Chapter 3: Death of a Parent 1 CE Hour
Course overview This course will help funeral directors and other funeral professionals serve their grieving clients and families to the best of their abilities. Funeral professionals can help mourners acknowledge their loss and mark this moment with respect. As a funeral professional, your role is to offer Learning objectives After completing this course, the learner will be able to: Examine how the loss of a parent is especially difficult for adults and minors. Give examples of how Funeral professionals and clergy can work together.
a guiding hand as mourners celebrate their deceased with respect and grace. Your clients should be able to look back on this tumultuous time and feel that they did their best to honor their parent. Your goal is that, years later, they will recall the funeral and find warmth and solace.
Recognize different grieving methods for adults and children. Identify ways to help minors express their grief.
INTRODUCTION
and can be applied to either group. The loss of a parent is intense and complicated, no matter the child’s age or circumstances. It’s important for funeral professionals to remember that sadness is not the only emotion mourners feel. We all know there’s no right or wrong way to grieve the loss of a parent, but these strategies can offer some ways funeral professionals can help mourners get through these early rough days and hopefully add another memory of their loved one via though the funeral experience. Studies suggest that a tension exists between the clergy and funeral professionals who have become more important to the bereaved. There has even been a suggestion that funeral directors and the clergy are in collusion when dealing with bereaved families as a means of ensuring both have financial gains. The church is typically described as being opposed to delay in burial, embalming, and the restoration of the body, expensive funerals and caskets, lavish floral displays, the extensive use of funeral homes, and the planning and control of the funeral by the funeral director. These assumptions are not supported by evidence, and you should not assume families will come to see you with these negative conceptions. The same advice as previously can be given here: Give the grieving families as much time as they would like when meeting with them, and be a guiding but not a controlling presence. When considering the large number of unaffiliated families who are currently using funeral homes for the entire funeral proceedings, the time the funeral director spends with the family is useful in gathering information about the deceased and family dynamics, as well as the direction the family may choose concerning the funeral service itself. Assure your clients that the roles of the funeral director and the clergy should be thought of as intersecting circles sharing the emotional care of the bereaved as well as the arrangements for the funeral event(s). Although clergy might be willing to accompany a family to the funeral home to make arrangements, that doesn’t happen frequently, so a funeral director is not likely to communicate directly with the family’s clergy.
Even though loss of a parent is “the natural order of things,” the death of a mother or father figure is never easy. Whether the death was expected or a tragic surprise, and whether the child is a minor or an adult with their own children, abandonment is a primal fear. When this absence occurs, mourners can have a very difficult time simply processing their new reality. Though we’ve broken up this course into two sections, adults and minors , much of the following advice overlaps Grieving adults Just like there’s no one way to grieve, no one grieves in the same way. It’s difficult for a funeral professional to get to know your clients, especially during this profound time. We can only pay attention to subtle clues and give the mourner a calm, detached, yet caring environment in which to discuss their needs and desires for the funeral experience. Be flexible: some families will come in with definitive and clear ideas of what they’d like; some families will have no idea what to do. Always schedule a generous amount of appointment time for the initial meeting. It’s important that you are there to receive the family and make them believe that even though you deal with death every day, you realize the impact of each and every individual loss. Traditionally the clergy played the most important role in the emotional and spiritual health of the bereaved. As more and more Americans do not practice an organized religion, this role has been greatly reduced, and the clergy are no longer necessarily a visible presence at the bedside of the dying nor among the bereaved in the weeks and months that follow the death of a loved one. The care of the dead is currently shared by the funeral professional and the clergy, if any. Clergy do continue to officiate at funerals, overseeing communal rituals despite the increasing number of congregationally unaffiliated. As a funeral professional, your role is, of course, to allow the families to make their own decision. Most families will have strong feelings and opinions and will not ask for your help. Occasionally, a family who has internal disagreements among its members might ask for your guidance. You cannot be the arbitrator at that family meeting; that is not your role. Most likely, your best choice is to have them consider the deceased’s own spiritual ideas, while gently reminding them that the funeral proceedings are for the living.
Page 17
Book Code: FOK0425
EliteLearning.com/Funeral
Powered by FlippingBook