Your Life, Your Party – Funeral Home Nails It

This is a great program put on by Pray Funeral Home in Charlotte, Michigan to engage with their community and talk about death. Thats right, a funeral home is controlling the conversation about death in their community, not someone else. This is the way it should be.

Does your funeral home do anything like this?

Your Life, Your Party

Butterflies, wagon trains, antique cars, brunch, slot machines, popcorn, and fireworks.  What do these have in common? They are all elements of a good party.  They are also elements of an appropriate memorial.  When it comes to a creating a meaningful memorial, there are lots of options.

In recent years the use of photographs has become commonplace at many funerals or memorial celebrations.  Family photos may be in the frames brought from home,  arranged in a montage with other photos, or played on a large screen in a moving video set to music.

Many other ideas are also being  incorporated in memorial celebrations that focus on the positive memories, life’s work, and hobbies of an individual.  Many people in Charlotte may remember the wagon train complete with outriders on horseback that was part of one individual’s funeral procession to the cemetery.  Other’s may remember a helicopter fly over and salute at the cemetery committal service of another.  Fishing and hunting trophies have been included in other funeral and memorial services.  All these ideas represent what family members want others to celebrate and remember about their lost family members.

How often have you heard people remark “when I die I just want them to have a party”?  While few people actually feel like having a party when they have lost a family member, there is a similarity between some vestiges of a party  in many  of today’s, funerals, celebrations or memorials.

Nobody would ever think a funeral is fun.  However, by including the elements of a deceased’s personality in  a positive manner,  funerals, memorials and celebrations have become an uplifting experience that helps surviving family members start their journey through grief following a loss with a smile on their face.

So you want to be remembered?  You want to have a party?  You can start by writing down some of the attributes you might want included in a memorial, or funeral, either for yourself or that of a family member.   These simple steps will be invaluable to family and friends.  The next step would be to record these preferences in a form of a Preplan, or Pre-arrangement with the funeral home of your choice.  That way they will be filed in a safe, secure and retrievable manner for family to use as a guide  at the time they need it most.

To explore some of the creative options and ideas that your friends may include in their celebration, and to make sure that you get your ideas recorded so your family knows what your preferences are,  you are welcome to attend either one of two workshops on the topic entitled “Your Life, Your Party”.  This presentation will be a light hearted discussion of the many new ideas that have been incorporated into memorials today and how they truly reflect the lives of those we know love and celebrate.

The first entertaining workshop will be Thursday March 21st at the Eaton Area Senior Center beginning at 10 AM.  This program will be followed by a  sponsored lunch.

The second discussion will be Wednesday March 27th, 6:30 pm at AL!VE and will include complimentary light refreshments.

Those who attend either workshop will receive a helpful resource book with lots of helpful information about the topic of making a funeral or memorial a meaningful and healing event.   This resource will be invaluable as you consider your own preferences for a meaningful FUNeral.  Throughout the presentation, Joe E. Pray,of Pray Funeral Home, and  Dawn and Dan Hoffman, of Pray’s Peace of Mind Pre-Planning, will entertain and answer your questions about the lighter side of creative memorials.