If we live long enough…
I am not a writer or blogger
but I want to share what I have learned along my journey in hopes to
help one person on their journey.
If we live long enough we will all experience the loss of a spouse. (If you’re married)
This
is not something you can plan for emotional, even when you think you
can. Trust me you can’t. I am a planner deluxe and I thought I had
prepared my self in every way possible. We had talked about all the
wonderful times, revisited photos and memories, talked about fears for
the future.. we even talked about the dreaded funeral.
It’s
funny the things that you talk about and laugh about when your loved
one knows that they are dying. My man knew he was going to heaven and
that his soul would leave his body but nevertheless he did not want to
cremated. He was worried about burning his beloved mustache. If you knew
him you would smile, nod your head and say “ I bet that’s right”.
Funerals
are expensive and they DON’T let you pay it out.When I say expensive
what does that mean? The first quote I got for the cheapest burial plan
available at a Dignity Funeral home was $12,500.00. That's was no
flowers on the casket, no special lining and I mean it was the bottom of
the barrel casket just up from a cardboard box. Yes , I said cardboard
box.Even when you know your spouse would not want you to spend one penny
more than needed on their burial, putting them in a cardboard box would
be horrible.
So what do you do when you don’t have Twelve
THOUSAND dollars to bury someone because you spent your money keeping
them alive or your just plain don’t have it?
You call around to
all the funeral homes, start with the family owned because they still
have a heart and don’t have to pay franchise fees etc. Call a funeral
home that is across the tracks ...This saved me about $7,000.00.
I
know you don’t want to prepay for your funeral it’s hard to think about
and morbid but please do this for your spouse…. You maybe the one to
go first and this will make things so much easier on your widow/widower.
At least start a savings account that isfor that purpose. Again this is
not about you but the one you love that will be left behind to live.
The
next think I would suggest in talk about what you would like your
funeral to look like should that happen. If you can’t talk about put it
in a word doc on your computer. Tell your spouse it is there, or make a
love folder and put that in your folder along with a list of password,
wills etc.
My sweetie wrote a list of songs he would like
to be played,list of people he would like to speak, what kind of flowers
he wanted (Which was none). I found this file along with his obituary
that he had written. He did not tell me about it and I just happened on
it just in the nick of time (A God thing) He even told me when to play
the songs. Like he wanted "Back in the saddle again" to be played as we
left the service. He told me what he wanted to wear and to be
SURE
to wax his mustache .Now this file was not dated after he was put on
hospice but it was dated years ago after his mother passed away.He had
planned for a rainy day and it really helped me.
If you
think about this ahead of time it will be a reflection of who you, or
who they were, not a canned service with photos of your loved ones.
People who leave the service will feel blessed. They will feel like they
just had a cup of coffee with your loved one.
I don’t
know maybe you like sad, boring funerals but I did not want that. I
wanted people to be reminded of who my man was. To remember his silly
lists of to do’s always written on a yellow legal note pad. (We used
those for guest to sign in). I wanted them to remember how he loved
being a cowboy. (We had his boots, hat and saddle there) How he was not
just a dress up cowboy he was a rancher and that was not just how he
dressed that is how he lived.(We had a rider less horse with his boots
in the stirrups backwards). We talked about many of the details late at
night when we could not sleep…There were always tears but much laughter
in silly ideas that we would NEVER use but still the same it was a hard
but sweet time.
If you live long enough you too will plan a
funeral, so think about it now. How can you make it easier on your
spouse should you be the first to go? It’s a gift you can give your
family to take a minute and make some notes to make this one step a
little easier on them.
This one step will be a huge gift to them.