What Is A Home Funeral Guide?
What Are Home Funeral Guides?
Home funeral guides focus on the need of families to care for their dying and their dead. Whether related by blood or connected through community, the importance of being with and supporting each other through the process of dying is an essential part of life. It is true that often a home funeral guide's role may overlap with the role of a death doula or a death midwife. Ideally, these folks will work together to support the family and dying person through this phase of life.
The goal of a home funeral guide is to help facilitate family-focused and led funerals. Home funeral guides are not funeral directors. They do not simply arrange funerals. Instead they empower and prepare the family to care for and celebrate their dying loved one from life to death and beyond.
What Does A Home Funeral Guide Do?
- Educates and guides families in conducting home funerals
- Meets the family with calmness, respect, and sensitivity to the last wishes of the dying person and the family
- Stays up to date with local and state laws, ordinances, and regulations, related to family rights in caring for deceased person
- Maintains relations with supportive groups and relevant organizations
- Makes plans for the physical body post-death
- Helps plan the rituals and end-of-life celebration
- Builds relationships with local officials, vital records department personnel, coroners and their deputies.
- Helps with grieving
Home funeral guides help families relearn how to care for their dead. Here's a great article about what a home funeral can be like.
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