Services Offered
Document Preparation
Confidential and thorough assistance assessing what paperwork is needed for your circumstances, as well as assistance preparing documents.
Funerary Planning
There is a lot of planning that goes into preparing a funeral, everything from last rites to where the body finally rests and so many steps in between. A majority of this planning can be done well in advance and at time of death set into motion by a phone call or two, rather than the all too common need to make plans at the time of death, when we are often overwhelmed by emotion and exhaustion.
Home Death Planning
Home deaths are a special way to honor the dying. It allows a person to stay in a familiar setting at a time that can be quite frightening. There are some legal and logistical considerations to make in this decision, but it can be an incredible option for those who want to be in a familiar and comfortable space.
Honoring Ceremony Planning
Celebration of life, wake, living memorial. There are so many ways to say goodbye collectively to the person we love. In many circumstances, the individual dying has an opportunity to be a part of the planning, if it is done in advance. In some circumstances, they may even want to be present to say their own goodbyes. This is an opportunity to prepare some or all of the elements that will honor them.
Honoring Rituals
Assistance designing personal ways of honoring the individual. This can be anything from setting up a room for them in a manner they would feel safe and comfortable, to teaching/leading candle vigils and so many other options, depending on spiritual practice preferences.
Bedside Vigil
This is a sacred time in a person's life journey. Being present as a person walks through this life's door into the next, it is a gift for us the living, to be present in this space. It can be frightening if we have not experienced it before, watching a person we love leave their body. Our goal is to prepare you for this moment, to give you tools to be present, if that is your wish. To help you understand the process the body is going through in these final hours, to help you find peace with this final step, so you can help the one you love find peace as well. We all come to this part of the journey with our own experiences, fears, expectations, but the goal is to lay all of those things at the physical door to help the person we love walk through their unseen door feeling free and loved and held as they go.
After Death Body care
For those who choose a home death, and for some who choose to be present wherever their loved one dies, there is a process to cleaning the body after death. This can be a beautiful way to say goodbye and is a ritual of its own. For those interested, we offer instruction at whatever level of involvement in this process you would prefer.
Room Clearing
This is a ritual to clear the residue of death from the home. It is practiced in many cultures all over the world. It is even practiced in hospice settings and care homes. For some it is as simple as opening the window in the room a loved one passed, in others it is using smoke, sage, Lavender, palo santo, cedar, whatever source it may be, to allow the smoke to fill and float away. It can be as simple as a prayer or as complex as a full cleaning possibly followed by a ritual. Whatever it looks like, it is a final way of saying goodbye to our loved one in that space.
Legacy Projects
This is an opportunity to preserve some element of the person we love it can be as simple as an endowment to an organization they love, a piece of art or a sentence they once said or wrote or loved being printed and shared. It can be a slideshow of their life, it can be an interview written or recorded of them talking about their life. It can be a quilt or truly anything at all that leaves their mark on this world.