Monthly Archives: September 2020

cremation services in College Park, MD

Erroneous Beliefs about Grief

One of the cremation services offered in College Park, MD is access to grief resources after the death of a loved one. Grief is part of the journey you will have to travel when someone whom you love dies.

Your grief will not be exactly like anyone else’s grief for your loved one. Our relationships with those we love are personal and individual, and the things that we grieve about when they are gone reflect that uniqueness and individualization.

It’s important to remember that grief is a response to loss. While we typically think of grief as being specific to the death of a loved one, the reality is that we can experience grief over any type of loss.

These losses may not be the death of a person, but they are the death of something. Losses like this can including being laid off or terminated from a job, not getting a job that we really wanted, moving away from a place we love to a new city (perhaps because of a new job), breaking up a long-term relationship (married or not married), and losing a close friendship because of time, distance, or an unresolvable difference.

Loss can come at many places and in many ways in our lives and they can trigger feelings of grief. If these kinds of losses come on the heels of the death of someone you love, they can intensify your grief until it can seem as though grief is swallowing you up.

You may, in an attempt to stem this overload of grief, be more susceptible to some of the erroneous beliefs about grief.

One of these erroneous beliefs about grief is that if you ignore the pain of grief, then it will disappear faster. The reality is that you more you try to ignore the pain you are feeling from grieving or the more you do to try to distract yourself from it, the longer you will actually have to grieve.

The painful part of grieving will not go away until you face the emotions and feelings of grief and deal with them. This can be unpleasant at times. It can be confusing at times. It can be very unsettling at times.

However, all of this is a normal part of the grieving process, and ignoring it or trying to distract yourself from it will only make it last longer and make it much worse.

Another erroneous belief about grief is that you are truly grieving the death of your loved one if you cry about it. Crying is good for you (although if you cry long enough, you may have a headache and swollen eyes that only sleep will take away), but crying is just one way to express the emotions of grief.

Don’t fall into the trap of believing someone – or even you – is not grieving deeply just because they – or you – aren’t crying a lot. There are many ways to process grief without any external manifestation of it.

The need to be emotionally strong after the death of a loved one is another erroneous belief about grief. This one may be harder for you to navigate through because this erroneous belief is projected on us by society.

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We are expected to return to our normal lives shortly after the death of our loved ones and function as though nothing traumatic has happened to us. We are expected to meet or exceed all the expectations of us as well, or better, than we did before our loved one’s death.

However, pretending to be strong when you are emotionally shattered inside means delaying grief. While you may be able to do this for a while (perhaps even years), eventually a day of reckoning comes when you can no longer hold off the grief. It will be stronger, more intense, and likely will take make longer to work through.

If you need information about the cremation services offered in College Park, MD, you can talk with our expert staff at Donald V. Borgwardt Funeral Home, P.A.

funeral homes in College Park, MD

How Funeral Homes Help You in Loss

Making arrangements for funerals at funeral homes in College Park, MD is never easy after the death of a loved one. However, funeral homes play a very important role in guiding you through the funeral process and making sure that you and your family have the support and comfort you need as you prepare to say goodbye to your loved one.

One of the things that funeral homes provide is a customized funeral experience. Perhaps your loved one specified the type of funeral service they wanted to have and provided all the details so that all you have to do is convey their wishes to the funeral home.

Funeral homes are able to accommodate just about any type of funeral service that can be imagined and they can ensure that every detail of the funeral meets the wishes of your deceased loved one.

If your loved one did not leave any instructions about the type of funeral they wanted, the funeral home will help you and your family in putting together a funeral that will honor and respect the memory of your loved one.

Funeral homes are also a safe place to grieve after the death of a loved one. Funeral directors often become funeral directors because they want to be able to comfort and support people in their loss. They will openly talk with you about how you are feeling, and they will reassure you, perhaps in the midst of many tears, that grieving is normal and acceptable.

Funeral homes deal with death and grief continuously. They know how to make you and you family comfortable with your grief. You will notice when you meet with the funeral director that the setting is warm and even your smallest needs, such as tissues to dry your eyes and blow your nose when you are crying, are attended to.

Funeral homes are full of compassionate people who genuinely want to help you and your family as you plan the funeral of your loved one and as you go through all the things that must be done when your loved one dies. You will find each person you deal with to be kind and responsive.

Support after the death of a loved one is another way that funeral homes help you in loss. The funeral home staff knows how to offer you the assurance and guidance you need as you make funeral arrangements and they also have ways to support you (such as access to grief resources, for example) after the funeral of your loved one.

You can count on the funeral home every step of the way. While you may falter at times, the funeral home will not, and they will be there to hold you up and to make sure the funeral for your loved one is flawless.

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The funeral home also offers you help in your loss by being the liaison and facilitator for much of what happens after the death of your loved one. The funeral director will reach out, for example, to make arrangements with all the parties involved in a funeral.

This will include coordination with the cemetery where your loved one will be buried, arranging special services, such as military honors, with local veterans’ organizations, handling funeral flowers in the funeral home and at the grave site, and taking care of getting death certificates.

If you’d like to know more about planning funerals at funeral homes in College Park, MD, you can talk with our knowledgeable team at Donald V. Borgwardt Funeral Home, P.A.

cremation services are offered in Adelphi, MD

Heart Disease and Death

While cremation services are offered in Adelphi, MD, we hope we don’t have to provide them for you or any of your family members for a long time. However, the American lifestyle is a major factor in the development of heart disease, and heart disease is the top cause of deaths in the United States.

Two-thirds of heart-related deaths are attributable to coronary heart disease; the other one-third of heart-related deaths are the result of congestive heart failure, rheumatic heart disease, congenital heart disease, and pulmonary heart disease.

Heart disease can strike at any time, and many people die prematurely from heart disease. However, in most cases, heart disease is preventable.

Americans do a lot of talking about healthy lifestyles. Advertising is full of health-related messages that portray Americans exercising a lot, eating healthy diets, and getting quality sleep (all things that are related to heart health).

However, in reality, most Americans have a very unhealthy lifestyle. Our lives have become so fast-paced and so filled up that we literally don’t have time to exercise regularly. We could make the time, but that would require giving up something else, and most Americans aren’t willing to make that sacrifice.

Exercise is good for the heart. If we can get 150 minutes of exercise – whether that consists of vigorous walks around the neighborhood, riding our bikes with our children, or gardening and doing yardwork (using, for example, a push mower instead of a riding mower to do the grass) – each week, we can strength our hearts (the heart is a muscle) and we can increase its effectiveness and efficiency in pumping blood throughout our bodies.

Our busy lifestyles also mean that we eat, in most cases, very poorly. Until the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, many Americans either ate highly-processed foods, fast food, or food prepared in restaurants.

The excuse for our poor diets has always been that we don’t have enough time to shop for fresh foods and then to prepare them at home. Again, Americans have the time, but it requires them to eliminate something else they’d rather do.

Coronary heart disease is often a direct result of poor diets. The coronary arteries get clogged up with plaque, slowing or eliminating (in some cases) blood flowing to the heart. Most people suffer a heart attack before they are diagnosed with coronary heart disease.

If they survive, stents are placed in the arteries to reopen them for effective blood flow to the heart. In severe blockages, bypasses may be performed to get enough blood flowing to the heart.

Most people in the United States don’t get enough sleep, and when they do sleep, they sleep poorly. One reason is because of our busyness. The most restorative sleep (and the one that cleans out brain toxins, such as tau and beta amyloids, which are key proteins involved in the development of Alzheimer’s Disease) we can get is deep sleep.

However, our busyness creates stress in our lives and stress disrupts our sleep. We either toss and turn much of the time we are supposed to be sleeping (restless sleep), we’re wide awake several times when we go to sleep, or we spend a lot of time in REM sleep (where dreams occur) trying to work through the stress of our waking hours.

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The result is very little sleep and very poor quality sleep. This in turn places stress on the heart and can lead to the development of heart disease.

If you need information about cremation services offered in Adelphi, MD, you can talk with our expert staff at Donald V. Borgwardt Funeral Home, P.A.

funeral homes in Adelphi, MD

How Many Americans Feel about Death

You may be uncomfortable attending funerals at funeral homes in Adelphi, MD, because death is a subject that you try to avoid thinking about, talking about, or having to deal with in any kind of tangible terms.

You are not alone. Many Americans have a denial mindset when it comes to death. This is exemplified by the fact that many people in the United States don’t have basic end-of-life documents like medical powers of attorney, living wills, or wills.

Creating end-of-life documents means thinking about your own mortality. It means having to come face-to-face with the reality that one day you will die and be no more. People in the United States are very uncomfortable with facing the truth about death being the end result of life.

Our denial of death is also seen in the American approach to medicine. Advances in medicine have made extending our lives a natural way of living, and many people will do anything to put off death, even if those life-saving measures ultimately diminish the quality of their lives.

Most Americans take a lot of medications to stave off death. These medicines attempt to regulate blood pressure, keep blood sugar under control, protect the heart, and keep depression and anxiety in control.

Additionally, many people in the United States also take supplements or use things like essential oils that hold out unsubstantiated promises of longer life with fewer ailments and diseases that can threaten lives.

Most of the medicines have serious side effects, and often the cure is worse than the ailment or problem it is supposed to treat. A good example of this is Taxotere, a chemotherapy drug that has been commonly used in the United States to treat metastatic breast cancer for several decades.

While Taxotere was somewhat effect in treating Stage IV breast cancer, it had some debilitating side effects that the drug manufacturer knew about but didn’t disclose. If the drug manufacturer had disclosed the side effects, they may not have gotten FDA approval for Taxotere.

However, because drug manufacturing is very profitable, the company was more interested in getting their patented drug on the market than they were in the overall health of the people who would be treated with the drug.

Had the side effects of Taxotere been disclosed, some of the worst of them could have been treated quickly and easily, with no long-term harm to the patients.

This is but one example of how the attempt to prolong life actually, in the end, destroyed the quality of life.

Surgical procedures to extend life where death will be inevitable without them are also routinely done in the United States, and the outcomes are often not as good as the patients and their families had hoped.

Americans routinely die during these life-saving medical procedures, especially those involving the heart or the brain. If they don’t die, it is not uncommon for serious health emergencies, such as strokes or aneurysms to occur shortly after the surgeries.

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If the strokes or aneurysms aren’t fatal, the patients are, at a minimum, disabled temporarily or, in the worst cases, permanently. These disabilities may include paralysis, speech defects, and brain damage.

We as Americans should consider how we see death and what that is costing us in terms of our health, our happiness, and the quality of life that we all desire.

If you’d like to know about planning funerals at funeral homes in Adelphi, MD, you can talk with our knowledgeable team at Donald V. Borgwardt Funeral Home, P.A.