage is $61,554. The average amount of debt without a home mortgage debt averages is around $12,875.

The question arises as to whether your loved ones will inherit your debt when you die. In most cases, your individual family members do not have the responsibility for paying off your debts. However, your estate, which includes life insurance, physical property, and financial assets, is responsible paying off all the debt that you owe.

If some of your debt is secured, such as debt from a car loan or a mortgage, then the car or home can be sold and the money from the sale can be used used to settle the loans. If the property is not sold to pay off the loans, then the financial lenders can repossess or foreclose on it to recoup some of their money.

In the case where a family wants to keep the family home that everybody grew up in, the person in the family who gets the house will have to finance a new loan in their name, making them liable for the debt that they are incurring.

If your debt is unsecured (as with credit cards or unsecured personal loans), then your estate has the responsibility to pay unsecured debt off with any money that it has before your beneficiaries receive their inheritances.

However, if your estate does not have enough money to pay off all your unsecured debt, then your estate will be declared insolvent. Your executor will have to go through the legal system – probate – to get a determination made as to which debts should be paid.

Debts that are not secured or unsecured debts are your sole responsibility, so they will be discharged when you die. This means they do not have to be paid.

If you leave debt with a cosigner who is still living, then your debt will be the cosigner’s responsibility to pay. On some cosigned loan agreements, lenders require that the debt be paid in full immediately after you die.

This can put your cosigners in a financial bind, especially if they are not beneficiaries of your estate and they don’t have the money needed to pay the debt in full.

For joint loans, like that of a married couple who have a home mortgage together, the borrower who survives becomes responsible for the remaining amount of debt.

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

Cremations are one of the cremation services offered in Washington Township, MI. While cremation is a very popular funeral option, many people don’t really know what happens during the cremation process.

Here is a brief overview of what steps take place during the cremation process.

With cremations becoming a very popular choice among Americans as a final disposition instead of the traditional underground burial, it’s important first to understand why. There are a few reasons.

Many funeral directors have noted a rise in the number of cremations since the Great Recession of 2008, while they have seen the number of underground burials go down, so there is likely an economic component to why cremations are more popular than ever.

In addition, cremations are considered to be more environmentally friendly than underground burials, so many people are choosing cremation as a way to help protect the environment. A third reason is that there are a myriad of things that families can do with their loved one’s cremated remains, and people like the increased flexibility cremation offers.

The practice of cremation has a history almost as long as that of humans themselves. In the ancient Greek and Roman cultures, cremations were grand celebratory fetes that honored brave, famous, or heroic people.

Additionally, militaries that were fighting in far away from home cremated their dead, and then took the cremation remains back home to be buried in elaborate ceremonies.

The majority of people who died were cremated, until Constantine adopted Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. Constantine felt strongly that he needed to draw clear distinctions between Christianity and pagan religions.

Because many pagan religions incorporated burning people alive as part of their worship to their gods, Constantine essentially banned cremations and replaced them with underground burials.

Underground burials remained as the traditional final disposition method in the Western world until religions began removing their prohibitions of cremations, enabling Christians to make their own choice as to whether they wanted to be cremated or buried.

There are some interesting things about cremations that you may not be aware of.

Cremation containers don’t contain ashes. The remains of cremations – what is left after the cremation process – are bones. The bones are pulverized to the consistency of sand, giving them the appearance of being ashes, and they are returned to the deceased’s family.

Bodies are cremated one by one. Cremation units, which perform the cremation process, can hold just one casket or cremation container at a time.

Crematories have the responsibility to make sure the family gets the correct cremation remains. All crematories follow the same procedure to ensure that this happens.

Each body to be cremated is tagged with a flame-retardant tag as soon as it arrives at the crematory. The family identifies the body either with a current photo or in person. The tag remains with the body throughout the cremation process and is attached to the container with the cremation remains that is given to the family.

Cremations generally take between two and three hours because of the intense heat sources applied that allows a body to burn that quickly.

You can have funeral services for someone who is being cremated. Funeral homes routinely arrange funeral services for people who are being cremated. The funeral service can be held with or without the body of the deceased present.

Cremation remains can be buried in cemeteries. Approximately 10% of cremation remains are buried underground in cemeteries. Many cemeteries are now created landscaped urn gardens for the burial of cremation remains.

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

You have made the decision that you want cremation services in Shelby Charter Township, MI as part of your funeral preplanning (good for you!). But you may not really know a lot about what is involved in cremation or what happens during the cremation process.

You are not alone. There are some questions that almost every person who choses cremation as their final disposition, or as the final disposition of their loved one, has when they are educating themselves about cremations.

One of the most frequently asked questions about cremations is whether the deceased is dressed or not when they are cremated. The answer is yes.

Just as the funeral home works diligently to show honor to and preserve the dignity of every loved one their family has entrusted to them, the deceased person is fully clothed (just as they are in a casket and burial funeral) when they are cremated.

The only restriction on the clothing the deceased will be cremated in is that it contains no metal because metal can cause significant damage to the crematorium. So, don’t include jeans, for example, with metal buttons or belts when you are providing clothing for someone who is being cremated.

Another frequently ask question about cremations is about how the funeral home and crematory keep track of the deceased during the cremation process so that the right cremation remains are returned to the deceased’s family.

A couple of procedures are in place to correctly identify the body before cremation and after cremation. One of these is that the family must verify the identity of the deceased either visually or with a photo prior to cremation.

A second procedure is that the crematory places a non-combustible tag on the deceased before they are placed in the crematorium. That tag stays with the deceased all the way through the cremation process, ensuring that the right cremation remains are returned to their family.

People often wonder how much time it takes to do a cremation. Cremation is a fairly quick process that usually takes two to three hours. However, by law, cremation cannot be done until at least 24-48 hours after death. This gives the funeral home time to get all cremation paperwork (permits, etc.) in order before the cremation.

Another frequently asked question about cremations is whether a casket is required. The answer is no. If you don’t want a casket, the deceased will placed in a very sturdy fully-combustible container (usually made out of cardboard) prior to cremation.

Some people want to bury the cremation remains of their loved one and wonder if this is an option. It is. When you meet with the funeral director to make funeral arrangements, you will need to let them know that you want the cremation remains to be buried (let them know which cemetery so they can make arrangements with the cemetery for burial).

The funeral home has urns that are specifically designed for burial, and they have a wide selection to choose from. Almost all cemeteries require vaults for burials, whether the burial is in a casket or an urn, so you will also need to purchase an urn vault.

Another frequently asked question about cremations is whether a funeral service can be held instead of a memorial service. Many people like the traditional format of funeral services and its familiarity can give great solace and comfort to a grieving family.

You can hold a traditional funeral service for someone who is being cremated. It can be held before the cremation or after the cremation.

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

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.