Monthly Archives: January 2020

cremation services offered in Greenbelt, MD

Planning a Celebration of Life

After cremations, which are among the cremation services offered in Greenbelt, MD, you will want to have a funeral or memorial service that honors and pays tribute to the life of your loved one who has died. This service gives you and your family, along with other family, friends, and acquaintances, an opportunity to express your farewells to your loved one, as well as to honor their memory and to find meaning in their death.

Funeral services or memorial services have traditionally been held before or after cremations to remember a loved one who has died. These types of services often follow a traditional format, although typically funeral services are much more formal than memorial services, that includes readings of poetry, prose, and/or scriptures, eulogies given by people who were close to the deceased and knew them well, spiritual comfort and encouragement, and musical selections.

These types of services are designed to help the bereaved family and those who knew the loved one to mourn collectively and to be able to offer and receive support and sympathy. Although that need never goes away, there are some types of services that have evolved in the last few decades that shift the focus of the services away death and toward life.

The reason for this is that some people feel like the traditional ceremonies in funeral services and memorial services are too impersonal. Because both funeral services and memorial services tend to be performed actively by a few people while the audience is passive and doesn’t participle, it can seem that most of the people who attend these types of services don’t get to express, in a meaning way, how they cared and felt about the person who died.

That has led to the rise of a service that is known as a celebration of life. Celebrations of life can be held in conjunction with funeral services or memorial services, or they can be the only service that is held to remember a loved one who has died.

Celebrations of life can be highly personalized in format and tone. They are specifically designed not to be sad or somber services. Celebrations of life are characterized by prolific storytelling, as memories of the deceased are shared by those who attend, and laughter and smiles. This is because celebrations of life are specifically geared toward remember the positive impact of the deceased on the world around them while they were living.

Planning a celebration of life involves much of the same preparation that planning a funeral service or a memorial service involves. Your funeral director will help guide you as you make the arrangements for this type of service to honor the memory of your loved one’s life.

There are several aspects you’ll need to take into consideration as you plan a celebration of life. You will need to decide the tone and the format. Many people simply gather and share food and memories of the deceased informally.

You’ll need to decide, if food is part of the celebration of life, whether you and your family will provide it personally, it will be catered, or it will be served in a restaurant. That will drive the location, date, and time of the celebration of life.

If there are special activities that you want to include in the celebration of life, then you will need to plan and organize those. Finally, you’ll want to decide how you want to notify people of the celebration of life, and whether you want to leave it open for public attendance or whether you want it to be a private event that only people you invite attend.

If you want more information about celebrations of life and cremation services offered in Greenbelt, MD, you can talk with our expert staff at Donald V. Borgwardt Funeral Home, P.A. You can drop by our funeral home at 4400 Powder Mill Rd., Beltsville, MD, 20705, or you can contact us today at (301) 937-1707.

funeral homes in Greenbelt, MD

Funeral Planning Guide for the Bereaved

As you’re planning funerals at funeral homes in Greenbelt, MD, you will find that trying to make many decisions while you’re grieving can be very difficult. However, your funeral director will help with every single aspect, so you will not have to go through the funeral planning process all by yourself.

One of the first decisions you will have to make is where you want to hold the funeral service. Traditionally, funeral services are held at the funeral home or in a place of worship. However, they can also be held somewhere that may have been a special or favorite place of your loved one. When you are choosing the location for the funeral service, you should consider whether it is an appropriate venue for the type of funeral service that you are planning to have.

The next decision that you’ll need to make is about the service itself. You’ll need to decide who will perform the service. While this is often a clergy member, you are free to choose anyone you would like to perform it.

If you want to include eulogies in the funeral service for your loved one, you need to identify the people that you would like to give eulogies, and then make sure they are willing to do them. Not everyone, even if they were very close to your deceased loved one, will be comfortable trying to put a eulogy together and/or speaking in front of people.

Please don’t be upset if someone you’d like to give a eulogy declines to do so. Respect that they cared deeply for your loved one, but they may not be able to express that in the public manner that a eulogy requires.

Another decision that you’ll need to make about the funeral service is whether you want to include a video tribute to your loved one, have a photo display that chronicles the life and achievements of your loved one, and music that your loved one may have liked or would have enjoyed.

None of these is required elements of a funeral service, although music of some sort is typically included in a funeral service, but these are elements that make the funeral service more personalized and will help mourners who attend learn more about what made your loved one so special.

An additional element in the funeral that will need to be decided is military honors. If your deceased loved one was a military veteran, they are entitled to military honors (they are also entitled to free burial, with a free gravestone or grave marker, in a national cemetery).

Military honors are performed by either a local National Guard unit or veterans organization. They include a United States flag, which is presented to the deceased’s family, and TAPs (which may be played live or which is recorded). You will need your loved one’s military separation orders (a copy of Form DD-214) to give to the funeral director, who will make the arrangements for military honors to be presented.

You will also need to decide whether you want an open or closed casket at the funeral service, as well as who you want to serve as pallbearers.

Finally, you’ll need to decide whether you want a public or private burial and whether or not you want a service performed at the grave site before your loved one is buried.

If you’d like to know more about planning funerals at funeral homes in Greenbelt, MD, you can talk with our knowledgeable team at Donald V. Borgwardt Funeral Home, P.A. You can visit our funeral home at 4400 Powder Mill Rd., Beltsville, MD, 20705, or you can call us today at (301) 937-1707.

cremation services offered in Beltsville, MD

Donating Your Body for Scientific Research

Before death and cremations as part of the cremation services offered in Beltsville, MD, you may decide that you want to donate your body for scientific research, in the hope that your donation may help people in the future, as researchers look for clues and solutions to many medical issues, problems, and diseases using whole body donations.

If you decide that you want to donate your body for scientific research, make sure that your family knows your wishes and be sure to write it in the final instructions for your life.

Next, you’ll want to do some legwork to find out how the body donation process works, what you need to do in advance, and to decide where you want your body to be donated. It’s important to remember that there may be some cases where your body is not eligible for donation, so make sure you have a backup plan in place for your family if that’s the case so that they will know what you want done.

The first part of donating your body for scientific research is finding the organization that you want to donate your body to. Most universities with medical schools have whole body donation programs. There are also some non-academic organizations that accept whole body donations. Look online to see what universities and organizations in your local area will take bodies donated for scientific research.

Once you find the academic and private organizations that you’re interested in donating your body to after you die, contact them and pre-register with them for whole body donation. The reason you want to have several possible places to donate your body to is that while one organization may not accept the donation, another one might.

Each organization that accepts whole body donations after death has different criteria that determines whether they can accept the donations. So, by pre-registering with several of them, you have a better possibility of one of them accepting your donation.

After you’ve pre-registered with the academic institutions and private organizations that you want to donate your body to, be sure to find out what your family and you are obligated for by participating in their program. Most body donation programs will pay for transportation from the funeral home to their location and for cremation after your body has been processed for research, but you need to make sure that is the case.

Be sure that your family knows about your wish to have your body donated to science. Your loved ones may have envisioned a funeral with a burial (which can still be done with your cremated remains) or some other type of funeral, and they may need some time to adjust to what you desire to do with your body after you die.

Make sure that all your legal paperwork includes your desire to have your body donated for scientific research after you die. This can be part of your advanced directive, your will, or your revocable trust.

Always make sure that you have a backup plan included in your final wishes in the event that the academic institutions and private organizations you’ve registered with can’t accept your body for their donation programs. This could include direct cremation or a funeral service followed by cremation.

If you want information about the cremation services offered in Beltsville, MD, you can talk with our expert staff at Donald V. Borgwardt Funeral Home, P.A. You can drop by our funeral home at 4400 Powder Mill Rd., Beltsville, MD, 20705, or you can contact us today at (301) 937-1707.

funeral homes in Beltsville, MD

What You Need to Do After a Funeral

After funerals at funeral homes in Beltsville, MD, the family of the deceased will need to take care of the final affairs of their loved one. This includes handling their estate (which will typically include a will or a revocable trust), taking care of their financial affairs, and handling administrative tasks.

The first thing that should be done is hand-writing and sending thank-you notes or cards (these are provided by the funeral home) to all the people who participated in the funeral (including pallbearers and clergy), people who sent plants and flowers, people who provided meals or other gifts during the funeral process, and people who made memorial donations in the name of your deceased loved one.

The next thing that will need to be done is to start handling estate matters. If your loved one had a will or revocable trust, then the person named as executor or trustee will be responsible for handling anything related to the estate.

They will be responsible for paying any outstanding debts, making claims for life insurance and other death benefits, distributing assets to heirs or beneficiaries, and notifying the Social Security Administration (if the deceased was retired) of the death.

The executor or trustee must also cancel credit cards, online shopping accounts, and they must manage financial accounts, including transferring banking and investment accounts into the name of the executor or trustee.

If your loved one had property that was mortgaged or that has outstanding loans on them, the odds are good that the executor, if they want to retain the property, will have to get a new mortgage and loans in their name to pay off the property. If they choose not to keep the property, then they can sell it to pay off anything that is owed on the property.

None of these things can be done without death certificates. When you meet with the funeral director to plan the funeral, they will ask you how many copies of the death certificate you will need. If your loved one’s estate is not large, 20 or 25 copies of the death certificate should be sufficient. If the estate is large and there are a lot of assets, you will need more copies of the death certificate.

If you get 20 or 25 copies of the death certificate and discover later that you need more, just let the funeral director know how many more copies you need and they will be able to get them for you.

If your deceased loved one was employed, you’ve already notified their employer that they are deceased. However, you should check with the employer’s human resources department to see if there are benefits available. These would include things like outstanding pay, personal time off pay, 401(k) accounts, life insurance, and profit-sharing plans.

You should notify fraternal, social, academic, and religious organizations that your loved one belonged to of their death. You should also notify the Department of Motor Vehicles so that all vehicle licenses and titles can be transferred to the estate.

Don’t forget about digital assets. These include things like social medial accounts, email accounts, and blog accounts (if your loved one had one). If you don’t plan on using or checking the email accounts, then you can save the messages and delete the accounts.

If you’d like to know more about what to do after funerals at funeral homes in Beltsville, MD, you can talk with our knowledgeable team at Donald V. Borgwardt Funeral Home, P.A. You can visit our funeral home at 4400 Powder Mill Rd., Beltsville, MD, 20705, or you can call us today at (301) 937-1707.