17 Should I Plan My Memorial?
So this was it, Vernon figured. His earthly demise was so near that he thought of little else. Vernon knew that it was time to focus. Indeed, he really had no choice. His passing occupied all his thoughts. Strangely, though, Vernon wasn’t upset by it. He trusted that his destiny was in the heavenly realm beyond. But Vernon also wanted to make a good end of his earthly sojourn. Vernon wanted to finish strong rather than half-heartedly. And to do so, Vernon decided that he should take a leading role in planning his memorial. Fortunately, his pastor and funeral home director welcomed his suggestions and guidance.
Participation
You have no obligation to plan your own memorial service or even to express any preferences regarding its content or participants. You need not recommend or request a church, funeral home, or graveside service, nor request that a pastor, family member, or friend give your eulogy. You need not make your own plans for the interment of your remains, nor request or arrange the content of your grave’s marker. You are certainly within your rights and privileges to leave those arrangements and any other details to your personal representative and family members. Doing so may permit you greater peace of mind. On the other hand, you may find that giving some attention to your memorial, even if only a meeting with your pastor, may reassure you, while relieving distraught family members from a particular burden. You get to choose. Don’t let anyone force or deny your participation.
Funerals
The tradition is, of course, to inter the body, accompanied by some form of funeral service. We call it a memorial service because of the several purposes it serves. A memorial service honors the departed. It also comforts the departed’s family members and friends, gathering the community around them to help them grieve and assure them of the community’s respect and support. Memorial services can be elaborate or simple. A memorial service may also be traditional in form and content or peculiar to the character of the departed or the preferences of the surviving family members. Memorial services play an important role in the family’s transition from loving and caring for, and relying on, the departed to honoring the departed’s memory while caring for the departed’s dependents. Memorials help family members shift roles and responsibilities to fill the departed’s absence. Your legacy can depend in significant part on how your family handles your memorial, with or without your prior planning, provisioning, or other involvement. Participate if you wish and your family permits you to do so.
Preparation
A close family member’s passing can be hard on the surviving family members, especially a spouse and children. Even if the departed had a long illness with a predictable demise, the eventual passing may overwhelm close family members, making handling funeral plans difficult. How well or poorly your family handles your memorial plans can thus depend on your own planning and preferences, if you wish to express them. You have no need nor responsibility to plan your own funeral. Others can and should handle everything, if you don’t wish to do so whether because you are not mentally or physically up to it or it would disturb you. Still, helping your spouse, adult children, or others plan your memorial when you know they would find it difficult to do so can be an especially heartening aspect of your legacy. You won’t be there to see it. But your family members will be, and they may appreciate what you arrange. If you are up to some of the memorial plans and preparations, it may make your own memorial significantly more meaningful for your family members, friends, and community.
Assistance
Don’t hesitate, though, to enlist assistance with your memorial plans. That’s the only way they’ll get implemented, after your transcendent departure. Your spouse, adult children, or other family members may help you. Whichever family member your will designates as your personal representative is generally the best candidate with whom to share your memorial plans and wishes. On the other hand, your family members may have no experience planning a memorial or little taste under the circumstances for doing so. If that’s your situation, then enlist your pastor, especially if your pastor knows you well and expects to participate in your memorial. Your pastor may be the only person with whom you need to share your memorial wishes, so that your pastor can communicate as necessary with the funeral home director or others. Enlisting your pastor would be especially appropriate if your memorial is at your church rather than a funeral home. You may alternatively have a close friend with whom you can share your memorial preferences. If you are a veteran, your local veterans service organization may agree to include military honors in your memorial. Get the help you need to preserve and enhance your legacy in the manner you desire.
Home
An alternative for sharing your memorial preferences is to work with your chosen funeral home and its directors, especially if the memorial will be at the funeral home rather than at your church. Funeral home directors are, like your pastor, professionals intimately familiar with planning and conducting memorials. The funeral home director may guide you through options, helping you shape your memorial. That help can be right down to details like the video or slide show to run before and after the memorial, photographs and family heirlooms to display, and family members to speak or not to speak. The funeral home director may also help you arrange payment for memorial and burial costs, relieving family members from the burden of doing so. Again, you need not attend to these details. Conversely, you may find yourself more willing and capable than your spouse, adult child, or others who would, after your passing, be responsible whether they can handle it with aplomb or not. A last gift you may give and kindness you may show to your family members can be arranging and paying for your own funeral. If you desire expensive funeral plans, then give greater thought to arranging payment for them without invading assets that your spouse, adult children, or others may need for their support after your passing.
Interment
Funeral home directors are also the responsible parties with whom to share your preference, if any, for the interment of your remains. Interment of remains may be significant to a family line or in a family culture, or not at all significant. Your legacy may, in other words, depend a lot or not at all on interment arrangements. Families have the options of cremation or burial of the body. Burial options can include elaborate or simple caskets. Interment of the remains, whether cremated or intact in a casket, may be in a grave, mausoleum, or other designated vault or chamber. Interment may also be with or without a graveside ceremony. Some funerals begin with a larger memorial service at the church or funeral home and then a smaller graveside ceremony. Others plan only a graveside service or only a church or funeral home service without any formality at the graveside. The preferences of your surviving spouse or adult children may best determine whether a graveside service takes place. Funeral home directors also need to know whether the casket, open or closed, will be at the memorial service, again a matter best left to family preferences.
Grave
The location of your body’s burial may be significant to you, your family, and your legacy. Some families have grave plots, mausoleums, or vaults where they expect to inter their deceased’s remains in places of prominence, relationship, and honor. The remains of spouses may be side by side, the remains of children may be near the remains of their parents, and so on down through the generations. Respect your family’s heritage and tradition. Your legacy may depend on that respect and connection. Family traditions may preserve and enhance your legacy down through the generations. Your family members and their future generations may visit your gravesite, as may others including historians, researchers, and strangers, extending your legacy.
Markers
The headstone or other marker at the location of your body’s burial may also be significant to you, your family, and your legacy, for the same reason. The traditional grave marker bears the decedent’s name and the years, while perhaps also the dates, of birth and death. Grave markers also often bear an indication of a spousal relationship as in husband or wife and sometimes of parent relationships as in mother or father, especially when the related others’ remains are near. Your choice to include relationships may especially honor your surviving spouse or your children and grandchildren. Grave markers may also bear words or symbols expressing faith, military service, professional degrees, careers, and even hobbies or pastimes. Consider including other words and symbols if any of these things are essential or important to your legacy and your grave marker is your only or primary way of preserving and sharing them. A very few grave markers may instead or in addition express humor or eccentricity, presumably out of the peculiar character of the deceased. Plan as you wish, but recognize that your personal representative or family members will have the last say, especially about eccentric, non-traditional expressions. Don’t make it hard and embarrassing for your family members.
Memorials
Whether the location of your memorial service is at the funeral home or church, or only at the graveside, you may request specific content in the memorial if you wish. Keep in mind that the memorial service provides and cares for the loved ones you left behind, not for you. That care for the ones whom you leave behind is also the point of your legacy. When requesting memorials, consider the impact you wish your legacy to have on those whom you leave behind. A memorial is generally not the time to settle old scores or set the record straight. Instead, a memorial is about leaving a legacy of care and inspiration. You may ask family members or friends to speak at your memorial service. You may also encourage them to include or exclude content in what they say. You may also ask your pastor to speak and share with the pastor your own thoughts about what to address. You may also recommend music, verses, and other memorial content enhancing your legacy.
Celebration
Perhaps the most significant consideration surrounding your memorial preferences is the hope your memorial should reflect. Your legacy isn’t one of somber resignation. Your legacy is instead one of eternal optimism inherent in your assurance of redemption and resurrection. Your memorial should remind mourning loved ones that you are in the loving arms of your Savior. Some traditions call a memorial service a going-home celebration. If you participate in your memorial planning, keep that perspective in mind. Point your family members and others attending your memorial to their own invitation to the creator’s paradise kingdom.
Reflection
Have you had any thoughts for your memorial service? How would you like your memorial service to impact your family members and close friends? Who would be the ideal person, among your pastor, family members, and closest friends, to give your eulogy? Do you envision a church memorial or funeral home service? Would it help your spouse, adult children, or personal representative if you made arrangements to pay for your funeral service and the interment of your remains? Does your family have a gravesite where your family would expect to inter your remains? Do you wish to have a say in the location or nature of the interment of your remains, or the marker left at your gravesite? What funeral plan, specific preparation, or last act would most convince your surviving family members of your assurance of your resurrection into the Lord’s arms and paradise?
Key Points
You have no need to participate in your memorial plans but may do so.
You may enhance your legacy by recommending your funeral plans.
You may relieve burdened family members if you make arrangements.
Helping family members prepare for your funeral can enhance legacy.
Your pastor or funeral home director may assist you with funeral plans.
The funeral home can help you with service and interment options.
Family gravesites can preserve and enhance family legacies.
Gravesite markers can confirm relationships and commitments.
You may recommend speakers and content for your memorial service.
Make your memorial service a faith-filled going-home celebration.