Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The Main Duties Of A Funeral Director

By Manny Cruise

A funeral director's main task is to make arrangements for the cremation or burial of the deceased and for the particular rituals that are held before the burial.

The important responsibilities of a funeral director include shifting the deceased to a mortuary, preparing the body for the memorial service, making arrangements for the services where people will remember and pay their last respects to the departed, and performing the final procedures on the corpse.

These responsibilities entail taking care of activities like deciding the place and timings of the funeral ceremonies, arranging for a car to shift the body, and writing obituaries and placing them in print or the digital media. Moreover, funeral directors also take care of things like flowers and bouquet arrangements for each service, anointing and clothing the deceased, arrangement for transportation of the family and relatives from one venue to another etc.

Besides these tasks, a funeral director also takes care of the critical paperwork that are a part of the official formalities following a person's death. He helps the relatives in procuring a death certificate. He also makes arrangements to settle any claims of insurance, and helps the family members in applying for seniors' burial benefits. He also takes care of problems related to clearance of pension and annuities of the deceased to the rightful beneficiary and helps the family to come up with a budget for the ceremony.

In addition, a funeral director has to liaise with a number of people so that he can do his jobs in a proper way. He has to interact with not just the coffin makers and flower sellers but also priests and doctors.

Finally, the funeral directors should be considerate too and should attempt to offer some comfort to the grieving family and try to bring them out of their grief over the death of a loved one. Some funeral directors neglect this responsibility, but it is an important part of their service nevertheless.

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