OneRoom Blog

“No one wants to plan their own funeral,” says James Montgomery, OneRoom’s national sales director, in a recent interview. His frank admission is based on nearly 15 years of industry experience, including a decade-plus tenure at Service Corporation International. “You’re essentially planning the worst day of your life, so it's easy for someone to put off,” he continues. As funeral professionals, you recognize this hesitancy better than anyone. 

For many professionals who have selected to delve into the world of the funeral director, it is more than just a career path but a calling. I have been a licensed funeral director for over 20 years in New York and more recently in Texas. I have served client families in different roles throughout my career ranging from daily operations, embalming, leading teams in pre need sales, managing cemeteries and crematories as well as presenting to other professionals at events. We are natural caregivers, finding fulfillment and pride in taking care of those who grieve, while ensuring their loved one’s disposition is carried out in the most dignified manner. Sweet moments of achievement in a funeral director’s day are also paired with several challenges. One of those challenges which has plagued the industry for over a year is COVID-19. Not only has it been a struggle to maintain the connection between grief stricken families and their director but also to remain relevant in these swiftly changing times, having to creatively adapt our care and adopt technology. 

For over 80 years, Krause Funeral Homes and Cremation Services have served the greater Milwaukee region with professionalism, empathy, and a deep reverence for life celebrations. With approximately 80 employees spread across four locations—Brookfield, Milwaukee - Brown Deer Road, Milwaukee - Capitol Drive, and New Berlin—Krause offers funeral, cremation, and burial options, as well as grief services. Additional signature services, including family follow-ups, floral deliveries, candle-lighting tributes, a grief therapy dog, the Krause motorcycle hearse, on-staff certified celebrants, among others, are offered to all families regardless of their funeral package. “We want families to feel that their needs are met, that they're cared for,” says Jacob Waterworth, manager of operations and funeral director. “They're not just another number to us.”

Einan’s at Sunset Funeral Home at Sunset Gardens, a valued OneRoom customer, has been serving Richland, Washington, for over 60 years. Always ahead of the curve when it comes to technology and innovation, Einan’s installed OneRoom’s live-streaming solution in its chapel and event center in 2019. “Families wanted it and expected it,” says Holley Sowards, service and operations manager. “If you want to stay in the game, you need to have this technology. It's critical.”

Funeral directors have the delicate task of supporting grieving families, while organizing a streamlined service that respectfully honors their loved ones. This challenging job, however, has grown even more difficult amidst a global pandemic that’s limited safe travel and constrained in-person gatherings. 

Funeral directors must organize an event that does justice to a person’s life, while also bringing mourners together under highly emotional circumstances. This can be a demanding and delicate task, but when done well, funeral directors create a unique and personal blend of sorrow and joy, reflection and hope, strength and meaning.

The grieving process is never easy. But that’s why families and loved ones come together to honor the person who has passed and help one another through a challenging time. 

How to respond to a global pandemic is a skill all governments, businesses and families have had to polish up on in recent months. Compassionate funeral directors looking to deepen relationships and build empathy with clients can do so by livestreaming the funeral, which allows all attendees, physical and virtual, to partake in the healing process.

YAKIMA, Wash. -- The Coronavirus pandemic is forcing many funeral homes to delay final goodbyes.

Over the last month, Richard Frieson has lost two sisters to COVID-19. In normal times, Frieson's large family would have gathered in Chicago, where his sisters lived, to sing, pray, hug and mourn.

In early April, Maura Lewinger, a mother of three from New York, told CNN about saying goodbye to her 42-year old husband over FaceTime as he died from coronavirus in the hospital. Unable to be with him at the bedside because of the danger, she, like thousands of others, faced the most difficult moment of her life, and that of her husband, separated by a screen and hundreds of miles. Lewinger is far from the only one who can tell this story. With the COVID-19 death toll in the United States at over 80,000 as of mid-May, we are witnessing an extraordinary onslaught of severe illness and death.

As COVID-19 cases spread across the nation, disrupting daily routines for the living, growing numbers of U.S. businesses and families are changing how they deal with the dead.

THE LOSS OF A LOVED ONE can be difficult to deal with at any time. But in the era of COVID-19, when physical, or social, distancing is the norm, family and friends wanting to pay their last respects to the deceased face special challenges.

When Candida Rifkind got the call on March 14 that her Aunt Cecilia had died, she realized she couldn’t attend the funeral. The rapid spread of the coronavirus was making international travel more uncertain than ever. Just a day earlier, the United States had blocked most European visitors from entering its borders. Ms. Rifkind, an English professor who lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, didn’t want to risk it. (Canada and the United States closed their borders to each other the next week.)