Additional Resources Mentioned

End of Life Service Worksheet here

 

Takeaways

Tip 1: Choose a Funeral Home

Select a funeral home that will meet your needs. This choice may be based on location, previous experience with them, or their reputation. 

Tip 2: Decide on Burial or Cremation

This fundamental decision shapes many subsequent choices. 

If choosing burial, consider:

• Cemetery location
• If the person is married, reserving an adjoining space for the spouse
• Whether traditional burial or green burial options are preferred.

For cremation, consider:

• Whether the cremation will happen before or after the service.
• What will be done with the cremated remains afterward.

In both cases, you’ll need to decide what clothing the person will wear. Greg advises bringing a complete set of clothing, including undergarments and outerwear. Shoes are optional and often difficult to put on, but can be included if they’re meaningful.

Tip 3: Decide on the Type of Service

Funeral services have evolved beyond the traditional. 

Traditional Service (for either burial or cremation):

• The body is present in a casket
• Open casket for viewing during visitation
• For cremation, a wooden casket must be used.

Memorial Service:

• The body is cremated before the visitation and service
• The urn is the focal point during visitation and the service.

Green Burial:

• The body cannot be embalmed
• Only biodegradable containers are permitted
• Even floral contributions must be free of wires or picks.

Direct Cremation or Direct Burial:

• No visitation or service
• Greg cautions that this “no farewell” approach may not help with processing grief.

Tip 4: Choose a Location

The location for the service could be:

• A funeral home
• A place of worship
• A location meaningful to the deceased

Tip 5: Prepare the Obituary

Rather than writing the complete obituary under time pressure, prepare by:

• Compiling all necessary information ahead of time
• Creating a comprehensive list of family members to include
• Selecting a photo or photos to accompany the obituary.

Tip 6: Create a Notification Tree

Decide ahead of time:

• Who needs to be notified of the death
• Who will notify whom
• Create a “notification tree” so you’re not responsible for contacting everyone.

Tip 7: Plan the Service

Consider these elements and include your care receiver as much as possible:

• Officiant: Choose the clergy or person who will lead the service
• Eulogies: Decide who will deliver them and provide guidance
• Music: Select meaningful songs or hymns
• Readings: Choose scripture, poetry, or other readings
• Personal touches: Include memorabilia, photos, or items that represent the person’s life.

Consider alternatives to traditional floral arrangements:

• Family quilts
• Meaningful objects (like golf clubs for an avid golfer)
• Photos.

Tip 8: Plan the Gatherings

Consider various types of gatherings:

• Private family dinner before the service
• Reception after the service for all attendees
• Informal gathering at home with close family and friends.

 

Read More in This Blog here

 

Full Episode Transcript

 

Sue Ryan 

Okay, when you’re in the middle of grieving, the last thing you need to be doing is planning a service. In this episode, Nancy and I are talking with Greg Cannon, who has more than 45 years experience in the funeral profession, including that as a funeral director. In addition, Greg speaks and trains on planning ahead for your loved one’s service. In this episode, we’re sharing eight tips.

 

Nancy Treaster

Everyone, let’s get started. 

 

Sue Ryan

Welcome, Greg. We are so blessed to have you here with us today. We appreciate you so much that you’re sharing your years of experience in all areas of the funeral profession. Most of what we’re going to be talking about today can be done ahead of time. If you wait until death occurs, you’re upset, you’re grieving, you’re in a time crunch. We don’t want you to miss the opportunity to personalize the experience, honoring your loved ones,

 

Yours and your family’s wishes.

 

Greg Cannon

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to share with you something that I’m extremely passionate about. The difference between a service being pre-planned and happening at the at-need time is as different as night and day. When it’s pre-planned, then you have two decisions to make when the death occurs. What day and what time for the service.

 

Preplanning allows you the opportunity to have conversation with your family, maybe even with friends, about your particular wishes, and learn what’s important to your family to help them process their grief. It allows you to notify participants, people that you may want to be a part of the service, especially the clergy or someone that’s going to do the eulogy.

 

Or maybe you’re going to have some grandchildren that do readings of scriptures. There’s so many things that you can identify ahead of time that may not be given consideration at the time. It allows you to also plan for the financial benefit of pre-planning. You may need to check on life insurance policies. You may also learn through the process that it secures the at-need cost for whenever the death occurs. Also, creativity. There’s so many things that happen today at funeral services. It’s no longer a traditional funeral service. I’ve experienced things with families that the person that died was an avid football fan, a fan of the Georgia Bulldogs. And as part of that visitation time with extended family and friends, they had a tailgate party.

 

Greg Cannon 

in the parking lot of the funeral home with a 20-foot inflated bulldog. Also the farmer that we handled the service for. The cemetery was not far from where he lived. We held the service beside the lake on his property. We placed his casket on a flatbed trailer and his tractor was driven by his son to take him to the cemetery.

 

Greg Cannon

Those are things that when you plan ahead, you make sure that those particulars happen.

 

Nancy Treaster

That’s lovely. You know, I planned ahead, I thought. My father passed away in January of last year, and I used that experience. My sister and I did a lot of the planning for his service, and I used that experience to create an outline and a plan for my husband. And I felt pretty good about it. And then when my father-in-law passed away in October, I thought,

 

I have really got to get my act together. And so I created a much more detailed plan out of that outline for my husband’s service. And then my husband passed away pretty surprisingly. I wasn’t really ready for it. And I can’t tell you how much having everything already planned, how much of a difference that made to me because it hit me much harder than I expected. And…

 

As Sue said, I was in the middle of grieving. And the last thing I wanted to do was think through all of these details. And I know I could not have been extremely creative like some of your examples, Greg, if I had to do everything at the last minute.

 

Greg Cannon

You know, Nancy, you made a comment that I’m quite familiar with when you said that you weren’t ready for it. I hear that often, but I would also say that even when we know death is imminent, for example, personally, my mother was an Alzheimer’s patient for five years. And I’m the strong funeral director all these years of doing this.

 

But I’m so thankful that we had planned her service ahead because I’d never experienced the death of my mother before. And no matter how seasoned I was as a funeral professional, I would not have wanted to be planning that service at that point. But I would also say to you, make sure that you do what you said in great detail.

 

Greg Cannon

And I encourage people to go to the funeral home because they can provide you with documents that will assist you in making decisions. 

 

Nancy Treaster 

Those are such great tips. And honestly, that’s kind of where we’re gonna start, which is tip one is, you know, pick your funeral home. Because as you said, they can help give you a bunch of information ahead of time

 

Greg Cannon 

Absolutely. I think that’s very important that you know and that that selection may be based on location. It may be based on a previous service with them. It certainly can be based on their reputation. But I think that it’s important that you select a place that takes care of your needs.

 

That takes us right into tip two, which means we need to decide, are we going to have a burial type service or a cremation service? It also is a conversation that all too often is not had. Too many times when we sit with families, the question always comes up from the family, well, mom never said what she wanted. But when it is pre-planned, you have no doubt that you’re doing exactly what that individual wants to be done. You need to make sure that you are honoring their wishes, but also have consideration for you as a family about what’s healthy for you to process your grief.

 

Yes, so when we’re talking about whether it’s burial or cremation, we need to make sure that we provide clothing for the funeral home or the crematory to dress that person. Sometimes you may find this amusing, but sometimes they want their old army uniform or they want the wedding dress without consideration of the fact that we’ve maybe gained a little bit of weight.

 

So we need to make sure that whatever garments are selected will fit. And on the little humorous part, there are often times when I handle a service for a man that the family seems to think that they only need to bring the upper clothing. They’ll bring a suit, coat, and a shirt, and a tie, but no pants. Well, we got to have pants too. So typically, the funeral home likes to have a full set of undergarments and then a full set of outerwear that would be viewed.

 

One of the other common questions is what about shoes? Shoes are not necessary. As a matter of fact, they’re difficult to put on a deceased body. So if it’s important, if mom always wore those six inch heels and we want to put her in those for walking the streets of gold, then bring them and we’ll put them on her. But it is important that we go through that entire process as though we were at that point.

 

Nancy Treaster 

And then we need a cemetery plot or something. I know that’s even an option, whether it’s cremation or burial.

 

Greg Cannon 

True, that’s true. You’re exactly right. Sometimes what I’ve learned most often is that when a family comes to make the funeral arrangements, most often they’ve already selected a burial site. But if they have not, then yes, consideration has to be given to that as well. And when they’re deciding that, especially if the person that is dying is married, then you want to consider the adjoining space for the spouse.

 

Sue Ryan 

Yeah. One of the things that happened with my husband is that it was the first time I had had a more non-traditional kind of service and planning. We’d been very traditional with my dad and other family members. And yet with my husband, a man of deep faith, it was his wish to have what they called a green burial, which is that the body is not embalmed and you are.

 

buried in a shroud and he was buried in a shroud in the ground at a monastery. And it was just such a beautiful experience. And yet there were a lot of pre-planning pieces for that to be the experience because the monastery was in Georgia and we were living in Florida at the time. So when we think about this, the planning ahead by having known all of the choices, what was important to him and why and honoring that and then to your point, Greg, about including the other family member or family members with that. All of those things were put in place. And so when he passed all of them I had to make one phone call and everything else was all lined up, including getting into the cemetery at the time of the service. So it really made it a lot easier for me to focus on the other family members and to be fully present in the moment of the experience. So one of the things that this leads to, because our service was also non-traditional, is Greg, we decide on the type of service we want. What are some things that you’ve got on that? tip, tip three, yeah, yeah, I just, I didn’t say that. So Greg, let’s lead into tip, leading into tip three, Greg, is.

 

Greg Cannon 

So even though funerals are not necessarily traditional anymore, the common verbiage in the funeral profession is a traditional type service. And that can be relative to either burial or cremation. And what that simply means is that the body will be present in a casket. If it’s a traditional burial, then of course that casket will be buried at the cemetery.

 

Greg Cannon 

If it’s a traditional cremation, the casket that contains the body will then be used for the cremation process. So with that being said, just be aware that that would have to be a wooden casket if the body is going to be cremated. Traditional indicates that the body itself would be present and an open casket for viewing during that visitation time with family and friends.

 

There’s also what we call a memorial service, which means that the body is cremated before the visitation time and of course before the service. But in place of where a casketed body would be, the urn would be placed there. And that would be the focal point during the visitation time and of course during the service as well. Sometimes,

 

As you’ve already mentioned, Sue, there are other options. For example, a green burial. And with a green burial, there are a lot of things that we have to understand. That is that the body cannot be embalmed. That is that the body cannot be placed in any type of container that is not biodegradable. Even to the point that if the family provides floral contributions. Typically those flowers have wires on them or picks on them. None of that can be present for a green burial because the concept is for it to be as green as possible, if you will. There are other options that some people may choose and I want to share that, but I also want to caution.

 

Greg Cannon

That is what we call a direct cremation or a direct burial, which means that there is no visitation. There is no type of service involved. It’s what I commonly call a no farewell. We’re not taking the opportunity to have our goodbyes or to develop a network of support. It does happen.

 

But I’m not really certain that that’s the best thing to do to help us process our grief. Those services are definitely available though through funeral homes and crematories.

 

Nancy Treaster

You know, we had, as I mentioned before, we had three deaths in our family last year, my husband, my father, my father-in-law and my husband, and we had three completely different kinds of services. But I wanna support your point. So my father had a burial in a cemetery with military honors, and then we had a service at the funeral home and a reception at the funeral home. For my father-in-law, they,

 

that he said he didn’t want to serve us at all. So we had him cremated and he wanted to be cremated. But to your point, I felt like that just really wasn’t honoring him. So, but we did not have a formal service at a funeral home or at our church. We actually just had a family gathering in my backyard. And because I had just had such a positive experience with the military honors, both my father and my father-in-law were in the Navy.

 

I invited the military honors people to come and do a military honors presentation in my backyard. And it was so memorable and impactful and it surprised everybody. But having that farewell, I do believe was important to everyone. So I’m glad we did it, is what I’m telling you. And then my husband was cremated, buried in his ashes, put in the memorial garden at our church and we had a regular church service at the church. everything, all three were very different last year.

 

Sue Ryan 

Tip five is about preparing the obituary. We’re gonna prepare the obituary, we’re gonna choose the picture or pictures that are going to go with it and compile the information ahead of time. Be gathering it so that you’ve got access to it, putting things so that you can just pull from them at the time. And part of this, and I can speak to this as well, is that if you haven’t done that,

 

And all of a sudden you have to come up with an obituary. You’re doing it and there’s a time crunch. And I, unfortunately, the first time I did an obituary, which was for my mother who died quite unexpectedly, I forgot some very important family members. And to this day, I feel bad about that because they were a very important part of our family. And yet, since there was the time crunch and there was the grief and everything else we’ve talked about.

 

I left out important family members. Don’t do that. Write the names down ahead of time, plan ahead of time. And Greg, you had some really good, go ahead.

 

Nancy Treaster 

And I think, I was just gonna say, and Greg, I think you had some suggestions, for example, that you don’t actually have to write the obituary, but it’s good to prepare the obituary.

 

Greg Cannon 

That’s correct. If you will simply write down the content that you want to go in the obituary notice, then the funeral home, the funeral director will actually help you construct it so that it flows well. But again, in reference to obituary notices, more and more today, people look for those notices via social media, not necessarily in the newspaper.

 

And newspapers today, for a lot of reasons, are losing their readership. And so they’re trying to sustain themselves. And guess what happens? The charge for an obituary keeps increasing and increasing. So you can do what’s called a death notice in an obituary column in a newspaper, which would simply have the name of the person that has died. And when they died, and then it can reference you to the funeral home website where the obituary would be placed. Funerals are expensive, and I’ll be the first to tell you that. And so when we are giving consideration to the cost, that’s one way that you can have some control over that. So I would encourage you to let someone help you on a regular basis by writing obituary notices and they will help you count the family members so hopefully you don’t leave anybody out too. So it’s a good idea to allow someone to help you with that.

 

Sue Ryan 

And I didn’t know about having someone who could help write it. I’m trying to figure out who was related to who and how they were related, you have blended families and all of these things. So please that tip on having the funeral director help write it, it’s excellent.

 

Nancy Treaster 

Also along the same lines as tip six, which is, you know, you’re in the middle of doing everything. You’re trying to keep your head together. There’s a lot to deal with your own emotions, other people’s families’ emotions and so on. Tip six is ahead of time, write down who needs to be notified and then create a tree who needs to be notified and who’s going to notify whom so that it’s not falling on your shoulders to notify more than a handful of people that start the tree. Basically, you get it started and then they all pre know who they’re supposed to notify afterwards. So that’s tip six and I highly recommend that once again, figure that out with my dad and then leverage it with my father-in-law and with my husband. All right.

 

Sue Ryan 

And then that takes us over into, and then that takes us over into tip seven, Greg, which is planning the service. And Nancy, you’ve worked with a, and Nancy, you’ve created a worksheet for that.

 

Nancy Treaster 

I did, so we’ll put the worksheet in the show notes, but it’s a good place to have really everything we’re gonna talk about quickly here, and then you can just document your decisions in the worksheet. So we’ll include that in the show notes.

 

Greg Cannon

Yes, and while doing all of that planning, be specific about things that are important. Maybe it’s not the current clergy at the church where you’re attending. Maybe it was the previous pastor that your loved one had a better relationship with. So make sure that it’s the person that they would want to be a part of that.

 

Eulogies. Eulogies are shared not only by clergy, but by friends or family members. The one thing I would caution you about is friends or family members that are not accustomed to publicly speaking, one of the best things that they can do is write down what they would want to say. If they don’t, they will find themselves rambling.

 

But more importantly, they may become emotional. And if the content is written, then the clergy can take control and finish delivering the information. So I think that’s really important.

 

Nancy Treaster 

But one thing I tell people who are doing eulogies is you have seven minutes. I want you to write it, I want you to practice it and run through it, and I want you to figure out how long it took. You have seven minutes. Because people get up there and ramble and it’s 20 minutes later and your 45 minute service just turned into an hour and a half. you know, anyway. That’s my rule of thumb, seven minutes.

 

Greg Cannon 

Some people don’t want flowers at their funeral. They think it’s a waste of money. I’ve put my grandmother’s quilt on her casket. I’ve put a golf club laying on the casket. Sometimes you can just put a picture. So all of those things need to be determined. A lot of funeral homes today produce what they call a video tribute. So you need to prepare for that by having pictures selected.

 

Sometimes people are concerned about children being involved in funerals. I think if they’re old enough to know right from wrong, they’re old enough to try and understand what death is. And one of the best ways to let them be a part of it is let them choose their favorite picture of them with that person and include that in that tribute. Add as many personal touches as you possibly can because this whole event is about the person that has died. And so often today, I’ve witnessed funerals where it’s almost like we forgot to invite the main person.

 

We don’t want to do that.

 

Sue Ryan 

Let that, when you talk about that, one of the other things that you had mentioned, Greg, is little keepsakes or memory cards or something that people can take away from it.

 

Greg Cannon

Yeah, when my, the people that knew my mom knew that she was a great cook. And as part of my mom’s visitation time and service, laying adjacent to where the guest book that people would sign was a stack of printed recipes that my mom was most famous for. And so we had to keep printing copies because everybody wanted one. anything as a takeaway, I had a family that the man that died was an avid golfer. And so as a funeral professional, I always try to do things that families aren’t expecting. And so I ordered golf tees with his name on

 

Greg Cannon

And everybody, when they left the service, they had one of those to take with them. So those things play an important role.

 

Sue Ryan

They play an important role. And as you’re saying, leaving the service, that leads us to our eighth and final tip, which is that there’s so often a gathering following the service.

 

Nancy Treaster 

Yes, and so when we think about gatherings, some of the gatherings are before the service, some gatherings might be after the service, some gatherings might be to anybody who chooses to attend, some might be private gatherings. So think through all the different types of gatherings you may want to have. If you have out of town family coming in, you may want to have dinner with the family at a restaurant the night before. If you have a late midday service, you may want to have the family together for lunch before the midday service. And those would be private gatherings. Most people, if they have a service, a public service where anybody can come, they’ll have some sort of a reception after the service so people can greet the family, the immediate family at least, and basically let them know they were there. People who come to a service want to have a chance to say, give their condolences and let people know they were there. So some sort of a small reception after the service is pretty common. And then often what people do after this exhausting activity has occurred and just emotionally exhausted, they’ll go back to their home and they’ll have a gathering of family or close friends back at their home just to sit down and casually, you know eat and relax and try to just take their shoes off and try to just absorb everything that’s happened that day and have the closest people you can have around you when it’s happening.

 

Sue Ryan

There are a variety of different ways that we do it as you could see it. So Greg, thank you so very, very much for all that you have brought to our listeners today. This has been incredible and the breadth and depth of information you have is so valuable for all of us. So thank you very much. And do you have any final comments before we wrap up?

 

Greg Cannon 

One thing that we’ve not mentioned that I think is important, please understand that you don’t necessarily have to go to the funeral home. Sometimes somebody may be bedridden or whatever the case, the funeral home will come to your home and assist you in making these arrangements. And I will share one last point with you that happened in my life many, many years ago.

 

Nancy Treaster 

So let’s summarize. In this episode, we talked with Greg Cannon about all the things you can do ahead of time so that you’re not left in the middle of grieving to plan a service. We shared eight tips. Tip one, choose a funeral home. Tip two, decide on burial or cremation.

 

Tip three, decide on the type of service that you plan to have. Tip four, choose a location. Tip five, write the obituary or at least prepare for the obituary and choose a picture or a handful of pictures to choose from so that you’re not running around at the last minute trying to find that picture. Tip six, create a list of people who need to be notified.

 

and get as the primary person, just get yourself one or two or three people that you should be in charge of and let them spread the word. Don’t take that responsibility on yourself. Tip seven is to plan the service itself. And in the show notes, there’ll be a worksheet with all the things you can think through ahead of time so that you’re not starting from scratch there. And tip eight is to plan the gatherings before and after the service so you at least understand what’s involved and who you want to invite and what kind of food you need and all the things that go with that. If you have tips on planning ahead for a service, please share them on our Facebook page, our Instagram page. We’d love to hear what your ideas are. If you like this podcast, please rate it, review it, follow it, subscribe to it. We’d really, really appreciate it.

 

And as always, everything we talked about here will be in the show notes so that you can find it easily. And so thank you so much for joining us. This is the kind of thing that if you can get it done ahead of time, will save you so much struggling when the time comes.

 

Sue Ryan

We are all on this journey together.

 

Nancy Treaster 

Yes, we are.