Not so many years ago the role of the funeral director or mortician in a community was to prepare the deceased for burial and coordinate all services between the family that was requesting services and the church body that was delivering those services. . . .which most of the time consisted of a traditional casketed funeral service that included music from members of the church and an eventual reception in the church fellowship hall.

 

I don’t really know how else to describe it, but that is what I did for the majority of my working life as a funeral director.  Yes, advice was part of my regimen but the vast proportion of my work around client families was about preparing the deceased and working out the logistics.  That work consisted of far-ranging things such as embalming of the body to writing obituaries and death notices.  Virtually all that I did included the funeral home being compensated for those tasks through our “Traditional Funeral” service charges.

 

It was a time when 90% of the families we served chose traditional casketed burial as their preferred method of disposition.  And, churches had their set protocol to move through the funeral process.  I remember arrangements where the family chose the date, picked the casket, picked the vault and then we moved on and let the church prepare the service.

 

Sometimes, in that process, I felt that the family was like a parade watcher standing on the sidewalk just watching the parade pass on by. . . . . and, many times I felt the family was short-changed because they should not be “watching the parade” they should be participating in it.  Many times I felt like the rigid church structure hindered the grief process instead of helping the family through it. . . . yet, I was fine with the process — it is just the way it was.

 

Today we still prepare the deceased for the method of disposition – whatever it may be and we still coordinate all services with whomever the client family chooses. . . even if it is not a church body.  However, I think it is a lot more difficult simply because the choices and the choice by families don’t follow a “set” pattern as in the past.

 

I also think we are better at helping the family because we’ve learned to ask the right questions whereby the answers to those questions  many times help the family through their grief by the disposition process they choose.

 

It’s my opinion that the really good funeral directors and pre-planners who meet with families have turned into “Facilitators” instead of just planners.  Planning is one thing — especially when there is a prescribed modus operandi of doing things such as church tradition.

 

“Facilitating” on the other hand, at least in my view, encompasses so much more.  It encompasses explaining options to client families and teaching client families that there are any number of ways to honor, celebrate, and memorialize their loved one.  It means letting these families know and understand that there are multiple options for body care, dispositions, services, and memorialization. . . . .it is not just about “coordinating” traditional services anymore.

 

I’ve also felt that as funeral directors have evolved, we have gotten better in finding what is meaningful to a family.  And, if the growing number of dispositions away from traditional casketed burials is indicative, it is not always a traditional casketed burial.  Cremation is growing, alkaline hydrolysis is growing, natural organic reduction is growing. . . . and services conducted by non-traditional sources are growing.  Those facts somewhat tell us that client families have been looking for something different over the past couple of decades.

 

Here’s “the rub” with the evolving funeral director — that funeral director that is the “facilitator” – that gives the family the time, information, and knowledge to select the best method for their grief recovery and movement from grief to remembrance.  The “rub” is the lack of margins or profits in many of the dispositions selected.

 

Ask yourself, “How many times has that direct cremation with a memorial service a month later taken more effort than a traditional casketed service with cemetery burial?”  We all know it happens.

 

Back in the day, funeral directors and funeral homes received large margins from traditional service charges, casket sales, and vault sales.  There wasn’t a lot of “facilitating” that had to be done. . . families came in, picked a date, ordered services such as embalming, picked some merchandise and the service was left to the church.

 

Today, being that “facilitator” that gives families the knowledge to make the decisions that they want many times results in that family picking a service or method that is much less expensive than the old traditional funeral. . . .and the funeral home profits and margins are less also.

 

Being a facilitator that explains many options to a family in need, in my opinion, takes more time and effort than being a funeral director who met with families when a traditional funeral was the expected option.  Families are better off with a “Facilitator” helping them — they get the help they need.   But, how do funeral homes recoup the cost for the time and effort put forth with this method when families then choose lower priced options?

 

It’s a dilemma that death care faces.  Funeral homes have fixed costs in facilities and personnel that need to be met.  Yet, many times we are providing more personnel services to families and receiving less in margins because of the lack of merchandise and embalming sales that many of the new dispositions do not require.

 

Facilitating is important.  And, it is important that families are presented the options that they may not even know about.  However, when that effort by our best men and women of funeral service cannot be financially rewarded by the services that are chosen, we have a problem.

 

And, I think it is a problem for traditional funeral homes with large fixed expense budgets that will only get larger down the road.

 

More news from the world of Death Care:

• Cape Breton funeral director exonerated over cremation of wrong body.  CBC News (Canada)
• Local company offers Canada’s only carbon-neutral cremation product.  Orillia Matters (Canada)
• “Sendoff” re-imagines how funerals are held.  Video news story.  KARE -11 TV – Minneapolis (Minnesota)

 

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