Monthly Archives: June 2020

Death Anniversaries

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.

Preplanning a Funeral

Preplanning funerals at funeral homes in Macomb, MI is not something most people want to think or talk about or even do. Facing mortality is hard, but we’re all going to die at some point.

Planning your funeral before you die takes a lot of additional stress off your loved ones as they are already coping with the emotional stress of a loss, an absence, and a void that will never be filled again. There can be as many as 125 things that must be done between the time that someone dies and the time of their final disposition.

Your family won’t have a lot of time to make funeral arrangements, and it will be much harder for them if they don’t know what kind of funeral service wanted. They’ll have to answer a lot of questions when they meet with the funeral director after you die.

Did you want cremation or burial? Did you want a visitation and funeral service, no visitation and funeral service, or no visitation and no funeral service? Are you a military veteran? Did you want a military honors funeral with burial in a national cemetery?

If they think you may have wanted a service, would you have wanted a funeral service or a memorial service? Who would you want to oversee the service? What would you want read or said and by whom? What music would you want to have played?

These are just a few of the kinds of questions that your family must answer so they can make arrangements for your cremation or burial if you don’t preplan your funeral. This is why preplanning your funeral takes such a tremendous burden off the loved ones you leave behind.

While preplanning your funeral doesn’t necessarily mean prepaying for your funeral, it can mean that you have purchased burial insurance so that your final expenses are covered. This insurance policy will be used by the funeral home to cover funeral costs, so that your family doesn’t have to worry about financial obligations. If you have a life insurance policy, a portion of it can be used to pay your funeral costs as well.

When preplanning your funeral, sit down with your closest family members and talk about what you want in detail. Be sure to have a written copy of these detailed instructions that you keep with your important papers, whether that’s in a home safe or a bank safety deposit box.

Make sure that your spouse or the executor of your will (or even your attorney) knows where your important papers are and that they have access to them.

Decide whether you want to be cremated or buried. If you want to be cremated, decide whether you want a funeral service before cremation or a memorial service after cremation. For burials, if you’re a military veteran, you are entitled to certain VA funeral benefits, including burial in a national cemetery. Otherwise, you’ll need to pick a burial location.

If you want a funeral service, decide who should oversee it. Decide what format you want for the service. If there are certain readings you want, list them. If you want eulogies given, designate who should give them. Decide what songs you want included in the service.

If you choose burial, decide if you want a graveside service. Choose the type of gravestone or maker that you would like to have (spouses often get double gravestones and buy two cemetery plots together, so they’re buried together – the engraver will update the gravestone when the remaining spouse dies) and what you want to include on it.

For more information about preplanning funerals at funeral homes in Macomb, MI, our compassionate and experienced staff at Lee-Ellena Funeral Home can help.

When Discomfort is Grief

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.

Funeral Homes and Millennials

When dealing with Millennials at funeral homes in Sterling Heights, MI, funeral directors will undoubtedly have to be prepared to make adjustments for and adapt to them. Millennials (born between 1983 and 2000) are a generation that perplexes every other generation before and after them.

Produced by overprotective parents and an educational/social system that lavished praise on them for just existing and made sure that the road was smooth, with no failures and no bumps, every step of the way, Millennials can be challenging to deal with in just about every area of life.

Funeral homes are now dealing with that challenge. To meet that challenge, funeral home directors need to know what makes Millennials tick.

Millennials have grown up in a world surrounded by technology. Before they were teething, they were playing computer and video games. Technology is at the core of how they defined themselves.

Because of technology being a part of their lives from the beginning, Millennials are going to demand that funeral homes have the technology to handle modern funerals. This means having the ability to livestream funerals, the ability to handle social media, advanced image manipulation, and to make it all smartphone or tablet-friendly.

Funeral homes need to be prepared for Millennials to tell them how to use technology and how Millennials can do it faster, better, and more efficiently. Millennials see most things – and traditions – as being outdated and old school, and they will not be afraid to tell you that.

It may come across as offensive, but funeral homes need to wade through what is actually offensive (Millennials, in general, tend to treat anyone older than they are with disdain, and as ignorant relics who couldn’t possibly know anything) to listen for what is relevant.

There are many ways that technology can benefit funeral homes and enable them to provide even more services to bereaved families who are planning the funerals of their loved ones. Incorporating these can mean that families can share their loved ones’ services with people throughout the world and they can create a virtual experience to remember.

Some Millennials are more environmentally conscience and they will want final disposition options that embrace that. They are more likely to opt for green burials and non-fossil fuel cremations.

While traditional burials usually include embalming, caskets, and casket vaults, green burials are designed to let the body decompose naturally, reducing the environment impact on the Earth. Millennials who favor green burials may want biodegradable burial containers and burial in “green” cemeteries.

Instead of traditional cremations, which uses heat to cremate the body, Millennials may choose an alternate form of cremation like alkaline hydrolysis (also known as water cremation). Although alkaline hydrolysis is a process that has been patented since 1888, it has not emerged as a preferred choice for final disposition until the last decade or so.

With alkaline hydrolysis, the deceased’s body is decomposed using a mixture of water (95%) and sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide (5%). While the time to break down the body takes longer, the carbon footprint of the process is about 1/10 of that of regular cremation, which makes it attractive to some Millennials.

Millennials will also want more personalization with their funerals. This generation is used to be able to customize everything because their lives have been customized from the beginning. Funeral homes will need to be able to meet their customization demands – which may often change on a dime – to give them the funerals they desire.

For more information about Millennial expectations at funeral homes in Sterling Heights, MI, our compassionate and experienced staff at Lee-Ellena Funeral Home can help.

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