Hi, my name is Crystal, and I love tradition and ritual, but I also love novel things and creating something special just for one person. When my mum died a few years ago, I decided that I wanted to write her funeral service – not just my eulogy, but the whole service. I wanted to tie in traditional elements as well as Bible verses and poems that she loved, but I also wanted something that was just for her and her alone. I learned a lot through that experience. If you have lost a loved one, I extend you my sympathy. I know how that feels, and I want to help with the funeral service. This blog has ideas and tips for writing your own service as well as a range of other things. I hope it helps.
Writing Your Own Funeral Service for a Loved One
Top Strategies to Help Funeral Homes Provide Multicultural Services
Minea Pesola
Gone are the days when funeral homes only provided services to particular cultures or religions. Today, funerals homes are accommodating diverse cultures in their services, and for good reasons. Offering multicultural funeral services expands your client base and allows employees to appreciate diversity. However, being successful at organising multicultural funerals is only possible with the right strategy.
Multicultural Chapel
In the past, funeral homes had to organise a Christian family service in a church setting. Similarly, funeral homes catering to other cultures, such as Asians and Africans, had a venue that catered to a particular clientele's specific needs. Such restrictions meant that a funeral home could not accommodate the funeral service of a different culture. Luckily, the tide is turning today since funeral homes are increasingly constructing multicultural chapels. The non-traditional chapels allow funeral homes to hold services regardless of a client's cultural affiliation. For example, a Muslim family can hold their funeral services in a non-traditional chapel that an Asian family used the previous week. Since a non-traditional chapel is a flexible facility, a funeral director arranges it to match a client's funeral rituals and traditions.
Collaborate With Various Religious Leaders
When organising a funeral service for a deceased loved one, finding a religious leader to preside over the ceremony takes time. Sometimes it forces grieving families to postpone their funeral service. Unfortunately, it affects a funeral home's schedule since other customers from different cultures also suffer delays. One way to avoid such inconveniences is to collaborate with local religious leaders from different cultures. Therefore, reach out to religious leaders in your community and inform them that your funeral home offers funeral services to different cultures. It will go a long way towards ensuring your facility has access to religious leaders who can preside over various cultural services upon request.
Multicultural Transport
For a long time, funeral transport was restricted to black or white hearses. However, more people are increasingly moving away from this traditional mode of funeral transport and embracing diverse options guided by cultures. For instance, clients might want to transport their loved ones in a horse-drawn carriage or a motorcycle hearse rather than settle for a limousine hearse. Similarly, Aborigine Australians prefer to carry their deceased loved ones in the open and on stretcher-like frames. Therefore, research the different modes of funeral transport that different cultures use and make them part of your multicultural funeral services.
Look for a funeral home that offers multicultural services, such as Asian funerals, for ideas.
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