After our initial conversation with Maggie at Mercy, Lauren and I had some decisions to make. Would we bury our daughter or cremate her? I hadn’t given any of the options much thought, but Lauren was pretty firm that we would bury her. I was fine with that.
I called a funeral home in the St. Louis area so I could get an idea of what would happen and who we needed to talk to. The funeral home was very helpful and let me know we would need to select a burial site and a church.
I called a potential burial site location whose first question was if we would want our daughter buried with us. I said yes and then the follow-up question was to ask where our burial spots were.
Given we are in our mid to late 30’s, I had not thought much about our mortality much less made plans. The burial site person then discussed the various options for our burial locations, pricing, payment options, etc. He turned our discussion into a sales pitch using statements like “I’m sure the cost may seem high, but you need to remember we’re paying for operational costs such as lawn maintenance not just for your life, but for eternity.” I wasn’t pleased with his approach in handling the situation at all. I said thanks for your time and he told me he’d follow-up with me in a week or so to “close the deal”. I told him it wouldn’t be necessary and that I’d call him if I needed any additional information.
I found myself angry the rest of the day and week at the thought Lauren and I wouldn’t just be planning our daughter’s funeral, but we would also be planning a portion of our own as part of this.
As the phone calls to various places increased, I became numb to their approach and tactics hiding my anger, but secretly sulking through all of them. I also didn’t want to distract Lauren with a lot of these decisions. I made various phone calls and gathered the information so when the time came to make decisions I could just give her the answers based on the research I had done. As the mother, I know Lauren is going through a lot more physically so I felt it was the least I could do and an important task for me to carry out.
Over the next couple of weeks, I gathered the appropriate information and we finalized the primary logistics. It was a tremendous relief to have those decisions made.