Wednesday, June 06, 2007
PRE-ARRANGEMENTS
Last night Karon and I began—and nearly completed—something we have talked about doing for a long time. We pre-arranged our funeral details and pre-paid the expenses.
Death, and the arrangements regarding it, is a subject most people avoid. (Although the gentleman from the funeral home said more and more people are making pre-need arrangements. I think he said something like 5 million a year in the United States.)
We didn’t pre-arrange the details of the memorial services. But we did arrange for about everything else and covered the expenses by an irrevocable trust. A lot of the costs are guaranteed at today’s prices. Some things couldn’t be guaranteed. But for those things we hopefully included enough money in the Trust so that about all either one of us (or our children) has to do is to arrange the memorial service, pay the preacher and write the obituary. We’ll leave obituary details with the funeral director and we’ll write memorial service ideas, too. Oh yes, the grave marker will be extra also.
In a couple of weeks we’ll finish the process by going with our representative from the funeral home to select a grave site at the cemetery of our choice.
It will be good to have this whole process completed. It gives us peace of mind knowing we have made rational, logical decisions rather than emotional ones in the stress of the grieving process. It also gives us peace of mind knowing our wishes will be carried out and that our children and estate will not be burdened with unexpected or unplanned expenses.
We are grateful that we had a Believer in Christ guiding us in this process. We were all on the “same page” and we didn’t have to convince him that we knew what we were doing. He wasn’t “pushy” and was very helpful.
Yes, this is a good thing.
posted by jim 11:17 PM 0 comments
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