Planning a home funeral
Preparation is key
The best thing you can do to prepare for someone's death is to talk about it. If families don't talk about a foreseeable death, they will be possums in the headlights when it arrives. Having a plan means considering the practicalities in detail, so that when the time comes, the people arranging everything are as ready as they can be - there is less scope for disagreement and confusion. Things get complicated when there is no plan, nobody knows what the dead person wanted and important documents cannot be found. An excellent video on "starting the conversation" about death can be viewed here.
There are many resources on the internet about end-of-life care, after-death care, and ways to conduct a home funeral. If you are planning one I strongly recommend that you watch the excellent educational videos produced by the Australian Home Funeral Alliance. They will give you a really good idea of what it can look like and ways you can plan for your own situation.
Documents are important
Documents become crucially important when someone loses their mental capacity, is approaching death, or has died. The links below go into considerable detail about some of the documents which are relevant:
- Advance Care Plans which are being promoted by the Ministry of Health and supported by organisations like Age Concern
- Enduring Power of Attorney for personal care and welfare
- Enduring Power of Attorney for property
- Your will, which appoints an executor to carry out your wishes upon your death.
You need to involve a lawyer when making a will and setting up Enduring Powers of Attorney. Dealing with someone's decline and death is much easier for the people doing it if these documents are in place. A memorandum of wishes can be attached to your will which states what you want or don't want to happen to you when you die.
Your executor and close friends or family members also need to know where to find the important legal documents which are going to be needed after your death - passports, birth certificates, marriage certificates, bank account details, insurance policies etc.
The NZ government End of Life Service, which is accessible by other government agencies, medical professionals etc, provides a centralised platform for recording your preferences regarding your end-of-life care and funeral arrangements. It also provides useful advice and links regarding what to do when someone dies. To its credit, the Department of Internal Affairs has recently improved this website by adding a tab on "Organising a funeral yourself".
The website Final Farewell sells a useful booklet which is designed to provide comprehensive support with all aspects of end of life and funeral planning. It is available in hard copy or electronically. The website also contains videos and links designed to increase awareness of the issues around planning for end of life.
End-of-life care
A sad fact of society today is that many people live alone and do not have family, friends or community to rely on as they approach their end of life. The desperately underfunded NZ Hospice service does wonderful work taking care of people who have a terminal illness. There is also a growing movement in NZ to develop community support networks around death, and the dying process. Organisations such as Compassionate Communities and NODA in Rotorua are also doing what they can to address the needs of the dying in their communities, but there is still a great deal of unmet need out there.
If you do not have a wide circle of friends and family, or they are not physically able to help with practical steps such as dressing and moving a body, you may still be able to carry out a home funeral with the help of a death doula. The Funeral Guides' Collective are in the process of forming a national organisation which will extend their existing model of guidance and support for home funerals to many more areas around the country. The Death Cafe movement may be another good starting point for developing community support around end of life care.
Dying is a once-in-a-lifetime-experience...
...so do it your way. A funeral (where the person's body is present) is usually held on the same day as the burial or cremation, but a memorial service (where the body is not present but their ashes or other memorabilia may be) can be held at any time afterwards. A gathering, small or large, gives people a chance to come together to share stories and emotions - and personalising this as much as possible is the whole point of having a home funeral.
If a ceremony of some kind feels right for the occasion, you can decide virtually every aspect of it. A gathering can be held in your house, at someone else's or anywhere which is suitable, inside or outdoors. It can be in any form which feels meaningful to the people involved. Decorate the casket, choose the playlist, and basically have everything the way you want it. I have heard of a casket being decorated on the kitchen table while the dead person was in it!
Some people also choose to have a "living wake" before they die. Why not have the party beforehand and hear what everyone has to say while you are still alive? An article on one person's experience of this can be found here.
A printable document to guide you through some of the practical issues to think about if you are planning a traditional funeral can be found here.