Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The Main Duties Of A Funeral Director

By Manny Cruise

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

The essential tasks of a funeral director include moving the deceased to a mortuary, preparing the body for the funeral ceremony, making arrangements for the ceremonies where people will remember and pay their last respects to the departed, and performing the ultimate procedures on the body.

These duties cover different types of tasks, including arrangement of a vehicle for carrying the deceased, deciding the place and timings for the funeral ceremony and also publishing obituaries in the local media as well as the newspapers. Moreover, funeral directors also take care of things like flowers and bouquet arrangements for each ceremony, anointing and clothing the body, arrangement for shifting of the family and relatives from one venue to another etc.

A funeral director has a lot of responsibilities other than the above mentioned ones, including doing the essential paperwork formalities as needed. He helps the relatives in procuring a death certificate. He also acts as a facilitator for settling insurance claims for the family as well as helping them take advantage of facilities like seniors' burial support. He can even arrange for the clearance of any pensions or annuities that the family members are entitled to get, and provides tips to the family on how to manage funeral expenses.

He also has to coordinate with a wide range of experts to accomplish his tasks in a proper and systematic way. He must be able to communicate with physicians, florists, coffin makers and priests equally well.

Finally, it is important for funeral directors to come forward and offer some comfort to the bereaved family on an unofficial level, so as to help them tide over the loss of a near and dear one. Though it is a crucial aspect of the profession, a few funeral directors tend to ignore it as a trivial responsibility.

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