Funneral Plans

Planning a funeral has to be one of the most surreal experiences that the average person goes through.  Exactly the time that you are most emotionally impacted, you have to plan an event that will cost thousands of dollars.  Despite the bad rap that the funeral home industry sometimes suffers, everyone I dealt with was very kind, professional, and genuinely cared about my best interests both emotional and financial.

Given the fact that this would be a closed casket service and that we had no burial plans, I decided to have Sara's body shipped to DFW and then cremated after the service.  I felt that this would be a good balance between the everyone's need for closure, and the cost of the this whole event.  I spoke to Sarah's parents and our kids about this before making the final decision.

One thing that I did early on was to identify some good pictures of Sarah for the funeral and for the media to use.  All the articles about her disappearance and death had used the pictures from the search and rescue team, which may have been the most recent but weren't exactly the most flattering.  After looking through the pictures stored on my computer, I selected the picture I wanted everyone to remember her by.

I've always loved this simple candid shot of Sarah holding Laura.  The lighting, expression, and smile on Sarah's face is how I will remember her.

Saturday, after dealing with the funeral home and arrangements at the church, I cleaned up the van and the house and waited for Jim, Mari and the boys to arrive.  They didn't get here until after dinner which had been delivered by some of the neighbors.  Jami Stripe had set up a meal train account for our family which was a great blessing.  Seeing all my kids again was a moment where I could finally have some peace.

We made it to church on Sunday and enjoyed the routine and anonymity of dropping the kids off for Sunday School.  I had emailed the children's minister that I didn't want anyone to make a fuss over the kids, and they did a great job welcoming us back.  I spoke to Doug, the lead pastor who would be delivering the Gospel at the memorial, a few days later and expressed my gratitude to the church staff for reaching out to us when we needed them.

The next few days are a blur of errands, editing photos for the slide show, cleaning, phone calls, and meeting relatives.  My parents were here to help watch the kids, but they quickly got tired of everyone being crowded in our home and moved in with some old friends living nearby.  Mari helped coordinate a lot of the back to school logistics for the kids.

By the time that Thursday came around and people started arriving, I thought that I had most things under control.