So this was it, Thomas knew. His earthly end was very near, so near that he was conscious of little else. Thomas had to focus on his end. He had no choice. Oddly, he wasn’t upset about it. He knew his destiny lay in the heavenly realm beyond his earthly end. But Thomas also felt that he wanted to make a good end of things on earth. Indeed, Thomas wanted to finish sensitively, clearly, and appropriately, rather than half-heartedly as if in afterthought. To do so, Thomas decided that he should have a say in his memorial plan. And fortunately, his wife and adult children respected his wishes to do so.

Funerals

The American tradition, practiced differently around the world but practiced in some form everywhere, is to inter the body after its demise in some form of funeral service. We call it a funeral or memorial service because a funeral serves. A funeral serves to honor the departed and to comfort the survivors who cared most for the departed. A funeral service may be elaborate or simple. A funeral service may also be traditional in its form and content, or peculiar to the life and story of the departed or the preferences of the survivors. Funeral services play important roles in the family’s transition from loving and caring for, and relying on, the departed to honoring the departed’s memory. Funeral services help family members begin to shift roles and responsibilities to accommodate the departed’s absence. Your legacy can depend in significant part on how your family handles your funeral service, with or without your prior planning, provisioning, and direction. 

Preparation

Obviously, a close family member’s passing can be very hard on the surviving family members. Even if the departed had a long illness with a predictable demise, the actual passing may so disarm and overwhelm close family members as to make handling funeral plans very difficult. How well or poorly your family handles your funeral service can thus in turn depend in significant part on your own planning and preferences. You don’t have to worry about your own funeral. Someone else can and should handle everything, if you don’t wish to do so because doing so would be difficult or unmanageable for you. But helping your spouse, adult children, or others plan your funeral service when you know they would find it difficult to do so can be an especially heartening aspect of your legacy. In short, if you are up to some of the funeral plans and preparations, you may make your own funeral service significantly more meaningful for your surviving family members and your friends and community, and thus strengthen your legacy.

Assistance

If you’re up to and interested in contributing to your funeral plans, you can have skilled and experienced assistance doing so. Of course, your spouse, adult children, or other family members may help you. Whichever family member you designate in your will as your personal representative likely makes the best candidate with whom to share your funeral plans and wishes. On the other hand, your family members including your personal representative may have no experience planning a funeral service. They may also feel uncomfortable discussing your funeral with you. An alternative is for you to enlist your pastor, particularly if your pastor knows you well and expects to participate in your funeral service. Your pastor may be the only person with whom you need to share your funeral wishes, letting your pastor communicate as necessary with others. That would be especially true if your funeral service is at your church rather than a funeral home. You may alternatively have a long-time, close friend in whom you can confide as to your funeral preferences. If you were in the military, your local veterans service organization may help you plan a funeral service with military honors. Get the funeral-planning help you need to preserve and enhance your legacy.

Home

Another alternative for help planning your funeral service is to work closely with your chosen funeral home and its directors, especially if the funeral service will be at the funeral home rather than at a church. Those directors are, like your pastor, professionals intimately familiar with funeral services and their planning and preparation. The funeral home director may guide you through appropriate options, helping you shape the funeral service. That help can be right down to the details such as a video or slide show to run before and after the service, photographs and personal items to display, and family members to speak or not to speak. The funeral home director may also help you evaluate and arrange payment for funeral service and burial costs. Again, you need not attend to these details if uncomfortable or unable to do so. But conversely, you may find yourself more willing and capable than your wife, adult child, or others who would, after your passing, be responsible for choosing options and making payment arrangements. Remarkable as it may seem, a last gift you may give and kindness you may show to your family members may be arranging and paying for your own funeral. If you desire elaborate, meaning 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 for interment. Interment of remains may be highly 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 service or ceremony. Some funeral services 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 the 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 better 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, all recalling and celebrating 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 expressions 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. You may plan as you wish, even though your personal representative or family members may have the last say. 

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 encourage them to include or omit content in what they say. You may also ask a specific pastor to speak and may share with the pastor your own thoughts about what to address or not address. Pastors generally make good speakers at funeral services, given the eternal stakes all face. You may also recommend music, scripture verses, and other memorial service content enhancing your legacy.

Celebration

Perhaps the most significant consideration surrounding your funeral and memorial plans is the tone and hope your memorial should reflect. Your legacy isn’t one of somber resignation. Your legacy is instead one of eternal optimism including the assurance of redemption and resurrection. Your memorial service should remind your mourning loved ones that you are in the loving arms of your creator and savior. To that point, the old folks in some traditions call a memorial service a going-home celebration. If you participate in your funeral service planning, keep that perspective in mind. You should want your memorial service to point your family members and others to their own assurance or, if they don’t know it yet, the potential for their resurrection into 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 beloved family members and close friends? Who would be the ideal speaker or speakers, 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 arms and paradise of the Lord Jesus Christ?

Key Points

• You may enhance your legacy by recommending your funeral plans.

• 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.