In the hustle and bustle of daily life, it can be difficult to keep up with all our personal and professional obligations.
From remembering to pay the electric bill to meeting a project deadline at work – and all the tasks that fall in between – there’s little room to think about the future.

So, it’s not surprising that most of us neglect to include what is perhaps the most important task on any to-do list – pre-planning our funeral arrangements.

Sitting down to outline a service or pick a burial plot might seem overwhelming, perhaps even a bit morbid. But the bottom line is, death is an inevitability, and planning for it now ensures your final wishes are met and your family won’t have to suffer the stress of making important financial decisions during a time of grief.

And your local Dignity Memorial providers can make the process simple and straightforward by walking you through each step with the compassion and one-on-one attention that defines the company’s approach to funeral arrangements.

Caring Dignity staff can help you decide which service is right for you. The word “funeral” is often used to describe several events related to final arrangements but, in general, it is a gathering of family and friends to mourn and pay tribute to someone they have lost.

How you choose to structure that gathering can, with advanced planning, be totally up to you. You might opt for a memorial in which a casket is not present. You may want to have a visitation or wake the night before the funeral and a graveside service following the funeral. Your funeral can be formal, following traditions of faith or culture, or an informal celebration that focuses uniquely on you and memories made with family and friends… or a combination of both. You can go with just one service or several – whatever you choose.

If you already understand the importance of pre-planning but have been putting it off because of the added expense, Dignity allows you to arrange your service in advance without paying for it now. Pre-planning simply gives you assurance that your wishes will be clearly known to your loved ones.

However, there is great benefit to pre-funding your funeral. Beyond assuring your family will not have to shoulder the burden of burial and other costs, paying an affordable plan today means you can lock in current prices, which might increase in the future.

Perhaps you are delaying pre-planning because you aren’t sure where you’ll be in the next 10, 20 or even 30 or more years. Here again, Dignity makes a decision to plan ahead easy. If you decide to move more than 75 miles from the town or city in which you prearranged your service, that plan moves with you to one of the more than 2,000 providers within the Dignity network.

With Dignity Memorial by your side, you can not only add funeral prearrangement to your to-do list, but cross it off, as well, allowing you to focus on today, on making important memories with your friends and family, with peace of mind.

Patrick Kelly is Family Service Manager for Dignity Memorial®, which cares for more than 300,000 families each year through its network of more than 2,000 providers throughout North America. Learn more at www.dignitymemorial.com or call Greenlawn Memorial Park, Oleander Memorial Gardens and Coble-Ward Smith Funeral & Cremation Service, (910) 799-1686.