What does a Funeral Director do?
When you reach out to a funeral home in Westbury, NY, you will meet with the funeral director. To figure out if they are the right director for your family, it helps to understand what they do.
Broadly speaking, a funeral director arranges every part of a funeral, including the coffin, ceremony, burial, or cremation. But their services go beyond ensuring smooth execution of the funeral.
Below are some of the things a typical funeral director does for their clients.
They are there for you
A commonly ignored part of having a funeral director is that they make it easier for families to plan a funeral in the thick of their grief.
For those navigating the uncharted waters of funeral planning for the first time, making decisions during a period of emotional distress can be overwhelming.
Funeral directors are trained and have a lot of experience helping grieving families. As a result, they know when and how to offer comfort and counsel that enables you to host a funeral that allows everyone to grieve.
Funeral directors plan the day
A funeral director plans out the actual funeral through patient and detailed consultations with family and friends. When there are pre-arranged plans, they enable you to execute the deceased’s wishes.
Using their insights, you can decide on caskets, obituaries, urns, flowers, and arrangements for the service.
Funeral directors are also in charge of your loved one’s remains. This includes body preparation processes like embalming, makeup, and dressing for viewing, burial, or cremation.
They are also responsible for managing the transportation of bodies from the hospital or home to the funeral home and burial ground.
They handle responsibilities on the day
Funeral directors make sure your plans are executed smoothly on a funeral day. They set up the room for the service, including arranging flowers and other memorabilia.
They ensure anyone with duties, from pallbearers to the servers, knows their tasks and gets them done. If the funeral is in a funeral home, they direct people to the correct rooms and chapel for service.
On the day, it is also the funeral director’s job to close the casket and lead the funeral procession to the burial site wherever it may be.
They perform administrative tasks
An understated part of a funeral director’s job is their administrative tasks, which involve legal documents like death certificates and burial permits.
Also, they keep and manage schedules, ensuring various funerals, burials, or cremations events happen when they are supposed to. Unless you are exclusively using a private space, it is also their job to prevent scheduling overlaps with other services.
All of this occurs on top of keeping the funeral homes running, meeting individuals, couples, families, and pre-arranging funerals.
As this list shows, funeral directors are skilled professionals whose work alleviates many stressors for families and allows them to mourn peacefully.
Our Westbury, NY funeral home directors are exceedingly well-trained and experienced for this purpose. Whether you wish to pre-arrange or need funeral services for a departed loved one, visit us. We will help you throughout the process and ensure your final farewell goes smoothly.
