Resources

Funeral Homes And Planning

There are many funeral homes located throughout the Greater Louisville area. If you are unsure who to contact for funeral homes and planning, use our zip code locator to get a listing of ones close to you or the deceased. We recommend selecting a funeral home that is close to where the person grew up or spent the majority of their time to make it easy for family and friends to attend the visitation and funeral, if a funeral home is where you choose to have the funeral.

The funeral home will likely be your first contact in planning for the burial arrangements. You will schedule a meeting with them to see their facility and determine if this feels like the right place to honor your loved one. Once at the funeral home, some decisions will need to be made such as:

    • Choosing a date and length of visitation
    • Creating an obituary and getting the word out for the arrangements 
    • Coordinating the dates with a house of worship or other places (if you want to hold the service at a different location outside of the funeral home)
    • Choosing a casket or cremation, (which may have been determined in the person’s Last Will and Testament, if they had one)
    • Where you will bury the deceased or house their ashes if cremation is decided.

All of this can be very overwhelming and we recommend taking a close friend or family member(s) with you. Here is a link to our Funeral Homes and Planning Checklist to help prepare you for the next few days.

Other planning may include talking with clergy about how to honor and share about your loved one at the service.  Perhaps there are other people who would like to participate in the service and say something memorable about the deceased. For example, children of a deceased parent spend a few moments sharing their fondest memories and feelings about mom or dad. And close friends may also want to say a few words about their relationship and what they loved about person that passed. Sometimes the loss is so devastating that no one from the family can find a way to speak. That’s perfectly acceptable. There are no set standards for how a funeral must proceed. Go with what you feel is best and what you know you can handle.

If the deceased did not have a burial plot already purchased, this too will need to be part of your planning. There are many beautiful cemeteries to choose from and we recommend locating one that will be easy for you and your family to access. When our 19 year-old son, Ben, passed away suddenly, we didn’t have any place for him to be buried. We not only purchased a plot for his final resting place, we bought two spaces for us as his parents. Note that this can be expensive, depending upon where you decide to lay your loved one to rest. The good news is that most cemeteries will work with you on setting up a payment plan.

Cremation options include placing the ashes inside of an urn (to scatter at a later date–or not), a columbarium or a boulder with a marker. You can buy the boulder and make arrangements for other family members to have their ashes placed inside the boulder in the future. Many people choose to scatter the ashes over one of the deceased’s favorite places like a lake, field or ocean. Sometimes they keep them in a beautiful urn inside the home and give out some of the ashes to close friends and family members in smaller vessels.

The obituary will need to be developed and we have created an Obituary Outline Worksheet to help guide you through this process. Be aware that the cost of an obituary can run into the hundreds of dollars depending upon the word count. Legacy.com is another site you can post the obituary on and then use social media to share the information.

There are many decisions that have to be made in a short period of time and we would be honored to help. Please contact us using the Contact Us form or call (502) 791-3398.