Funeral

This morning, one of the leading news stories was about a fire at a local mortuary.  This hit home for us, as it was the funeral home that handled both Brady's and Henry's arrangements and services.  It's hit me harder than I thought it would, as I think of the services they provide to so many grieving families, and how it will affect families that currently had arrangements pending.

When we walked into this funeral home, just days after Brady's birth, and death, we were shell-shocked.  We were very newly married, and still trying to process the loss of our precious baby boy.  We had NO idea what to expect, as neither of us had ever been very involved in making funeral and burial decisions and arrangements.  Sure, my grandma had died a few years earlier, and my family included me in some of the decision making, but I wasn't the one in charge.  Now, here we were, trying to make arrangements to bury our baby boy who never even took a breath on this earth.  We went from planning a nursery to picking out an urn.  This was definitely not something we were prepared for.  Yet the people at Heafey-Heafey-Hoffman-Dworak took care of us.  They walked us through the decisions...from the big ones like cremation to the little ones like the wording of the obituary.  They didn't get upset when we called several times to change the obituary.  And they helped get us started at the cemetery too.  Like many funeral homes, there was no charge for the cremation.  We only had to worry about the cost of the services.

Unfortunately, when we walked in a year and a half later to make arrangements for Henry, we knew what to expect.  This time, we were ushered into the big office.  We knew what questions to ask, and we knew what steps had to be taken.  Yet the staff (this time our director happened to be the gentleman that was injured in the fire) still took their time with us and gladly answered all of our questions.  The same was true at the cemetery, where they took extra good care of us.  I know it's the nature of their business in funeral homes and cemeteries to deal with grieving families, but as in any industry there are some that are better than others.  And Heafey was (and still is) definitely at the top of my list.

I'm not really sure what the point of my post is...I suppose just to get some of this off my mind.  My heart certainly goes out to those who had arrangements scheduled and loved ones at this location.  I also hope for full recovery for the firefighters and gentleman that were injured during the fire.  It still surprises me that this has had such an affect on me.  However, I suppose when you have people that are involved with such an intimate time of your life, you still feel a bit of a connection...