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.