I have an irrational fear of organising funerals

[Radi0liverpool]

I have never had anyone close to me die. I keep thinking about my parents or partner dying and how I just can't bare the idea of organising a funeral. I hate organising parties and it causes me huge anxiety, I love other people's parties, weddings but i eloped to marry so I didn't have to organise one.
Anyway, sometimes I feel like I really would prefer to die before any of these people so I don't have to organise their funeral. Why am I getting preoccupied with this?? I'm quite sure it doesn't fill other people's heads!

Thank you. That's so helpful

Dh had a direct cremation. Neither of us could ever have sat through each others funeral. When my time comes I’ll be having one too. I got a load of hate for it but dh and I mattered, not the people who let us down repeatedly. People who hadn’t bothered with him for years letting the family know their doing a eulogy 🤨

No way was I sitting through a funeral service, what a load of old bollocks with people who showed you no respect turning up for a gawp and a buffet. I remember at granny’s sitting there thinking what a load of tosh.

They should be organising their own funeral. You shouldn't have to make decisions on their behalf.

I organised my mother's funeral when I was 22, delivered the eulogy etc. Basically the funeral directors will take care of it all and you just have input into various decisions like cremation vs burial, flowers or no, how many cars, which songs and so forth. So it really wasn't that stressful at all. You have to remember they're used to dealing with people who are in so much shock or pain or anguish they're barely able to eat a sandwich let alone organise a big event. In my experience they were very kind, considerate, thoughtful, amazing people, that made a difficult time as easy as it could be. I'll never forget one of them opening up the funeral home on Christmas Day for me to go and see her as she'd only died a couple days before. That kindness still blows me away.

A funeral is probably easiest thing to organise. Funeral Directors do most of it (after you have death certificate but they even guide you to how to get this) and you pick a venue for afterwards close by, so they are often chosen for funerals and you ask to cater for a rough estimate of people - dont worry about getting it spot on a cup of tea, sandwich and cake is all most expect.
As for bits in service person taking service will talk you through options.

I had to arrange my mums from scratch in Jan. Never had to do one before so hadn't got a clue. They are more expensive than I expected even for a simple service so although mum had set aside some money it would have only covered the direct funeral option but we wanted a little service for the family so we ended up paying. Only saying this as it is something to be aware of.

You are given full information on each step and really guided through. The hospital gave us a 'what to do' type booklet for official stuff such as registering the death, the funeral director helped us with funeral arrangements and explained everything in detail. Our celebrant - the person who did the service- came to our house and chatted to us and sent copies of the service through for us to edit. Hardest bit was chosing the music.

Overall it was very easy and we felt supported the whole way. While I hope I won't have too many to arrange it wasn't the hardest thing to do. We just came back to my house for a light lunch after as didn't have a huge amount of people coming and funeral was about 11am. I put out some photos and people just stayed an hour or so as many had travelled a fair way. It was long enough tbh but nice.

Also useful after a death is the Tell Us Once service where you can inform multiple government organisations at the same time

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/conversations-with-annalisa-barbieri/id1567190358?i=1000609221646

This podcast on organising funerals is very interesting and covers lots of the different options. Posting it for general interest rather than for OP necessarily, as it's completely fine just to let the funeral directors lead you through.

I have organised a lot of funerals and the hardest thing is the music. Ask the people for whom you will be next of kin to think about what music they would like and to write it down. They then need to tell you where that information is. I've gone through CD collections and music on a piano to work out what the deceased liked because the NofK have no idea.

If they don't want to think about it then at least you know you asked.

You can honour someone's life by finding music that reflects their interests. We had The Lark Ascending for a gentleman in my congregation who was mostly non verbal because he loved birds. It was very appropriate and there was barely a dry eye in the house. My mother in law left no instructions so we had the theme from Strictly to get us out of the crem as she was a huge fan.

Is it more to do with being the adult left in charge? If your parents are still alive and you've never truly been the ultimate grown up / last authority, this can seem overwhelming and impossible. But it comes to us all and we do fine in the end. The truth is nobody is ever the last person standing. We live in a society, and people do help each other. There's a lot of kindness in the world.