The daughter of the deceased rushed in and quickly informed me that her late father’s housekeeper had just recently become his wife. The daughter was concerned as to who was to be responsible for the funeral expenses. Luckily, the elderly gentleman had prearranged and prepaid for his funeral services with me just months before his death; otherwise, this arrangement conference would have been a nightmare. I seated the daughter and excused myself to retrieve her father’s pre-arrangement file. I showed her that her father and I had sat down just recently and finalized his funeral arrangements and that he had prepaid. This pleased the daughter, yet she was very concerned about her late father’s property and other valuable belongings.
She went on to weave a tale to me that she and her late father had been estranged for many years, and that in a period of extreme loneliness, her father had agreed to the prodding of his young, live-in housekeeper of just a few months and had married her. The daughter had recently discovered that her father had decided to leave all of his worldly goods and possessions to his new bride, and his children were to gain not a thing. I felt sorry for her and her situation but explained that her late father’s wife was the legal next of kin and the number-one decision maker.
The next morning the new widow in question arrived at my office alone and proceeded to verify all the information and selections her late husband had arranged for, including shipping his body back to his native East Coast for burial. The spouse was keenly aware of the fact that her late husband’s children harbored a profound hatred toward her. She wanted a private funeral ceremony with only her and the casketed remains of her husband present. She said she was willing to allow her late husband’s children to have a public viewing and funeral the next day, without her presence.
So that is exactly what occurred—the first funeral for the wife was the only time I had ever conducted a service with only the deceased, the officiating minister, and one mourner. The second service the next day was well attended by his family and many mourners, and officiated by the same minister.
Second marriages can make for some strange proceedings. A gruff woman of seventy years sat with me to arrange for her late husband’s funeral services. Before I could begin my normal arrangement conference procedure, she quickly interrupted me with many questions: Was a newspaper obituary required by law? Do stepchildren have any claim to a dead body? Could she have him cremated without his children’s knowledge?
I explained to her that she, as the surviving spouse, had the right to arrange for the final disposition of her late husband’s body. Morally, I mentioned to her, perhaps her late husband’s children should be notified of the death-care plans. She replied that she had no plan to inform her husband’s children of the death—those children despised her and rarely visited their father. She further stated that her late spouse’s children would telephone only when they needed money or to be bailed out of jail. She asked me to present her with a proposal for direct cremation with no public viewing and no funeral ceremony.
When I asked the wife if she wanted to view her late husband before he was cremated, she replied, “I already saw him in the hospital before you got there to pick him up.” We finalized the proposal and she left, only to come back a few hours later to inform me that she had changed her mind. She now wanted me to embalm, dress, and place her husband into a fiber-board casket so that she and her neighbor friend could privately view him before he was cremated.
When I informed the woman that I would charge for the extra requested services, she was very unhappy, referred to me as a rotten S.O.B., and accused me of overcharging her. She angrily left and called me the next morning to tell me that she would still like to see her late husband. I offered to dress him and place him in a rental cremation casket at no additional charge, to which she replied, “There better not be any charge for that.” I sighed and told her to come over in a few hours for her private, no-extra-charge viewing.
In the meantime, the late gentleman’s natural children received wind of their father’s death and were calling to see about the time for the funeral. When I explained to the children that there was to be no funeral, they went ballistic and rained profanities on me the likes of which I had never heard.
I telephoned the spouse of the deceased and told her of my recent telephone encounters with her stepchildren. She laughed it off and told me that the reason she was having her late husband immediately cremated was so that his children would not have an opportunity to see him one last time. She justified her stance on the matter by declaring, “They would not come to see him when he was healthy, and they would not come see him when he was ill and infirm, so they are not going to see him when he’s dead.” That’s a pretty strong sentiment on her part, although the strange part was yet to come.
After the cremation had taken place, I delivered the cremated remains of her late husband to her home. As I was walking away, she yelled for me to come back so she could ask a question. She asked about the toxicity of human cremated remains. I replied that, since the cremation process involves such tremendous heat, I was sure that the ashes were not toxic. She seemed happy with that answer and began to share with me that she and her late husband enjoyed taking a bath together in years past and she was planning on drawing a nice hot bath that evening and wanted to include sprinkling a few handfuls of her late husband’s ashes into the steaming bathwater with her.
In this strange situation, I did what I could to ease the pain. No matter what the circumstances, during every stage of the funeral process, so much pain can be avoided. All you need is the trusted guidance of a director who displays professionalism and integrity, and who is willing to take the time to find out what you really want and need, what you can afford, and what you feel is appropriate.
The clergy can also make the situation better—or worse. Funeral directors and the clergy, through regular, ongoing contact, enjoy a close-knit relationship. They are often good friends, golfing partners, and sometimes even drinking buddies.
Priests and ministers can make or break a funeral home’s reputation. In my first year in the business, I worked for a man who lavishly bestowed gifts on the clergy. When a minister first arrived at the funeral home to conduct a service, my boss would hand him a Cross pen-and-pencil set. The next time the pastor would receive Cincinnati Reds tickets; other times a crisp $100 bill would be pressed into his hand. “These people help us to stay in business,” he would tell me. “Go out of your way to treat them well.”
For Christmas, he would order expensive fruit baskets from a local florist, and we would deliver them personally to area ministers’ homes. After about three years, my boss decided to curtail the practice, and you would not believe the fallout. Not only ministers but also their wives began calling us around December 20, wondering when their fruit would be delivered. When informed that we had cut back on gifting, they called us a bunch of cheapskates. We reinstituted the practice the following Christmas.