One of the cremation services offered in College Park, MD is to provide advice about comforting and supporting families who are grieving over the death of their loved one. No one ever wants to make grief worse because they do or say something that they shouldn’t have said or done.

Most of us are uncomfortable with speaking to bereaved families because we don’t want to cause them any more pain. However, we also tend to say or do things that we think will help or be okay, and they do not or are not.

Here is a quick guide to some things that you can do to avoid making grief worse for your family members and friends when they have lost a love one.

The pain of grief is fresh and it is right at the surface. Because of that, almost everything the grieving person hears gets filtered through the emotions they are experiencing. Therefore, you might say something that, of and by itself, is okay, but its effect on the grieving person is not good and they react in a way that surprises you.

It might surprise you to learn that grief and anger are very close to each other on the emotional spectrum. Therefore, if you say things that come across as trite, callous, rude, disrespectful, or dismissive, the grieving person may lash out at you in anger.

What are some of the things you might say – and have probably heard said to grieving people – that could cause someone who is grieving to experience even more grief, even though that is not what you mean to do?

Platitudes are something that could make someone’s grief worse. Platitudes are expressions that we say without thinking. They roll off our tongues, but they don’t have any real feeling or understanding behind them.

If you offer platitudes to someone who is grieving, they may get the impression that you don’t really care enough about them to feel what they’re feeling and to comfort them through empathy and compassion.

Here are some common examples of platitudes.

“All things work together for good.” The person that you are speaking to does not see the loss of their loved one as good. They do not feel good. They are not going to feel good for a long time and the death of their loved one is never going to be something they view as a good thing. This platitude can appear to dismissive of the pain they are experiencing.

“They are in a better place.” This platitude can make grief worse because it suggests that the person’s loved one was not in the best place they could be when they were alive. That can come across as an insult to the person you are trying to console.

“Everything will be okay.” This platitude may make grief worse because right now, for the person you are speaking to, everything is not okay. They lost somebody they love. That person is gone and that is not okay. This platitude can sound callous, because it can seem as though you do not see that the life of the person you are trying to comfort is currently anything but okay.

“Let me know if you need anything.” This is a common platitude that grieving people hear. While you may genuinely mean it when you say it, the person you are talking to has no idea what they need now or will need in the future.

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

After cremation services in Adelphi, MD, you have a lot of options for what you want to do with your loved one’s cremation remains. One option that you have is to permanently store the cremation remains of your loved one in a columbarium niche.

A columbarium is a structure that contains small vaults where urns with the cremation remains of loved ones can be stored. A columbarium may be a separate building in a cemetery, or it might be part of a cemetery mausoleum.

However, a columbarium is a final resting place for the cremation remains of loved ones, so it is treated with respect and honor just like any other final resting place.

Each vault (also known as a niche) in a columbarium is large enough to hold urn or cremation container with your loved one’s cremation remains, as well as a few small items that may have had special meaning to your loved one.

Some columbarium niches have a clear piece of glass (that lets you see the contents inside the niche) with memorial information for your loved one on a plate underneath the niche. Other columbarium niches have solid grave maker (with your loved one’s memorial information on them) covering them.

If you want your loved one’s cremation remains stored in a particular style of columbarium niche (clear glass or solid gravestone), your funeral home director will make sure that your wishes are honored.

Not all columbarium niches are the same size. Columbarium niches that are designed for a single urn are about nine cubic inches. However, some columbariums have bigger niches that can accommodate multiple (two or more) urns so that family members can be stored together.

Therefore, when you are thinking about a columbarium niche for your loved one who has died, the size you choose may be a factor if you and/or other family members want to be stored with them when you and/or they die.

Columbarium niches are a very good option with cremation services because they serve many practical purposes.

One practical purpose of a cremation niche for your loved one’s cremation remains is that friends and family have a fixed site where they can spend time with your loved one. When families keep urns in private homes, no one can spend time with that loved one unless they visit the home.

With a columbarium, however, friends and family can visit with your deceased loved one without having to plan a visit or ask for permission during the hours when the cemetery is open, and in that sense, it is similar to a grave site.

Another practical reason for choosing to store your loved one’s urn in a columbarium is space. In larger cities across America, cemeteries no longer have much space for burials. These cemeteries find it difficult to expand horizontally either because there is no available land or because the purchase price of available land is cost-prohibitive.

To counter this dilemma and to still meet the needs of the public, cemeteries are using the remaining space they have to expand vertically by building columbariums. This greatly increases the number of spots they have to offer as final resting places for deceased loved ones.

That is because columbariums inhabit a small amount of horizontal land space, but they can inhabit a lot of vertical air space.

Some columbariums have a small number of niches, while others have an almost infinite supply of niches. No matter how tall a columbarium is built, it is designed so that all the niches are easy to get to and so that there is private space at niches to allow families to have private time with their deceased loved ones.

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