Our whole family had to do a lot of planning and preparation for the funeral service. We decide to do a burial for mom. I just want to list out the things that we've conducted as a reference for those who are needing to deal with this kind of situation. Hope this will help out some people, because many of us don't have experience in funeral service. As a first timer, overall, I think we did an good job.
There are many ways to do a funeral service, and it really depends on the cultural background of your family, and how your family to do the funeral. Well for us, Chinese immigrants in Canada, we want to make everything simple, but at the same time, have some Chinese tradition elements. Here are the things that you should do if someone passes away (in Canada). Like our funeral director say, there are no right or wrong ways of doing it. It's just how you wanted it to be.
- Pick a funeral home - They'll provide most of the solution and information, usually family owned are less expansive. Also, there is something call per-arrangement in some funeral home, which you can have discount. This only applies when you make payments before the person past away. If you choose burial, the basic package are around 3-4 grand Canadian Dollars for burial, that price include funeral service (picking up the remains from hospital, funeral home facilities...etc), embalming (for viewing), funeral coach (for bringing the decease to the cemetery), hiring a presider (MC during the service), death certificate and some consumer protection plan as a anti-fraud/identity theft function. After all that, you will need to pick a casket of your choice. It ranges from $500-$35,000 (MJ used 35grand one, its all gold plated) Canadian, and the most popular picks are those around $2,000-$3,000 mark. Usually, the service will last about an hour and a half.
- Pick a cemetery - There are corporate owned or city owned. I'll talk about city own first. Usually, there are some restriction for city owned cemetery. There are resident and non-resident pricing, and the price for non-resident can be quite high (pay premium). Also, some city owned cemetery would not allow non-resident to buy the burial plot. As for corporate owned cemetery, they are usually a bit higher in price, but there's no area restriction. However, sometimes, there may be some restricted area for per-arrangement, meaning there are some spot that you can't buy if the person that will be using the burial plot has not pass away yet. This is to help safe some spot for those in need. Anyhow, you will need to decide on cremation or burial service. For cremation - you can pick a urn, then pick the place to put the urn. There are four places to pick, indoor clear-wall, brick wall, mozelium, and ground burial. Indoor clear-walls, like its name, is located indoor with a clear wall covering the urn; besides putting the urn, people may also decorate the plot, it can look quite artsy and modern. Brick wall, is another option, is just a wall covering the urn in brick. Next, mozelium, is a wall covering the urn with granite. Finally, the last option is to bury the cremation in the ground. For pricing, you ask for the burial plot price, lining price, and foundation price. For burial plot, some cemetery have double slot for pair of caskets.
- Buy flowers - There are three major types, flower-spray ($200+ approx.), flower-rings ($100-$200 approx.), and flower-pod ($50-$70 approx.). The most expansive are listed respectively. I think the flower-spray is a must for burial, it goes on top of the casket. The other two are usually for relatives and friends to buy. Don't buy too many, since you never know who else will buy more flower to the funeral home.
- *EXTRA Chinese Traditions - If you want to follow all the tradition, please goto China town to ask those expert for help. I will just talk about some of the procedure that can happen when some Chinese customs are performed during the funeral service. First, Burn the "ticket to ???" (need to fill-in somthing and it's a large piece of yellow paper) on the day before the funeral service. Near the end of the funeral service, burn another "ticket ???". Second, Place those joss paper, and all sorts of tradional paper besides the casket. Third, get blankets to cover the remains, and pillow for the head area. Forth, buy two pack of joss paper plus tradion paper; one is burn in the chapel, one is burn in the cemeter area.
