Christy Sharkey
So we’ll start off by telling you who we are. So I’m Christy Sharkey. I’m one of the licensed funeral directors at Hoy Funeral Home. I’ve been with our company for ten years now, Timothy Grant, he has been with us for almost 17 years. So we’re both licensed funeral directors.
Christy Sharkey
We wear many hats as being a licensed funeral director. If you go to other states to prearrange, you’re not always sitting with a licensed director. It’s not mandated by that. Where we can rearrange funerals, we could sit with the family at the time of need. We can take care of the preparations in the prep room for your loved one, which involves embalming, dressing, casketing, things of that nature.
Christy Sharkey
So we do it all. So we’re going to talk about pre planning. Now, a lot of folks believe or say, oh, I prearranged my funeral, and that they just have their cemetery plot. That is not pre arranging your funeral. Um, there are a lot of more details that go into it than just having that grave.
Christy Sharkey
So when it comes time to come in and have a conversation, you sit with Tim, so he’s going to give you a little background on pre arranging.
Pre Funeral Planning
Timothy Grant
So pre planning, when we sit with families, we kind of go through all their wishes. And it’s really a no pressure environment most of the time. Most families who come to us have an idea of their wishes or what they envision their funeral to be, to be. And it can be as simple as really no services, just kind of bury my body or cremate my body to, as far as, you know, an elaborate two or three day type service. So it really depends on their wishes. But we meet with them, we go through everything, a to z. And the idea is that we take the hour or 2 hours, sometimes even a couple days, to go through everything over the course of a few meetings. And then we create a file on them. So when the day comes, no one in the family has to go out and find any information. They don’t have to guess. It’s all said and done. And that’s really the gist of pre planning, is really to make sure that the kids or brother, sister, or any of the loved ones don’t have to guess. It’s all done. And really all we do is we pull the file and say this is what mom or dad or whomever planned for and that’s that.
Timothy Grant
When would you like to do everything? And of course there’s some legal things in the background that we have to take care of.
Christy Sharkey
But that’s the gist of it where like at the time. So I’m usually the director you would sit with at the time of need. If this is not done, you usually will sit with me for anywhere between two to 3 hours to discuss all these details. And again, at the time of grieving, you don’t want to be spending your time in the funeral home. You want to be with your family. But I’m asking you questions from what mom or dad wants to wear. Do we know if it’s a cremation or a burial? All the vital statistic information that goes on. A death certificate, Social Security number, parents names, including the mother’s maiden name. A lot of things that children don’t know the answers to, to flowers, to prayer cards, which is all taken care of before if you do prearrange. And obviously the cost is going to depend on what is collected. So obviously there’s a lot of talk about cremation now. It has become a lot more popular and a lot of people think it’s just because it’s less expensive. That is not necessarily true. People are doing cremation and not doing any services.
Christy Sharkey
So yes, you’re going to be in the $3,000 range versus doing a traditional funeral where you’re having wakes and a casket and a vault at the cemetery, and church fees, which can go up to $10,000 again, depending on how many flowers you pick. So it’s really no set answer. It’s going to be based on what the family wants to do and what they choose? Yes. And then when you do prearrange with us, you do not have to use our funeral home at the time. So we do keep everything in a file. If you do fund your prearrangement, it is all done through New York state pre plan, so the funds do not come to Hawaii funeral home. They would not be ours. The only way we can access the funds is when you pass. We have to send them a death certificate. It shows it’s our funeral home and then they release the funds. So say again, you prearrange with us. Kids either don’t know about it or do not want to use their funeral home. They can call another funeral home and they can access those funds with a death certificate, same as they move out of state.
Christy Sharkey
They don’t have to use us necessarily. We are a corporation, so we do have 2000 funeral homes around the United States. We are Sei, which is an umbrella of dignity memorial. So we can always use another provider and they guarantee our pricing.