Today funeral homes and morticians in Albuquerque, New Mexico contribute in many ways to the daily lives of families in the community. The professionals working as funeral home directors must satisfy legal and educational requirements to obtain a license issued by the New Mexico Board of Funeral Practice.(1) They offer a variety of helpful services.
Morticians in New Mexico help ease the emotional distress of grieving families, who may find themselves cleaning up after the deceased loved one has physically departed from the premises. Attending to the numerous tasks of making burial, cremation, or memorial service arrangements and disposing of the personal effects of a deceased person frequently places enormous stress on survivors. Most funeral directors and their staff members seek to alleviate this burden.
Pre-Planning Services
A funeral home may offer pre-planning services to enable a person to personally oversee final arrangements for months or years in advance of dying. In some cases, families pay for these arrangments in installments; since no one can determine with absolute certainty when a death will occur, these efforts may help a household avoid incurring sudden, unexpected, steep funeral costs. Additionally, pre-planning often helps survivors, by ensuring that the deceased person has already approved of all of the details of the final arrangements.
Pre-planning may involve the preparation of a memorial service and the selection of a grave site and grave marker or tombstone. In some cases, Albuquerque residents specifically ask the planners to provide for a cremation. Funeral homes may undertake responsibility for all final arrangements. Some people order pre-planning; others do not.
Preparing a Body For a Funeral
Many funeral directors and their staff members also complete death certificates. They may transport the remains of a deceased person from a hospital or county morgue to the funeral home. They undertake the sometimes challenging task of preparing a body for a funeral or a cremation. Their clients may request embalming services (or not) in order to prepare the remains for an open casket funeral or transportation to a gravesite some distance away.
When preparing remains, the funeral home staff may serve as cosmetologists to some extent; they strive to present the deceased person attractively. This process may involve reconstructive procedures in the case of individuals who passed away under traumatic circumstances. Performing this task requires extensive training (one reason many morticians today undergo two to three years of specialized education).
Memorial Services
Funeral homes also frequently provide venues for memorial services. Families cleaning up after the deceased may decide to conduct a service at a funeral home or a house of worship, rather than a graveside. Final arrangements frequently vary.
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