Monthly Archives: January 2022

Fast Facts About Urns

If you’re like most people, the first time you’ve ever thought about cremation urns is right before or after a cremation service in Oakland, CA. But it always better to be prepared. Here is a list of things you should know about cremation urns to help you get ready for the death of a loved one or to prepare for your own passing.

Use exterior measurements for placement. Do check an urn’s exterior measurements to make sure that it will fit in the place of your choosing. For example, if you want to house the urn in a columbarium niche, make sure it fits the niche’s dimensions. Or, if you want to keep the urn on your mantle, ensure it’s not too wide or too tall to fit safely.
You can pre-purchase urns. If you’re planning for your own eventual passing, you can prepurchase a cremation urn. This way, you’ll not only ensure that you get the urn that you want but you will also take one thing off your loved one’s to-do list. Simply store your urn in a box until its needed.
Capacity is important. While you should check an urn’s exterior measurements to see if it will suit your needs, you also need to check its capacity to make sure it will fit the cremains. Many urns have decorative edges or accents, making exterior dimensions useless when it comes to determining the urn’s interior size. Always double check an urn’s interior dimensions before you make a purchase.
The funeral home will transfer the remains for you. Since funeral homes are required to use a cremation container of your choosing, they will transfer the cremated remains into that container for you.
A Cremation urn is just a container. An urn can be whatever kind of container you want or need it to be. As long as the container can hold the cremated remains, it counts as a cremation urn.
You can rent an urn for a service. If you only want to have an urn for a funeral or memorial service, you can rent one. This is a great way to save money if you’d rather use the expensive, fancy urn for the service but want to scatter, bury, or otherwise inter the ashes afterward. Most funeral homes or cremation providers have a selection of urns you can rent, so check with your provider.
You don’t have to buy a cremation urn from a funeral home or cremation provider. While its often very convenient to get a cremation urn from your provider, you don’t have to. You can buy an urn online, at a store, or wherever you can find one. You can also make an urn or use the one that comes free with the cremation.

Do you need help planning an Oakland, CA cremation service? Deer Creek Funeral Service is here to assist. Call or visit us today to learn more about what we can do for you in your time of loss or of preplanning.

What is Absent Grief?

Absent grief is when someone shows little to no signs of normal grief, such as crying, lethargy, missing the deceased, or anger. What happens if you can’t grieve the loss of a loved one? What do you do if you feel like your emotions are frozen in place? Losing a loved one and going through their service at a funeral home in Oakland, CA is one of the hardest parts of life. Working through your grief over the loss is one of the best ways to heal from it, but if you can’t grieve, you might have absent grief.

Symptoms of absent grief include no signs or symptoms of grieving whatsoever, irritability, forgetting about the loss, not feeling connected to the loss, and denial. Though absent grief is very common, many people don’t know much about it. Here are some fast facts about absent grief to provide guidance and context. Absent grief can have physical symptoms. Holding in your feelings of loss can take a toll on the body, leading to heart palpitations, insomnia, fatigue, or eating disorders. Death isn’t the only event that can cause absent grief. Other life events besides death can cause absent grief, including divorce, job loss, regret, or loss of a romantic relationship or a friendship.

Anticipatory grief can lead to absent grief. Anticipatory grief is when someone grieves a loss before its actually happened. Oftentimes, if you grieve before a death, you won’t feel as much pain after the death. You can move on from absent grief. Once you accept the loss you can work through your pain and grief to move forward with your life. If you need help doing so, don’t be ashamed. There’s nothing wrong with asking for help.

Absent grief isn’t just denial. The “denial” stage of grief is when you try and deny the death happened. Most people face denial in the first few hours or days after a loss. But denial becomes absent grief when the denial continues on much longer. Some might feel like they have absent grief if they aren’t grieving, but it might simply be that they just weren’t that close to the deceased. If that’s the case, it’s OK. You don’t have to demonstrate deep grief over someone you weren’t close to.

Grief is often unexpected. Grief looks and feels different for everyone, so it’s often tough to pinpoint when someone is experiencing absent grief. Check in with yourself or the grieving person to see how you or they are feeling. Avoiding grief isn’t obvious. There are many ways people that experience absent grief try to avoid grieving. For example, they can focus on taking care of others, lose themselves in drugs or alcohol to numb the pain, or dive into work in order to distract themselves.

Deer Creek Funeral Service is here to assist if you have more questions on absent grief, dealing with a loss, or Oakland, CA funeral homes. Call or visit us today to learn more about what we can for you in your time of loss or of preplanning.

What Happens if You Can’t Pay for a Funeral Home Service?

Funerals and memorials don’t have to be extravagant or expensive, but they do cost money. What do you do if you can’t afford a funeral home service in Oakland, CA? Here are answers to common questions surrounding paying for funerals and cremation services:

Are there free cremations or burials? If you cannot afford a burial or cremation, you can sign a form with the county coroner’s office and the state will bury or cremate the body for you. This will be at no cost, but you won’t have any say in where or how.
How do you pay for a funeral with little or no money? There are many ways to cover funeral expenses, including low-cost options and fund raising.
Is body donation free? Donating a body to research does result in a no-cost cremation. You can donate your body to science through institutions like medical laboratories, medical schools, and local hospitals.
What happens if you refuse to pay for a funeral? The funeral home is not obligated to take custody of a body. If a family does not or will not pay, the funeral home does not have to accept the body. If the funeral home already has custody of the body and the family refuses to pay, the funeral home will pause all funeral services and planning, store the body in the cooler, and charge the family a storage fee for every day the body is there. The funeral home as the right to refuse services and can transfer the body to the state at any time, but they cannot hold a body hostage in order to get payment.
Do you have to have a funeral? You’re not required to have a funeral. So, if you can’t afford one, you don’t have to worry. You’re more than welcome to select a direct burial or direct cremation option (the most affordable final disposition services) in order to save money. But if you want to have a funeral or service, there are ways to do so without spending too much money.
Are there government bodies that help with funeral costs? There are several government organizations that can help with final disposition and funeral costs including Social Security, State Department of Health, Veteran’s Affairs, and even FEMA if the deceased died in a natural disaster.
Can you get a funeral loan? Anyone can apply for a funeral loan to get help paying for funeral expenses. They are generally available through credit unions, banks, and online lenders.
Who pays for the funeral if the deceased has no money? If there isn’t any money in the deceased’s estate, the next-of-kin traditionally pays for funeral expenses. If the next-of-kin aren’t able or don’t want to pay, there won’t be a funeral.

Paying for an Oakland, CA funeral home service can be worrying, but it doesn’t have to be. Take time now to preplan for your eventual passing, including how your loved ones will pay for your services. Deer Creek Funeral Service is here to help if you would like to learn more about preplanning or dealing with a recent loss.

All About the Five Stages of Grief

The five stages of grief are a well-known blueprint that helps people understand how they grief and offers guidance on how to get through a loss and a cremation service in Oakland, CA. Keep reading to learn more about the stages and how they might be able to help you.

Grief doesn’t come all at once or all in the same way, it often moves through stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a Swiss-American psychologist, first developed these five stages in 1969 to help illustrate that fact that, while every human experience grief differently, almost everyone moves through one or many of these five stages at some point in the grieving process. Some people might move through all, others just one, and more still might experience only a few.

While it’s not a comprehensive guideline, the 5 stages of grief do help, comfort, and basic understanding of how we experience grief and how that experience changes over time. The order of the five stages isn’t necessarily important, as people might experience them in varying orders and intensities, even moving back and forth between them.

Denial is when you don’t want to believe or an unable to believe that your loved one has died. The “this can’t be happening to me” reaction is very normal, and is usually the first reaction after a loss. Denial can also come in the form of telling people you’re fine even though you’re not because you’re denying your true feelings of grief. Anger generally sets in when you realize you can’t deny or fight the loss any longer. You might become angry at the people around you, taking your anger out on doctors and nurses who “failed” your loved one or on yourself for making a mistake that might have led to or worsened the situation. Some even direct their anger toward God or a higher power.

Bargaining is when you deny the truth by trying to change it. It might manifest as trying to get the doctors to bring in another expert or try a new treatment, or as pleading with God or a higher power for more time or a different outcome. Like the name sounds, depression is when you feel hopeless or that you can’t go on because of the loss. You might feel overwhelmed, alone, and lost.

The final stage, acceptance is where you come to terms with the fact that your loved one is or is going to be gone. The grief and pain don’t go away in this stage, but you do accept and feel those feelings. When you reach the fifth stage of grief, you begin to plan on how you will move on with your life.

The five stages of grief are a helpful tool for anyone dealing with a loss or a service at an Oakland, CA funeral home. Do you need help with your needs in this time of loss? Deer Creek Funeral Service is here. Call or visit us today.

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