While it’s never easy to think about your eventual passing, preplanning your funeral service or cremation and choosing a cemetery in Charlotte, NC is one of the best things you can do for your family, and for yourself for a wide variety of reasons.

Preplanning for your passing and following services can help both you and your loved ones in many different ways. The benefits of preplanning include, but aren’t limited to:

1. Easing Your Family’s Burden: Let your family know exactly what you want for your cremation so they don’t have to guess what to do after you’re gone, or spend time making painful decisions when they should be grieving with loved ones.
2. Maintaining Self-Reliance: Taking charge of your memorial services and cremation allows you to maintain control and independence when you might otherwise lose them. This is good for your mental health at the end of your life and gives you more self-reliance.
3. Financial Responsibility: You can plan for how to cover the cremation costs in advance to make it easier for your family’s bank accounts and stress levels. Look into cremation insurance or funeral trusts to help ensure financial ease for your cremation and service.
4. Making Sure Your Wishes Are Met: Make sure you get the exact cremation and memorial service you want by taking care of the details and clearly laying them out for your friends and family. This way they won’t be able to argue or disagree.
5. Creating a Meaningful Service: Memorial services are an important part of the grieving process, but your loved ones might miss out on the important benefits if they are too busy planning the event. Preplan so they don’t have to.

These are just a few of the ways preplanning your cremation can help both you and your family. But how do you go about preplanning a funeral or cremation?

The first step is to make some choices. Think about what you want for your service and be prepared to make some choices. For example, you need to choose what to do with your remains, from burial and scattering to more non-traditional methods of body disposal like a biodegradable urn or water internment. You also need to decide between a funeral home or crematory for your cremation and service and make more detailed choices about memorial or funeral specifications like preferred music, desired readings, special decorations and video displays. Don’t forget about choosing your final resting place. There are a ton of options, but the main ones include a family plot in a cemetery, mausoleum, columbarium, or cremation urn.

Preplanning your funeral or cremation isn’t as hard or overwhelming as you would think once you get started, and it can only help you and your loved ones after your death. If you do need more assistance with preplanning, Gethsemane Cemetery and Memorial Garden can help. We are an experienced Charlotte, NC cemetery and would be happy to help you however we can.