So many decisions. Are we making the right ones? Would Daddy be ok with them? Its hard to know without knowing what he really wanted. Mommy said they really never talked about what they wanted for a funeral service or if they wanted to be buried or cremated. Its even harder when he had no will and no life insurance. No will. No life insurance. No kind of coverage for funeral costs. No wishes made known. So now it is up to us as to what to do. We need to keep the cost down as much as we possibly can because my Mom doesn't have the money for any of this. Everything is overwhelming for all of us. Especially Mommy. I can't even image what it is like to lose your spouse. Someone you've spent half your life with. Then to have to make decisions while you're in shock from their sudden death. So, we decided that we needed to have the funeral in Beaver, since that is where he worked and lived and most of his friends and customers are there. Do we bury him or cremate him? If we bury him, where? In Beaver or Wilkes Barre? And if we cremate him, do we bury his ashes and again, where? We decided to have him cremated because burying him would mean additional costs to buy the casket and actually bury him. And we decided to keep the ashes for now, until we figure out if/when & where we should bury him. Then making the decisions of when to have the viewings and funeral service. After going over all of our options, we figured out what we thought was best and I hope it is what Daddy would have wanted.
We contacted our friend Keith from church to do the service. We felt like we wanted to have someone that knew Daddy well and would deliver a meaningful message. Daddy knew Keith from the time he was young and worked with the youth group when Keith was a teen. We set up a time to meet with him to go over the service. We also set up a time to meet with the funeral director to go over everything with him.
After making most of these decisions, I started second guessing some of them. In particular, cremating him. I had a conversation with Betty, a close friend of ours and she mentioned briefly that she didn't think Daddy would have wanted that. Then she did say that we need to do what we feel is best and she didn't have a problem with it personally.
So I started questioning, would he want that? Would he be ok with it? He never said one way or the other. It wasn't something I'd ever thought about myself. I guess I always thought that we would bury him somewhere. Where ever he was living at the time maybe. I don't know. After feeling confused about cremation, I called our preacher to ask if it was anywhere in the scriptures. Does the Bible say anything about it? Is it wrong? He assured me it was not wrong and that the Bible doesn't really say anything specific about it. So I felt that we made the best decision we could have given the circumstances.
I also talked to my mother-in-law for the first time tonight. We decided together that she would fly up from TN, to be with us and help with the girls to keep everything as "normal" as possible for them. I'm glad she is coming. Tomorrow we travel 5 hours to Beaver.
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