Role Of A Funeral Home Company
In Melbourne, funeral home companies serve as pillars of support during times of grief, offering essential assistance and guidance to families navigating the complexities of loss. These professional establishments are dedicated to coordinating every aspect of a funeral service, from transportation and accommodation of the deceased to the meticulous organisation of ceremonies and rites.
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What Happens In A Funeral Home Company?
The term ‘funeral home’ came into common use because in earlier times the Funeral Director (and their family) tended to live in a building or house that included both domestic accommodation and funeral related facilities including mortuary, chapel and viewing spaces. It was their home, and in a way it became the short term ‘home’ of the deceased. A special purpose AirBnB, long before that concept existed.
In times when land-line telephones and cars were not common (and mobile phones and Uber weren’t even a thought!), the idea of a Funeral Director living on the premises made perfect sense. A death could occur at any hour, on any day of the year, and when it did a family member would physically go to the funeral home company confident there would be someone available to assist them.
Nowadays, it would be unusual to encounter a live-in traditional funeral service. Modern communications and transport have made that idea redundant, however, the function of the affordable funeral home is very much the same today as it was 100 years ago.
Families contact a funeral home to seek the assistance of people who are familiar with the essential and useful processes and procedures required when a death occurs. Assistance most often begins with transportation of the deceased from the place of death to a mortuary accommodation facility. The affordable Funeral Directors liaise with doctors and hospitals to organise necessary paperwork, provide mortuary care and coffins, coordinate and schedule the funeral service and provide hearses and transport.
Funeral directing services were one of the earliest examples of a ‘one-stop-shop’ product and service delivery business. Today you’re much more likely to find the Funeral Director by calling their mobile phone, and your choices are much greater because you are not limited to dealing with the local area provider. Nonetheless, to a greater or lesser degree the Funeral Director of your choice will be providing you with the same (or very similar) services delivered to your great-grandparents.
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What Is The Role Of Funeral Directors In Melbourne When Arranging A Funeral?
The professional Funeral Director as we know it now is, in historical terms, a relatively new development. Going back only a matter of a couple of hundred years, when communities were smaller and less mobile, the organisation of a burial and traditional funeral was taken on by the community itself.
Certain individuals, with different skill sets, each contributed to take care of essential and social arrangements. It is not hard to imagine the local carpenter providing a coffin, the doctor or midwife attending to the ‘laying out‘ of the deceased, and big Thomas heading to the edge of town with a shovel over his shoulder to dig a grave. Meanwhile, the local priest or minister comforted the family and Mrs Miers cooked up a feast. On any given day these individuals were simply going about their normal business, but when a death occurred they mobilised to serve their community.
While there are countless variations, this basic idea of the community itself stepping up to deal with the practical and social aspect of death went on all over the world for centuries. Jewish communities even have a name for those members of the community they came together to organise the budget funeral rites – ‘Chevra kadisha’ which translates roughly to ‘burial society’.
Increasing populations, greater mobility, and industrialisation are all factors that gradually over time contributed to making the traditional community-based practices less common. In a sense they simply became less practical.
Consider the effect of population growth on traditional community-based death care and traditional funeral service. The more people there are in a town or city the more deaths that occur – this is a statistical fact. While the population is small (village level) the members of the ‘burial society’ might be called upon three times a year. At this level their contribution is something they can fit into their normal lives. Now imagine a slow but continuous population growth, and eventually, those same people end up being called upon every day. At a certain level of population, this simply becomes unsustainable.
For a time, the local ‘burial society’ may have coped by recruiting some extra members, but there are natural limits to finding more and more people with the right skills and personality. There would come a point where the local carpenter would be spending half his time building coffins, and unless he started charging for them, he wouldn’t be able to feed his family. At a certain moment in time, one of the carpenters in a growing community began making coffins in advance – Smith and Co. Carpenters became a specialist coffin maker.
Then Smith started charging a fee for the use of his wagon for those who didn’t have one. Then Smith built a nice wagon specially designed to carry a coffin – someone called it a hearse. Then he built on some extra room at the back of his house for visitations – and someone called it a funeral parlour, etc, etc…
And there we have the origins of the professional funeral home company director! A natural, logical progression toward specialisation as families adopted and accepted the shift from community-based to specialised funeral facilitation.
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What Are The Main Tasks Of A Funeral Director In Melbourne?
The tasks performed by an affordable Funeral Director include practical logistics such as transport and accommodation of the deceased. Also specialised services such as preparation for viewings and encoffining. Organising medical certificates and providing cemeteries and crematorium with the necessary paperwork is essential in ensuring the funeral proceeds on time and as planned. To a greater or lesser degree, all the activities listed so far happen in the background. At the same time, a key foreground role for the Funeral Director is to advise and assist families with the ‘event planning’ aspects of organising the actual affordable funeral service. Organising a venue, a celebrant, flowers, catering and transportation are all things a funeral director can arrange.
Exactly which services an affordable Funeral Director provides depends upon the wishes and instructions of the family and friends involved. Most families entrust the bulk of arrangements to the Funeral Director because it reduces the load and stress, allowing time to just be and come to terms with the death. Others find it helps to be more directly involved in the process, especially attending to the elements of the service such as preparing a eulogy, organising flowers from their garden or preparing a catered event at their home to follow the funeral.
The thing to keep in mind is that there is no right or wrong here. Every funeral is as unique as the person themselves. A professional Funeral Director should offer, and provide, the flexibility to tailor the services to best meet you and your families needs and wants.
At Potter’s Field, we have the best Funeral Directors in Melbourne on standby ready to arrange the type of funeral service you truly want, and take care of all the details. Our funeral home company has served Victorian families since 2014, and are available 24/7 to service your needs. Call us at (03) 9568 4047.
Written by Kevin Hartley
About the author:
Kevin Hartley has been involved in every aspect of the funeral industry for 30 years. He focuses now on promoting sustainable funeral practices, natural burial grounds and has a passion for encouraging people to participate in truly meaningful end-of-life practices and events. His writings combine years of practical experience with formal psychological insights.
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