good evening and welcome to like ahead right here on PBS Fort Wayne.

>> The name of our show is like ahead there's a reason for that .

We try to give you education and information on different topics and different one every week to help you when you have to make choices for your LIFE Ahead.

Well, tonight our topic is going to be funerals but that's a choice a lot of people have to make whether it's you making plans for your parents or your grandpa parents or and this is one of the things we're really going to get into tonight preplanning your own funeral.

That's certainly a big trend, if you will right now and there are a lot of good reasons for that and I have two gentlemen here with me tonight to talk about that and to answer your questions.

The phone number (969) 27 twenty is appearing on the bottom of the screen that'll be there periodically throughout the show and you can give us a call any time with any questions you have our phone operator will be right there to take your question if you'd like to talk to us live on the air, I bet these guys would like that that way if they have a question back, you're right there on the phone otherwise you can give the phone operator your question and she'll type it up and send it out here to me in the studio.

>> That sounds good.

Yes, sure.

>> We don't have any other rules.

We're pretty easy going here on life and we like that.

OK, all right.

First of all, I'd like for you to meet Casey Miller.

Casey is the executive director of Divine Mercy here in the Fort Wayne area and they have some new things to talk about and Nate Hoffler is saying that right close enough.

>> OK. All right.

Close enough.

OK, Nate, we'll just call you.

That's good.

Nate handles a lot of the preplanning.

He's the manager of that area and I said that I think that preplanning is becoming a pretty popular print trend, if you will.

>> Would you say that's right, Casey?

Absolutely it is and I'll let Nate speak to that as well.

But there's so much relief that comes to the family when somebody is preplan their funeral with us or another funeral home.

It doesn't matter.

But taking control of one's decision making and removing that burden from other family members or a spouse is is huge.

>> It really is needed.

You'd like to say and now you would meet with somebody that wanted to plan their own funeral or somebody in their family.

>> Yeah.

Typically the role that I have or that I've had throughout my career has been meeting with families to help them, you know, just iron out kind of all the rough spots, get them information about what's involved, have them have the ability to do you know, their question and answer sessions with me about, you know, what's involved, what do I need to be prepared for ?

What do I need to make sure my kids know?

What do I need to make sure that I have in here and and really just that's like a road map really for a time when one family member is not going to be there, you know, to give advice and typically we're talking about maybe parents making arrangements of course and then their children having to come in and at the time of death and then at that time what we can do is again we just we lay out all of the instructions that that family member has left for them.

So in other words, it really helps them focus on the task at hand.

And one of the things that we say a lot in is when someone passes away it's really a time for people to slow down and not speed through this event.

And so when when things are done ahead of time as opposed to if somebody has an unexpected death in their family and they have to come in and start from scratch, do everything, make all the decisions.

>> Yeah, they can it basically is they come in, the family comes in and we show them the gift that's been left by their family member and it is a gift like that.

>> Yeah, it is a gift that you're giving yes.

>> To your family.

It's a gift that might be a little hard to talk about.

You know, when that's about it to you because you know, I'm sure that maybe many of you feel the same way that it's kind of kind of a touchy topic in people whether it's talking about funeral planning or estate planning or so many topics even health they don't want to talk about because it's it means facing mortality.

Well, you know, Sandy , I would add to that that when people come in to our funeral home and make these arrangements, the professionalism of the people that they're going to meet with, they make the process so easy.

> Yeah.

And it's so good.

It's not awkward.

And what we do is we document everything that is discussed so that when the when the family needs our help at Divine Mercy we know exactly what to do.

It's all been written down has been described the selections have been made in prefunded.

>> So OK so that's the typical thing that a person would make their choices of what they want for their funeral or their spouses or whatever and go ahead and pay for that package.

>> Exactly.

And the whole point being so that when the family needs our help everything's been taken care of financial and it's not a burden to the family.

>> OK, what happens Casey, I'll ask you this what happens if I say dad has visited with made and made all of his his plans are his preferences and paid for everything but he doesn't pass away for four or five more years.

>> Meanwhile, choices have changed.

>> The financial financial planning has changed.

>> Do you have to pay more?

No, that's the beauty of it.

If that person lives twenty more years we will not ask that family for more money.

So you lock in the prices at that particular time once you make that that those choices and that's why we encourage families to prepay because you lock it in as prices go up in the future no longer affect and they probably will I mean what doesn't correct?

>> Well, what about the funeral home itself?

>> What if you had made these arrangements through some funeral home and preplanned everything and paid for it in advance but then that funeral home closes for one reason or other.

>> What happens now?

Well, if it's been a properly executed and properly set up burial trust or prepaid funeral.

Yeah, one of the nice things about the way those are set up is that they're totally transferable which just means that the money or that funeral goes where you go and that's one of the things that has to be part of that for it to be properly executed is they have to have the ability we don't hold the money.

>> So it tells that like the pastor should say.

Yeah, yeah.

And so the beauty of that is regardless of what happens to the funeral home that you set things up with and if you change your mind down the road and your kids have moved away and it comes to that point in your life where you know all the kids and the grandkids are somewhere else and they're on the phone and they say hey, we would like you guys, you know, come here that goes with you to wherever you go your wishes go all of it goes with you whether it's in Indiana or North Korea where that's wonderful or whether you're there right or not there anymore and it's really set up that way.

>> So people have choices so that they're not tied into one entity if they prefer not to be there at some point in time.

>> What if you want to make changes to that package and do what different music or oh yeah.

>> Or different things.

Can you still do that for sure ?

>> What we encourage families to do once they've made these arrangements secured everything is to revisit it every five years just to be a good idea and if there's been any changes, maybe more grandchildren have been added to the family this kind of thing we can update our records so it's very easy to do.

>> Do people normally make all their choices when they come and we have a sit down meeting we try that we try to you know, I always tell the family what we're going to do today is we're going to sit down and we're going to go through this as if you were going to need tomorrow, OK?

>> And so because there are a lot of times families are like well I don't know what I want to do with this or I don't know what I want to do about that.

>> So yeah, really the most effective way for us to be able to help a family is to say well let's pretend or what if death had occurred yesterday for one of you, what would you be doing today and what decisions would you make?

That big difference is when there's when they're there together doing it, they get to bounce these things off of each other as opposed if death had occurred, there's only one person there may be making all those arrangements.

So we really do it in a way or in a fashion so that we try to create some urgency and help them solidify the decisions based on today.

And to your point, if things change luckily you know they have ten or twenty years to think through those things and if it wasn't perfect or it's not perfect for them anymore, then there's certainly things they can change.

>> OK, all right.

So you're covering most yeah.

All possibilities trying to you know what?

>> We can have some beautiful pictures of Divine Mercy I bet I want to share with all of you we'll just let those photographs go on throughout our conversation here just to give you a feeling of what we're looking at here.

>> OK, this is the Divine Mercy.

>> This is the nativity scene that we had commissioned an artist by the name of Chris Body and his studio to create for the cemetery for Catholic Cemetery.

It's located just adjacent to the entry of the funeral home and it creates a really peaceful setting of the Holy Family during the Christmas season.

We place that during November, December and January.

>> What you're seeing right now are columbarium for those families that prefer cremation .

>> Yeah, and I want to get into cremation too.

Is that something people preplanned, Nate?

Oh, absolutely.

It doesn't matter what your wishes are ground burial or cremations just it's the weird words going to sound a little funny but dispositioned so in other words instead of being put into the ground full body casket, a cremation is an alternative to that.

So where we would have the cremated body and then that would be either put into a columbarium above ground or a niche space or buried in the ground, you know, just as a full body would be.

But just the cremated form is it often that people choose to take the cremated remains with them?

>> Sometimes, yeah.

But typically there's always that thing of like what do you do with those on the mantle?

>> Yeah, we would encourage families to have a final resting place.

>> You know you see these things on the news every once in a while or someboy will buy a car or they'll move into a home and they'll find something in the trunk of the car in the closet and oh my gosh, I don't know what this is and they open it up and it ends up being grandma someone's loved one.

And so that's worst case scenario.

We certainly don't want that to have to be part of that experience for a family.

So ultimately having a final resting place is really important.

>> Now this sounds like again we're going to be talking about some rather bold things here concerning the topic here of funerals, cremation.

>> What kind of choices are there?

I mean you always see like an urn.

>> Is that the only choice?

No, no.

You want to know and what we encourage families to do is to still have that visitation usually two to four and six to eight in the evening for family and friends to remember even if you even if even a body is going to be cremated after the service in many cases there will still be a funeral mass or a funeral service at the funeral home and then placement of the cremated body and a final resting place like the buried in the ground or a cremation niche whether it be granite front or glass front.

And the nice thing about Catholic cemeteries we have numerous options for the cremation customer not just one or two all at different price points that you so you can select exactly what you want for what you can afford.

But what we see I think Nate alluded to this a little bit too is that cremation just follows the typical service because that's what that person wants.

They don't want full body burial and in a cemetery but they want a cremation smaller niche still the family can come and visit the cemetery for the birthdays, the anniversaries, Christmas, the holidays and so it's simply a place to remember.

>> I get that I get that Neek in our conversation before the show started you've been in this business now several decades.

>> Almost thirty five years a long time.

Yeah it is.

Makes me feel old no not at all.

>> That's not what I waited for .

Oh what are changes you have seen what are the most significant and to your point I think cremation is the biggest change that we've seen typic when I when I first started in the funeral business cremation or direct cremation was very rare maybe less than ten five percent of the families and now cremation is probably close to 50 percent of yeah really good high but typically in most families would choose to as Casey said, have what would look like a traditional funeral service.

>> The only thing that would be different would be cremation nstead of , you know, going full body into the ground one of the things that a lots- of people might be a little bit confuse about or maybe uncertain about is that when you are cremated you can still have everything else.

>> And that's one of the things that a lot of times that when I meet with families they don't realize that.

But yeah, you can you can have everything is just like it was to be grounded.

>> You could still have like the museum.

Yes.

Yes.

A certain sermon or yeah.

>> By your choice.

Yeah.

And if they want to go to the church with the full body it's everything is the same exact thing.

>> So is it typical Casey that somebody might choose to have a full body and do a service then get cremated the next day?

>> Yes, absolutely.

And that's the whole thing about the visitation is it begins the process of healing.

That's what the funeral service is all about.

Life is going to be different for the survivors after that.

Sure.

When I pass away things are going to be different.

But for my two kids, my friends I wife so there's going to be a change.

But that funeral process begins the healing process so that they can grieve and attend that visitation and receive friends and feel the love that is exuded to that family because of the death that they are that they encountered.

>> We looked at some photographs that a little bit ago but we also have a brief video we'd like to share with you as well in that case, see if there's anything you'd like to share to describe as we're looking at this video.

>> Please do.

Well, this is the original Divine Mercy Funeral Home which was constructed correctly open November 2nd twenty seventeen and this is the construction of our new Divine Mercy Funeral Home at Cedar Canyon, Alabama Road, the first facility has been so well received by the Fort Link community and not just Catholics it's non-cash the like OK so that we we have found it necessary to construct the second funeral home which is going to open in November of this year just in a few months.

>> So it's we're U.S. non-denominational non to terms absolutely divine mercy will help anybody in need.

OK, all right.

Good to know.

OK, let's go back to you Nate.

You're the pre planner here.

>> Let's go through if you will, the choices people have to make when they come in to see you.

>> Do they have to have all these choices made before they come?

Is it one meeting or if they say gee, I don't know, I want to go home, it can be Malzone about it?

>> Yeah, it can be multiple.

Typically when a family comes they they are looking for guidance.

They may have some construct of what they think the arrangements for them might look like but they really do rely on the adviser to get like the specifics and just maybe reaffirm some things in their minds like if they're if they think they want to have you know, like what's the I have a lot of families that want to know from A from A to Z when I pass away what happens, you know, here here and here.

And so a lot of it is educating the families on what that process looks like.

They'll be asked, you know, to come into the funeral home for , you know, finalizing all the arrangements and then what that looks like.

>> And then a lot of times it's just getting ideas for cost they want to process, you know, and that's the beauty of the pre planning process is you don't have to make any decisions that day.

>> Yeah.

You can come in and get all the information that you're looking for and you have time to process it.

And if there are doubts on your end about or maybe some things that you just really weren't certain about if you want it or not, you have a chance to go home and talk about them, talk to your kids if you want.

Do and then but I will say most of the time your kids are going to say one or two things mom or dad .

I want to I don't want to I don't want to talk about it or you're never going to die.

>> So I'm not going to worry about you know so it's that I hear that so yeah it's not the older person the parent of a grandparent that is hesitant to talk about their mortality.

>> It's the younger kids that like I don't want to talk about you know, we can talk about that next decade or ten years from now or why do you think that is what your experience?

>> I think it's a protective thing, you know, for the kids they they're they're trying to tell the mom and dad , hey, don't worry about it.

>> We'll take care of it because we don't want you to have to worry about it.

>> But the reality of that is none of us have been promised tomorrow.

So your children haven't either.

So it's really important to have those things talked about if they if they can't and if they're unwilling to talk about families come in and this happens a lot too where they come in and make the arrangements they go tell the kids.

>> But you know, Nate, what I see in reality is after somebody has made the prearrangement and that person passes away and they need our help over overwhelmingly the kids will say I'm so glad I did this.

>> Yeah, he made the selections.

He selected exactly what he went.

We didn't have to do it.

I had no idea Dad would want that song played, that kind of thing.

So we see that overwhelmingly and so it's a gift to a family.

It truly is when you come in and you do that and again the individuals that are at Divine Mercy that help these families make the process so easy, I think everybody needs to know that it's not all doom and gloom.

>> It's usually a cheerful conversation conversation.

Right.

You want a celebration of life?

Exactly.

Yeah, right.

>> And I hear what you're saying too about the relief that it gives, you know, two fold or three fold even.

But you know, two of the major reasons for preplanning might be again if you're it relieves your kids of having to make the choices right away that first week after you passed away, you know they're in shock perhaps or they're grieving and they don't want to talk about flowers and you know, music and stuff like that.

>> I mean they they're dealing with their own stuff and making contacts with relatives and whatever.

>> And secondly, I would say it takes them off the hook if you will.

If somebody criticizes something that happened at the funeral, they can say that's what dad wanted.

>> We followed his directions, correct?

Yeah.

And that comes into play especially more today with blended families.

So if there's a husband and wife that have already had children from other marriages to your point it relieves the finger pointing.

>> Well, you know, when someone passed away they can easily just say well those were his or her decisions.

You know, no one was coercing them into doing something they didn't want to do.

And so it does it separates the you know, the families to to an extent where to your point there's no finger pointing anymore.

>> It's those reversed his or her decisions.

Right.

Right.

And I hear that a lot when we have legal shows here unlike the head which we do often and we're talking about estate planning or you know, if somebody has to go into a care facility of some sort and the kids are maybe experiencing guilt over what they're choosing for their parents and if their parents decided beforehand and they in that seems to be a new trend now that the older generation will go and visit different nursing facilities or rehab centers and then they can tell their kids, OK, here's where I want you to put me if you will.

I know that sounds terrible but again then it becomes their choice.

>> Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, I'm going to ask you this case if you've been in funeral planning business for a long time as well, what is the job of the funeral home no matter what type of service?

>> OK, the child of the funeral home and there's several aspects I'm not going to be able to cover at all.

>> No.

This short meeting that initialized place the level one in our care, OK, and then within a very short period of time after that we'll meet with the family and if it's been prearranged like we would hope it had been everything's in writing.

It makes our job so much easier because we know exactly what the family wants.

But if there is a case where there has not been a prior arrangement that it's time to meet with the next of kin, usually the surviving spouse, the children and sit down and make those selections at that time and we have a wonderful group of funeral directors that do just that make the pain, make it as painless as possible and then we carry out the wishes exactly of that family if they want to have visitation we'll arrange for that next day the mass will be at St. Jude's Catholic Church will arrange any other clergy that's involved so it doesn't have to deal with that.

>> Fill out all the necessary legal requirements for when the death occurs with this with the board of health, things like that.

We'll post the obituary with the Fort Wayne newspapers.

Just take care of a whole myriad of details for the family so they don't have to do it again.

The funeral director is that bridge so that that family can begin to grieve and go through the grief recovery which is very, very important so that the family doesn't have to worry about those details.

>> So in a nutshell that's basically it and then of course arrange for burial.

>> We think that's very important as well.

OK, in kind of continuing this this topic, if you will, in the preplanning stage, do people at that point have to have like their obituary written in advance or what do they need to tell you?

>> We gather all this statistical and biographical information that the family's going to need to construct most of that information.

>> So but there are a lot of families who will pre write their obituaries and want them to have them in their file and that's a really good that's a really nice gift too.

So the families have they have a really good outline and there may be a grandchild or great grandchild or something else that might need to be added.

But you know, the people take it they can take it as far as they want as far as the planning part of it goes.

>> You mentioned, Casey, that the funeral home would take care of notifying the newspaper, have it put in the newspaper and again that's the family's choice of whether they want three lines about grandpa.

>> That's correct.

Five inches there is a charge per line for the obituary but the Fort Wayne newspapers will place a very, very small inexpensive funeral notice in the newspaper on the obituary page just basically stating the name and then the name of the funeral home, the name of the decedent in the name of the funeral so you can go on our website and take a look at the full obituary there's no charge for OK, that makes good sense.

>> OK, we have a quick phone call here from Jane.

She said How soon can a cremation happen before a memorial service?

>> You want to answer that one quickly?

>> We only have a minute.

It has to be a minimum of 48 hours but ultimately it's dictated on when we get the sign death certificate back from the doctor and it will always you know, typically it's going to be longer than 48 hours.

>> So I depending on where someone passes away or what the cause of death but really we can't do much until we get the death certificate back from the doctor.

>> But it has to be a minimum of 48 hours and I'd like to add to that divine mercy we have our own crematory so your loved one never leaves our care and so it gives them some life , a lot of flexibility and more control over scheduling the cremation for the family so that if they want to have a memorial service and such and such and date we can arrange for that.

>> Oh, you you've taught talked a lot here just in this last half hour.

Casey, thank you so much for waiting for our viewers here.

>> I learned a lot and I'm sure that there's even more we could talk about at another time to expand on this topic.

Meanwhile, we appreciate our guest here tonight.

We appreciate you as well for watching us here on LIFE Ahead and I'll see you next Wednesday night right here at seven thirty.

Good night