If You Don’t Know Where You’re Going, How Will You Know When You Get There?
By Mark Krause

Suppose you decide to take a trip. You load the family in the care and start driving. Sooner or later probable miles from home, you discover that you have no idea where you’re headed. You don’t have a destination…and you don’t even have a map.
Of course, you wouldn’t do that, because you understand the value of defining a goal, no matter what it is, and making a plan to accomplish it. If you try to build a house without a blueprint, you wind up with a pretty odd house.
We plan our vacations, our careers (sometimes), and our investments. We plan for the education of our children, and we plan for the day we don’t have to work anymore. Yet, oddly enough, there’s one critical plan that most of us never make.
We don’t plan for our funerals. Strange, when you think about it. We could plan for a vacation and never go…plan an investment that never happens… but we can’t bring ourselves to plan the one event we know is going to happen…an event we know will cause disruption, sorrow and possibly unanticipated expense for those we leave behind. Yes, it’s difficult to think about death, and especially difficult to think about one’s own passing. But we promise that pre-planning your funeral is the most loving, compassionate, considerate thing you can do for the ones you love.
There are many good reasons to pre-plan your funeral and no good reason not to. First, let’s consider the emotional aspect. During a time of grief and loss, people are not prepared to make complex arrangements. When you pre-plan, you spare your family the burden and stress of having to make many decisions at the worst possible time. All they will have to do is make one telephone call.
Then, there are practical reasons. When you discuss your preferences with our pre-need counselor, you can specify exactly the type of service you want, down to the last detail. And you can consider you choices in privacy at your leisure, with no pressure of hurry. Today’s contemporary funeral traditions offer many dignified, touching forms of commemoration. Do you know what they are? If not, meet with a funeral director or a pre-planning counselor. They will note all your decisions and keep the information on file at no charge, so your family won’t have to worry about it later.
For even more peace of mind, some may consider pre-paying their funeral. Many funeral homes offer installment plans, where the funds you pay are placed in a trust and protected by law. Prepayment means your prices are guaranteed against future cost increases, and it means your family won’t be faced with expenses they didn’t expect. Even if you think you may live somewhere else in the future, the plans and funds are always yours and portable to whatever funeral home you desire.
Perhaps it’s time to think about the one thing we don’t like to think about. It’s not too late to help your family with many difficult decisions. But someday, it might be.