Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The Main Duties Of A Funeral Director

By Anton Cruise

A funeral director's main job is to make preparations for the cremation or burial of the dead and for the particular rituals that precede the burial.

The essential tasks of a funeral director can be divided into four broad heads, which are shifting the dead body, preparing it for the funeral service, making arrangements for friends and relatives to assemble and pay their final respects to the deceased and then the actual cremation or burial of the body according to the choice or beliefs of the family.

These responsibilities encompass different types of tasks, which include arrangement of a vehicle for carrying the deceased, deciding the place and timings for the funeral ceremony and also sending obituaries in the electronic media and in the newspapers. Moreover, funeral directors also look after things like flowers and bouquet arrangements for each ceremony, embalming and clothing the deceased, arrangement for transportation of the family and relatives from one service to another etc.

A funeral director has many responsibilities other than the ones mentioned above, including performing the paperwork formalities as needed. He helps the family secure a death certificate. He is also entrusted with other jobs like helping the family members with obtaining the insurance money and to take advantage of veterans' burial scheme. He also takes care of problems related to clearance of pension and annuities of the deceased person to the rightful beneficiary and aids the family to estimate a budget for the services.

Moreover, a funeral director has to liaise with a number of people so that he can do his jobs in a systematic way. He should be able to interact with physicians, florists, coffin makers and pastors 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 get over the loss of a near and dear one. Though some funeral directors neglect this responsibility, it is an important aspect in a job like this.

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