When it happens
Usually the day after the death, in daylight, and it takes about ninety minutes.
If someone has died
The arrangement meeting
One conversation, in daylight, that settles the shape of the week. What happens in it, what you will be asked, and what is put in your hands before anything is agreed.
When, where, and who to bring
It is the only meeting most families have with us, and everything that happens afterwards is us carrying out what was agreed in it. It is also shorter than people expect.
Where it happens
Here, at your kitchen table, or over a video call if the family is spread out.
Who to bring
More than one person, if you can. Nobody should do this alone and nobody remembers all of it.
A round table rather than a desk, because a desk has a side you sit on and a side you do not. This is where the price list is put in your hands and gone through line by line.
What happens, in order
It runs the same way every time, and it runs in this order for a reason: nothing about money is discussed until we know who the person was and what shape the family wants.
We ask about the person
Not about the arrangements. Where they were born, what they did, who is left. It fills the certificate and it tells us who we are looking after.
We put the shape of it on paper
Burial or cremation. A service or not. Which day, roughly. Nothing is fixed at this point.
We go through the list, item by item
Every charge, in writing, in front of you, before anything is agreed. You may decline any of it except one, and we will tell you which one and why.
We confirm the day
Which means the cemetery or the crematory, the clergy, and the permit — in that order, because any of the three can move it.
You sign, and you take a copy
The itemised statement is yours to keep, and it should match what you were told.
If you feel hurried
The uncomfortable sentence goes here rather than on a page you would have to go looking for, because it is only useful before the meeting.
If at any point in that meeting you feel hurried, say so, and if it happens twice, leave. There is nothing you can sign in the first two days that another funeral home cannot do instead.
There is nothing about this that has to be settled in one sitting. Families stop halfway through, go home, and come back the next morning, and the only thing that costs is a day.
Nobody is hurried
If you feel hurried in the arrangement meeting, say so. If it happens again, go somewhere else.
What you will be asked, and what you will not
Families arrive braced for a much larger conversation than the one that happens. The decisions on the left are the ones that actually move the week and the bill. The ones on the right belong to other months and other people, and nobody will raise them on the day after a death.
What you will be asked
- Burial or cremation
- Whether there is a viewing
- The casket or the urn
- Cash advances
- How far, and how many journeys
What you will not be asked
- The estate. Probate, the will, the accounts, the house, the taxes. We are not lawyers and not accountants and we will say so rather than guess. What we can do is give you enough certified copies that whoever does handle it is not held up.
- The headstone, which is a monument dealer and usually months later. Nobody will raise it in the week after a death, and it is a conversation with somebody who is not us.
- We cannot promise you a date until three other people have agreed to it. The certifying doctor, the cemetery or crematory, and whoever is leading the service.
The price list is in your hands at the start
Not at the end, and not after a room full of caskets has been walked through. It is put in front of you before the conversation about arrangements begins, and it stays with you afterwards.
What you are entitled to. You are entitled to price information over the telephone, to a printed price list to keep before any discussion of arrangements, to buy only the items you want, and to an itemised statement before you pay. Every funeral provider in the United States owes you those.
A price over the telephone. You do not have to give your name, and you do not have to come in. Ask, and any funeral home has to answer.
- What it costs, and why — what actually moves the total, in the order it moves it, and which parts of the bill are not ours at all.
- The price list you are owed — what has to be on it, what it is for, and why comparing two of them line by line is worth an evening.
Two things you may do at any point
You may take it away, and you may come back
Neither of these is a favour and neither needs a reason. They are what any family is entitled to from any funeral home in the country.
A printed price list, to keep
Handed to you at the start of any conversation about arrangements, goods or prices — before the discussion, not after it, and it is yours to take away and compare.
An itemised statement before you pay
Every item you have chosen, what each costs, and what the total is, in writing, before any money changes hands.
What you leave the room with
The itemised statement is yours to keep, and it should match what you were told.
Everything in writing, before anything is agreed
The itemised statement is given to you and gone through in front of you before you sign, and you keep a copy.
- Who has the authority to decide — who the law asks to sign, which is occasionally not the person who called us.
- What we need from you — what to bring, and what can be found afterwards.
If the meeting is tomorrow and something is worrying you
Ask before it rather than during it. Nothing on this site has to be read first, and nothing is agreed in that room before you have seen it in writing.