Services

Traditional Services

Today's funeral services have evolved through the years as a result of our instinctive wish to honor our dead. At different periods in history, in different cultures, funeral customs have developed in characteristic ways. But always, the funeral serves many purposes. It symbolizes the beliefs of the society, its hopes, its ideals1 and its religious concepts.

Funeral service in the future is about getting in touch with the attitudes and values of people. It is more and more about the celebration of long life, and about the helping of people at the end of life And, this includes arrangements for people who are dealing with the end of their own lives It is about honor, dignity, love, respect, memories, and humor It is about faith, religion, ritual, music, homily, ceremony and procession. It is about beautiful and tasteful surroundings and appropriate amenities, It is about remembrance and memoralization.

It is about putting all of the services and the products that are associated with funeral service into context. It is about preserving the best of tradition. This starts with the word service. Our goal is to be there for you and your family at the time of any loss, to assist with the needs that arise when a loved one dies. Our funeral home has prided itself on the individual attention and more importantly the ability to offer a professional service in homelike surroundings.

We offer customized or individualized services, which begin with convenience, convenience of location, arrangements, scheduling, and convenience of the funeral itself. We recognize the need for formal services and informal services, elegant services, and simple services, solemn services and casual services, long services and short services, open-casket services and closed-casket services and, more and more, individualized services.

Being a full service funeral home we offer all service types. With more and more inquiries about cremation services, its section was designed to help families determine what type of service fills their needs.

Cremation Services

If cremation has been chosen and quite possibly there will be those in the family who have never been involved in this kind of disposition of the body, it becomes even more imperative that we proceed with care and caution. The answer to this is to make general plans, have a family meeting so everyone has a voice in the plans and understands what is to happen, and then make it clear that it will be all right if changes have to be made.

Cremation is the method of choice for a growing number of families in the United States, It can be a meaningful form of caring for the body of a loved one. Cremation should be looked upon as simply an alternative to burial. This guide is not designed to talk you out of cremation, or sell you anything, or "upgrade" any choices you make. Our hope is that it will simply share the options with you with simplicity and clarity so you can make choices that will be good for your family.

Planning is an act of love. Some folks have tried to paint the funeral as plastic, costly, meaningless and even pagan. They seem to think the sophisticated thing to do is deny death and ignore the inner need to express love toward a loved one who has died.

Viewing gives reality and closure. If at all possible, we think it is important for the family to view the body of the loved one. This may seem like a terrible ordeal to put a grieving person through, but it is hard to find reality without this experience, but in most cases it has a healing and comforting effect on us.

Gatherings provide a chance to talk. Visitation times at the funeral home or friends dropping by the home give us the chance to begin telling the stories about our loved one. The stories we tell will one day become the great memories that stay in our hearts forever.

The funeral gives us permission to grieve. Grief is not an enemy. It is nature's way of healing a broken heart. We are doing the best job of handling grief when we are grieving. The more we express our grief the sooner we work through this process that leads to health. Nothing that we know of gives us a better chance and more freedom of expression than the funeral experience.

Utilizing cremation does not put any limits whatsoever on what can be done at the funeral. Examples would be:

Full traditional or contemporary service before cremation with the body present at the service. This is certainly possible and can be done without adding a great deal to the cost, Your funeral director has ideas and plans to make this type service affordable and practical.

Full service before cremation with body not present. This type of service usually features a large photo of the deceased. Even though the cremation has not taken place, the body is not present at the service.

Memorial service after cremation has taken place. Usually these services are held several days after the death.

Any combination of the above. The choices are unlimited. Every family should feel free to choose exactly what they want.

Cremation is a process for preparing the body for its final disposition. Through cremation the body is reduced to small skeletal fragments by intense heat and evaporation.

For more information on cremation, ask us for a copy of The Cremation Process: Step By Step.